Description:
The main purpose of this article is to discuss the structural reorganization of the Swedish upper secondary school during the last decade and its possible policy implications for students with different social and cultural backgrounds. Until the late 1980s students’ routes through the educational system could metaphorically be described as joining trains that were bound for different destinations. Each of these trains was loaded with social class, gender and educational attainment, which in return resulted in a few years of collectively shared experiences. Today the students drive their individual cars through the educational system and thereby have to choose between different routes and crossroads to achieve a predicted destination. It is argued that this “revolution of choice” has its ground in a neoliberal discourse that demands that each school agent develops a personal belief in the rational individual. Consequently it demands a person that from empirical knowledge is able to make suitable choices to achieve an individualistic qualification. In return contemporary policy also tries to handle the educational aim of socialization. In the point of intersection of these two discourses the conclusions of the article indicate that the neo-liberal involvement of educational policy sustains a new type of learning culture that will favour students with possibilities to survey and determine what the different choices will entail.