Den säkra zonen : Motiv, åtgärdsförslag och verksamhet i den särskiljande utbildningspolitiken för inhemska minoriteter 1913-1962

Sammanfattning: The thesis studies how and why ethnicity was used as a ground for separation in order to establish education that was segregated from the normal teaching in elementary schools. The thesis focuses on the educational policy targeted at Gypsies, vagrants and nomadic reindeer-herding Sámi. Due to their ways of living they did not fit into the general Swedish education, which was based on domicile. My aim is to problematise research of the teaching that was offered to Sámi and Gypsies. The safety zone has been used as a metaphor for analysing a physical, spatial way of thinking, where the location of the educational environment in relation to the surrounding society was focused on. The concept has also been used in order to analyse a dimension of educational content that was a matter of forming the pupils’ way of thinking and knowledge. What may at first glance be perceived as primitive and poor, e.g. teaching out of doors, may also, as I see it, be interpreted as a manifestation of a radical educational current. The education policy was moreover a concern not only for the state or for centrally placed actors but engaged the local authority community and other actors. The study shows how actors at different levels in a country committed to education handled issues concerning ambulatory ethnic groups. It was not the same issues that were relevant for the groups, but they involved a common pattern of thought. The education policy, teaching activities and sorting process that are described developed under the influence of international educational and socio-political currents and were shaped by politicians, civil servants, experts, teachers and all sorts of “amateurs”. It is the scope of their knowledge basis, opinions, proposals and actions that is focused on. The thesis also deals with a complicated justification process for identification, sorting and implementation of a separative education, where quite often a “Swedishness” that was difficult to capture was articulated as a norm in relation to the deviant groups.