Guest Editor's Introduction

Legacies of equality versus quality for competitiveness: Norway has had compulsory primary education since 1739. The Educational Act of this year was motivated by the religious needs of the State Lutheran Protestant Church and the political power needs of the King of Denmark, who was also head of the church. From 1389 to 1814 Norway was a part of Denmark. The great majority of the population lived in rural areas, dependent on small farming and coastal fishing. The content and organizing of the school was decided and controlled by the Ministry of Education and the Church, but was modified by the needs of local working people. The interests of the state and the community gradually fused with the emerging encyclopedic ideas developed by Comenius, to be reinforced and extended by French rationalists' enlightenment efforts. At the secondary, noncompulsory level, classic ideas, represented by the Latin and Greek languages, maintained some status until the mid-nineteenth century. From this time encyclopedism increasingly influenced secondary education. The basic primary school gradually increased its number of years and became more comprehensive

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