Civil disobedience to further a good learning environment. A Norwegian case-study

• In Event: Politics, Protest and Educators

Proposal

A couple of Norwegian teachers protesting against an elaborate grading of primary school pupils

By Prof.dr.Birgit Brock-Utne
The story of how Norwegian teachers prevented Nazi takeover of education in 1942 has been well documented. The more limited and recent teacher protest lasting from 2011 until 2014 has not reached an international audience the same way. On March 15, 1942, more than 1,300 Norwegian teachers were arrested by the German Nazi-installed government run by Vidkun Quisling after 12,000 of 14,000 teachers nationwide had refused to join the new Nazi-oriented teachers’ association and resisted nazification of the curriculum. Half of the teachers were held in a concentration camp outside the capital of Oslo. The rest were shipped to the Arctic for forced labor alongside Russian prisoners of war. A film, which can be bought online, has been made about this nonviolent action by thousands of Norwegian teachers during the second world War.(https://theteachersprotest.com) As the film tells us, “As a leader, Quisling was in fact broken…. A Nazi curriculum was never taught in Norwegian schools.”
In the year 2011 the school bureaucrats in the municipal Sandefjord in the south of Norway decided that all teachers were to grade their primary school pupils on many subjects and traits. The teachers were to fill in a form twice each year grading their pupils on as many as 70 subjects and traits. The teachers were required to assess their young pupils according to the following three point scale: under expected, satisfactory and above expected goal attainment. Most teachers in Sandefjord disliked the forms not only because of the extra work required to fill them in but also because they felt that the filling in of the forms was a contradiction of the official policy saying that there should be no grading of pupils in primary school. They were still obedient and filled in the forms under silent protest. Two teachers, Joachim Bjerkely Volden, and Marius Andersen chose not to be silent. They refused to fill in the forms which they regarded as an example of new public management philosophy. They argued that the use of these forms would lead to greater differences among pupils and the creation of more losers. The school bureaucrats hired a law firm to scare the teachers into compliance threatening them with losing their jobs as teachers forever. The teachers were temporarily suspended right before Christmas in 2011, not knowing if they would get their jobs back. Their protest was covered by both the Norwegian radio and television and some of the biggest newspapers. More and more teachers reacted to the injustice committed against these two teachers who protested against an evaluation scheme many teachers were against. Their protest led to more and more teachers in Sandefjord supporting the original protesters. The school bureaucrats had to drop the case against Volden and Andersen who could resume their teaching profession and in 2014 the forms were abandoned. In 2015 the two teachers received the Zola price for civilian courage. Their example shows us the importance of protesting against inhumane evaluation procedures and the importance of solidarity among teachers.

Author

• Birgit Brock-Utne, University of Oslo