Read time: approximately 15 minutes

This week we returned from Autumn Break!

• Mon, 06 Oct I taught a workshop at the university where I’m based, Høgskolen i Østfold to teachers-in-training about teaching writing!
• Wed, 08 Oct I taught the first of a three-part workshop to teachers at Halden VGS, an upper elementary school, about offering feedback on student writing
• Wed, 08 Oct I also introduced a colleague and the IT department of my university to Google docs. My mind has never been more blown. There are people who don’t know Google docs exist?!
• Thurs, 09 Oct I learned how to tell time in Norwegian! It involves a lot of math. And I was able to share some of my justice research with a potential teacher educator collaborator!
• Fri, 10 Oct I headed out to Malakoff VGS, an upper secondary school in Moss, to do two systems of oppression workshops and one art remix workshop. First time doing art remix and it went as well as I had hoped! We also had a fire drill during one of the lessons—just some teens smoking in the bathroom. A true high school experience!

There’s been something I’ve been thinking about over the last few weeks, and I think it’s time to get these ideas out of my head in some sort of drafty form, so here we go. I also wrote a preliminary version of this here. 

There are tensions and dissonances I am noticing among Norwegians, namely

Nature Loving — Earth Destroying

I heard a statistic that Norwegians spend the most per capita (in Europe?) on camping and hiking gear. They are a people who love the outdoors. And who’s to blame them? They have fjords! They have mountains! They have forests! They have lakes! They have cabins! Specifically, a system of approximately 500 cabins; if you become a member of this cabin organization, you get a key to these 500 cabins and you can hang out there any time you’d like! You have to hike in, and there may not be electricity or water, but there are candles and bodies of water and outhouses close by. If you arrive at a cabin and there are already people there, I’m told that the parties just work something out. Usually the new party gets to have the beds, I’m told. What a system! 

And yet, Norwegians are also the largest extractors of oil in Europe. Oil was discovered off their coast in the North Sea in 1969 and they have been extracting it ever since. The decision was made early on by the Norwegian government that the oil would be extracted by and profits would go to the public (rather than private companies) and the Norwegian people have been beneficiaries of this money ever since, paying for many parts of their welfare state. It’s a lot of money. Many environmentalists, however, would like Norway to stop oil extraction and production, because of its direct effects on the oceanic environment, and also because using the products of the oil are detrimental to the planet. Norway has offset its oil extraction and production by encouraging electric vehicles (the country has the largest market share of electric vehicles (in Europe?); 1 in 3 people have an electric vehicle) and even producing the first electric plane! 

We are a we — But being a Norwegian citizen doesn’t mean you’re Norwegian

Since I’ve arrived, I have been hearing about this idea that Norwegians are a we; “we are a we,” I have been told numerous times. This means that no matter who you are or where you are from, you are Norwegian. Sounds kind of nice? Everyone belongs? I’ve been told about Janteloven, these ten cultural “laws” that Norwegians implicitly follow, where everyone is pretty steadily the same; no one is better than others, no one stands out, no one has the impression that they can become more than they are. And because we are all a we and we are all effectively the same, we will help each other. We will offer universal health care and education and we will support you with our welfare state because we are a we and we help each other. 

But I’ve also been told, sometimes in the same breath, that we are a we only because we have covered up the differences. There are actual differences in the people who live in Norway, and they are treated differently because of these differences. I’m learning in my Norway October book that in the 1990s, Norway began accepting refugees, mostly from Asia and Africa, and that while Norway was able to provide housing and sometimes jobs for immigrants and refugees, the families and especially the children weren’t always accepted in school or in society. Reading excerpts in the book about how children of color were treated in the 1990s and hearing stories from the students of color on my school visits echo a familiar story I hear and experience in the US: people of color and people who are visibly different (like they are hijabi) from white people (what I’ve heard referred to here as ethnic Norwegians) aren’t necessarily treated like white Norwegians. I think I have written about some of this already, but on a school visit a teacher from Canada came to talk to the Fulbright Rovers. He was a retired teacher and had earned Norwegian citizenship, yet when he made it to this milestone, he was told that he might have Norwegian citizenship, but he’ll never be Norwegian. He noted with shock that he was blond, blue eyed, and looked like many Norwegians he knew. He spoke the language—a requirement of Norwegian citizenship. What did it take to become Norwegian? What did it mean for people of color who were Norwegian citizens? What I’ve heard students of color tell me in school is that they’re not treated like full citizens or people who belong here. And I get that—it happens to certain people of color in the States too. My US citizenship is frequently questioned. I’ve written about it here. But they’re also told that we are a we. The kids are being gaslighted! They’re not being treated like a we, but being told that they are. Who gets to be the we here?

The Occupation of WW2 — We Were All Resistance Fighters

When we were looking for housing, I was chatting with another Rover who told me he contacted the synagogue in Oslo to inquire if they could help him find housing. Wait, I stopped him, what do you mean the synagogue in Oslo? There’s only one synagogue in Oslo? Then he launched into Norway’s role in WW2. Within seven months of the start of World War 2, Norway was occupied by German forces and would remain so until the end of the war in 1945. The word, quisling, which means a traitor who collaborates with an occupying force, was so created because of the Norwegian Quisling, who indeed did just that after the Norwegian King fled to London. I have no idea what I would do if I were in a position of governmental power during a war and the aggressor came into my country. I would hope that I would go the way of Churchill and the British and fight those occupiers. But that’s not what happened in Norway. 

When I ask Norwegians about WW2, they say they were all resistors and fought the occupation and that it was just Quisling who was the bad guy. That’s not possible. It’s not possible that the only people who collaborated with the Nazi forces were Quisling and his minions. You don’t almost eliminate your entire population of Jews because of one collaborator and his staff. But I also understand the shame that comes with collaboration and the desire to say what you need to say and/or believe what you need to believe so that you can look at yourself in the mirror and sleep at night. I see this in the US too—in what ways have I helped to create and perpetuate an unjust society? In what ways do I actively resist racism and the war against people who live in poverty? In what ways do I combat homophobia? Patriarchy? Settler colonialism? I’ve recently seen videos of people in Chicago protecting other Chicagoans from being abducted by masked ICE agents. If it were me, where would I stand? 

These tensions aren’t limited to Norway. I’ve noted above the ways in which they overlap with the values the United States says we maintain and the ways those values are actualized. What’s most interesting to me in noticing these tensions is how they show up and shape teacher preparation and teaching.

One question that I came with from my teacher educator work in the States is, how do our contexts shape the ways in which we (teacher educators) conduct teacher preparation? By contexts, I mean our individual contexts: who we are, how we experience and/or witness in/justice. I also mean our historic contexts: where do we live? Where do we work? What is the history of in/justice and resistance in these spaces? I mean our geographic contexts: do we live in states that are more likely to support deij efforts, or ban them? I mean our institutional contexts: where do we work? Are these schools supportive of the deij, anti-colonial work that we do? 

In Colorado, for example, there is a history of the United States government massacring Indigenous peoples. The United States government interned Japanese Americans in Colorado. Racism and xenophobia eliminated Denver’s Chinatown. I could go on, but that seems like enough for now. Even if we or our families weren’t a part of these historic events, either as the aggressor or those victimized, these events are part of our state and national ethos and history. These events, regardless of our involvement, shape our schooling: how we conduct it, what we find important to teach about, what we value. 

How so? I’m glad you asked. In the most direct way, we either teach or don’t teach about these events as part of Colorado and national history. I’m from California, and in my state history class in 4th grade we learned about internment camps. Maybe because the Japanese Americans who were forced to relocate were from California. But I had no idea until I was a grown up there were internment camps in Colorado or Arkansas. Maybe it’s because I’m not from Colorado, but I had to find out for myself about the Sand Creek Massacre and why Denver doesn’t have a Chinatown. Do our Coloradan youth learn these ideas in school? How are these historic events presented to them? Which history we choose to tell, which we don’t, and how we tell that history shapes how we think about our history and our present day. I’ll remind you about how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that enslavement was good because “it taught useful skills.” Um, wut? So what we literally teach in school and what students learn matters to how we think about ourselves, others, and the world. It matters to how we think about the past, the present, and the future.

But our historic and cultural contexts also shape our educational systems in more ideological ways in addition to the literal ways. It’s about how schooling is framed. What is the purpose of school? Is it to present an idealized, sanitized, and perhaps white-washed version of our historical and cultural contexts? Glorifying the settler colonial men and families who broke treaties they never meant to honor and took land from Indigenous people because the settlers believed they had a right to it? Glorifying the Founders, who enslaved people or supported that enslavement so that they could have untold wealth? Downplaying the role of Indigenous people, enslaved people, immigrants, and refugees in fighting for rights guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution? 

Historic and cultural systems of oppression exist in the US, and shape how schooling is framed. It isn’t just the perpetuation of a single person’s settler colonial or racist or xenophobic or heteronormative or patriarchal ideas onto another person. Oppression is systematic. It’s systematic when a member of the dominant group (because say you’re white or Christian or a guy or heterosexual or ablebodied or speak English or you have money or you have land) takes their prejudiced beliefs about others and acts on them: codifies them into law or harms people because of beliefs they have about their dominance and value and, conversely, beliefs they have about someone else’s lack of worth and value. In other words, if you hold power (like you have a gun, or if you can pass a law, or if you can enact a judgment, or if you can write policy), and you use that power to put your prejudiced beliefs about people into policy or law or practices or you just straight up kill someone, that’s a system of oppression in action. 

The enactments of these beliefs about which identities are valued don’t necessarily have to play out in laws or on the battlefield or in the streets. These beliefs about who is valued and the perceived lack of value of others is also played out in school. 

It’s played out in our curriculum: whose stories get the place of honor and get to be told in school? In English class? In history class? It’s played out in our pedagogy: whose ways of knowing are centered in school? In science class? In math class? It’s played out in our assessment: how do we check for student understanding? Whose ways of knowledge conveyance are valued? It’s played out in our perceptions: how teachers perceive students, how students perceive themselves, how students perceive their classmates. There are teachers who don’t believe that all students or their families value education because of racist ideas they have been told about these children and families. There are teachers who don’t believe that all students can learn because of racist ideas they have been told about children and their families. There are students who start to believe these ideas.

We take ideas about ourselves, our cultural values, our histories, and we use them as the foundation for and to explain the purpose of schooling. What we believe about our culture and our history undergirds what we believe about the purpose of school and what we do in the classroom. If we believe everything our teachers taught us about US history, we would believe that the oppression of people of color is over! But we look around the US and there are plenty of experiences that show us that that isn’t true. If we believe that we are still fighting for rights enshrined in our founding documents, we teach students about our missteps, but also about ways we have moved toward more freedom and rights for everyone. Rather than freedom being a done deed guaranteed for all, it is something in our democratic society we fight for every day. How we remember our histories and the stories we tell about ourselves translate to what and how we teach. 

Prejudiced ideas about people don’t come from nowhere; they come from a system of beliefs and interactions that allow us to continue to oppress others in systematic and open ways (like, it’s not hidden what is happening). Education is where students learn about our national identities, our histories, our heroes and villains and those in-between. What we are taught in school shapes our cultural and historical knowledge. This is why education is a threat to authoritarian and fascist regimes. When I do my systems of oppression workshop and ask students how we push against systems of oppression, a student always says that we need to educate ourselves on our actual history and what’s happening now and the relationship between the past, present, and future. We can break cycles of systems of oppression—we just have to know the truth. And that truth shall make us free. 

Schooling in the United States is literally founded on settler colonialism and assimilation: how can we take all these children from different backgrounds (Indigenous, immigrant, refugee, enslaved) and make them into one, American, people? Ah. We make them white. We teach them ways of whiteness. But we are not all white. We do not all want to learn whiteness. 

So if you’re a country that—for whatever reason—denies your full history (I’m looking at you, the US and Norway) and you believe that history is always a march toward glorious progress (rather than cyclical and that we move backward and forward toward rights for all), how might this shape your teaching? How might this shape how I prepare teachers? Will you ignore the foundations of your schooling system? Will you ignore your history? What are the costs if we do? What kind of history will you teach students? What kinds of texts will students read to learn more about themselves, others, and the world? Will you expand students’ ideas of themselves, others, and the world, or continue to perpetuate this myth of wholeness and sameness and oneness and an everlasting march toward progress? Will you ignore that schooling by design is meant to assimilate children? Will you keep insisting that we are a we? Or will you find a different purpose for school? Will you maintain the status quo, or will you do something different?