This study concerns the history of Swedish public everyday discourse about knowledge and its benefits for the individual, c. 1920–1974. We examine the value(s) ascribed to knowledge – in economic and/or idealistic terms – using private correspondence institutes as our point of departure. These were immensely popular, yet have hitherto been overlooked by historians. First, we argue that commercially driven correspondence education, which was a mass phenomenon in early and mid-20th-century Sweden, blurred the demarcation lines between general and vocational education, and more importantly between formal and so-called popular education (folkbildning). Second, we examine how knowledge and education were promoted and justified in the widely circulated advertisements for Hermods Korrespondensinstitut, the largest of the Swedish correspondence schools. By analysing and contextualizing advertisements over six decades, we find a strong dominance of individualistic economic valuations from the beginning, a successive increase in idealistic valuations over the decades, and an increasing amalgamation of idealistic and economic justifications for knowledge. We argue that the extensive scale of Hermods’ and similar institutes’ educational activities offers an important key for understanding the social context in which the overall marketization and capitalization of knowledge in the latest decades was able to take root.

中文翻译：

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人力资本与人力价值之间

这项研究涉及瑞典公共日常话语关于知识及其对个人的好处的历史，c。1920-1974 年。我们以经济和/或理想主义的术语来研究赋予知识的价值，使用私人通信学院作为我们的出发点。它们非常受欢迎，但迄今为止一直被历史学家忽视。首先，我们认为商业驱动的函授教育是 20 世纪早期和中期瑞典的一种大众现象，它模糊了普通教育和职业教育之间的界限，更重要的是正规教育和所谓的大众教育（folkbildning）之间的界限。其次，我们研究了瑞典最大的函授学校 Hermods Korrespondensinstitut 广为流传的广告是如何促进和证明知识和教育的。通过对六十年来的广告进行分析和情境化，我们发现从一开始个人主义经济估价就占主导地位，几十年来理想主义估价的连续增加，以及对知识的理想主义和经济理由越来越多的融合。我们认为，Hermods 和类似机构的广泛教育活动为理解最近几十年知识的整体市场化和资本化能够扎根的社会背景提供了重要的关键。以及知识的理想主义和经济理由的日益融合。我们认为，Hermods 和类似机构的广泛教育活动为理解最近几十年知识的整体市场化和资本化能够扎根的社会背景提供了重要的关键。以及知识的理想主义和经济理由的日益融合。我们认为，Hermods 和类似机构的广泛教育活动为理解最近几十年知识的整体市场化和资本化能够扎根的社会背景提供了重要的关键。