Background
The year 1842 saw the promulgation of Sweden’s first statute on elementary schooling, or folkskola —a “school for the people.” It was not without a prior history. Since the seventeenth century the Swedish church and government had tried to make literacy general among the lower strata of the population. The history leading up to the introduction of national elementary schooling with the School Act of 1842 involved a recasting, in many ways and several times, of the relationship between public education, orphanages under diverse authorities, church leadership, and local and central political authorities. In Sweden the history of childhood through the lens of educational facilities for children of the lower classes is also a history of political and social reforms and shifting class relations. The history of children is clearly also a history of the governance of society. It is framed by the history of state-formation as well as a history of the economic and social transformation from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Since the seventeenth century the state has been profoundly involved in the teaching and religious instruction of the population. The educational system then was designed in the spirit of Luther and closely associated with the fundamental political and social unit of society: the household. It was incumbent on the head of the household to ensure that the ecclesiastical culture was reproduced, as is clear, for example, from the Church Act of 1686. This culture, built up around the church, was propagated by the authorities as a shared ideology which was supposed to pervade all levels of society. In urban centers a formal system of grammar and church schools was also established. These schools also played a part in alphabetization, as did the instruction given in the household under church law, but they also educated people for other positions in society, for civil and public service, for commerce, and as a foundation for the academy.
It is consequently a complex history that shaped the life of children. In this book the emergence of schools in urban Sweden between the seventeenth and the nineteenth century provides the sources and the framework for a history of children and of childhood. It is a study of children and childhood through the lens of the development of early modern educational provision, as an example of the political and economic transformation that underwrote new systems of governance.
The overall problem concerns the relationship between the political and social development, the design and nomenclature of the school system, and the life of children and the understanding of childhood in Swedish towns, in households, in the family, and also in streets, parks, harbors during a period of about two hundred years. In this introductory chapter, a broader research context will be outlined, to delineate the background to the questions asked and provide an analytical framework for this study. This also includes a discussion of some earlier research as well as a presentation of how analyses of the relationship between the historical place and role of children, the space cut out for children, can be understood in the light of the histories of education, family, and state-formation.
During the period of time studied in this book, Sweden was established as a military power in Europe from the early seventeenth century to the early eighteenth. Significant territorial gains facilitated economic, social, and cultural integration in Europe. The period as a major player in Europe’s devastating wars and politics had significant consequences for the population both in the scenes of warfare in Europe and at home in Sweden. The toll on the population and the country’s economic resources was significant. It also led to the development of an efficient fiscal and administrative system, which served as a model for others, and an intensified exploitation of the natural resources in Sweden. War spoils and economic subsidies from other major political powers made Sweden a central part of the transformation of politics on the European continent.1 It also reshaped the Swedish capital, Stockholm, into a city better equipped for the role of a great power. The transformation was not all about splendor and glory, carnivals and jesting, new houses and city plans, it was also about poverty and destitution and the influx of new population groups: workers, soldiers, men, women, and children.2
It was in this environment that the education of the young became an issue. The proximity between rich and poor, between transient and stable groups of the population was augmented by the very density of urban life, the dark alleys, the dirt and disease, the almost ungovernable character of the urban space. Even a military power that could dominate battlefields had difficulties controlling the dark back alleys and streets of its capital and making them safe. The irony is that, at the same time, the city was the very place where the successes of the nation, the power of the Sovereign, the Royal House, and the Nobility were to be displayed and admired. Such public display of power was a part of everyday city life, along with the processions and festivities on special occasions.3 It was in this political setting that the educational initiatives were introduced and established.
The eighteenth century entailed a major loss of territories and gave rise to a greater parliamentary influence, a party system and consequently a weaker sovereign power, and an insignificant role in the politics of Europe. The eighteenth century was also characterized by an economic transformation, agricultural reform, proletarization, and the development of manufacturing systems. Toward the end of the century, the political situation again was built around an absolute monarch, a more aggressive foreign policy, but also political mobilization of the middling classes in town and country. During the early nineteenth century a political coup reshaped the political landscape and paved the way for a new constitution that gave greater power to parliament, a new royal house, and a number of political reforms that influenced the life of children.4
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries show evidence all over Europe of a discussion about how to handle street children, young paupers, and orphans roaming the towns and countryside during the seventeenth century, along with debate about the reform of the educational system. Such discussions led to legislative and institutional changes in Sweden and elsewhere, such as the reform of church and secular laws, street ordinances, policing and poor laws, and the establishment of orphanages and a range of educational institutions. In Sweden the discussion of formal schooling had implications for the question of the orphanages as well as for the system of religious instruction in the home and the poor laws. The household was understood as an educational entity by both the church and the central government and thus also a political unit. Educational policy and public policy also exposed nation-building processes in their different facets. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries population growth, pauperization, proletarization, and the developing economy constituted a challenge to the system of governance established during the seventeenth century and resulted in its transformation.5
Negotiating Childhood; Home, Street, Work, or School
Educational systems were in the process of development from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, this had no great effect on the life of the majority of children. Childhood in the lower social classes was a time of hard work and sharing of the life experiences of older generations, although concepts of childhood also existed both in popular culture and in social and political theory of the time.6
Only slowly did educational institutions such as schools become important in the everyday lives of larger groups of children. Children’s lives were primarily influenced by other formal system, as apprentices in the crafts and through informal systems of socialization into the roles of farmhands or farmers or in the family and the local community. For children working as apprentices, factory hands, or farm laborers, childhood was not defined by educational institutions organized on a national or regional level. Children were taught at home or occasionally in institutions such as schools, orphanages, and workhouses. It was not until the end of the nineteenth century that schooling became a dominant aspect of the majority of children’s lives in the western world. Many children were also housed in workhouses for adults and in prisons. However, the idea of schooling and education started to define the parameters of childhood and the nature of family life and parenting already during the seventeenth century but primarily from the late eighteenth century.7
Religious ...