Read time: approximately 13 minutes

This week

• Tuesday, 20 January I went out to Halden Montessoriskole to work with the 7th-10th graders on slang. The first school I attended as a kid was a Montessori school, so it was fun to be at another one. And two teachers there have Colorado connections! One finished her undergrad at CSU and the other used to also live in Loveland! I was blown away by how small the world can be!
• Wednesday, 21 January I traveled to Lillestrøm in preparation for a Thursday morning workshop. It was a cute little Oslo suburb and I was glad to see another city in Norway. 
• Thursday, 22 January I facilitated a workshop with teachers from three upper high schools on the teacher version of the system of oppression workshop. 
• Friday, 23 January I had lunch with friends! I have friends! I also met the woman who organizes the local expat network and I gave her my contact information to notify me for future activities. 
• Saturday, 24 January One of the lunch group friends from Friday invited me and another US prof to dinner at her house. So nice! 

Last week I wrote about a student complimenting me on the way I speak English (thanks? That’s just the way I speak?) because I sound like people she watches on YouTube and TikTok—most of the women who post videos there sound like Valley Girls. Then I walked into my hotel in Lillestrøm on Wednesday and when the check-in desk lady switched from Norwegian to English it was like looking in a mirror. She was hitting that Valley Girl accent hard and I was so stunned I was wide-eyed and open-mouth speechless. Thoughts were immediately pinging in my head: is this an extreme version of what I sound like? Did I sound like this at one point in my life? But she doesn’t speak Norwegian like this? Then I smiled with all my teeth because the way she spoke was offering a way to be on the receiving end of the way I talk. There were a few things this week and that I’m still thinking about from last week that allowed me to examine encounters from perspectives opposite of how I generally experience them in the States, so that’s what I want to talk about this week!

First, I’ve been thinking more about my interaction at the library (that I wrote about last week). Here’s how a typical interaction goes with students who are looking for a book:

I’m able to recommend books because I find out more information from the reader about what they liked, and then can direct them to more of those things. It is really important as teachers that we understand what a student is communicating to us and can respond appropriately (and not just for books), simply because we want to encourage the reader to keep reading! 

But at the library last week, I was the student in the situation and the librarian didn’t ask more questions about what I liked about the book I was pointing to and asking, Do you have more books like this? She wasn’t able to adequately recommend to me books on my cognitive level that would help me become a stronger Norwegian reader. Literally she pointed me toward picture books for children. Throughout this week, I have kept thinking about this and what it would do to my self-concept if I didn’t know I was smart and capable of reading complex texts (maybe just not yet in Norwegian). When I was applying to graduate school and struggling with the math portion of the GRE I felt the same way: because I am a confident student and believe that I am smart, I have the self-talk to say, okay, this is hard, but you’re not stupid. You can do this. Imagine if I didn’t have the confidence I have as a reader when she pointed me to children’s picture books. I might imagine, because students have told me that they do, that she only thinks I’m smart enough to read books for early Norwegian readers. Like, babies.

What about for students and adults who don’t have that kind of self-talk? Who don’t believe they are smart and capable and strong? This isn’t the first time I’ve had to tell someone as an adult that I can’t read in the language. I have to actually do this quite often when I’m in Thailand. The look of pity and confusion I get when I tell people I can’t read in Thai or Norwegian could be crushing if I didn’t have the confidence or ability to ignore their gawking. But what if I didn’t? I wonder the extent to which we can look with empathy and compassion instead of judgment and derision at those who can’t do things we expect them to be able to do. As teachers, this is especially important, I think. It’s not often that I experience this, but it’s a good reminder of how I interact with learners. 

Another mirror that happened this week was some thinking on the nanny state. Many conservatives in the US call the Scandinavian welfare state/system a nanny state, where the perception is that the state has an almost paternalistic sense of control over your actions. Because of all the social services that countries like Norway provide and the ways that they could potentially shape your decisions, some Americans in the US bemoan governments such as this as overly and unnecessarily overbearing and directive. For example, tobacco products are very expensive in Norway and their packaging has giant letters that warn about the negative effects of using the product. In France, cigarette packaging has graphic images of what happens to your body if you get throat and/or mouth cancer from smoking. Americans say, they’re my lungs (and mouth and throat). Let me do whatever I want with them! (The Scandinavian response to this is that the state will eventually pay for the healthcare to take care of your diseased body so lighten up, eh?)

In Norway, there are many many times when I have said in my head, well, this is potentially a lawsuit waiting to happen. For example, the number of doors in Norway that open to the inside. In the United States, with a few exceptions, it is illegal for a door that the public accesses (like doors to stores) to open toward the inside of a store. Think about this. In the US, when you are exiting a store and it doesn’t have an automatic door, you push the door to leave. You pull the door to enter. This is because of fire safety and being able to quickly evacuate a place. If you have to pull the door to exit, and there was a fire and people are pushing up against the door, it’s going to be hard to pull the door open to leave. So in the US, we push to exit. Not so in Norway. The number of doors I have operated incorrectly is astounding. I once thought a store was closed because I pulled the handle and it didn’t open. Turns out I was supposed to push. It’s literally that Farside Cartoon. Equally embarrassing is when it’s labeled push/pull but in Norwegian and I do the wrong thing. You’d think this would be high motivation for me to learn the words push/pull in Norwegian. Alas. We can’t do it all. 

Another example: roads, sidewalks, school yards have been ice skating rinks since the snow and ice started falling. When I returned to Norway in early January, everything was already slicked over. From what other Fulbrighters tell me, this counts as snow removal in Norway because they’re just going to get more, so there are certain parts of town they don’t focus on clearing. When I was at Torsnes Skole last week I noted in the blog that students were slipping and sliding all over their blacktop playground turned into an icy slip-n-slide. In the US, this is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Some kid is going to hurt themselves (I witnessed several) because they are moving too fast on the ice. In the US, many parents would be outraged. They would tell the school to clear the ice! The kids are falling, for goodness sake! But in Norway, they’re like, well, if you fall, you know not to run. Or if you fall, you know you have to be more careful next time. When my cousin’s kid was real small and she’d be on playground equipment or jumping off the couch or whatever, my cousin would say, don’t hurt yourself. This is Norway: you are responsible for yourself. 

So I was at a restaurant in Lillestrøm on Wednesday night. And I was so hungry. My pasta came out on a double plate: there was a large plate and on top of that large plate was a crock that had been clearly pulled out of the oven because it was emanating hellfire heat. In the US, when you get a dish like this, the waiter says, that crock (or whatever they call it) is hot so be careful. So I am careful. But in Norway, no one says that because you are responsible for yourself and not being an idiot. It was clearly hot. I took my knife and fork to my pasta and I told myself something along the lines of, I know you’re hungry, but this is hot, so give it a minute. You don’t want to burn your tongue. But then I also said in my head, well, they didn’t tell me it was hot. So it must not be that hot. So I ate it and you know what? I burned my effing tongue. Even though I could see and feel and sense that it was hot. But because no one told me it was hot, I put it in my mouth and burned my tongue. So who lives in the nanny state?

Okay, last mirror: let’s talk about the US’ embrace of her imperialist era. When Trump had US troops extract Maduro and his wife, I was paying attention, but only with one ear. Because sometimes I have to protect myself and prevent escalating blood pressure. But then he turned to Greenland. And Norway. And again with the Nobel Peace Prize. And things have been escalating in Minnesota. In the teacher workshop I gave on Thursday, the teachers who attended the same workshop in November asked me to make stronger connections between Europe and the US when it comes to understanding foundations of injustice and the persistence of systems of oppression in both places. 

So in my prep, I looked up different articles about the rise of far-right nationalism in the US and in Europe. I went down a rabbit hole looking up the uses of the word ‘remigration’ in Europe and the US. I continued to think about the ways in which some Europeans and some Americans talk about and view people who they perceive as different from themselves, especially immigrants, refugees, and other newcomers to their countries. I paid more attention to how Europeans talked about people who they assume/think/should be in the country, like white people. A fellow Rover sent us a screenshot of a warning to Indigenous peoples in Minnesota to carry around their citizenship papers because there is risk of their detainment and deportation. What are the words to describe the absurdity of this situation, especially the threat of deporting people INDIGENOUS TO WHAT IS NOW THE UNITED STATES. Sorry for the yelling. Just. Actually, think that through. Where would they be deported to? I mean, I get that the directions are because of racialized profiling. But literally where are you going to deport Indigenous Americans to?

In the session itself, as I went through the slides and my notes with the teachers, I was intentional in making connections between the playbooks of Europe and the US for establishing a racialized hierarchy and how to dehumanize populations so that it’s easier to abuse them and convince people that your country should be rid of them. I saw nods. These teachers are recognizing it too. Even though I’m the one offering this workshop, I get very defensive of the United States when people ask me to talk about how systems of oppression persist. Because what I’ve noticed is that many teachers ask for this information to prove that the US is such a bad country: look at how it treats people it considers different from them, look at its behavior on an international stage, look at your leadership. But while Trump’s behavior and the behavior of the maga movement might be done in the name of the United States, that is not all that we are. And, we are not the only country by a longshot who engages in these monstrous and heinous acts. Europe and the US are mirrors of each other. 

European far-right nationalism reflects US far-right nationalism and vice versa. I have the receipts if you’d like. The end of WW2 didn’t at all signal the end of fascism and far-right nationalism in Europe. Just like President Obama didn’t signal a post-racial era. We are all using strategies that rhyme, that mirror each other, to dehumanize, threaten, abuse, and execute people. We are all using similar playbooks for the rhetoric to prove that the we are right and the they are wrong. We are all trying to make someone else the monster so that we don’t have to admit to ourselves that we are the actual monster. It is sheer absurdity to me that Trump is criticizing the Iranian government for attempting to squelch protests. Excuse me? What, precisely, are you doing in Minneapolis? 

It’s been hard to watch this last mirror. The other mirrors are more like, hm, well that’s an interesting perspective that I haven’t truly considered before. In this last mirror I feel like I am watching worlds collapsing. And I know intellectually this is neither the first nor the last time governments will position one population against another. I know it’s not the last time governments will terrify and kill people. I mean, I just gave a workshop on how systems of oppression were created and persist. It’s hard and scary to watch, from whatever side of the Atlantic you’re on. We’re cheering for protesters in Minnesota and Iran, and mourning their losses. 

Before you go: I can’t stop thinking about a book I just finished reading: I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying by Youngmi Mayer. I really appreciate the ways that she is able to communicate her insightful observations about racialized identities in the US. And generational trauma. If you’re looking for a memoir or something new to start reading, I recommend this one!