på Skole: What I learned in School this week

So it occured to me that you may not even know where the heck in Norway I am, so with the help of Google, I have provided this lovely map as a reference. If you take a look, you can see where I am staying; it's the city north of Oslo called Hamar. Some of the cities I'll be visiting during our excursion the week after next are Trodheim, Oppheid, and Bodø.

So, this is what I learned in school this week:
Noen Faktum over Norge/Some Facts about Norway

Population: 4,681,100

Capital: Oslo

Offical Languages: Norwegian:
Båkmal --which I am learning, and is "traditional norwegian"
Nynorsk --literally "New Norwegian", a language that was basically created by an anthropologist that is a compilation of all the "land" dialects, defined to me by a speaker as "farmer's Norwegian" (think of it as Texanese beeing its own language.)
and Sami --the language of the indigenous Sami people in the north (most common in the counties of Troms and Finnmark)
-Note: as a general rule, I have learned that NO speaker of Norwegian speaks
Norwegian like any other speaker, even if they both claim to speak Båkmal or Nynorsk! Every family, generation, region, town, farmstead, etc. pretty much has their own dialect (try learning that !!?)

Currency: Norwegian Kroner (NOK) 1USD =5.81 NOK

Government: Constitutional Monarchy, Parlimentary Democracy.

-So, Norway voted for a Monarchy. Yes, that's correct, they VOTED for it. When they split from Sweden in 1814, they voted whether they would have a democracy, or a monarchy, and the monarchy won by quite the vast majority. So they wrote up a constitution for the Monarchy, and so it was. They have a parliment also called the Storingt (very similar the United Kingdom!). The king and queen really don't have much power. They kind of sit around being rich and looking pretty, doing ceremonial things and such. Anyway, the first King of Norway wasn't even Norwegian, he was Danish. The current king, King Harald, is actually the first King in Norwegian history to have been born in Norway. Yeah, that's what I thought, too: interesting.

So yes, the king's name is Harald and the queen's name is Sonja. (pronounced Sonya)

The Official Relgion of Norway: Evangelical Lutheran

-Some 87% of the country belong to the church. It isn't mandatory to belong to the church, however, if you are a member you have the responsibility to raise your children in the church, i.e. baptize and confirm them.

And of course, they are notoriously a "Welfare State"--whatever that means, right?
This is where it gets PARTICULARLY interesting...
Taxes are OUTRAGEOUS! in Norway...but it works, somehow.
There is a 22% income tax, almost no property tax, a rather high capital tax (i don't have the number for that), and a 25% consumer based tax--which is less on food (only 14%) and much more on petrol, cigarettes, and alcohol. (A meager attempt at lowering the usage of such products...it was a nice thought.)

So where does this money go??
Free Health Care, Free Education (including higher education!), and into the "kitty" for social security/retirement.

I think the education part is REALLY interesting (And why shouldn't I? It's only what I've been doing for the last 15 years of my life...)

FREE Education..FREE higher education..and my tuition went up to $36,000 this year?? This is exciting.

Primary schools (ages grades 1-5) are funded by the municipal government, Secondary schools (grades 6-12) are funded by the county (like state government in the U.S.), and all universities are funded by the state/federal government.

So the money that goes to all schools comes from the 22% income tax, and is, for the most part, equally distributed throughout the country. This means, for the most part, all Primary/Secondary/University Colleges receive equal funding, and the goal is for all students have equal access to knowledge.

What a NOVEL idea.

I think the US missed that memo. As I understand it, the United States funds their schools with money from property taxes. So more expensive neighborhoods = more money for schools. Definitely not so equal. And they try to combat this flaw with affirmative action and no child left behind and blah blah blah. Maybe a reform in funding is what we need?
Some other questions that came to my mind as we discussed this difference were whether this has an effect on the mentality of students in the US, or if it contributes at all to why the US has such a high number of school shootings, while Europe has almost none?


So as you can tell, I am really enjoying this course. There are definitely a lot of interesting ideas being tossed around.

And that's what I did in school this week.