Christianity as culture and religions as religions. An analysis of the core curriculum as framework for Norwegian RE

Abstract

Religious education (RE) in Norwegian public schools has attracted much attention as a result of criticism from the UN’s Human Rights Committee in 2004 and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 2007. Due to the statement from the UN and the conviction in the ECHR, revisions have been made in the Education Act and the curriculum for RE. However, the core curriculum for primary and secondary schools and adult education introduced in 1993 has not been revised. The scope of the article is to analyse the core curriculum and show how this document constructs Christianity as culture and national heritage, leaving other religions as something ‘other’ in Norwegian society. The main argument is thus that the core curriculum provides a qualitative bias towards Christianity in the Norwegian educational system in general, and especially in RE.

Keywords:

• religious education
• cultural heritage
• Christianity
• nationalism
• human rights
• civil religion

Notes

1. The core curriculum is available in English at this link: http://www.utdanningsdirektoratet.no/upload/larerplaner/generell_del/Core_Curriculum_English.pdf [last visited 20 August 2013]. All quotations are taken from the official English version.

2. The Norwegian state had to publish the UN committee’s view: ‘The State party is also requested to publish the Committee’s view’ and did so on the government’s official website: http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dokumentarkiv/Regjeringen-Bondevik-II/ufd/233191/251920/Human-Rights-Committee-Communication-No-11552003.html?id=422478# [last visited 2 July 2013].

3. The complete verdict entitled Folgerø and others v. Norway (application No. 15472/02) is found on ECHR’s website: http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx#{“dmdocnumber”:[“819532”],“itemid”:[“001-81356”]} [last visited 2 July 2013]. See also Lied’s (2009) analysis and discussion of the verdict.

4. KRL is the abbreviation for Kristendomskunnskap med religions- og livssynsorientering. Official translation in English reads ‘Christian and other religious and ethical education’.

5. Rulings by the UN and the ECHR have been discussed in works by Lied (2009), Gravem (2005), Høstmælingen (2005) and Strand (2012, 361–433).

6. Background for the Ministry’s considerations for the new core curriculum can be found in St. meld. nr. 40 1992–1993 (especially pages 75–76, White Paper, Report to the Parliament).

7. In M74, the subject Ethical Education included religions other than Christianity. This was the first time other religions were mentioned in an RE curriculum. Previously, other religions had only been mentioned in the curriculum for social science during the 1960s (Skeie 2006). In the curriculum for Christian Knowledge in M87, ‘other religions’ were also included as a topic, although the curriculum still underscored the fact that the ‘primary responsibility for the introduction and orientation in this topic [other religions and world views] lies in social sciences’ (M87, 114). It was not until 1997, as Christian Knowledge and Ethical Education were brought together as one subject (in KRL), that other religions were introduced as a topic together with Christianity, Philosophy and Ethics.

8. Almost identical formulations were used in a revision of the RE curriculum in 2002 but removed in later revisions in 2005 and 2008 after the UN’s and ECHR’s critical statements about KRL (cf. Andreassen 2013, 11–18).