A new education for a new Sweden : The technical secondary school 1855–1920

Already during the first half of the nineteenth century, the question of getting more people to engage in business occupations instead of “consuming” occupations in the service of the state had been discussed in both the parliament (the Swedish Riksdag) and among people engaged in education. Better educational opportunities and, by extension, a higher degree of social mobility was considered to favour a faster industrialisation process and thus also Swedish competitiveness in the international markets. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the lack of technically knowledgeable staff stood out as urgent. In the locally and regionally based industries, most foremen and people in senior positions had no other education than the one they could get through practical work directly in the workplace. In order to remedy the shortage of technically trained staff and to support regional industrial and economic development, the parliament, therefore, decided in the early 1850s to establish a number of technical secondary schools. This article is about the location of the schools, what they offered in terms of teaching and to what extent they can be said to have fulfilled the ambition to strengthen regional development.