Sustained Criticism

Why don't I just give up on Norwegian politics? Does anyone have a good answer? It is not politics, so much as a badly directed Ionesco play. Høyre (centre-right party, more or less) now wants to introduce awards for academic achievements in schools. Buttons, diplomas, lists of the best students. Reward the brilliant, knowledgeable, hard-working and clever children. By all means, make it less of a bad thing to be smart. But rewards solve nothing. I have been awarded through my school-years, in more ways than I care to remember (lovingly by teachers, deviously by pupils). If you finish an assignment, your reward is always more of the same.

Just finished ten pages of grammar exercises in record time? Well, jolly good, take another fifteen! Here's to keeping you interested. Rewards have no effect when the teaching is of abysmal quality. I spent a year of English classes, in primary school, playing crap computer games. It was the reward for acquiring a good grasp of rudimentary grammar and vocabulary. Why wasn't I given more advanced books? Why did no one challenge me? Because the Norwegian social democracy frowns upon cleverness. If a child suffers the misfortune of being clever, they must be beaten down at all costs. Do they enjoy learning? Give them piles of mundane tasks to take their minds off it. Let them lead groups of dunderheads; because at ten, these children benefit from being forced to lead. Let them help the others, they benefit from having to answer stupid questions and not being listened to when they try.

What part of bad teachers, bad curriculums, do these people not understand? Why can 'social democracy' not entail teaching at the pupil's level, rather than at the non-existent average?

I am very much to the political right, and in Norway that means I have only one option. If you have the intelligence of more than the average goldfish, you cannot seriously consider voting the far-right joke that is Fremskrittspartiet. But Høyre is no better. The leader is like a jellyfish: huge, flabby, taken to drifting where the current will.

Disclaimer: if I haven't made it clear already, I am very much to the political right. And I despise this country's idiotic play at politics. We can't even surface long enough to join the European Union.

I am done now, and it has not quite registered yet. I've left upper secondary behind, and it scares me to no end; When it hits me, and I remember I'm not going back this fall, that is. It's over. And I think I will miss it. At least parts of it.

I just lost all semblance of coherence, didn't I? Perhaps fiction is the solution to this. Sense certainly isn't. Or perhaps I just need to go sit down somewhere and think. Death by coffee and literature.

We have this delightful girl in our class by the name of Iselin. She has cheated through all our three years at Nordstrand, and the scale has grown with the difficulty and work-load. Lately, she has been cheating on more or less everything. And got caught on the English final. For three years she has been getting undeserved 6's, and no one has said anything.

Now she claims to be anorectic, and our teachers have talked with her. They now know that she has been cheating all year. Her excuse was that "I can't do anything but exercise, these days, I just can't revise". Normally, when someone is having a hard time, they take the time they need to get better, talk to their teachers about it and reduce their work-load. After Christmas this year she had a disastrous fall-out with a few people, and she has generally been having a tough time, it seems. While I have all possible sympathy for that, I cannot stand her way of dealing with it. You do not cheat your way to exemplary grades. You just do not. The rest of us work for them. And for the school to simply let it slide, is horrendous. It is outrageous. Letting her have grades she does not deserve, letting her get a place at a university she has not worked for.

But, we know she is intelligent, and that she would have gotten these grades if it wasn't for her illness. Oh, right, the illness she pretends to have? Like those cutting for attention, she displays it. She prances about bragging of how little she has eaten, of how she is soo tired – she just spent to hours at the gym, before coming to school at 8.

Perhaps I should fake a depression? That would justify my cheating on my up-coming exams. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

I echo my words: if I have children, they will not go to a Norwegian state school.

The Norwegian school system has always been a disappointment, from the moment I learned how to read, multiply, divide and conjugate "to be", I have been disappointed. Talent is a thing to be shunned, it is scary, appalling even, and must be handled accordingly. Boring my way through conjugations I had known by heart for years, I told my teacher so, and spent my final year of primary school English classes playing silly games, alone in a computer lab.

When I was miserable, for the better part of primary school, no one saw a thing. I did my best to conceal it, but I cannot have been that apt. They must have seen the girl in the corner, and what went on behind the smiles. No doubt, I was an insufferable know it all, I was the teachers' pet and used words bigger than I was, but someone must have seen something. I sat through parent-teacher conferences, withdrawn and lying with a straight face. Everything was fine, perfect, absolutely "honky-dory". What kept me going through mundane classes was the thought of Upper Secondary, where I was sure people would be interested in the classes they took, there would be challenges and interesting conversations. Need I say I was hugely disappointed?

I would love to know the number of mind-numbing exercises I have done over the course of my schooling. Progress comes, inevitably, and it is on to Upper Secondary. A year and a half of boring English classes, the first year with a marvellous teacher, sadly intent on teaching me how to conform, the half of the next with the worst I have yet encountered. It ended in me taking two years worth of English classes in one, with promises of University-level English thrown around.

Imagine my rapture, someone saw my need for a challenge, and took it to heart. I had the most fun yet in those six months of classes, and stunned an examinator with my knowledge and locution. Again, inevitably, I am disappointed, those university lectures I was promised seem to have evaporated somewhere along the line, and I am stuck doing nothing. If I ever have children, there is no way I am putting them through the hopeless educational system in Norway.

My schedual grows less tangible by the day, but I think I will be very happy with this latest edition. I will only have to get up early two days a week, and I have next to no classes - 17 hours a week, plus the occasional Wedensday. It also seems the school is arranging for a group of students to attend some lectures at UiO, and write a paper to be assed by the British Insitute. To make up for lost classes, I'm taking an exam in Psychology B. To keep myself entertained, I'm signing up for a Russian class.

My Norwegian/History teacher is wonderfully well-read, intelligent, engaging - all 'round wonderful, and a brilliant teacher. He even approved of my somewhat morbid topic for the "extended essay" (bad translation of the Norwegian "særemne"). Religion seems, this far, to be one of those subjects that are so ridiculously easy they just might prove difficult to get the hang of. Get a 6 in, that is, a 5 I can acquire without batting an eye.

We examined Hovland's book today, and although I haven't grown to like it more, I respect Hovland more. There were a few things I'd not seen - glaringly obvious ones, at that - that gain his case.

(For anyone wondering, the title translates as "in search of lost time" or, "in search of time lost". I personally prefer the latter for its ring. And credit goes to Proust.)

Aaand, I got to play dictator today. I was told I'm a natural, and really can't figure why.