The aim of this study is to contribute with knowledge on how bildung and democracy can be analytically discerned in the proposed syllabus of Swedish in the coming educational reform of Swedish upper secondary school (Gy25). Since Swedish as a school subject was established, it has been a heterogeneous phenomenon (Thavenius, 1999). Historically, different selective school traditions for Swedish as a subject have emerged in different school forms: Swedish as a Higher Subject of Bildung (old upper secondary school) and Swedish as a Proficiency subject (folk school; vocational school). Later, these traditions, along with a progressive alternative, Swedish as an Experience-based Subject, took root within the same school forms (compulsory school; upper secondary school). Thus, the same curriculum and syllabus can be interpreted by teachers in widely different ways, which made it possible to legitimize all three mentioned traditions (Hultin, 2006 and 2008). Furthermore, bildung and democracy have been treated differently in the mentioned traditions. Since the beginning of the 2000, there has also been a debate about how the subject of Swedish as a democracy subject can be realized (Hultin, 2003; Molloy, 2003; Alkenstrand, 2016; Hultin, 2021). Lately it has been pointed out how democratic values, especially in terms of subjectification (Biesta, 2013), have been marginalized in the last curriculum and syllabus (GY11), as the educational focus rather has been on neoliberal concepts as entrepreneurship and the logic of measurability (Borsgård, 2021). However, in the directive of the mentioned ongoing reform of secondary high school (Gy25), the Swedish National Agency for Education states that democracy and bildung among other things should be specifically visible in the new curriculum and syllabus. Based on this background, we find it motivated to conduct a deductive analysis of the proposed syllabus of Swedish with an analytical focus on: 1) What democratic functions can be discerned in the syllabus? 2) What interpretations of bildung can be discerned in the syllabus? Theoretically, the study is placed within Curriculum Studies, where educational policy texts as curricula and syllabi can be understood as political compromises that can be interpreted in different ways; interpretations that often can be linked to different selective traditions (Englund, 1990; Hultin, 2006). The first analytic focus of the deductive analysis is informed by Biesta’s three functions of democracy in citizenship education, namely socialization, qualification, and subjectification (2013); the second analytic focus is informed by the notions of bildung in terms of a free and open process (cf. Broady, 1984) and bildung in terms of a fixed cultural heritage (cf. Thavenius, 1995). The preliminary results of the analysis show that 1) socialization and qualifications as democratic functions are dominant in all parts of the syllabus (in aim, central content, and assessment criteria), while only traces of subjectification can be discerned, mostly in the part called the aim of the subject; 2) the notion of bildung in terms of fixed cultural heritage is dominant in all parts of the syllable, while traces of bildung as a free and open process can be discerned mostly in the aim of the subject. Conclusively, democracy and bildung are rather narrowly articulated in the syllabus where democracy as subjectification and bildung as a free and open process are still marginalized.
2024.