Literacy Campaigns in Sweden

Abstract

The history of literacy in Sweden must be understood as two separate campaigns of popular education. The first one, the early church Campaign around 1700, was built upon informal instruction for everyone to read, sing, and pray the holy “Word” of God from books printed in Gothic type. The second one, the late school Campaign around and after 1850, was based upon formal schooling, so that everyone might read, write, and reckon the “world” from new books and texts printed or written in modern type. This is true for rural life and for the large majority of the population. But for towns and a small minority of the (male) people there always was a need for schools and reading, writing and elementary arithmetic in daily life, a continuing pattern of “functional” literacy.

This article compiles and completes some parts of four studies by the author: “Literacy Studies in Sweden: Some Examples,” in Egil Johansson (ed.), Literacy and Society in a Historical Perspective—A Conference Report. Educational Reports, No. 2 (Umeä 1973); The History of Literacy in Comparison With Some Other Countnes. Educational Reports, No. 12 (Umeä 1977), pp. 41–66; “Kunskapens träd i Norden” (“Popular literacy in Scandinavia. The picture of a growing tree”), in M. Jokipii and I. Nummela (ed.), Ur nordisk kulturhistoria: Läskunnighet och folkundervisning före folkskolan (Cultural History in Scandinavia: Literacy and Popular Education before the Pnmary School System), XVIII, Nordic Historical Congress (Jyväskylä, Finland, 1981), pp. 263–267.