CHAPTER 10 - The Development of Swedish Mass Schooling, 1800–82

Abstract

This chapter highlights the development of Swedish mass schooling in 1800–82. It discusses the formal educational system before 1800, as it was explicitly not universal in scope and involved only a small proportion of the population. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the institutional framework of Swedish society was restructured around a new model of society. In this model, society was conceived as consisting primarily of fundamentally similar (equal) individuals, while much less social reality was attributed to corporate entities—estates, towns, villages, and so on. At the same time, the theory that childhood socialization was the crucial determinant of the personal character and capacities of adults assumed the status of an unequivocal truth. These elements combined to produce mass schooling as the means by which children could be transformed into modern individuals capable of the rational calculation, self-discipline, political astuteness, and religious righteousness required to make the national polity both successful and just. Schooling was not the only initiation ceremony that arose in response to the institutional demand for a new type of citizen in the new social order.