A history of sermons and carrots but no sticks

Abstract This paper is concerned with a historical analysis of educational policies on Modern languages or second foreign languages (SFLs) like French, German and Spanish in Sweden. Using a typology from policy instrument theory, colloquially phrased as sermons, carrots and sticks, the paper provides an historical overview and a discussion of acess policy objectives and policy instruments since 1945 with a particular focus on lower secondary school the last 20 years. The analysis shows that while policies and policy instruments naturally have varied over the last 70 years, there are also similarities. A finding is that in the domain of SFLs, sermons have not been perceived as enough, carrots have tended to lead to inequalities and sticks have been avoided.