This article deals with the question of what has happened to ‘the public’ in the Swedish education system during the last three decades. In our search for an answer we illuminate and discuss how the process of marketisation, together with the learnification and individualisation of education, replaced ‘the public’ from public education with the logic of the market place. To shed some further light on the current discourse on Swedish education, we contrast two principles in education and teaching, the aristocratic principle and the democratic principle. According to the aristocratic principle, education is about fixating and reproducing existing power relations as the cornerstone of a well-ordered society. According to the democratic principle of education, equality is the cornerstone of a well-ordered democratic society. Considering the shift in the very infrastructure of the Swedish educational system, we arrive at the conclusion that the principles in education and teaching are characterised by the aristocratic principle, rather than those we have characterised as democratic principles. The educational message is clear: upcoming generations are to accept the rules of the market economy and play the game accordingly.

本文讨论了过去三十年来瑞典教育系统中“公众”发生了什么问题。在寻找答案的过程中，我们阐明并讨论了市场化过程以及教育的知识化和个性化如何用市场逻辑取代了公共教育中的“公众”。为了进一步阐明当前关于瑞典教育的论述，我们对比了教育和教学中的两个原则，即贵族原则和民主原则。根据贵族原则，教育是关于固定和再现现有的权力关系，将其作为一个有序社会的基石。根据民主教育原则，平等是秩序井然的民主社会的基石。考虑到瑞典教育系统基础设施的转变，我们得出的结论是，教育和教学原则以贵族原则为特征，而不是以民主原则为特征。教育信息很明确：后代将接受市场经济规则并相应地参与游戏。