The present paper focuses on a very specific feature of elementary and secondary education in early-modern Sweden, namely the school prison (Carcere) and its disciplinary rationale. Part of a broader repertoire of strategies and objects designed to uphold social order and inculcate ethical values, the school prison was introduced in formal instruction as early as 1571. In subsequent national and regional decrees issued in the seventeenth century, the prison gained a central position in student upbringing. With eighteenth century regulatory reform regarding the maintenance of appropriate conduct and additional disciplinary aids, the routine of incarcerating pupils changed and the prison was gradually phased out. Why study school prisons? The social and moral upbringing of students – in this paper perceived as at least partly freestanding from their intellectual training in traditional subjects – was considered integral to early-modern schooling. This social and moral obligation deserves closer examination, first of all for so profoundly setting the ground rules for day-to-day life in pre-modern schools. From this perspective the school prison is an interesting research object. As a central hub in upholding core values, the prison not only constitutes an entryway into understanding the moral foundation upon which early-modern education was based, but also highlights the connection between space, objects and educational ideology, as well as the link between institutional change, the transition of disciplinary regimes and re-materialisation/re-spatialisation in this specific area. Furthermore, it provides insight leading toward a more nuanced understanding of the nature and role of violence – physical as well as symbolical – in early school contexts. This presentation undertakes a Lefevbrian understanding of space and makes use of the Foucauldian concepts governmentality and governmentalisation as well as ideas about long-term paradigmatic shifts in the administrative objectives upon which these concepts rely. In short, the paper outlines ways of understanding how the school prison and changes in practice can, and cannot, explain how general governmental shifts in policy affected educational planning.

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