Utbildning – mellan individ, nation och samh lle

Education – between the individual, the nation and the society. In this lecture I dwell on the question of how different forms of national identity affect the education of young citizens. Although this significant contemporary problem is by no means new in the history of education it has become increasingly evident during the 21st century. Starting with a brief picture of a downward trend for a multicultural policy I argue that the increasing focus on national identity, when related to education, is about individual and collective self-consciousness – a consciousness that is further characterized in terms of citizenship education. By referring to Jürgen Habermas’ thesis of a public sphere and nationality; John Dewey’s focus on the meaning of democracy; Hannah Arendt’s highlighting of the authentic person taking place in the public sphere, and to Richard Rorty’s emphasis on contingency as an ontological condition of the individual and society, I discuss the principles for a citizenship education that treats nationality as a political claim, rather than an ethno-cultural fact. I do this in terms of an expressive agonism.