This thesis is about the socialisation of schoolchildren and how normality is learned and managed in two Swedish school classes. The Swedish school is, according to the "Curriculum for the compulsory school system, the pre-school class and the leisure-time centre", the Lpo94, based on democratic values and respect for the individual. In accordance with these values socialisation of the pupil is, as the thesis argues, accomplished through “benevolent government” by the teachers. To enable this governmentality, the pupil needs to learn how to be him or her “self” according to norms about how the “self” is to be expressed. The pupil also needs to learn how to balance multiple relations in school and the different aspects that constitutes the social person. Benevolent government is here used as a description of a certain kind of teacher-hood dependent on a certain kind of pupil. The pupil-subject that is constructed is a subordinated, self inspecting, positive, empathic person who will approve of being governed by the teachers through the governing of them selves.

The study is based on fieldwork with one pre-school class and one fifth grade class in the Swedish compulsory school during the period from August 1999 to June 2002.