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

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 point of departure in the neoliberal emphasis on the individual, not the least concerning school choice and in relation to the significance of class for educational success, the analysis focus 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 status and differing 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, and that class matter in the educational assemblage in the form of economic subjectivities constituted in a web of intersecting notions about differing preconditions and outcomes of education.Klass i marknadsliberala utbildningsdiskurse