This study is about youths and their thoughts on democracy. The study seeks to describe the problem of pupils’ ideas of democracy in context to the ideas that is described by the curriculum, Lpo94, and attach these ideas to theories of democracy to show what type of democracy the youths are bringing up. Three theories about democracy are brought up in this essay: the theory of electoral democracy, participatory democracy and deliberative democracy. The study is based on a qualitative survey answered by 102 pupils in the senior level of the compulsory school, grades 7, 8 and 9. The answers given by the pupils in this study are for the most part attached to the theory of electoral democracy and partly to the participatory democracy. The pupils refer to elections and voting, and the participation in the democratic procedure as the most important elements of democracy. Justice and the civil rights are also brought up in the answers by the pupils. They refer to democracy as a way of making decisions and the rights for the members of the society. The results of this study are compared to the results of another study, made by Skolverket in 2003: NU03. This comparison shows that the conception of democracy that the youths are delivering is similar to the NU03. The results of both of the studies show that the youths mostly refer to the principles of electoral democracy. In proportion to the ideas of democracy that is brought by the curriculum, Lpo94, which recommend the deliberative democracy’s principles, the results of this study shows that the youth’s picture of democracy and the Lpo94’s ideas of this are not the same. The consequences for our democratic society and for individuals are that we attend to keep our present democracy and we teach the pupils how to vote but not to develop our democracy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hik-1834 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Karlsson, Julia |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Kalmar, Humanvetenskapliga institutionen |
| 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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