To Govern in the name of the future is considered to be an essential part of policy-making in education. In Sweden, this is particularly evident in the political and public rhetoric used in debates on modern schooling and educational reform. However, this is not merely a national phenomenon; rather, educational governance in the name of the future is largely a global phenomenon that can be found in text and talk worldwide. These national and global narratives express ideas, hopes and visions of the future society and the school of tomorrow, but also the demands of and expectations from different actors on educational arenas. In this article I draw attention to the education policy debate in the Swedish Parliament during the period 2001-2010, with a certain focus on the debates about teacher education. The aim of the paper is to discuss how the future society is expressed in Swedish policy debate in times of changing conditions and demands of education mainly represented by knowledge-based economies and the increasing globalization of society.