School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences

The overall aim of this dissertation is to explore the connections between rhetoric and civic and moral education. In the Latin schools (trivial schools, cathedral schools, and gymnasiums) in eighteenth-century Sweden, rhetoric still had a prominent position. In examining school rhetoric under the Swedish School Act of 1724, the study takes on rhetoric education in the broad sense, asking questions about teaching design and content, and about which texts were read and written. In addition to this, the dissertation discusses the moral content of the education as well as the function of the texts and exercises of rhetoric education in character and identity formation. The study also demonstrates the practices of rhetoric in schools and gymnasiums. Everyday classroom activities as well as ceremonies and festivities are treated as arenas for the display of erudition, asking questions about eloquence as a possible catalyst for the raising of schoolboys into men and citizens.

Drawing from curriculum history, the investigation focuses on the content of the education. The analytical framework regards educational content as multilayered, ranging from conceptual content to content related to school subjects, syllabi and educational programmes, and further to socialisation content. Therefore a number of theoretical and methodological perspectives have to be employed in order to analyse a multitude of sources: from textbooks and records from schools to written curricula.

The curriculum history foundation is therefore supplemented by theoretical inspiration from among other things the sociology of education and the sociology of literature, from the history of rhetoric and from gender history. The concept of virtue is given a special role in the construction of civic ideals and masculinities, two important aspects of an erudite identity cultivated in the early modern Latin schools.

The dissertation shows that during the long period of time that the Swedish School Act of 1724 was effective – a total of 83 years, until 1807 – school rhetoric changed very little, and the changes that took place did so only slowly. A number of factors explain this rigidity. The same textbook,

Elementa rhetorica by Gerardus Johannis Vossius, was used used in Swedish schools throughout the entire period studied. A shortage of textbooks led to older copies being used, and to a manual reproduction of textbooks and educational content.A canon or publica materies of classical, especially Latin, texts connected the branches of the trivium. It also worked as a common resource, read throughout the school: from fables and the short texts of compendia used in the first forms of the trivial schools to the philosophical and literary works used in the gymnasiums. The proximity between school rhetoric and the exemplary classical texts offers a further explanatory factor for the slow changes of 18th century rhetoric education.

The rhetoric education in schools and gymnasiums appears as one of the most distinct illustrations of the early modern Swedish school's twofold objective to transmit knowledge and instill virtue. The rhetorical pedagogical programme was not just about the arts and crafts of linguistic ornaments. School rhetoric had an even larger aim, combining knowledge and virtue into the training of an orator. Through the reading of the exemplary texts and the moral lessons taught by them, and through pupils' own co-creation and rhetorical (re)production, a classical, medieval, Renaissance and Reformation legacy was passed on. In this legacy, the aim was virtuous eloquence.

The learned world in and around schools and gymnasiums can be considered a premodern or early modern public sphere, filled with rhetorical ceremonials as a display of erudition and scholarly status. At the school level rhetoric was a representative resource that could justify the position of the scholarly community and the clergy, demonstrate the standing of the school and the church site in the city, and distinguish the learned from members of other social groups.

[...] This presentation explores the connections between the legacy of an eloquent erudite culture and the rhetorical practices in schools in a time when social change and ideological currents led to the establishment of new types of schools and to the inclusion of new social groups, albeit sharply divided by gender and class lines. In this the emerging school system rhetorical activities were part of an institutionalised identity formation on a radically new scale.By comparing classroom exercises as well as outward identity-oriented rhetorical activity in grammar schools with that in e.g. apologist schools or girls’ schools, it is shown how pupils in different types of schools were socialised in alignment with different identity configurations. [...]

I den tidigmoderna lärda skolan hade retoriken, eller vältaligheten, spelat en avgörande roll för skolornas, lärarnas och elevernas identitet. Utöver de kommunikativa färdigheter som lärdes ut utgjorde retoriken också ett verktyg för kulturell reproduktion: dels genom det moraliskt fostrande innehållet i texter och övningar, dels genom hur vältalighetspraktiker i sig fungerade som ett kännetecken för läroståndet och för de personer som skulle fostras till medlemmar av detta.

En viktig arena för denna typ av konstitutiva retorik var de tal och orationer som hölls vid t.ex. skolavslutningar, rektorsskiften, lärartillsättningar samt olika kyrkliga och världsliga högtidsdagar.

När nya skoltyper etablerades under 1800-talets första hälft togs liknande praktiker upp även av de nya skolorna, trots att retoriken vid denna tid mönstrades ut från svenska skolor. De tal som tidigare traditionellt hade använts för att definiera distinkta identiteter för läroståndets uppväxande medlemmar placerades därmed i helt nya sammanhang med helt nya grupper av elever.

Med utgångspunkt i en retorisk analys av vilka elevidentiteter som befordrades i tal hållna i olika typer av skolor tecknar presentationen en bild av hur vältaligheten vid bland annat skolavslutningar och skolinvigningar bidrog till att betona skilda identitetsaspekter för olika grupper av elever.

The aim of this study is to investigate how employees in consulting companies develop their competence in order to perform their daily work. The focus is on informal competence development. The theoretical framework consists of theories concerning learning and ...

The main purpose of this article is to focus what meanings the concept of quality is given in the political development of Swedish upper-secondary school. By using Quentin Skinner's speech-act theory comparisons is made between the meanings formulated in the early ...

This article is about moments when teachers experience hate speech in education and need to act. Based on John Dewey’s work on moral philosophy and examples from teaching practice, I would like to contribute to the discussion about moral education by emphasizing the following: (1) the importance of experience, (2) the problem with prescribed morals and (3) the need for moral imagination in education. My Deweyan proposal for teachers responding to hate speech in education is to use moral imagination in education and take contextual elements into consideration when deciding how to act. Doing this would facilitate work related to doing morals and help to prevent prescribing morals as something that has already been done and that teachers (and students) have to adjust to in schools without being part of the process.