The rise and fall of the Swedish school

In the debate on the new marking system and other measures to lift up Swedish schools, it is sometimes said that the reforms should be carried out with as broad a consensus as possible. People think that agreement is good on sensitive matters. Perhaps the really important decisions should indeed be left to experts. Where the economy or defence is concerned, this is usually the view advocated by the right. But where education is involved, it presently seems to be the approach taken by the left.

Nevertheless, the history of Swedish school reform is an excellent example of the benefits of disagreement and debate and the dangers of consensus and the rule of experts. It is also beneficial in other respects to return to the 1960s and look at how the Swedish school really came to be what it is today.

The reforms were actually quite disparate. The approach changed dramatically between the early and late 1960s. In truth, by the mid-1960s, Sweden probably had the best schools in the world as a result of its hotly debated reform policy – perhaps the best in history. Then, without any significant debate, there began another development, the end of which we are now – hopefully – experiencing.

To be completely fair, one should realize that the Swedish school system even before the post-war expansion was among the world leaders. It probably had been ever since mass indoctrination by the Lutheran Church began in the 17th century, with its study of the Bible and parish catechetical meetings. There was general literacy in Sweden as early as the 18th century. With the introduction of the folkskola (four-year primary school) in 1842 came the general ability to write and surprisingly high level of general education so desired by the Church, which paradoxically swiftly reduced the Church’s power over people’s minds in favour of independent churches and, later, popular movements.

In actuality, the educational system was probably what made Sweden so very different and created the conditions needed for later social and technological development – the engine of social welfare. Education was a prerequisite for Sweden’s inventions and innovative industries as well as for the practical application of the ideas of its inventors and entrepreneurs, who had access to a fairly well-educated workforce that could read instructions and understand rules and plans.

It was somewhat of a paradox that the lower levels of education – junior school, the folkskola and later vocational school – were most impressive from an international perspective. The upper secondary schools and teacher training colleges resembled similar establishments the world over. Swedish universities were inferior, apart from the special colleges for technology and medicine that were created outside the university framework in Stockholm. However, access to higher education was remarkably broad from an international perspective. Many farmers’ sons could become clergymen and their children civil servants. The social pyramid in Sweden was comparatively flat and easy to climb within a few generations.

But the system at the end of the Second World War was still complicated, inadequate and unfair. Most had to make do with seven years of folkskola, perhaps followed by a year of vocational training. Barely one in four went beyond third grade to the lower secondary school or girls’ school, thus getting a total of nine or ten years of schooling. Just 6% graduated from upper secondary school, with its rigorous tests to earn the studentexamen certificate, after a total of 12 to 14 years. Another 2% went to a special vocational upper secondary school.

The Social Democrats, who had a majority in the Swedish parliament in 1945 and the initiative in politics, wanted to reform the system. Bu there was already disagreement in the party about how.

Arbetarrörelsens efterkrigsprogram [‘The Labour Movement’s Post-War Programme’] from 1944 sketched out a future ”nine- and ten-year integrated school, which can provide a good education for citizens and humans”. There was a strong emphasis on the school’s role as a ”cultural institution”. However, lower secondary school was to be ”differentiated based on varying practical and theoretical educational needs”. Everyone was supposed to start studying a foreign language – an almost utopian requirement at that time. The goals were to raise the general standard of education, increase the supply of educated people in society, and give everyone an opportunity for higher education with the help of financial aid: ”Many people who do not have a good head for studies get an extensive education, while other young people with far better aptitude are not presently developing their talents.”

These ideas generated widespread enthusiasm. As early as 1949, there were attempts in a number of local districts to establish ”integrated schools” based on the model in the programme. Grades 1-6 were each integrated as single groups, whereas Grades 7-9 were usually divided into a theoretical programme corresponding to the old junior secondary school and one or more practical programmes. Despite considerable difficulties due to the shortage of teachers, new groups of pupils and the fact that, in the beginning, the experiment was usually carried out in socially disadvantaged areas (thus, in Stockholm the integrated school was introduced only south of Skanstull), the whole operation was a clear success. The experiments were gradually expanded so that in 1962 these integrated schools accounted for almost half of all children in the relevant age groups.

But at the same time there was opposition. Alongside the post-war programme that strongly embraced knowledge, the Social Democrats had another manifesto, which in practice came to have an even greater impact on the reforms carried out in various areas – Gunnar and Alva Myrdal’s The Crisis in the Population Question from 1934. Here, the school’s task was instead to create good, equal citizens through social training.

Alva Myrdal, who found her inspiration in American educational reform theory, tried to push this approach through on the school commission that was active in the 1940s. She had the support of the Social Democratic politicians Stellan Arvidsson and Ragnar Edenman. Arvidson was a poet and leftist radical romantic with a touching faith in a ”musical upbringing” in which children, given their freedom, would develop into better people. Edenman was a tough bureaucrat. Both wanted to focus the work of the school less on the general level of education than on raising good social citizens in the Myrdalian spirit and replace the old kinds of knowledge and teaching with new activities and methods, mainly practical work and group activities. Marks were an abomination. If poor children had equal opportunities for a career, the working class would be drained of its talents! Society should instead be changed by training young people to live according to equal values in the school.

Many Liberals shared this view. The party’s leading spokesman on education was eventually Gunnar Helén. Helén was a professor of Nordic languages who at the same time despised the symbols of the old educational system, especially the studentexamen – judging from his memoirs, due largely to a friend from upper secondary school who had failed his oral exam. The agrarian party, Bondeförbundet, was in agreement given the general anti-intellectual attitude in its political base. The Conservatives cherished knowledge but were not exactly ardent supporters of equal opportunities for the poor.

The government bill for a new school put forth by the Erlander government in 1950 was already infused to a great extent with Myrdalian ideas instead of the love of knowledge embraced in the post-war programme. All children were to follow the same course, as far as possible, up to Grade 9. New teaching theories would be employed. Group work would make its debut as the one and only working method in Swedish schools.

However, violent debate and opposition from, among others, the teachers’ unions meant that no decision could be reached. The integrated school was expanded, using knowledge as its content and fair competition as its guiding method, along with a few dutiful experiments, often of short duration, with new working methods.

Nonetheless, the anti-intellectual currents scored a success in 1957 when Ragnar Edenman became Minister of Education. The following year, he declared in an interview that ”It must be the primary task of the schools to make children into people who are as happy as possible.” However, just how one should teach happiness was never communicated. Nor why it was the school rather than other social institutions that were responsible for happiness. After this came ”making children into little citizens by instilling in them democratic values.” This should be done above all by ”fighting social vanity”. Third came teaching, but it was supposed to be aimed primarily at ”giving children certain skills so that they can leave school with a desire to improve as they continue.” The quotations ends, ”Last comes direct memory-based knowledge. Children should have learned to read, write and count and they should have gained some basic understanding in different subjects.” So education in the sense of liberal education was now to come last, since schools had been given other tasks.

But the fight leading up to the crucial reform was instead soon about how the programmes in the lower secondary school should be divided up. Should Grades 7-9 in the definitively reformed school remain divided into different programmes? In that case, should marks determine acceptance in the programme that prepared students for upper secondary school? Edenman and the Myrdalian reform theorists insisted on integration as the sure way to abolish ”swot schools” and meritocracy in favour of solidarity and happiness.

The teachers, those with a university degree as well as those working in the primary schools, were strongly in favour of having separate programmes. But the trade union for primary school teachers changed its position in 1959 and came out in favour of an integrated lower secondary school. In what became known as the Visby Compromise of 1960, drawn up by Helén, the proponents of integration prevailed – almost. Lower secondary school was to remain integrated up to Grade 8. Grade 9 was divided into no fewer than nine programmes: a Grade 9 programme that prepared pupils for upper secondary school, four other theory-based programmes and four practical programmes denoted by two initials, like 9TP (technical-practical). In maths and English, a ”special course” was introduced along with the general course, which was intended to be more advanced. There was free choice in courses and programmes, which resulted in pupils and parents ”voting with their feet”. Within a few years, essentially everyone chose 9G (general studies), while the other eight programmes became a kind of remedial class. Similarly, nearly everyone chose the special courses.

The question of programmes seems to be a pseudo-problem. The problems of the lower secondary school were caused by a very small group of pupils with special problems, who had to be dealt with in a slightly special way in every system. But because those supporting the new teaching theories gradually clung to this superficial issue, those eager to promote knowledge and a liberal education were completely victorious in terms of the content and working methods in the schools.

The primary school teachers, whose union supported the Visby Compromise in the hope of taking over the whole of primary education, had been duped by the bureaucratic establishment, which needed their support to get their proposals passed. They were totally excluded from lower secondary studies and lost Grade 7 to the secondary-school teachers.

A statistics-based marking system with five levels was also established. At the time it was introduced, it was considered to be very progressive in terms of education theory.

Primary schools were introduced in the fall of 1962 after a new Schools Act and new curriculum were adopted. Läroplan för grundskolan [‘Curriculum for primary school’] (1962) is in fact the most optimistic document of its kind in Sweden regarding education and the most ambitious in its promotion of knowledge. The curricula outlining what should be learnt in each grade and how it should be taught are detailed and advanced concerning language, mathematics and subjects like history or biology. Everyone was supposed to study English for five years, while the overwhelming majority who were in the G programme also had three years of German and one year of French. Today, it is difficult to find university graduates with prestigious degrees who have studied as much, much less after graduating from the upper secondary school!

The introduction contains a bit of bureaucratic froth about the model that was later to completely poison education. But the key chapter is the first one, with the same passage also contained in the Schools Act, that the aim of school teaching ”is to provide knowledge to pupils and train their skills”, which to the annoyance of educational reform theorists was placed ahead of fostering the development of children into ”harmonious humans” and ”responsible members of society”. This last statement, to cap it all off, assigns the pupil’s home an equal role. The group work so sacred to the reformists was reduced to ”a valuable complement to other working methods”.

The plan for primary school was followed in 1965 with a new Läroplan för gymnasiet [‘Curriculum for upper secondary school’], which was characterized by the same ambitious spirit. Here too was an incredibly detailed curriculum for what should be learnt for different grades in different subjects in different programmes. For Swedish, it identified key books and authors that pupils were to become familiar with in each grade, obviously with the recommendation of additional extensive reading. Those frightened or delighted by the loss of the Latin programme, for instance, should bear in mind that, in the years to come, as a result of the opportunities available under the framework for the humanities programme created in 1965, there were soon more young people studying Latin in Sweden than at any time before.

The most drastic changes were just for show. The studentexamen, with its rigorous testing, disappeared. But uniformity and fairness in the five-mark scale also used here would be guaranteed by centrally organized exams that would be carefully evaluated. In truth, by this time the old upper secondary school had already achieved a high degree of social levelling. In the final year of the studentexamen, 1968, fewer than 35,000 young people took the exam, not even a third of the entire class – in fact, about as many as those who took it in the next version of upper secondary school, when it was still possible to measure this, as the upper secondary theoretical programmes were in actuality completed each year.

An improved and extended vocational training programme came with Läroplan för fackskolan [‘Curriculum for vocational schools’], also from 1965. Child allowances and study grants made it feasible for everyone to take advantage of the opportunities on offer. Free textbooks were introduced in the upper secondary school in 1965. A system with extremely generous student loans for university studies with a sizeable component of this in grants was proposed in 1963 and implemented shortly after that.

What happened next is not easy to explain.

The work with reform had been a success. Because of the conflicts, the best solutions had most likely been hammered out. The problems that existed were local, with pupils tired of school as a result of extended lower secondary studies, the 1960s wave of drugs and large groups of semi-lingual pupils in new suburbs being settled by immigrants. But these were practical issues to be tackled in a limited context.

In some way, it also appears the general public, the cultural world, politicians and even teachers’ unions lost all interest in schools starting in the mid-1960s. People seemed to be saying that everything was all settled and the direction determined. The experts should take over. They obviously knew best!

At the same time, the reform work really had left behind a considerable body of experts in the bureaucracy and in educational institutions. As for them, they could hardly be content with the idea that the problems were solved or simply local. They had to justify their existence. After all, they had lost the battle over school content. So they were already up and working on a new curriculum for primary schools that would realize Edenman’s intentions. When he retired in 1967, he was able to bequeath this to his successor, and there was broad consensus when it was adopted two years later as LGr 69. The aims in the introduction were switched so that the school was to work mainly with personality development ”and provide pupils with knowledge in connection with that”. Note the ”in connection with that”! When I attended teacher training college at that time, it was considered necessary to say how we in fact were allowed to convey knowledge while we were making young people better humans.

Homework was forbidden. Marks were limited to the last few years. A few hours a week were given over to ”open-choice work” which consisted of absolutely anything. The curricula for the various subjects were moved to special appendices. Aims were lowered significantly and all the descriptions were very vague.

Socialists thought that pupils became socially aware and critical thinkers as a result of less focus on knowledge. Liberals got what they wanted because children would ”choose” among religions or life philosophies, ways of living together or attitudes to drugs.

The new Minister of Education, Olof Palme, gave only passing interest to day-to-day school issues, convinced that the experts knew what they were doing, while he devoted his energy to broader social matters. The most peculiar phenomena, like ”the new mathematics” were thought to be allied with democracy and promoted religiously. Such phenomena could come and go without ever seriously being questioned before they were, in the best case, discreetly forgotten by the wayside.

We have continued down this road – with the broadest political consensus, without debate.

Does anyone remember the SIA school established by the ”lottery parliament” in 1976? ”Skolans Inre Arbete” [‘The School’s Inner Work’] was supposed to keep children there all day with games and sport and outside the classroom walls, with interruptions every now and then for practical work or group studies with no boundaries between the different grades. Or LGr 80? The new curriculum for primary schools that abolished all subjects except languages and mathematics and replaced them with two blocks, ”SO” and ”NO”, because ”existence is not divided into subjects”. This was the curriculum that also abolished history and instead introduced the unit ”Human activity – a chronological perspective”, where pupils were supposed to study their own history and that of their family and local area and as a result be prepared to encounter a globalized culture.

The fact that the school nevertheless survived and functioned rather well in some places was because the local authorities could not afford the biggest follies and because good teachers carried on teaching the way they always did. When nobody from outside or from above really cared anymore, the bureaucrats could come up with their strangest decrees. But people could also ignore those decrees. Unfortunately, it was presumably also possible, if one wanted, to totally ignore teaching. Fairness and equality were not among the qualities typical of the new educational system. The uneven social representation, which can be seen today in the upper secondary school, has instead steadily increased, as I mentioned. The really good teachers and regular teaching methods naturally were found most frequently in areas that were strong socially.

LGr 80 was thus adopted under a non-Socialist government, as was the final slaughter of knowledge in 1994 with the curriculum and syllabus then introduced, in which all concrete content was abolished. It was in 1994 that the most recent marking system was introduced for the few critical occasions when marks had to be retained for the sake of appearances. By removing all intelligible norms and every form of control, it nonetheless ensured that marks would at least be completely arbitrary and unfair when they could no longer be totally abolished.

But it was the discreetly presented curriculum of 1969 that forcefully broke the trend. It was a break with the major reforms that came in the early 1960s – and with the previous Swedish school tradition.

Are we perhaps finally about to experience a new break in the trend?