CAN NORWAY LEARN FROM CHINA?

Two particular experiences of my life as an international education researcher are behind this travelogue. During my seventy years’ participation in and observations of Norwegian education, I have seen a sad decline of school quality. It started when Norway switched to a US American curriculum tradition after WWII. The positive experience is my familiarizing with the education culture of East Asia over the last twenty-five years. In this culture, there is an enormous respect for learning, knowledge and the teacher. Willingness to learn and respect for knowledge is now the super soft power of economically successful East Asian countries. My two opposite experiences resulted in the following question: What can Norway learn from China in terms of school quality? Internationally, we see parents and grandparents who sacrifice everything to ensure their loved ones this best possible life insurance in a challenging global world - solid basic education making it easier to continue to learn new knowledge and skills when the environment is changing. I start the book by explaining the Chinese setting. Following, I present the meaning of ‘school quality’. In the China section, I first present Hong Kong’s education as a successful synthesis of English, American and Chinese/Confucian ideas about effective learning. The rest of this section is a historical sketch of education development in China, as well a series of individual pictures illustrating Chinese education culture in practice. In the second section – on Norway – I give a historical sketch of educational decline from its golden age, right after WW II, until present. In the last (third) section, I sum up what Norway (and many other countries) can learn not only from China, but also from Finland and England. In the final chapter, I envisage a rather radical market-oriented model for how Norway could regain a learning culture needed to provide quality education for all its citizens.