Modersmålsämnets legitimitet i ett förändrat politiskt landskap - En analys av svensk riksdagsdebatt under 2010-talet

The legitimacy of the mother tongue subject in a changing political landscape: An analysis of Swedish parliamentary debate in the twenty-tens. This paper highlights and discusses the arguments in favor of, or against Mother Tongue Instruction (MTI) in Swedish parliamentary debate between 2010 and 2020. New to this decade is the entrance of yet another nationalist and populist party with the abolishment of MTI on its political agenda. Building on a critical discourse analytical frame and argumentation analysis, we discuss this party’s rhetoric on MTI – based in an Othering discourse and the construction of MTI as a path to alienation – and the parliamentary counter-voices. The latter mainly concern the role of MTI for development of Swedish and learning in other school subjects, implying that MTI in its own right is subordinated. We argue that this counter-discourse represents a shift in how MTI is legitimized – and in fact plays into assimilationists’ hands – compared to the pluralistic ideology that initially made way for MTI. The importance of scrutinizing political rhetoric is stressed to anticipate political action.

The Who? Didactics, differentiation and the biopolitics of inequality

The three didactic questions – what?, how? and why? – are increasingly supplemented with a fourth: who? Drawing on Therborn’s distinction between difference and inequality, as well as on biopolitical theory, the present paper engages critically with the didactic who?-question. The paper situates the who?-question in broader discussions of educational differentiation, suggesting that it encompasses a tension between the recognition of difference and (re)production of inequality. Arguably, this tension becomes visible, and possibly more navigable, when we pose “Therbornian questions”. The paper further suggests that the who?-question can be understood, in biopolitical terms, as a technique for constructing various student populations as appropriate for different kinds of education. Such management of difference, the paper warns, can easily slip into a biopolitics of inequality. Despite our critical observations, we conclude that there might still be radical potential in the who?-question, provided that it is handed over to the students and that careful attention is paid to societal relations.