“while 3 hours might seem a bit long for answering 70 grammar questions, writing a dictation and an essay, we have a long tradition in the liberal arts and humanities, even in high school: it should be a composition, not a reproduction of something you have read somewhere- points will be taken off if the examiner notices you have copied a sentence. a student of political sciences once learned his professor’s book by heart for the exam, and pretty much managed to copy big parts of it. he got a C. the professor’s explanation was- it’s from the book, and the book didn’t merit more than a C.”
that’s what our Norwegian teacher said, in exam preparation, before she gave us the three massive cakes she had baked for us, all organic, with berries from the woods surrounding Oslo (“bløtkake”).
now hey! in Austria I get a C for writing my own thoughts and not copying the professor’s book at the exam! awesomeness. also- in the library of Universitetet i Oslo, there is a big selection of newspapers and journals- one of them is called Klassekampen- “class struggle” or something similar. O_o omg! a state-funded institution actually facilitating the circulation of a critical instrument!
in Austria, protests against extreme right-wing organizations are prohibited because of the appearance of a feminist flyer… (who knows why these said extreme right-wing organizations may host balls in the president’s traditional residence in the first place)
in Rania Ajami’s movie Shadows of a Leader on Qaddafi’s female bodyguards we learn how hard it is to get a filming license in Libya, and Moustafa 1 and 2 have to follow you around all the time to make sure you don’t get the wrong thing on on film. tough stuff? in Austria, filming makes you a potential terrorist as well. being an art student consolidates the suspicions.
when did a terrorist become someone having guts, soul and passion- and a burning need for education and fair and equal treatment based on the universally accepted fundamental human rights?