The application of civil courage to oppose structural violence and defend child-centred education: A Norwegian case study

Abstract Amid the ever-greater encroachment of neoliberal principles in education – including marketisation, ranking and teaching to assessment – this article serves as a reminder that educators possess agency to resist and mount a successful defence of democratic, child-centred education. The case study presented here reports and reflects on an instance of informal adult learning at community level. It occurred between 2011 and 2014 in Sandefjord, a small town in the south of Norway. The municipality is affluent and was governed at the time by the two most right-wing parties in Norway, the liberal-conservative Høyre [The Right], and the populist-libertarian Fremskritts-partiet (FRP [Progress Party]). The local politicians wanted their schools to be the best in the county, preferably in the whole of Norway. For them this meant achieving the top grades in the national exams in Years 5, 8 and 9, so they introduced a strict half-yearly grading scheme in all municipal schools, starting with six-year-old children in Year 1. They ignored the fact that the Norwegian Education Act specifically forbids the grading of children in the first six years of schooling. One teacher refused to comply, arguing that this represented an inhumane ranking of his pupils. He was joined, first by one other teacher, and later, after the municipality hired a law firm to enforce their compliance, by 38 others. Parents wrote to newspapers in support of the protesting teachers. The entire community studied the legal regulations on the grading of young children. The “Sandefjord case” gained nationwide media coverage, the protests were successful, and the scorecards were done away with. On 13 January 2015, the original two protesting teachers were awarded the prestigious Zola Prize for civil courage. Ten years after this victory, the author of this article presented this case study at the 2024 conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), whose thematic focus was “The power of protest”. The Sandefjord case is of universal relevance, demonstrating the power of informal adult education, of protest, and of solidarity among members of a local community.