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Education for Modernity: The Impact of American Social Science on Alva and Gunnar Myrdal and the “Swedish Model” of School Reform

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Abstract

This paper directs itself to the impact of American social science on the writings of Alva and Gunnar Myrdal on the role of education and social science in “modern” industrial democracy. After a brief sketch of the Myrdals' role in the development of Swedish welfare reforms and of their intellectual contacts in the United States during the 1930's, the paper outlines four theoretical “dilemmas” of “modernity” to the solution of which education and social research was seen to contribute: the relationships between facts and values, the individual and the collective, child rearing and social change, and theory and practice. The paper concludes by tracing the articulation of these themes in the Social Democratic Party school reform proposals of 1948.

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  1. Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, South Bank University, London, UK

    E. Stina Lyon

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Lyon, E.S. Education for Modernity: The Impact of American Social Science on Alva and Gunnar Myrdal and the “Swedish Model” of School Reform. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 14, 513–537 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007825127229

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