Discourses of education and constitutions of class: public discourses on education in Swedish PBS television

Abstract

Drawing on post-structural perspectives and analysis of television programs on education, the article investigates the public educational discourse in Sweden. It shows how a dominant neoliberal educational discourse is articulated together with a discourse of equal education, where the two discourses influence and subvert each other so that neither becomes totally hegemonic. Taking as its point of departure the neoliberal emphasis on the individual, especially as it relates to school choice and to the significance of class for educational success, the analysis focuses on the constitution of classed positions. The study reveals constitutions of class in which race, place, gender, economy and agency are intertwined, such that the schools and the students are attributed both different statuses and different subject positions in terms of future economic trajectories. The conclusions drawn are that, in the public conversation about the organization and goal of compulsory education, it is important to be aware of the discursive and political contexts in which the discussions take place. It is also important to realize that class matters in the educational assemblage in the form of economic subjectivities constituted in a web of intersecting notions about differing preconditions and outcomes of education.

Keywords:

• education in the media
• educational discourses
• education and class

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by The Swedish Research Council as part of the project ‘Class in neoliberal educational discourses’ (VR 2009–10–22). I want to thank Lena Martinsson, University of Gothenburg and the two anonymous referees for their valuable suggestions.