Equality and Air Brushing

If Americans defend the concept of "Freedom" above all, then Norwegians defend the concept of "Equality."   I suppose it is difficult to define what "equality" means exactly, but the idea is to minimize the difference between the 'haves' and 'have nots', to make sure that everyone has a good education, decent working wages, healthcare, and in american suburban terms "a wife, dog and 2.2 blonde children."    

This idea permeates in the schools where all children have the same education system regardless of the neighborhood (unlike the U.S. where more income means more money for schools).  It translates to teaching where the culture strives to empower all children and does not single out students for special awards based on academic achievement. 

Children do start to get graded until Year 9, which is the point when schooling apparently starts to get hard and every grade counts for admission to the higher academics.  There is no grading "warm up" or trial run, although I'm told you can translate the smile on the happy face drawn on your assignments prior to Year 9 into a loose grading system.  The Norwegian emoticon grading system where ;-) means an A, :-) means a B, etc...

All children must also take the same Norwegian curriculum through Year 11 which includes courses in religion, music, and gym.   Your performance in music and gym are judged equally with other subjects like math and science.  "I'm sorry you can't get into Harvard, because you sing off pitch and your skiing is too slow."

I'm told the idea of equality permeates to the college level where students try not to really stand out in any one thing or to outperform the others.  My daughter Melita is a natural for this type of society, since she doesn't like to be singled out for anything and never wants anyone to feel bad if she passes them on swim team or whatever.  Maybe equality is hard-wired in the Scandinavian brain, but I think not.  Damn it, I like to win.  I like the feel of blue ribbons and trophies...oooohhhh... (although not as much as my oldest sister who is pathological about winning games :-)

The Norwegian idea of equality is so high here that they have an official Director of Equality, actually to be specific, the Minister of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion.  Ironically, he looks like a Norwegian version of my young nephew Max (see below) and isn't exactly the emblem of social inclusion that I would naturally pick for this position (the 'pale male syndrome' is pretty prevalent here).

The Equality Minister's latest campaign is to put warning labels on images of airbrushed supermodels. “This advertisement has been altered and presents an inaccurate image of how this model really looks.”  I'm sure my nephew would also present such important legislation for equality and do all the necessary research involved in putting forth this bill.  We can all agree that our children must be protected at all costs and supermodels should be fleshy.

But on to serious matters, Norway is also in the news for introducing laws to break the glass ceiling for females in the boardroom and even in academic institutions-- although good things but hard to legislate with quotas.   This has led to such headlines as "In Norway, a woman's place is in the boardroom."  Right on sisters!   Sign me up, if I get to serve with the Equality Minister.  I promise I won't air brush.