The role of teachers as rhetorical agents of a national cultural state was emphasised.
The nation state was to be understood as a state of mind. The political discourse set
up a rhetorical agency in a detailed curriculum, which was bound by law. In the
chapterThe Role of the Teacher and Educator,the teacher is portrayed as an agent
with both a capacity and the skills to persuade. Furthermore it was thought that this
agency should be a national agency, using the capacity to forcefully deliver to
pupils national traditions, myths, history, religion and heritage.
The good teacher is master of the subject–his or her section of our common cultural
heritage. [...] To explain something new implies mooring it to something familiar. This is
accomplished by the teacher using expressions, images, analogies, metaphors and examples
which convey meaning to the pupil. [...] A good portion of this the pupils have in common,
from our broad cultural heritage which provides a sounding board for communication,
dialogue and learning.
The cultural baggage that learners carry with them, from the home, local community, or
earlier schooling, determines which explanations and examples have meaning. Pupils from
other cultures do not share the common Norwegian heritage. Good teachers, therefore, use
many and varied images to make a point or demonstrate a common pattern, and draw
material and illustrations from the diverse experiences of different pupils. Further, a good
school places emphasis on broadening the pupils’common store of associations because it
aids simple and succinct communication. (KUF 1993 , p. 20)While the global discourse is narrated as threatening, the national discourse is given
rhetoric of stability, order and responsibility. The local is given mostly an instru-
mental value as pupils backgrounds need to be taken into consideration when
explaining other and higher forms of knowledge, as building blocks toward a higher
national—and then global—understanding, and as a mere pedagogical tool in the
hands of the skilled teacher.
24.5 Teacher Agency as Structuring Well-Tempered
Selves
The political concern regarding the riddle of globalisation versus the national and
the local is not a typical Norwegian trait. Ken Robinson—government advisor, for
different countries, on education and change—clearly expresses such concerns on
behalf of a lot of governments in his famous animated speech in 2010.
Every country on earth, at the moment, is reforming public education. There are two
reasons for it. Thefirst one is economic. People are trying tofigure out: How do we educate
our children to take their place in the economies of the 21st century? How do we do that
given that we can’t anticipate what the economy will look like at the end of next week? [...]
The second one is cultural. Every country on earth is trying tofigure out: How do we
educate our children so they have a sense of cultural identity and so that we can pass on the
cultural genes of our communities while being part of the process of globalisation?
(Robinson 2010 )24 The Paradox of Teacher Agency in a Glocalised World 365