ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses textbooks and writing standards in Norway in the 1950s, with a debate in a local newspaper as its point of departure. It shows how a comprehensive national issue related to the use of language can engage on a local level. The debate addressed an overarching issue for schools, which provides guidelines for textbooks, teaching, and learning. The discussion in the local newspaper demonstrates a tension between the legally mandated language freedom and an understanding of language training, which is consistent, and which relies on certain cultural traditions. As a radical representative of the Norwegianness movement, Eivind Vågslid, teacher at the Eidsvoll Landsgymnas, provoked students as well as parents with an authoritarian and coercive style, and in a number of contributions to the local newspaper Eidsvold Blad, he was contradicted by writers who emphasized the right of everyone to take control over their own language and language development. The autonomy emphasized in these texts points forward to the emphasis of critical thinking which is defined as one of the twenty-first-century skills.
