I nationens och det praktiska livets tjänst Det svenska yrkesskolesystemets tillkomst och utveckling 1918 till 1940

Sammanfattning: ?The aim of this historical study was to investigate and describe the Swedish vocational educational school system from 1918 till the 1940's. The dissertation focuses upon vocational education related to industry and craft work. Questions include; who were the actors; and who's interests did they represent; how did the quantitative development of that school system look like; and which content, according to officiai authorities, should the education have. The work has a theoretical frame that comes closest to reproduction theories and educational sociology. The empirical material comprises the official documents, periodical journals and official statistics.The results showed that there was a wide gap between official rhetoric and what took place in reality. The development of the vocational training system did not follow expectations, neither in the quantitative nor the organisational sense. The national board of education also paid little attention to the vocational school system, once it was launched. Only a handfull of men persued the question and thereby at the same time made it their careers. The vocational educational school system branched out rather quickly and became incoherent. Futhermore there were difficulties in finding pupils who wanted to join the new school-form that vocational schools represented. The benefits from joining the many branches of the vocational educational system were few. The professional staff of teachers was diffuse, they were mostly recruited from "higher" school systems while the status of working as vocational educational teacher was low. In fact, the dissertation shows, that the vocational educational system that was introduced during the first half of the 20th century, had a very low status. The educational content looked very much like the content in the compulsory school, among other things, due to the ways of recruiting teachers. Overall results show that vocational training did not become a powerful means to carry into effect the rhetoric that underpinned it, but the period had significance at a symbolic level because it linked school and the labour market more firmly in popular consciousness.