Political Education of Young Children in the Norwegian Primary School

The Norwegian Education Act states that one of the overall aims with the Norwegian school is to promote democracy and to educate children in democratic citizenship. Furthermore, from the first school year, social studies is supposed to contribute to development of political knowledge and democracy training of Norwegian children. Both nationally and internationally, the importance of democratic learning and civic education for the youngest children is stressed. Great emphasis is placed on teachers to educate children in becoming democratic citizens from their first day in school. In the Norwegian context, it is much up to each individual teacher how they choose to solve this task. The teachers have no clear guidelines on how to proceed in the process of facilitating political and democratic understanding among their pupils. Generally, we have little knowledge of how teachers in the lower grades of the Norwegian primary school conducts political education for the youngest. NOU 2011:20 (a Norwegian green paper) confirms this, stating that it is little research on democracy training in the Norwegian school. Over the last few decades, some greater empirical works on democracy education have been done.These are however limited to higher grades of the Norwegian school. This is why more and extensive research on political education on the lower grades of the Norwegian school is necessary. Interviews with twenty-nine social studies teachers in the lower grades of the Norwegian primary school provides an empirical basis for describing the political education of the youngest children. Teacher`s descriptions of their education serve as a background for a discussion about the political education in the lower grades of the Norwegian primary school. The aim is to investigate to what degree political aspects is a part of the first basic education in social studies, what the teachers focuses on and how they do it.