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Education is frequently put forward as a key to achieve societal change towards sustainability. National curricula present guidelines for educational practice stating what knowledge and skills students need to be prepared for future challenges. The curriculum is a canvas painted with imaginaries of a desired future. The description of knowledge, the use of concepts, and the emphasis put on different sections defineeducational practice.

Here, I critically analyze the sustainability discourse in the Swedish national curriculum using Carol Bacchi’s WPR- approach keeping the following questions in mind: How is sustainability described in the curriculum? What are the challenges? What knowledge and skills are needed? So far, results show that sustainability imaginaries differ between sections. The first general section describes the purpose of education asl laying the foundation for democratic values, lifelong learning, and respect for thee nvironment and human rights. Accordingly, teachers’ shall on the one hand prepare students to become competitive in face of internationalization and a competitive mobile labor market, and on the other hand to take collective action to solve complex environmental issues. A sustainability imaginary composed of competing individuals that take collective action or an oxymoron?

Both, competition and collective action, call for creativity, curiosity, self-confidence, communicative and social skills, as well as dynamic thinking and an understanding of the relativity of knowledge. The second subject-specific section describes education content and knowledge requirements with a focus on individual assessment. In their planning, teachers refer to this section more frequently than to the general section. Therefore, it is astonishing that collective action is touched upon only marginally here.

Finally, although education for sustainability is presented as the key to collective action for societa lchange towards sustainability, the subject-specific section is dominated by sustainability imaginaries that emphasize individuals’ competitiveness rather than collective action.