Cultural Training - Feb 5, 2010

Introduction by Jane
Our second cultural training focused on the history of Norwegian & Arctic industrialization (and its relation to/impact on society – with particular attention to how the impact of industrialization has varied between Norway, the United States, and Russia ); the historical and contemporary structure of education in Norway; and contemporary science and technology development/challenges in Norway.

In this session, we tested whether the dominant images of Norway that we had identified at our first meeting – toughness, self-sufficiency, independence, egalitarianism, and humanitarianism – continued to make sense and be useful in the context of this new data. In general, we agreed that this image of dominant constructions of self- and national-identity for Norwegians could be productively used as an explanatory factor in our examinations of industrialization, education, and science/technology development.

Readings

1. Thomson (1938). Norway’s Industrialization. Economic Geography, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 372-380
2. Duhaime & Caron (2009). Economic and Social Conditions of the Artic Regions (pp. 11-22) in The Economy of the North.
   
3. Statistics Norway (2009). Facts about Education in Norway 2009. (PDF – 18 pages)
4. Norwegian Center for International Cooperation in Higher Education (2009). Guide to Higher Education in Norway: Look Up and Discover (PDF, pp. 6-9; 14-17)
5. Sivertsen and Persson (2000). The low citation impact of Norwegian Science. Bibliometric Notes, 7(4). (PDF – 4 p)
6. Research Council of Norway (2007). Report on Science and Technology Indicators for Norway (PDF, pp. 7-14; 53-60).
7. Norway Exports (2007). “Looking to Global Hands for Continued Growth” (pp. 16-20) + “A Market Full of Options” (pp. 24-25) + “Ensuring the Best Brains Stay” (pp. 26-27) in Career in Norway: Live, Work, Enjoy.
8. (Browse) Norwegian Center for International Cooperation in Higher Education (2009). Renewable Energy in Norway: Studies and Research.
9. (Browse) Norwegian Center for International Cooperation in Higher Education (2009). Marine Studies in Norway.

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Blog Post by Frank
Our second cultural training meeting took place on the Cal Poly Campus. To start off the evening we talked about the next technical assignment and the woes of tracking the robots on their way home from the arctic. Since some of the robots would not be home for the time we scheduled, we pushed back the timing for the first technical training.

The first topic on culture was the history of Norwegian industrialization. Jessie explained that this country was not very industrialized in the beginning of the 19th century, with most of their work done in fishing forestry and agriculture. The first wave of industrialization was in the 1840’s, with textiles and mechanical engineering repair work done. In the 1860 the second wave started with raw material making use of the timber and manufacturing pulp. The third wave of industrialization was the hydro electric power wave in the early 1900's. Making use of all the power they build electro chemical plants to make artificial fertilizers and also extracted aluminum.

The next topic that we discussed was the social impact that industrialization had on Norway. This was brought up by Kevin. Industrialization brought more wealth to the population and brought the life expectancy up while lowering the infant mortality rate. Women were also greatly affected by the greater wealth, since they could move into the work force and no longer have to be stay at home parents. The Sami people were one group of Norwegians that were negatively affected by industrialization. The reindeer herding of the Sami people was affected by the dams that were created for hydro electric plants and the electric power lines and also roads. They had to fight the Norwegian government for rights to the land that they live on and eventually were given 95% control of the land minus control of fish, oil and minerals.

Greg brought up the topic of education and its history in Norway. It started as far back as medieval times where it was necessary for people to learn to read the bible. Naturally the first schools were in churches, and in 1537 they turned into more Latin based schools. As early as 1736 children were taught to read in schools and about 90 years later they began to create primary schools. By 1889 there was 7 years of school required for children and it moved up to 9 years in 1969. Children went to school between the ages of 7 to 16, and recently they added another year so they would start at the age of 6. An interesting fact about the early years of school are that there are no grades until students are 13 years old and that grades are important to get into high school.

The topic of challenges in contemporary science and technology was brought up by Alex. One challenge that was brought to our attention was the fact that research papers in Norway are cited much less that other countries in one study. One thought of the reason for this was that Norway is writing more papers about the needs for its country and not the needs of other countries. There is a push for open access to papers written in Norway which could help with the low citation percentage. One difference between researches in Norway compared to other countries is that they use it more as a learning tool rather than using it to make products. Even thought Norway is not a part of the EU they are taking part in 10% of EU research which opens them up to a lot of opportunities.

Through this cultural meeting we all learned a great deal more about the culture of Norway and preparing for our trip come April.