The School System of Norway

by David Allen Anderson

While co-education is in agreement with conditions of family life, is economic, and continues to be entirely practicable, the question still remains whether there may not be justification in a demand for certain fundamental differences to be made in adapting educational means and matter to the two sexes. Co-education, however, may continue without making the education of the sexes identical. In fact it is very easily possible to make the education of the sexes fundamentally different even though both institutions and class activities are co-educational in practice. A difference in the amount of work in certain groups of subjects required of men and women, respectively, might furnish a satisfying solution of this question. And if there are certain branches of study which should belong exclusively to one or the other of the sexes, it is a simple matter to separate for such work. On the whole it seems to the writer highly advisable to educate the sexes together as far as possible.

THE SCHOOL YEAR

The regular school year in Norway has forty weeks of six days each. The plan of having school on Saturdays furnishes an additional day of fruitful, well directed activity to the children, who might otherwise be permitted to spend the time in idleness or misguided conduct.

In America we have so many vacations and holidays that our schools are in session only about 75 or 80 per cent of the time utilized in Norway. We may be justified in having the long summer vacations because of the inconvenience and depletion of strength occasioned by the heat, but several of our vacations during the year and the practice of having no school on Saturdays are inheritances without much justification. School activities, when rightly conducted, should be invigorating and exhilarating instead of producing a state of prolonged fatigue requiring seasons of inactivity or other changes in order to regain lost vitality. Again, the relaxation occasioned by diversion of thought and change of activity on Sunday is certainly sufficient to counteract any necessity of using Saturday for recuperation. It appears evident that we are not as frugal in this matter as sound judgment demands that we should be.

SCHOOL LUNCHES

It has been found that mental activity is very greatly affected by conditions of nutrition. The quality, quantity, and preparation of foods, together with regularity in eating, determine to a considerable extent what may be the progress of the pupil in his growth, both mental and physical. The child who is improperly fed or underfed is thereby handicapped, while the one who receives intelligent care along the same line is placed at a distinct advantage.

That in all large cities there are hundreds and thousands of underfed children is a fact of common knowledge. In many cities provisions have been made for supplying at least one meal per day free of charge to all needy pupils. Norway has been in the forefront in this paternalistic movement. Several of her cities have undertaken this noble work and probably no city in the world can boast of more adequate facilities for carrying it on than Christiania.

They purchase the best procurable quality of the most nutritious food, prepare it in a wholesome and palatable manner, and send it out from a central kitchen to the several primary schools of the city in such quantities as are needed to liberally supply the demands. The food is served hot in the regular lunch rooms absolutely free to all children whose parents ask it and at first cost to others. This work in Christiania is typical of the provisions made in other cities but the equipment, and possibly the system of distribution, is superior to that found elsewhere.

In addition to this, nutritious and easily digested foods and drinks are provided at other schools and served at a moderate cost in the lunch rooms at stated hours in the day. This latter provision is generally in charge of the family of the janitor of the building and is most common in the private and secondary schools to which the previously mentioned plan does not extend.

Experiment has demonstrated in our own land that it is entirely practicable to provide at a minimum cost warm, well-cooked, wholesome foods to either supplement or replace the cold indigestible lunches so commonly carried by school children. The cities and towns enjoy few if any advantages over the rural districts in this regard. The plan is workable and advisable, and it should be more commonly adopted.