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Contribution
Description: This paper discusses the negotiation of Swedish Muslims girls' right to knowledge in the name of cultural justice.The National Syllabus for The Swedish Compulsory School stipulated that all the Swedish children must learn to swim before the 6th school year. Although some schools sign contracts with Muslim families that authorise Muslim girls to not take part in the compulsory swimming lessons at the school. This paper aims to analyse how the National goals for the Compulsory Swedish School are shaped and reshaped at the municipality and school level in relation to the pupils' religion and gender. This paper analyses even the question of how far the adaptation of the Compulsory National Goals can go without missing the right of equity for all the pupils. This paper considers the problems of negotiating the Muslims girls' right to learn to swim in the name of culture justice. This study discusses the dilemma of multiculturalism and women's right as well as the conflict between distributive justice and culture justice. This paper relates this discussion to Nancy Fraser's research of the distributive justice and culture justice as well as Seyla Benhabid's research of multiculturalism and women's right.
Methodology: The study consists in text analysis of the Swedish National Curriculum for the Compulsory School,the Syllabus for the Compulsory Swedish School, the National Swedish Education Act , the municipalities' plans, the schools' plans and the schools' contracts with Muslim families. This study includes even interviews at the municipality level, school level and at the National Agency of Education.
Conclusions: The expected outcomes of this analysis are the following:The schools' and municipalities' strategies to avoid responsibility in the question of Muslims girls' swimming lessons risk these pupils' right to an equitative education. In stead of creating practical solutions that allow these girls to take part in the school swimming lessons, some schools and municipalities leave the responsibility for the swimming lessons to the parents. If the schools have not possibilities to control if these pupils have learnt to swim, the right of all the children to have the same access to knowledge is adventured in Sweden.
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