This essay examines the role religion plays in kindergarten. Today, the Swedish kindergarten provides child care for a secular and multicultural society where religion is considered a private matter that should not influence government nor the policy documents of kindergarten and elementary school. According to a study by Jenny Berglund, there is a so-called Protestant bias present in the Swedish elementary school. Protestant bias is shaped by a ”marinade” of liberal Protestant Christianity and has an indirect influence on how other religions are described, how religion is defined and how concepts such as religion, tradition or culture are viwed. The study was also based on Ninian Smart’s dimensions of religion, which correlates to Berglund’s theory on Protestant bias. If Berglund’s theory could be applied to the results of this study, some of Smart’s dimensions would probably appear as well, some more prominently than others. The results demonstrated that some dimensions were indeed more prominent than others in the informants’ definitions of religion. This study showed that there is a Protestant bias regarding what feasts are celebrated and how concepts such as religion, tradition and culture are viewed. The study also showed that there might be an additional secular bias present in the results. This was also indicated by some unexpected answers where the explanation could not be attributed to a purely Protestant bias. The secular bias indicates that the view of religion has been modified. The reason for this transformation is analyzed with the help of the examplar view theory.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-44213 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Richter, Malin |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper (KV) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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