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| Reference Material |
| No Pie From the Sky by : Rosalinda N. Olsen Augus 10, 2004 Two years ago, a journalist of Dagens N�ringsliv asked General Torgeir Fosland his opinion on the military budget cuts proposed by the Storting (Norwegian Parliament). General Fosland�s succint reply was, �It is not in our culture to expect our reward in heaven.� Norway is probably the only nation whose national anthem celebrates its defiance of Rome in the early 12th century by King Sverre Sigurdsson. In the second verse of the song, written by Bj�rnstjerne Bj�rnson, are the words, �Fra det h�ye Sverre talte; talte Roma mot imot�. This roughly translates as, �From the high North, Sverre spoke in defiance of Rome.� King Sverre won his fight with the Vatican and its representatives that then insisted on its right to determine who shall be king of Norway. Evangelical Lutheran is the state religion in Norway, with the King as the head of that church. Bishops and priests are civil servants and do not have special rights and privileges as �men of the cloth�. Priests at all levels are subject to the same reward and punishment system in the civil service, and more than a few have served time in jail for breaking the law. The most memorable are the priests in the 18th century who who travelled throughout Norway teaching the people how to plant potatoes. The fond joke was to call a priest �Potet Prest� (potato priest) when he talked of the potato from the pulpit instead of giving the usual homily. This helped save Norway from starvation during the Napoleonic wars when Britain blockaded the sea between Denmark and Norway, effectively cutting off Norway�s food supplies. With only 3% of its total land area as cutivable land, Norway imports about 75% of its food. There was a time when Norway was so poor that people baked bread with more ground tree bark than flour in it. Today Norway is one of the wealthiest countries, chosen by the UN a couple of years ago as the country with the highest quality of life in all aspects. The wealth did not just come from the oil that Norway began pumping from the North Sea in the early 1970s; and the people certainly did not get rich by waiting from the pie in the sky. The Norwegian used his head and his hands. Norway has more water than land, and some bright heads came up with the idea of producing hydropower from the numerous waterfalls. Electricity became one of Norway�s important imports. When the Industrial Revolution gave women the opportunity of earning by taking jobs, the mothers did not wring their hands because there was no maid or nanny to take care of their young children. Mothers pooled resources and brought their children together under the care of one person. This nursery pool became known as the �barnehage� (literally, children�s garden). Eventually, the women orgaized and sought the institutionalization of the barnehage. The first �official� barnehage opened in Oslo in 1920, a pre-school for six-year olds that had place for only 60 children. It took more than 50 years before the rules governing the barnehage was signed into law in 1975. In 1990, the education and training for barnehage workers was included in the Barnehage Law. To a large extent, children clearly manifest what is good and what is wrong in society. Children mirror what the society is like and what it is likely to become, as they are the carriers of the culture that they inherit. Norwegian children learn to be self-reliant at a very early age. For them, the worst insult and shame is that they cannot hack it. While on a one-month practicum in a barnehage, I saw how children learned the most cherished norsk values through play. They were not taught letters or numbers but the values of self-reliance, responsibility for one�s actions, respect for the rights of others, and cooperation are reinforced each day. It was wonderful to see tiny fingers struggling with buttons when putting on their jacket or raincoat. Once I made the mistake of helping a three year-old girl without being asked. She stamped her foot and, with indignant voice and eyes told me, �Jeg kan klare det!� (I can manage it!) Like other children the world over, they could be little imps too, no ifs and doubts about that. There was this little boy who just couldn�t resist taking by force what the others won�t lend him. One afternoon, it was my turn to watch over them as they played in the yard and this boy came running to me, asking me to reprimand somebody who hit him. I looked calmly at him and told him that there comes a time when he would get what he had been giving. He looked puzzled, as did one of the barnehage assistants who overheard what I said. Obviously, the little boy had thought long and carefully about what I said because, later that afternoon, as I stood watching some children play football, a small hand crept into mine. It was the little boy. As I gave his hand a little sqeeze, he looked up at me and his eyes said it all. That was the best �thank you �I have received from a child. Of my 11 granchildren, only the eldest grew up in his mother�s care and mine, the rest had to be left to the care of their yaya while their parents work at their jobs. The sad refrain in the Philippines these days is a spoof of an old song, �Where have all the nannies gone, gone to Saudi everyone.� My daughters tell me that their biggest problem is how to get a good yaya, but it has not occurred to them to borrow the barnehage idea to solve that problem, even if I had told them about it years ago. It hurts to see my granchildren growing up to be little se�oritas and se�oritos with the yaya and the maid at their beck and call. Chances are they might grow up into an overly extended infancy unless they are forced out of that dependency. Filipino culture as it has developed does not encourage independence, much less independent thinking. Paternalism in all its forms is the thread that runs through Filipino society; obedience and respect for elders being prized more than initiative or self-reliance. Hence, the Filipino is trained from childhoold to expect reward or punishment according to how obedient they have been to their parents, their teachers, the government officials and, of course, to the priests and nuns. Not surprisingly, Filipinos are forever hoping for a president that would right all wrongs, much like a Superman-Messiah who would bring the pie from the sky. When the president turns out to be a lemon and the usual prayers and novenas don�t work, the Filipino goes into an �EDSA� which, of course, was began by the Church and could not be dissociated from it. But there is no pie in the sky, not unless one works for it. When Norway was brought under the Swedish crown as the prize for Sweden�s alliance with Britain and Russia in the Napoleonic wars, the Norwegians could have chosen to fight it out. Instead, the Danish prince Christian Fredrik of Augustenborg, then the governor of Norway, called for an assembly that would become the group to write Norway�s Constitution of 1814. Interestingly, the youngest member of that constitutional assembly was a 17-year old 2nd lieutenant from the Artillery Corps. The constitutional assembly was a radical cross section of the society, as the order from the royal governor was that the representatives should be elected from among the brightest and reasonable men in each district and detachment. From the military representataives, not only officers were considered, but NCOs and privates as well. Likewise, the representatives from the farmers and the merchants (the de facto 'overclass') were not necessarily the biggest landowners or the wealthiest but those known for their intellect and common sense. Presented with a fait accompli, King Karl XIII (formerly French general Jean Baptiste Bernadotte) had no choice but to accept the Constitution. Political power firmly resided in the Storting (Norway�s Parliament), but not always without frictions. The Swedish kings were in no way despotic and neither did they oppress the Norwegians, except for the question about dissolving the union. . Even so, Johan Sverdrup would not allow the Swedish king nor his officials to ignore the majority at the Storting and he uttered the famous words, �All makt I denne sal.� (All power is in this hall.) and the Swedish-appointed officials had no choice but to appear before the Storting when requested. After an unsuccessful attempt to reinstate a Conservative government, after the impeachment of Prime Minster Selmer, King Oscar II had to appoint Johan Sverdrup as Prime Minister, as the Liberal Party repesented the majority at the Storting. The parliamentary system had been established. Norway does not have a national hero because this country has hundreds of heroes, among them Johan Sverdrup and General Fosland, echoes of the independent thought and self-reliance in the words of Sverre Sigurdsson. Norway does not have a national hero because it is inconceivable that one man alone could move a nation. Norway reached the goals it sought because Ola Nordmann�the ordinary Norwegian�used his head and his hands to work together. Ola Nordmann has something valuable to tell the world: Nobody, not even God nor the devil, shall take the blame or credit for what happens to Ola Nordmann. Ola Nordmann is responsible for himself. |