The right kind of democracy – an ideology analysis of school literatures description of the term democracy.

Writers: Fredrik Hedlund & Mattias Ahlqvist

Democracy is today a word and a concept that in many ways is taken for granted and almost never is reflected on. The concept democracy is also considered as an essential issue in the swedish school system, both regarding the way the education should be managed and also as a part of the students democratic schooling – all according to the comprehensive document Läroplanen för de frivilliga skolformerna (Lpf94).

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate how swedish literature in political and social science talks about and looks upon democracy – what do the books say it means?

The materials we have chosen for this report are the books Zigma and Forum. As metod we are using a textual ideology analysis in which we have created three dimensions – meaning/associations, criticism of democracy, and demos/citizenship. The dimensions are designed to fit our critical point of wiew regarding how democracy is looked upon in school literature today.

Our results have shown that both books gives the same meaning and significance to the word, that no one of the books lifts forth any serious criticism of democracy and that no one of the books is trying to discuss nor question the word demos/citizenship.

Key words: democracy, criticism, demos/citizenship, rights and obligations.