The ideological battle in the book : - An examination of ideological depictions in teaching material.

One of the important tasks of Swedish education is to prepare students as future members of a democratic society. Part of this includes educating them in different perspectives of how society might or should work, including ideologies. Studies of the contents in educational materials have often focused on subjects such as sexuality, gender, religion and ethnicity but few have studied the subject regarding political ideologies and how they are described and presented to students. Studies so far have shown that in educational material the ideology of liberalism could often be considered synonymous with democracy and Swedish constitution, with often bias involved towards liberalism possibly coming from both government and private spheres that potentially can colour the opinion of readers. This work has studied Swedish educational material through the past three curriculums, Gy11, Lpf94 and Lgy70, of Swedish high school. I have found in the results that over time since the 70’s that the description and presentation of the three major political ideologies: liberalism, socialism and conservatism, educational material have more and more moved away from comprehensive descriptions and presentations of the different societal outlooks in favor of liberalism in the latest curriculums. This puts the material in conflict with the stated educational values of the Swedish Department of Education regarding comprehensive education and poses a potential problem for the future democratic education of Swedish students.