Abstract
Being a part of a larger project on subject positions of the child in policy documents and teaching materials, this article focuses on the role of undecidables in the fabrication of the so-called good child in the Swedish curriculum for the compulsory school. Within a framework of governmentality, the curriculum represents technologies of government, providing an undecidable terrain open for interpretation and decisions by subjects. Through the lens of education for sustainable development, I have selected five school subjects of particular interest for analysis: biology, civics, geography, home and consumer studies, and physical education and health. By focusing on the undecidable olika, meaning ‘different’, in the five syllabi, a pattern of features designating the good child emerges: (1) science-based categorization, (2) the lifelong learner, (3) the informed consumer, and (4) celebration of diversity. These four features represent a political rationale characterised by a contradictory amalgamation of cosmopolitanism and value pluralism. In combination with an increased emphasis on measurement and assessment in Swedish education, this reinforces abjection processes in school, separating ‘the good child’ and ’the child left behind’.
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