The crises of the education system remains a heated political topics Sweden, often quite contentious, and to a high degree based in populist rhetoric and simplified analyses. The Swedish debate about education is an amalgam of problem descriptions and suggestions to solutions. Educational researchers often have a hard time getting research based information about the complexities of education into the ether (Wiklund, 2006). However, certain politicians and professional debaters have an easy access to several different channels to communicate their ideas about the faults of schooling in Sweden and its teacher education (cf Edling & Liljestrand 2019) often in short debate texts with simplified but catchy messages. While many of the problems pointed out have a base in the everyday problems of schools (such as an increasing teacher shortage, grade inflation and increased segregation) and/or political problems (such as placements on national and international comparisons of knowledge) some more conspiratory themes also figure in the debate.

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the development of such a theme, or rather concept in the debates about education, namely “The Pedagogical Establishment”. In the past decade, this concept has appeared with increased frequency in debate articles on education, was often used in social media by household names and has even been used in the Swedish parliament by a minister of education. As vague as the concept is, as regards both its membership and its whereabouts, it has been referred to regarding several different crises of education, often in self-contradictory manner and as self-explanatory.

This paper studies the origins of the concept and the development of its use in education debates over the past 50 years. With Michael Apple (1997) as a point of departure, debates on education are seen as necessarily political as they can be seen as explications of “theories” of education in a broad sense, i.e. more or less explicitly ideological constructs. As such, they are concerns about education – “what it should do, how it should be carried out, and whom it benefits – are not simply internal to education. Rather, they are about the very nature of the relationship between social groups and differential power.” Debates often contain direct and explicit recommendations to policy-makers and politicians, and thus aim to alter current organisation and/or practices within the education system (Ball, 2003). In fact, among the concept’s more established users are both politicians, including a former minister of education and a former head of government agencies. This concept can thus illustrate a particular and important tendency in political discourse about education in Sweden.

As regards the analytical framework, theoretical literature on conspiracy theories will provide the basis for interpretation of the concepts develoment. These concepts primarily regard common characteristics of conspiracy theories, their psychological function, their populist political function and, of most importance for this paper, their rhetorical function.

The methodology can be said to be inspired by Reinhardt Koselleck's diachronic analysis (as opposed to synchronic) searching for the term "pedagogiska etablissemanget" (E: the pedagogical establishment) and similar terms in order to understand the development and use of the concept over time. Aside systematic google-searches for blogs and social media occurrences, searches were conducted in a database of all Swedish newspapers, in the 3 largest Swedish research journals on education research, in the parliamentary records, and in several debate-books. Approximately 200 occurrences between the years of 1972 to 2019 were found and analysed. After a first analysis, the data was shown to be relatively shallow due to the nature of debate articles and political purposes of using the term. Hence the decision was made to stick to occurrences which had sufficient quality to be deemed as a purposeful use of the term in a relatively coherent argument and the empirical material was isolated to parliamentary records, dozens of debate articles and interviews from media, and two books from the 1970's. Posts on social media were excluded as they may have less-official tone despite often coming from high-profile people. However, a few blog-posts were included due to their incendiary tone and high profile. The material was read and re-read and finally sorted into a chronological timeline via a summarizing, qualitative content analysis using 1) the context of the concept's occurrence, 2) descriptions of potential members of the "establishment" 3) the activities of the establishment (or lack thereof) and 4) the concept's explanatory function for school-crises of different kinds. An interpretation using the theoretical framework was conducted continuously.

The notion of a pedagogical establishment (PE) is first formulated in a book by Thorsten Husén in the early 1970's, albeit characterized in different terms than common now. in 1979 PE appears redefined by a movement expressing disappointment with Swedish education politics, i.e. an image of an establishment of teacher educators and educational researchers arrogantly ignorant of the perils of the Swedish schooling system. Over the first 3 decades PE appears sporadically, illustrating plasticity as it's used to explain (blamed for) a variety of problems. In the early 2000's the becoming education-minister began to use the term in political discourse, partially weaponizing it against perceived opponents in education in general and academia in particular. Now, PE receives a populist tone, emphasizing an elite opposed to "regular" people. In the early 2000s the frequency increases slowly, only to explode in the late 2010's when it becomes common sense explanation in all sorts of debate articles, and only a handful of debaters actually represent most of the occurrences. PE is clearly a useful (albeit imaginary) political opponent, onto which which one can both reflect despicable opinions and political positions, as well as use to extrapolate and clarify one's own position. PE has clear characteristics from conspiracy theories, the definitions of its membership fleeting and fuzzy, having infiltrated most government agencies, and all sorts of crises are seen as the results of their plans and cooperation. While it's clear that some debaters believe in the establishment's existence, it seems likely that most of them are using it as a rhetorical trope in order to leave more realistic and complex explanations and solutions to the side and to present their own as both viable and conceived without the influence of the establishment. It's a matter of influencing education politics and policy from the outside.

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