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During the Cold War, Norway was a member of NATO, Sweden was neutral but depended on Western support in the event of a crisis, while Finland's foreign policy priority was to win and retain the Soviet Union's confidence. The purpose of the thesis is to study whether the three small states' different foreign policy choices had consequences for the ways in which the Soviet Union and the USA were depicted in school textbooks for history, geography, and social sciences in the period 1930 to 2004. To this end, a theory derived from small states' strategies to maintain their independence was applied to textbook production. The study demonstrates that there was a link between small state foreign policy and textbooks' accounts of the USA and Soviet Union. Swedish and Norwegian textbooks portray international conflicts from a legalistic perspective, taking the part of small states exposed to superpower aggression such as Vietnam and Afghanistan. In Finnish textbooks, however, an interest in defending small state's rights yielded to the need to demonstrate their goodwill towards the Soviet Union, which was described in far less critical terms than in Swedish and Norwegian textbooks. In time, in the name of neutrality, depictions of the USA also became increasingly uncritical. All three Nordic states had government authorities charged with inspecting and approving school textbooks. Foreign policy's chief influence on textbooks was not effected by direct oversight, however; instead, it was established indirectly by means of the social climate, which determined what was considered politically correct in the three countries, and it was to this that the textbooks' authors adapted their work. Textbooks are often said to be conservative and slow to change, but the thesis shows that in parts they were politically sensitive, rapidly adapting to changes in what society held to be politically correct.

<p>During the Cold War, Norway was a member of NATO, Sweden was neutral but depended on Western support in the event of a crisis, while Finland's foreign policy priority was to win and retain the Soviet Union's confidence. The purpose of the thesis is to study whether the three small states' different foreign policy choices had consequences for the ways in which the Soviet Union and the USA were depicted in school textbooks for history, geography, and social sciences in the period 1930 to 2004. To this end, a theory derived from small states' strategies to maintain their independence was applied to textbook production. </p><p>The study demonstrates that there was a link between small state foreign policy and textbooks' accounts of the USA and Soviet Union. Swedish and Norwegian textbooks portray international conflicts from a legalistic perspective, taking the part of small states exposed to superpower aggression such as Vietnam and Afghanistan. In Finnish textbooks, however, an interest in defending small state's rights yielded to the need to demonstrate their goodwill towards the Soviet Union, which was described in far less critical terms than in Swedish and Norwegian textbooks. In time, in the name of neutrality, depictions of the USA also became increasingly uncritical.</p><p>All three Nordic states had government authorities charged with inspecting and approving school textbooks. Foreign policy's chief influence on textbooks was not effected by direct oversight, however; instead, it was established indirectly by means of the social climate, which determined what was considered politically correct in the three countries, and it was to this that the textbooks' authors adapted their work. </p><p>Textbooks are often said to be conservative and slow to change, but the thesis shows that in parts they were politically sensitive, rapidly adapting to changes in what society held to be politically correct.</p>

Narratives of Nordic pre-history are common in textbooks of the Swedish 'folk school'. This thesis discusses them from an ideological critical perspective and analyses them as textbook myths. This analytic concept of myth is constructed and used as a tool for studying ideological expressions in pedagogical texts. It is compatible with a historical materialist, social constructivist and Gramsci inspired perspective towards folk schooling and can handle questions of selection and re-organisation of ancient narrative material. The study shows how a paternalistic ethnic ideology which showed the pupils how their ancestors immigrated and set up society and order is replaced by nationalistic myths where the Swedes are projected on the totality of the past. Idealisation of farmers and expressions that neutralise poverty and legitimates subordination are used continuously throughout the study period. After 1868 a national folk concept is established. Textbook myths with a euhemeristic portrayal of civilisation are replaced by other scientific ways of handling pre-historic religions including elements from nature mythology and evolutionary theory. The myths handle religions both through Christian polemics and theological projections. The results of the analyses are interpreted in the light of the contemporary socio-economic changes where a feudal agrarian society's principles for classifications and hierarchies are challenged and broken by the principles of a class society with a nationalistic ideology. In the concluding chapters the myths are discussed and interpreted in relation to curriculum codes and in a Gramsci inspired perspective as expressions of a passive bourgeois revolution, where intellectuals of the middle class conquered the school and the textbook myths by making alliances with the farming class and trying to neutralise the poor and the working class. The thesis contributes to research in the use of history, representation in pedagogical texts and to research in nationalism.

I centrum för avhandlingen står den konflikt om skolagan som aktualiserades när det svenska skolväsendet skulle stöpas om till en enhetsskola. Undersökningsperioden är 1946-1962. Det övergripande syftet har varit att analysera denna konflikts upprinnelse, utveckling och följder i relation till skolans fostransuppdrag och barndomens innebörder. Med utgångspunkt i detta syfte har dels har det formella skolpolitiska spelet kring enhetsskolan och skolans fostransuppdrag beskrivits, dels har ett antal centrala texter som producerades i denna process analyserats. Teoretiskt och metodiskt har undersökningen knutit an till ett diskursanalytiskt förhållningssätt där frågor om makt och styrning är centrala. I diskussionen om skolans fostransuppdrag framträdde olika diskurser som på vissa punkter stod i skarp opposition mot varandra. Vid en närmare granskning av denna konflikt har diskursernas olika möjlighetsvillkor undersökts, i betydelsen deras historiska och samhälleliga förutsättningar och deras inre logiker; och de centrala ord, begrepp och metaforer som har utgjort diskursernas centrala element har kunnat ringas in. De två maktteoretiska begreppen styrningsrationalitet och hegemoni har utgjort de primära analytiska redskapen. Med hjälp av styrningsrationalitetsbegreppet har de målsättningar, inställningar och problem som har varit knutna till hanteringen av barnen under perioden åskådliggjorts. De olika antaganden om barnet som den fostrande verksamheten har vilat på, kunskaperna och vetenskaperna som har legat till grund för den, teknikerna som har ansetts nödvändiga samt det subjekt som utgjort målet för olika fostrande åtgärder har analyserats och diskuterats. Med hjälp av hegemonibegreppet har kampen om skolbarnets fostran under perioden kunnat förstås och fostransdiskussionens konsekvenser för hur den nya skolans fostrande målsättningar formulerades och kom till uttryck i grundskolans formativa dokument. / This dissertation analyses the controversy on corporal punishment that arose in conjunction with the Swedish comprehensive school reform. The time period covered is 1946-1962. The overarching aim has been to explore and analyse the origins, development and consequences of this debate in relation to the school’s task of character formation and changed notions of childhood. The school politics in which the comprehensive school reform took shape has been examined and a number of central documents that were produced in this process have been analysed. Theoretically and methodologically a discourse-analytical approach has been used where issues of power and governance have been central. In the discussion on character formation in school different discourses were operating, which at certain points stood in sharp disagreement with each other. This became especially clear in the debate on corporal punishment. A closer analysis of these discourses has revealed their different conditions of possibilities, in the sense of their historical and societal circumstances and their internal logics, and the keywords, concepts and metaphors that constituted the central elements of these discourses have been highlighted and described. The two theoretical concepts governmentality and hegemony have been used as the primary analytical tools for the study. With the concept of governmentality the goals, attitudes and problems that have been tied to the training of the schoolchild during the period have been made visible. The different presuppositions about the child’s being and development on which the character-forming practices have been built, the knowledge and science that have been referred to, the techniques that have been viewed as necessary and the subject that has been the goal for various character-forming actions have been analysed and discussed. With the concept of hegemony the power struggle connected to the discussion of character formation during the period has been examined and the various guidelines for the school’s task of character formation that were formulated and expressed in the formative documents of the comprehensive school have been made visible.

This dissertation investigated the demise of Illinois State University (ISU), a small antebellum Lutheran denominational college that existed from 1852 to 1867 in Springfield, Illinois. The professional higher education historiography has described the phenomenon of antebellum college demise, but a traditionalist theory of causality by unrestrained competition among religious denominations to found colleges, proposed in the early 20th century, was by the end of the century largely debunked by revisionist higher education historians as based on ahistorical concepts and inaccurate data. The study utilized the historical narrative method consisting of document review and content analysis. Using Clark’s (1972) concept of “organizational saga,” the study found that while ISU was in many ways indistinguishable from other denominational colleges in the United States of the era, ISU accumulated unsustainable debt on its edifice and failed despite determined founders. Durnford’s (2002) model of institutional sponsorship revealed that despite growth during the antebellum era, the Lutheran Church was riven by doctrinal, linguistic, national and personal rivalries that undermined its ability to sustain ISU. Five of the seven factors in Latta’s (2008) unique model of antebellum denominational college survival helped identify ISU’s strengths and weaknesses, and revealed that an unresolved crisis in leadership contributed to the school’s demise. This study provided data useful in furthering the development of a comprehensive revisionist narrative to explain antebellum college founding, demise and survival.

The following thesis is a study of the founding years of the Mormon supplementary religious education between 1890 and 1930. It examines Mormonism's shift away from private denominational education towards a system of supplementary religious education programs at the elementary, high school, and college levels. Further, this study examines the role that supplementary religious education played in the changes between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. During the 1870s and 1880s, Utah's territorial schools became an important part of the battles over polygamy and the control of Utah. As the Federal Government began to wrest control of the schools from the Mormon community, the Church established a system of private academies. Economic problems during the 1880s and 1890s, however, made it difficult for the Church to maintain many of these schools, necessitating the Mormon patronage of the public schools. As a result, in 1890 the Church established its first supplementary religious education program, known as the Religion Class program. The Religion Class program suffered from a variety of problems and was criticized by both Mormon and non-Mormon officials. Despite the failings of the Religion Class program, the need for supplementary religious education became increasingly important during the first two decades of the twentieth century. In 1912, the Granite Stake established the Church's first high school seminary. Within ten years, the seminary program replaced the majority of the academies and became the Church's preeminent educational program. During the 1920s, the Church began extending supplementary religious education to its students in colleges and universities through the establishment of the institute program and the near-complete abandonment of its private colleges and schools. The successive establishment of these three programs demonstrates a shift in Mormon educational priorities and attitudes throughout this period. Whereas the academies and the Religion Class program emphasized a general fear of Americanization, the seminary and institute programs accepted the public schools and much of the Americanization that accompanied them, while at the same time providing means for the continued inculcation of Mormon values into the lives of Latter-day Saint youth.