The aim for this study is to analyze teachers’ view on coloring and their perception of student motivation at vocational upper secondary school programs history class in Sweden. Five semi-structured interviews were conducted with five history teachers who taught at the same school and have experience of teaching the history course for vocational programs. The interviews were analyzed in relation to self-determination theory and vertical and horizontal knowledge. The result showed that students following vocational programs were seen as less motivated towards the subject of history than the students following theoretical programs. However, upon closer analysis the differences were found to correlate more with the teachers’ perceptions of the student’s inner motivation than the programs being followed. These groups provided an inner motivation for the students and the deciding outcome for how hard they were going to work at the course. At the same time, they performed better in the subject of Swedish than in history. This can be interpreted as the students adopting an autonomous-or inner motivation because they were willing to work harder on a subject that they deemed as more important for their future vocation. The results also showed that teachers’ use of coloring knowledge related to the perception of their student’s future salary and that this image contributed to the students’ loss of inner motivation and to a focus on external motivation in relation to the students’ future vocation. Teachers perceive that students following vocational programs want knowledge that gives them an understanding of society. However, as vocational programs devote fewer hours to subjects such as history and Swedish, they do not have time to study these subjects in as much depth. The time limitations and coloring of horizontal knowledge made the vocational students experience fewer opportunities of vertical knowledge. This means the information that they saw as relevant and interesting, such as modern history, is limited. This is as consequence of the curriculum dividing students into vocational -and academic students. This potentially limits the students in their learning about democratic public discourse. Students following vocational programs are perceived by their teachers as less motivated to achieve higher grades, or to work to get a pass grade, even when their teachers perceive they have the ability to achieve a pass or higher grade. This connects to the course plan’s structure by people in power, giving them no chance for higher education when graduating, and the grades are in the hands of the teachers.