The Norwegian Debate about Christian Education and Christian Private Schools

Of all the Norwegian parties, the Christian Democrats were the strongest antagonists of the de-Christianization of the school. Since the party’s foundation in 1933, they had defended the influence of the Norwegian Church on schooling. In their postwar manifestos, the Christian Democrats emphasized the importance of Christian education. This was a crucial issue related to their main political aim: to protect Christian moral values. The party received support from pietistic Christians in the west of Norway, the Home Mission milieu, and similar. It was anchored in the Christian lay population and the rural population to a higher degree than the Conservative Party, which also represented parts of the Norwegian Church but more the upper ranks of the clergy who were concentrated in the cities and integrated into the state (Reference Svåsand and VeenSvåsand, 1994b, 177ff). From a Rokkanian perspective, the Christian Democrats gave expression to the state-church cleavage, but also the rural-urban and center-periphery cleavages.

Despite the Christian Democrats’ efforts, secularization of the school progressed over time, promoted by social democrats and, in some periods, by currents within the Liberal Party. The Labor Party did not include secularization as an aim in its manifestos between 1958 and 1978. In most manifestos there were no references at all to the role of Christianity in the school. The only exception was the manifesto of 1969, to which a special supplement was added at the end:

This is a good example of how the Labor Party maneuvered on this issue. Some social democrats wanted a fully secular school, but many wanted to keep a modernized form of Christian education because of its ethical value (Reference TønnessenTønnessen, 2011, 73). Even in the Socialist Left Party some high-ranking representatives were Christians, notably the education politician Otto Hauglin. Nonetheless, social democrats and socialists agreed that schooling was primarily the responsibility of the state and that children should be taught about other religions as well (Reference Korseberg and NinaKorseberg, 2016, 155ff). This consensus dominated their politics.

The Center Party supported the Christian Democrats in the struggle against secularization and included the importance of Christian education in most of its manifestos from 1957 to 1977. But the issue was not as pivotal for Center Party politicians. The same was true of the Conservative Party. This party also included remarks about Christian education in its manifestos but without insisting that the entire content of schooling had to be in line with and based on the Christian faith. The Liberal Party of the postwar period can be placed in between. In its manifestos, it emphasized the importance of Christian education. From the late 1960s, the manifestos also emphasized that students should be taught about other worldviews as well.

Several other organizations were involved in the conflicts. Christian organizations and institutions supported and sometimes pressured the Christian Democrats, such as the Church Educational Center (Institutt for Kristen Oppseding, IKO), the Association for a Christian School (Landslaget for kristen skole), and the Synod of the Church of Norway (bispemøtet). The missionary societies also played a role. The Association for a Christian School was founded in 1963 and was based on the former Norwegian Christian Teachers’ Association (Norges Kristelige Lærerforbund), which had been founded in 1909. According to the organization, the 1970s and 1980s were its “heyday,” with around 4000 members and fifty-six local chapters (KPF, 2021). The Church Educational Center was founded in 1945 and is owned by the diocesan councils, the Synod of the Church of Norway, and several other Christian organizations (IKO, 2021). The Norwegian Humanist Association (Human-Etisk Forbund) is situated on the other side of the conflict. It was founded in 1956 and supported secularization and the separation of church and state; it had around 30 000 members in 1986 (HEF, 2016).

The issue of religion caused conflicts over the folkeskole law of 1959, the number of hours taught of Christian education during the 1960s, the primary school law of 1969, and Christian private schooling, which are now discussed in turn. The folkeskole law of 1959 was not only contested because it limited experiments to the youth school. It also created opposition because it curtailed the rights of the Church of Norway. In the parliamentary debates, the Christian Democrats underlined their worries. They were supported by the representatives of the Conservative Party, the Center Party, and the Liberal Party (Forhandlinger i Odelstinget, March 5 and 6, 1959; Forhandlinger i Lagtinget, March 13, 1959). The preamble of the law (formålsparagraf) had been changed. The paragraph still contained a reference to “Christian and moral education,” but this had been moved to the second sentence. In the sixth paragraph of the law, the subject of Christian education was listed in third place, after Norwegian and Mathematics, even though it had been listed in first place in the earlier law. All non–Labor Party representatives in the parliamentary education committee objected to this and suggested listing Christian education first. They also wished to add a sentence stating that each school day should start and end with a hymn or prayer.

Their proposition was rejected by the Labor Party majority in parliament (Forhandlinger i Odelstinget, March 5 and 6, 1959, 111). As the Labor Party representative Rakel Seweriin pointed out, no gym teacher or physics teacher should be forced to begin the day with a hymn or prayer. Such Christian elements of education should not be the result of a “decree.” Seweriin accused the opposition of conducting a “superficial […] struggle about the placement of a single word in a list” and of overreacting (Forhandlinger i Odelstinget, March 5 and 6, 1959, 106f). The Labor Party representatives downplayed all changes as barely relevant. It would not have served the Labor Party well to say outright that secularization was the aim. Instead, they pointed to the fact that the school laws of the nineteenth century had also listed the subject of reading before the subject of religion, since being able to read was necessary for all further learning (Forhandlinger i Odelstinget, March 5 and 6, 1959, 102).

Another contested issue was whether the bishops of the Church of Norway should have the right to comment on the curriculum for Christian education. The minority in the parliamentary education committee, consisting of the three Conservative Party representatives, Erling Fredriksfryd, Per Lønning, and Hartvig Caspar Christie, and of the three center party representatives, Olav Hordvik (Liberal Party), Einar Hovdhaugen (Center Party), and Hans Ommedal (Christian Democrats), suggested including this right of the bishops in the law. To this, the Labor Party representatives replied that it was unnecessary to include in the law text something so “self-evident” (lnnst. O. II. [1959], 9; Forhandlinger i Odelstinget, March 5 and 6, 1959, 113). However, the minority succeeded in convincing all but one of the Labor Party representatives on the committee to include a sentence about the content of Christian education (lnnst. O. II. [1959], 9). The minister of education, Birger Bergersen, felt that he was being “strongly attacked on this point, […] completely without reason.” He found it unnecessary to include specifications about the content of Christian education in a law but considered that this concession would not do any harm (Forhandlinger i Odelstinget, March 5 and 6, 1959, 113f). As a result, Hordvik could claim that “the biggest and most dangerous simplification suggested by the ministry” had been avoided and that “Christianity will have its central place as before in the Norwegian folkeskole” (Forhandlinger i Odelstinget, March 5 and 6, 1959, 18). Ommedal was not as enthusiastic and concluded,

He referred to the fact that the local priests, who had been appointed to the school boards by the bishops, had lost their voting rights and were now only allowed to comment on issues that had to do with Christian education. The nonsocialist representatives on the parliamentary education committee had accepted the loss of voting rights but had suggested that the priests should retain the right to comment on all issues broached at school board meetings (Innst. O. II. [1959], 15). The Christian democrat Kjell Bondevik put to the vote a proposal according to which the priests would also retain full voting rights. In his opinion, the priests had played such an important role in the school historically that it would be democratic to continue to preserve this role for them (Forhandlinger i Odelstinget, March 5 and 6, 1959, 142). The conservative Per Lønning was not pleased. He believed that it would make life easier for the priests not to have to vote on political decisions and considered it strategically unwise to split the four nonsocialist parties. Hordvik agreed that decision-making power should be given exclusively to elected representatives. Bondevik reacted irritably, saying that he apparently had “a stronger belief in theologians than Mr. Lønning,” which was ironic since Lønning was a theologian himself. Lønning replied that Bondevik had a more “romantic” view of the working conditions of the priests on school boards (Forhandlinger i Odelstinget, March 5 and 6, 1959, 144ff). These were not the words of close allies. Bondevik’s proposal received fourteen votes – five votes more than the nine votes presumably coming from his own party. It is probable that the five additional votes came from the Center Party. Lønning’s proposal, which suggested that priests should be allowed to comment on all issues, received most of the non–Labor Party votes but the Labor Party majority asserted itself.

In the following years, the number of hours devoted to Christian education became the subject of massive debate. The number of hours taught in the old folkeskole had varied considerably from municipality to municipality. The urban municipalities could afford to dedicate more hours to Christian education because the total number of hours taught was higher there. In some of the rural municipalities in western Norway, Christian education had also received high numbers of hours in the folkeskole, up to three hours weekly. In poor rural municipalities this often implied that other subjects received less time (comment by minister Helge Sivertsen, Forhandlinger i Stortinget, June 8, 1965, 3724). In 1959, new minimum standards were devised for municipalities that wanted to participate in the experiments with nine-year obligatory schooling. On the children’s level, meaning the first six years, the minimum number of weekly hours taught was set at 135 hours.Footnote ¹ The minimum standard for Christian education was set at 1.5 hours per week for the first three school years and at 2 hours in the next four years. Grades eight and nine should have one hour weekly (Forsøksrådet for skoleverket, 1960, 9f). In 1963, the minimum number of weekly hours taught was lowered to 123 on the children’s level.Footnote ² The minimum for Christian education was increased to 1.5 hours weekly in the first three years and 2 hours weekly for grades four to nine (Forsøksrådet for skoleverket, 1964, 18f).

For some of the poorer rural communities, especially in western Norway, that could not afford to increase the number of hours taught above 123 on the children’s level, this implied that they were forced to reduce the number of hours taught in Christian education if they wanted to join the youth school experiments. This created opposition. In 1964, the ministry decided to allow municipalities that followed the minimum standard to redistribute up to three hours between the subjects to strengthen Christian education. Municipalities that had had a higher number of hours taught in Christian education could apply to the ministry to reestablish their previous level (Rundskriv nr. 13 [1964], published in Innst. S. nr. 233 [1964–5], 539f).

This concession did not have the intended effect of calming the Christian groups and rural municipalities. On the contrary, the debate became more heated, and the issue became highly politicized in the months preceding the elections of 1965. In January 1965, a group of mayors and local politicians of various parties from the western county of Hordaland sent a letter to parliament, asking whether it agreed that around 70 percent of the Hordaland school boards had to apply to the ministry to keep their previous number of hours taught in Christian education (Innst. S. nr. 234 [1946–65]). The Norwegian Association of Farmers’ Women (Norges Bondekvinnelag) and the Norwegian Association of Housewives (Norges Humorforbund) complained about the reduction in hours taught in Christian education. In March 1965, around 8000 teachers signed a letter of protest. The grand finale was the collection of 725 614 signatures between March and June 1965, delivered to parliament on June 8, 1965. The People’s Action for Christian Education (folkeaksjon for kristendomsfaget) had been initiated by a group of leading men in the organizations of Christian laypeople, such as the principal of the Christian gymnas in Oslo, Hans Bovim; the conservative theology professor Carl Fredrik Wisløff; the chair of the executive board of the Inner Mission Society, Fredrik Wisløff; and the general secretary of the Norwegian Lutheran Mission Society, Tormod Vågen. A committee was created, which organized the campaign. It was led by Bjarne Stoveland, who had a leading position in the Inner Mission Society.Footnote ³ All of Norway was divided up into thirty districts, where local committees were founded to organize the collection of signatures (Reference KvalbeinKvalbein, 1965, 171). Among the first signatories were all the Norwegian bishops. The number of signatures approached approximately 26 percent of the population over sixteen years (SSB, 2014, 52, own calculation). The text to be signed read as follows:

On the day the signatures were delivered to parliament, a school-political debate was taking place there and the conflict led to fierce exchanges. The Labor Party representatives believed that the regulation of 1964 had taken all justified criticism into account and that the campaign was expressing its criticism one year too late. The real intention, it was said, was to influence the elections of 1965. Several Labor Party representatives accused the organizers of the campaign of misinforming people and pressuring them into signing. It was said that rumors had been spread according to which the Labor Party wanted to force municipalities to weaken or abolish Christian education. It was asked how exactly the supporters of the campaign wanted to increase the number of hours taught in Christian education without increasing the total number of hours taught. The implication was that other subjects would suffer due to Christian overzealousness. Overall, the campaign was deemed by social democrats to be a political campaign against the Labor Party (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, June 8, 1965). The two Socialist People’s Party representatives supported the Labor Party. The socialist Finn Gustavsen pointed out that the Church of Norway sanctioned the state’s right to “kill and go to war” and concluded, “When these are the official morals of the Norwegian Church, it won’t help to double the number of hours taught in religious education” (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, June 8, 1965, 3748).

The conservative representative Per Lønning showed some understanding for the social democrats’ discontent regarding the timing of the campaign. He did not think that the Labor Party aimed at weakening Christian education. However, there were other strong forces at work, he maintained, presumably referring to the radical left and the Norwegian Humanist Association. He showed some sympathy for the petition, without subscribing fully to its demands (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, June 8, 1965, 3701). The Center Party representative Hovdhaugen also chose his words carefully, saying that it would “probably be a gain if the minimum hours taught in the subject were increased somewhat,” but also pointing out that much had been corrected by the regulations of 1964. He claimed that the issue was problematic due to its relationship with the aim of comprehensive schooling:

The Christian Democrats’ representatives defended themselves against the social democrats’ criticism by underlining that it was not their party’s campaign or even a political campaign; it was a campaign based on justified concerns. Financially weak municipalities would not have the means to increase the number of hours taught above the minimum level and would not be able to retain their earlier levels of three hours weekly, even under the regulations of 1964. The Christian democrat Ommedal considered it a democratic loss not to allow local school boards to decide about curricula (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, June 8, 1965, 3710).

It is probable that the petition contributed to the result of the elections of 1965 and to the forming of the non-Labor government. The Christian Democrats’ support of the campaign presumably also contributed to the strong reactions to the Christian democrat Kjell Bondevik becoming minister of church and education. Jakob Aano, who became parliamentary representative of the Christian Democrats in 1965, describes in his memoirs how shocked he was at the extreme antipathy Bondevik and his party engendered in the media. Internally, the party was divided into a radical Christian current and a moderate current consisting of people, like Aano, who wanted to turn the Christian Democrats into a reliable party of government capable of democratic tolerance and cooperation (Reference AanoAano, 1991, 81ff).

In Aano’s opinion, Bondevik proved to his critics in the following years that he was not a marionette of the Christian organizations but was capable of showing “independent political expertise” (Reference AanoAano, 1991, 123). The minimum number of hours taught in Christian education was raised to only two per week for all grades, even though the Christian organizations had demanded a higher number. This was in line with the suggestion of the folkeskole committee of 1963, which had been put in place by the Labor Party and delivered its report shortly after the parliamentary debate of June 1965 (Innstilling frå Folkeskolekomitéen av 1963 [1965], 165). The local school boards could choose the maximum number, three hours weekly, though only during the first six years. The total number of hours taught had been rising across the country, and the new minimum standard was set to 126 hours (Ot. prp. nr. 59 [1966–7], 24f).

With the primary school law proposal of 1968–9, new conflicts arose. In the text accompanying the proposal, Bondevik’s ministry stated that Christian education served the aim of educating members of the church in their faith (Innst. O. XIV [1968–9], 30). The Labor Party representatives on the committee turned this into a big issue. Some representatives of the center parties were also unhappy. After negotiations between the Christian democrat Jakob Aano, the liberal Olav Kortner, the social democrat Rolf Fjeldvær, and the conservative Kjell Langeland, the committee agreed to point out that it was primarily the church’s opinion that Christian education was part of its baptismal education (Reference AanoAano, 1991, 125; Reference Korseberg and NinaKorseberg, 2016, 163). The committee’s report stated that “the church itself has the responsibility to give baptismal education in the ecclesiastical sense” (Innst. O. XIV [1968–9], 32). In Aano’s memoirs, it is not clear whether he was aware of the great change he had thus agreed to: the church’s representatives had lost the right to consider Christian education part of “their” baptismal education. The bishops and the Christian organizations were not pleased.

Nonetheless, the law of 1969 reversed several of the critical points discussed in 1959. In paragraph 7 of the law, on curricula, Christian education was mentioned in first place again. Local priests regained the right to express their opinion on all topics in school board meetings. They did not regain voting rights (Besl. O. nr. 33 [1968–9]). Once again there was a massive debate about the preamble. The non-Labor government made sure that “Christian and moral education” was again mentioned in the first sentence. The formulation suggested by the ministry, according to which the primary school should provide Christian education “with the home,” was interpreted by the Labor Party as Bondevik wanting to impose on parents the obligation to raise children in the Christian faith. According to Aano, this had not been the intention (Reference AanoAano, 1991, 121ff). The Labor Party, on the other hand, considered it a great victory that the sentence was changed; it now stated that the primary school should “in understanding and cooperation with the home, assist in giving students Christian and moral education.” The school should also “further freedom of thought and tolerance” (Besl. O. nr. 33 [1968–9], 63). Despite these changes, supporters of the separation of state and church criticized the law. The Socialist People’s Party voted against it and considered the preamble an “unbearable” compromise (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, April 21, 1969, 284).

Another conflict was related to private schooling. In 1965, all four governing parties had included in their manifestos remarks about the financing of private schooling. The Labor Party had intended the school system to be public and had not financed private schools on a general basis, but only by application and from year to year. The few private schools that existed in Norway had precarious financial conditions.Footnote ⁴ When Bondevik became minister of education, he appointed a private school commission, Privatskoleutvalget, which was meant to conduct a survey of private schools in Norway and prepare a regular financing scheme for these schools.

In the first report of the private school commission, disagreements between the opponents and the supporters of private schooling became apparent (Innstilling I fra Privatskoleutvalget [1967]). For the Labor Party, a school system based on democracy and tolerance was one where all children were taught together. Religious private schools were seen as a means for “an intolerant parental generation […] to educate their children to become as intolerant as themselves” (Forhandlinger i Odelstinget Nr. 7, February 17, 1970, 56). For the non-Labor camp, respect for the rights of all parents – including minorities – to educate their children in their belief was an expression of democratic tolerance. They argued that private schools should receive state support so that they would not have to charge tuition fees and thus become “exclusive schools for the financially well-off” (Innstilling I fra Privatskoleutvalget [1967], 17ff, 69).

The four governing parties were not in agreement regarding how generous the private school law should be. The Conservative Party emphasized in its manifesto of 1965 that it was “the parents’ right and responsibility to choose education for their children” and that “full access” to private schools was necessary. The position of the Center Party and of the Christian Democrats was not as categorical. The Liberal Party was most specific in its demands made of private schools, saying in its manifesto of 1965 that private schools “which work in accordance with curricula and school laws which comply with the demands for teacher training and facilities in the school and which cover a need, [will be] given state support in line with permanent regulations.”

The preparation of the law took a long time because the ministry was waiting for the reports of the private school committee and because there was disagreement about the conditions under which schools would qualify for state funding (Reference AanoAano, 1991, 143ff). In April 1969, Bondevik’s ministry presented a law proposal (Ot. prp. nr. 61 [1968–9]). The Labor Party representatives on the parliamentary education committee opposed the law and, in June 1969, prevented the government passing the law before the elections (Innst. O. nr. 107 [1968–9]; Reference AanoAano, 1991, 147). The non-Labor government won the elections by a small margin and the coalition continued. The center parties and the Conservative Party now needed to come to an agreement. This was difficult because of the reservations of the liberal member on the parliamentary education committee, Olav Kortner, who was in charge of preparing the committee’s report in response to Bondevik’s law proposal. Kortner was skeptical and pressured by a current within his party that opposed private schooling (Reference AanoAano, 1991, 145). He pushed through several changes.

First, he insisted that the law had to include specifications as to which kinds of private schools could apply for funding. A sentence was added to the first paragraph, according to which private schools had to either be based on alternative pedagogical ideas, or be based on religious or ethical grounds, or fill a quantitative need for schooling. Private schools would not be allowed to pay their teachers more or less, or have smaller class sizes, than public schools. They would also be obliged to send in lists of students to the ministry, to ensure that no selection took place based on social, religious, or economic grounds (Innst. O. VII. [1969–70]).

In the parliamentary debate on the law proposal, the liberal Kortner made it clear that he was not a supporter of private schools. He underlined that no international agreement obliged Norway to give economic support to private schools. This argument had been made by the ministry, but Kortner rejected it. The only obligation was to allow private schools in principle. Thus, one had to make a “political choice” regarding whether one should let the few private schools “starve to death” or help them with public resources (Forhandlinger i Odelstinget nr. 7, February 17, 1970, 49). He gave his consent to the law, but conditionally:

He pointed out that while he respected the rights of parents, these rights were weak compared to the right of the child to learn and make a free choice. He also expressed the hope that, in the future, “all religious and ethical societies […] will understand the value of the public school and will discontinue private group schools” (Forhandlinger i Odelstinget nr. 7, February 17, 1970, 51). He ended by saying that, while Norway had the resources to allow a small number of private schools to exist, the most important aim was to focus on the expansion of the public school system, to make sure that this system would receive the necessary resources and would not be undermined (Forhandlinger i Odelstinget nr. 7, February 17, 1970, 53).

The Labor Party representatives regretted Kortner’s choice to support the law and warned that private schools would indeed undermine the public, comprehensive system. Resources were needed in the public system rather than in the old-fashioned, religious private schools (Forhandlinger i Odelstinget nr. 7, February 17, 1970, 54). The Christian milieu was not completely satisfied with the law either and considered it too strict (Reference AanoAano, 1991, 149; Forhandlinger i Odelstinget nr. 7, February 17, 1970, 55).

Overall, the debates about Christian education do not give the impression of an ideologically united non-Labor block. The state-church cleavage became evident to some extent but was crosscut and partly eclipsed by other cleavages. For the Christian Democrats, the religious character of schooling was most important, while the conservatives stood closer to the interests of the state elites and the upper class and were more liberal culturally and economically. For example, the former Christian democratic representatives Jakob Aano and Hans Olav Tungesvik both underlined in expert interviews that they did not support the Conservative Party’s intention to allow private schooling without conditions and thus unleash commercial interests. The Center Party cared about the quality of schooling in rural areas and in some cases valued this goal more highly than, for example, the number of hours of Christian education taught. The Liberal Party especially represented an element of uncertainty for non-Labor majorities, as it was historically closely connected to the development of the nation-state and its school system and was critical of Christian private schooling. Thus, the Labor Party had opportunities to cooperate with one of the center parties, mostly the Liberal Party; to make small concessions, as in the debate on Christian education; or to ridicule and attempt to split and weaken the non-Labor camp. The Labor Party did not prevent Christian groups from asserting their interests in all regards. But the social democrats succeeded in defending the comprehensive principle against any serious threat from this fold. Curricula became more similar across the country and the final version of the private school law was restrictive enough to prevent a steep increase in private schools during the period in question.

The Debate on Denominational Schooling and Private Schools in North Rhine–Westphalia

In NRW, Christian education was also among the most contested topics. This is especially true of the 1950s and 1960s, when the conflict over denominational schooling still dominated education politics. This conflict dated back to denominational conflicts during the Weimar Republic, to the cultural struggle under Bismarck, and even further to the Thirty Years’ War and the Reformation. It can only be understood in light of historical background (Reference ErlinghagenErlinghagen, 1972, 69ff; Reference SchmittSchmitt, 1989, 27ff). In contrast to the Protestant Church, the Catholic Church had long stood in opposition to the Prussian state. During the cultural struggle, Catholics had developed a tight fabric of mass organizations in response to the state’s attacks. The most important political expression of Catholicism during the nineteenth and early twentieth century was the Catholic Center Party, which was by far the most successful party in Catholic areas. For the Center Party and the Catholic Church, denominational schooling was an important issue. In 1926–7, 23 313 of the 33 523 Prussian Volksschulen were Protestant schools, with 8823 Catholic schools and only 1392 common schools for both denominations. In the Rhine province and in the province of Westphalia, a majority of Volksschulen were Catholic, since Catholics were the majority here (Statistisches Reichsamt, 1930, 449).

In Rokkanian terms, the postwar conflict over denominational schooling was a continued expression of the state-church cleavage that had two faces: first, the Catholic Church and milieu wanted to ensure that its members would be educated into the Catholic identity so that their loyalty to the Church and to Catholic organizations would be ensured. Second, both Catholics and religious Protestants wanted to combat the secularization of society. The first motive was more important for the postwar debates about denominational schooling. In the area of NRW, this conflict was especially sharp owing to the religious mix of its population and the comparatively high proportion of Catholics. Until 1958, when it lost its last seats in the NRW parliament, the Center Party remained a fervent supporter of denominational schools. More importantly, the CDU, which was still predominantly Catholic in NRW, supported denominational schooling. The CDU was not quite as tightly connected to the Catholic Church as the Center Party had been. But it was the only party which explicitly represented Catholic interests and was associated with political Catholicism, not least by the Catholic population (Reference SchmittSchmitt, 1989). The Protestant Church relinquished its adherence to denominational schooling and instead supported Christian common schools. It thus played a less prominent role in these conflicts.

In other federal states where the CDU organized a higher share of Protestants or where the tradition for denominational schooling was not as strong, the conflict was of less importance. For this reason, the CDU’s national manifestos did not contain many comments on the issue. The party’s Berlin manifesto of 1968 only stated that “besides Christian common schools, denominational schools and non-confessional [bekenntnisfreie] schools can be made legally and materially possible where parents in sufficient numbers wish it for their children.” The federal state chapters of the party developed independent policies on the issue. The CDU in NRW did not produce written manifestos before 1970, at which point the conflict had largely been settled. The high importance of this issue for the party in NRW during the 1950s and 1960s was demonstrated in the battles fought over the school articles of the NRW Constitution, and over later school reforms and laws. However, the CDU in NRW was not entirely united on this issue. Over time, the supporters of denominational schooling became fewer.

Social democrats and liberals had long argued against the denominational separation of students in the Volksschule. After the Second World War, the approach of the SPD to denominational schooling gradually became more pragmatic. In its Godesberg program of 1959, the SPD stated more clearly than ever before that Christianity and socialism did not stand in opposition to each other (Reference SchmittSchmitt, 1989, 80). Even though some social democrats and liberals still supported a wholly secularized school, most of them now accepted the Christian character of the public school but insisted that children of both denominations should be taught together in “Christian common schools” (Christliche Gemeinschaftsschule). The Education and Science Workers’ Union (GEW) and the teachers’ organization within the SPD also opposed denominational schooling.

There were 3651 Catholic Volksschulen in NRW in 1959 but only 1802 Protestant Volksschulen and 884 common schools for both denominations (Table 5.1). In the latter, only 13.8 percent of the students were Catholic, the rest were Protestant (Statistisches Landesamt Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1960, 49). This illustrates that denominational schooling was more important for the Catholic parts of the population. The teachers of the Volksschule were educated in denominationally separate teacher-training colleges. After 1967–8, the upper stages of the former Volksschule, now termed the Hauptschule, became mostly nondenominational, while denominational schooling was continued in many primary schools. Today, there is still a sizable proportion of denominational primary schools in NRW.

The main conflict pertained to the denominational character of the Volksschulen, which were mostly public. In addition, the financing of the mostly Christian private schools was discussed. The debates about private schooling were secondary but related to the conflict over denominational schooling. The Realschule and the Gymnasium had never been denominational, except for the private schools. Social democrats and liberals agreed that too generous financing of such schools would endanger the public system. The CDU emphasized in most of its education-political documents that parents should have the option to choose a private school and that private schools should receive the same amount of financing as public schools. Its manifesto of 1964, “Education in a Modern World,” stated that in private schools, “any selection of students based on the property or income of the parents is to be precluded.”

Private Realschulen and Gymnasien were mostly Catholic and mostly for girls. In 1959, 76.7 percent of the private Realschule students and 81.4 percent of the private Gymnasium students were Catholics, with 23 percent and 17.4 percent, respectively, Protestants. In the public Realschulen and Gymnasien, there was a slight majority of Protestants. Around 9 percent of Realschule students and 18 percent of Gymnasium students attended private schools. The majority of these were girls (Statistisches Landesamt Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1960, 49f, own calculations). In 1967, 50 of NRW’s 452 Realschulen and 114 of NRW’s 570 Gymnasien were private. The proportion of girls in the private Realschulen was about 75 percent and in the private Gymnasien about 69 percent (Statistisches Landesamt Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1968, 57, own calculations). In 1980–1, there were 43 private Realschulen, of which 34 were Catholic and 7 were Protestant, and 103 private Gymnasien, of which 85 were Catholic and 14 were Protestant. There were also a few Rudolf Steiner schools but the main operator of private schools was the Catholic Church (Reference Lemper and von WestphalenLemper/Westphalen, 1982, 207ff).

The postwar conflict over denominational schooling began almost immediately after the war with the reopening and the reorganization of the Volksschulen. Denominational schooling had been abolished by the Nazis. In response to pressure by the Catholic Church, the British military government decided in 1946 to hold a referendum among parents about the reestablishment of denominational schools. The Catholic population especially voted for such a reintroduction. This was in part a result of a campaign by the Catholic Church, which deployed all its power to ensure a favorable outcome. In some cases, children of parents who voted against denominational schooling were even threatened with being excluded from the local school (Reference EichEich, 1987, 81). In the following years, denominational schooling was largely reintroduced. This led in some cases to the founding of small Volksschulen with only one class for all age groups (Reference DüdingDüding, 2008, 268).

Private schools had also been closed during the Nazi dictatorship. Catholic Church officials and CDU politicians began to lobby for the reestablishment, financing, and legal protection of Catholic private schools after the war (Reference HeumannHeumann, 1989, 74ff). They based their demands on the situation of private schools in the Weimar Republic. The Weimar Constitution had permitted private schools but their approval by the state had been conditional on the qualifications of their teachers and on the demand that selecting students based on parents’ income was not encouraged. Private denominational schools had only been permitted where public denominational schools were not available or they had to have been based on a special pedagogical interest (Article 147 of the Weimar Constitution, quoted in Reference HeumannHeumann, 1989, 75). Many private schools had received subsidies from the federal states of Rhineland and Westphalia or from cities and municipalities. This was not legally regulated. The supporters of private schooling now demanded binding regulations for the financing of private schools. They argued that private schools eased the financial burden on state coffers. In their view, financial support was necessary to make sure that private-school teachers would be as qualified as public-school teachers and as protected socially. From 1945 to 1946, private schools received funding based on agreements between church officials and the school administration that were not legally formalized (Reference HeumannHeumann, 1989, 100ff).

In 1950, the conflict culminated in connection with the passing of the NRW Constitution. Against the votes of the SPD and FDP, the CDU stipulated the denominational character of the Volksschule in the school articles of the Constitution. Denominational schools (Bekenntnisschulen), common schools for children of different denominations (Gemeinschaftsschulen), and schools based on other worldviews (Weltanschauungsschulen) were equally recognized. In practice, the number of denominational schools was much higher than the number of common schools, and worldview schools did not materialize at all (Table 5.1). Article 12 of the new Constitution stated that small, one-class Volksschulen complied with the requirements of a “well-regulated school operation” (geordneter Schulbetrieb). The SPD had opposed this, as social democrats did not think that these “dwarf schools” were capable of offering quality schooling. They had demanded that only eight-class Volksschulen – with separate classes for all eight age groups – should be considered “well-regulated school operations” and had offered, as a compromise, that six-class Volksschulen could be defined as such. The FDP also opposed denominational “dwarf schools.” But the CDU and Center Party insisted on including a sentence in the Constitution that legitimized the existence of the more than 750 mostly denominational one-class Volksschulen and made it possible to establish additional such schools in denominationally mixed areas (Reference DüdingDüding, 2008, 271).

The NRW SPD had moderated its position compared to the Weimar years. Some leading social democrats, such as Heinz Kühn, argued that common Christian ethics and tolerance between the denominations should be manifested in Christian common schools. Among leftist SPD members, who preferred a complete secularization of the Volksschule, this attempt to build a bridge with the CDU was unpopular. It was also unsuccessful, as the CDU was not willing to compromise and refused to add the label “Christian” to the term “common school” in the Constitution. For the NRW CDU of the immediate postwar years, the most important aim was to secure denominational Catholic schools, in which Catholic children would be socialized into the Catholic community (Reference DüdingDüding, 2008, 267ff; Reference EichEich, 1987, 171ff). However, the CDU supported Christian common schools in other federal states and several Protestant CDU representatives in NRW also did so.

Article 8 of the NRW Constitution, which regulated private schools, also created debate. It referred to Article 7, paragraphs 4 and 5, of the German national Constitution (Basic Law). These paragraphs stipulated that private schools that functioned as a replacement for public schools needed public approval. This would be granted if the schools’ learning aims and teachers’ scientific qualifications were equal to those of the public schools and as long as a separation of students based on income was not encouraged. The economic and legal situation of teachers needed to be secured. Private Volksschulen could only be permitted if they had a special pedagogical approach or based on parental request. If parents requested a private common school, a private denominational school, or a private worldview school, a precondition was that such a Volksschule was not available in the municipality (Article 7, Basic Law). All parties, except the Communist Party, which opposed private schools in principle, supported the inclusion of these regulations in the NRW Constitution.

But the CDU and the Center Party wanted a more private-school friendly regulation. Against the votes of the other parties, Article 8 of the NRW Constitution also stipulated that private schools had the same “authorities” (Berechtigungen) as public schools and were entitled to public funding. The SPD and the FDP had suggested that a separate law should regulate the role and financing of private schools (Reference EichEich, 1987, 181ff; Reference Lemper and von WestphalenLemper/Westphalen, 1982, 88ff). The conflict over the school articles was so serious that the SPD, the FDP, and the Communist Party voted against the Constitution and advised the population to do the same. Nevertheless, the following referendum resulted in a clear majority for the Constitution, due not least to the efforts of the churches to mobilize their members to vote yes (Reference EichEich, 1987, 194ff).

The debate continued with the Schulordnungsgesetz (Law on the Regulation of Schools) of 1952 (Reference DüdingDüding, 2008, 331ff; Reference EichEich, 1987, 214ff; Reference FälkerFälker, 1984, 113). This law interpreted the schooling articles of the Constitution in such a way that denominational schooling was strengthened further. The teacher workforce at denominational schools now had to belong almost entirely to the respective denomination. The financing and founding of private schools was regulated in a private-school friendly way. Regulations following the law clarified the details. Private schools needed to finance 15 percent of their costs. But this contribution could be reduced to 7.5 percent, or even waived completely, if the operator of the school had little income, provided school buildings, or employed teachers who did not receive full wages – for example, members of Catholic orders (Reference EichEich, 1987, 259ff; Reference Lemper and von WestphalenLemper/Westphalen, 1982, 101ff). The SPD attempted unsuccessfully to make it harder to transform nondenominational schools into denominational ones. Both the SPD and the FDP suggested to no avail that schools with denominational minorities of a certain size should be transformed into common schools automatically. They saw the law as an additional step toward the “confessionalization” (Konfessionalisierung) and fragmentation of the school system. The Education and Science Workers’ Union opposed the law as an attempt to “abolish the state school” (Reference EichEich, 1987, 226). Catholic Church officials had direct influence on the law text and regulations, to the extent that even the Protestant minority in the CDU parliamentary group was somewhat dismayed. Even though not all of the Catholic Church’s wishes were taken into account, Catholic Church officials were satisfied (Reference EichEich, 1987, 221, 258). The main argument of the supporters of the law related to parents’ rights to choose a denominational education for their children.

The SPD-FDP government of 1956–8 did not attempt to pass a new Schulordnungsgesetz in order to reverse the regulations on denominational schooling and “dwarf schools” because the social democrats and liberals had included a Center Party minister in their coalition. The support of the Center Party had been conditional on the acceptance of the status quo (Reference DüdingDüding, 2008, 392, 395). The coalition passed a law on school financing (Schulfinanzgesetz) but the SPD decided, with the support of the FDP and against the votes of the CDU and the Center Party, that this law should apply exclusively to public schools. Presumably, this was a tactical move to avoid a new struggle before the elections. In the discussions regarding school financing, the SPD and the FDP favored higher contributions by private school operators, while the CDU and the Center Party defended the existing regulations (Reference EichEich, 1987, 266f).

During the CDU’s next period of government, from 1958 to 1966, no further changes to the regulations on denominational schooling were made. In 1961, the CDU government passed a law on the financing of private schools (Ersatzschulfinanzgesetz). This law was much discussed in parliament and by the public (Landtag NRW, October 18, 1960; Landtag NRW, June 20, 1961). It stipulated that private school operators would still have to finance about 15 percent of their costs, but this percentage was reduced across the board by 7 percentage points for the provision of school buildings and by an additional 2 percentage points for the provision of other school facilities. Previously, such reductions had been subject to individual examinations. All private schools now enjoyed these lump-sum reductions. As a result, they only had to finance 6 percent of their costs. This could be reduced further to 2 percent if the school operator faced a difficult financial situation. It was no longer permitted to completely waive the school operator’s contribution. CDU minister of education Werner Schütz defended these rules. He argued that the old rules were basically being kept intact but just simplified. A lump-sum reduction in the contribution of all private schools was necessary because many schools could not afford to finance 15 percent of their costs. The minister defended private schools in principle, arguing that they were an expression of “the spirit of freedom” and a “truly democratic institution” (Landtag NRW, October 18, 1960, 1696). Banning private schools would in his view be an expression of “totalitarian state thinking, such as we have experienced it in the so-called Third Reich and today in the Soviet zone and in the countries of the Eastern Bloc” (Landtag NRW, October 18, 1960, 1696f). He emphasized that the school administration would make sure that parents’ income would not play a role in the composition of private schools’ student bodies (Landtag NRW, October 18, 1960, 1696).

The law was opposed by the SPD and the FDP. Both parties feared that the public school system would be endangered and that the denominational division of the school system would be increased further, especially among the Realschulen and Gymnasien. In the first parliamentary debate on the law, the SPD’s speaker, Johannes Rau, criticized that school operators now only had to contribute their ideology, while the state would contribute the financing. He warned that the law would open up opportunities for nonreligious, economically oriented private school operators, especially in vocational education (Landtag NRW, October 18, 1960, 1700). The Liberal Party representative Liselotte Funcke pointed to the dominance of the Catholic Church in secondary private schooling. She warned that increased confessionalization and increased privatization of the school system would make it harder for children belonging to local denominational minorities to attend a school of their choice and would potentially force them to attend Catholic institutions. This applied especially to girls, for whom public secondary schools were not always available (Landtag NRW, October 18, 1960, 1702f). These protests were fruitless, and the law was passed and remained unchanged for decades.Footnote ⁵

In its manifesto for the elections of 1962, the NRW SPD commented,

Similarly, the NRW FDP made the following demands in its manifesto for the NRW elections of 1962: “The public financing of private schools [should be limited], to preserve their character and avoid any erosion of the public school system; [there must be] an end to the increasing confessionalization of the school system.”Footnote ⁷

The SPD and the FDP also continued to advocate the Christian common school, but only carefully, and connected this demand to a criticism of denominational schools that were too small to guarantee good-quality teaching. For example, in 1964, the national education policy guidelines of the SPD stated,

Similarly, the FDP stated in its manifesto for the NRW federal state elections of 1962,

In 1966, the last CDU government had introduced nine years of obligatory schooling and defined the upper grades of the Volksschule as a new secondary school, the Hauptschule. However, the primary school and the Hauptschule were still one administrative unit and still denominational. By the time the SPD and FDP regained power in December 1966, conditions were more favorable for a reform of denominational schooling. According to a poll in January 1967, 65 percent of practicing Catholics and 85 percent of practicing Protestants in NRW now supported common schools for both denominations (Reference DüdingDüding, 2008, 559). This was a result of several trends. For one, the influx of refugees after the Second World War and urbanization processes had broken up the geographical separation of the denominations and the population had begun to mix more. For example, marriages between Catholics and Protestants were becoming more common. Processes of secularization within the population were also beginning to make themselves felt and church attendance was becoming less frequent. Moreover, Catholics were no longer a minority in the Federal Republic, owing to the division with the GDR. Even though Catholics were still, on average, somewhat socially disadvantaged compared to Protestants, social inequalities between the dominations had gradually been reduced (Reference SchmittSchmitt, 1989, 54ff). For all these reasons, political Catholicism had been weakened. For many Catholics, educating their children as Catholics within a denominational school no longer seemed such a pivotal issue.

The reform of the Volksschule became one of the greatest reform projects of the social democratic–liberal government. It entailed a change of the school articles in the Constitution and therefore depended on the CDU’s approval. The compromise came about against the opposition of the Catholic Church and its bishops, who thought that the Concordat of the Vatican with the German Reich from 1933 forbade a weakening of denominational schooling and who even threatened to found a new Catholic party. The main argument of the bishops was still that parents should have the right to choose denominational schooling. The Protestant Church accepted the reform (Reference DüdingDüding, 2008, 557, 560ff). The Volksschule was now split up into a four-year primary school (Grundschule) and a five-year secondary school (Hauptschule). The primary school would still be denominationally based but the newly founded Hauptschule was to become independent of denomination. Denominational Hauptschulen could still be founded either as private schools with funding from the federal state or as public schools, if a majority of parents asked for this – as long as a nondenominational Hauptschule was geographically reachable and as long as the school was big enough to ensure separate grades for all age groups (Reference DüdingDüding, 2008, 555ff).

This compromise was a result of lengthy negotiations between the SPD and the CDU (Reference DüdingDüding, 2008, 555ff). For the CDU, Wilhelm Lenz, who was interviewed for this study, was one of the main negotiators. He summed up the conflict as follows:

Lenz was a Catholic but said in the interview that the Catholic Church had been a much more difficult partner for him in this process than the Protestant Church. He described how the five bishops of NRW had pressured him, especially the bishop of the Catholic diocese of Aachen. The bishops insisted it was their prerogative to “define the position of the CDU” on this matter. However, a generational shift was taking place in the CDU. Lenz was one of the younger CDU politicians, who had joined the party after the war and who thought that the opposition between Catholics and Protestants should be a thing of the past. In this spirit, the CDU had been founded as a union of both denominations. In Lenz’s words, he did not want another “cultural struggle.” Some of the older CDU politicians, who had defended denominational schooling during the Weimar period when they had been Center Party representatives, did not agree. As Lenz explained,

For this reason, Lenz and the CDU committee that supported him during the negotiations (which also included former minister of education Paul Mikat, another young and comparatively reform-oriented CDU politician) resisted pressure by the Catholic Church. In the negotiations, they developed the compromise described above, which left some loopholes for a small number of Catholic Hauptschulen and which retained denominational schooling at the primary school level. Most of the CDU representatives eventually accepted this. With this compromise, the conflict over denominational schooling was put to rest, though it never vanished entirely since the public school system of NRW was never fully secularized.

In 1969, teacher training at the Pedagogical Colleges was also decoupled from denomination. The CDU accepted a change in laws and the Constitution in return for several concessions. The Catholic Church was given influence in the appointment of professors of and lecturers in theology. Each Pedagogical College needed to appoint at least two Catholic theological professors. The Catholic Church was also granted the right to establish institutions for further teacher training, which teachers could attend voluntarily (Reference DüdingDüding, 2008, 580ff).

Overall, state-church conflicts demanded much time and energy from all education-political actors in NRW during the 1950s and 1960s. Before the compromise of 1967–8, there was hardly any room for debates about comprehensive schooling. Even though the Catholic Church was not satisfied with the compromise, the CDU remained the only party that saw itself as a representative of the Catholic Church’s interests in education politics. The CDU ensured that NRW regulations were designed in a private-school friendly way, which was important for Catholic private schools. Catholic Church officials could count on a steady stream of information and stable cooperation from the CDU. In return, the Catholic Church did much to mobilize its members to support the CDU. This is one of the explanations for how the CDU managed to integrate people of different class backgrounds among its members and voters.

The conflict also created an alliance between the SPD and the FDP in NRW education politics. The SPD and the FDP both had sizable numbers of comparatively less religious Protestants among their voters, many of whom opposed Catholic denominational schooling (Reference SchmittSchmitt, 1989). Despite the influence of economic liberals in the FDP, the FDP opposed not only denominational but also private schooling during the first postwar decades. The main explanation for this is that private schools in NRW were mostly Catholic and the FDP opposed the far-reaching influence of the Catholic Church. The FDP first adopted a more private-school friendly position when the conflict over denominational schooling had been put to rest. In other words, both the SPD and the FDP stood more on the side of the state in the state-church conflicts.

The Centralization Debate in Norway

All three center parties had their strongholds in the countryside. This applies especially to the Center Party, which since its foundation in 1920 represented farmers primarily. It was called the Farmers’ Party until 1959, when the name was changed in an effort to represent other groups of the (rural) population too. Decentralization and the economic and cultural strengthening of Norway’s rural areas were the party’s main political goals. For the Center Party, decentralization implied that decision-making, provision of services, and relevant public institutions should all be maintained locally. Schooling played an important role, since schools in small rural communities functioned as cultural centers. Local schools were also considered important for the local economy. In its manifestos of 1957–77, the Center Party emphasized the importance of a “decentralized school system.” It opposed the development toward larger schools and insisted that no rural municipality should be forced to close its primary school against the population’s will. At the same time, it supported the improvement of schooling in the countryside and insisted that rural municipalities had to receive as much financial support as possible so that schooling conditions would be equalized. The Center Party’s manifestos were most detailed and extensive with regard to these issues, but the two other center parties also supported school decentralization, largely for the same reasons.

This should not be taken to mean that the other parties openly dismissed such arguments. The manifestos of the Labor Party, the Socialist People’s Party/Socialist Left Party, and the Conservative Party also mentioned the necessity of improving schooling, especially in the poorest rural municipalities. The Socialist People’s Party was especially clear in its rejection of too much centralization, stating for example in its working manifesto of 1965 that “the first years of the children’s school [småskolen] should be located so close to the home that transport by car is avoided.” Neither the Labor Party nor the Conservative Party included equally categorical formulations in their manifestos, but they too showed an understanding of the needs of the rural population. For the Labor Party, the most important aims were better schooling for working-class and rural youths and increased investment in rural municipalities, especially at the level of the children’s and youth schools. In its manifestos of 1961 and 1965, the Conservative Party focused on the importance of expanding upper-secondary schooling in the countryside. They demanded that no municipality should be forced to close its gymnas due to centralization. From the 1970s, the Conservative Party and the Labor Party suggested increased decentralization – but by this time, the major changes had already taken place. In the following, the conflicts related to centralization are analyzed chronologically.

Much centralization of the school system had already occurred before the introduction of the youth school, based on the laws of the 1930s. Social democrats had long aimed at equalizing schooling conditions across the whole of the country. In the 1950s, the conditions were still very different. There were separate laws for rural and urban schools. The rural folkeskoler were often so small that they could not divide children into different age groups or had to group them in fewer than seven groups. The minimum amount of schooling was much lower, and curricula were different. The law of 1959 became the first school law that applied to rural and urban schools alike. All parties supported this. Everyone agreed that it was necessary to improve the rural schools and lessen the differences in standards by integrating the previously separate laws.

However, disagreements within the parliamentary education committee indicate that the center parties stood in opposition to the Labor Party and the Conservative Party regarding some of the details. The three center party representatives on the committee, Hordvik (Liberal Party), Hovdhaugen (Center Party), and Ommedal (Christian Democrats), suggested a change to the law proposal according to which the state would finance up to 50 percent of the costs of new school buildings. They argued that economically weak rural municipalities would need more state support or else they would be left behind. The Labor Party and the Conservative Party representatives agreed that state support for weak municipalities had to be increased but thought that 50 percent state financing for school buildings would be too high, considering that the law already contained a paragraph according to which the counties had to pay 50 percent. In effect, it would thus be possible for a municipality to receive up to 100 percent financing from county and state together. The Labor Party and the Conservative Party thought that this would stand in opposition “to the old principle that municipalities should organize their schools themselves” (Innst. O. II [1959], 14). The center party representatives also argued that financing of school buildings by the county should be increased from 50 to 65 percent, which the majority of the committee, including the conservatives, rejected (Innst. O. II [1959], 14).

Paragraph 2 of the law included regulations for the reorganization of school districts. The merging of school districts often led to the closing of village schools. The school directors, who were appointed by the ministry, played an important role as organizers of comprehensive school reforms and of centralization. According to Reference Telhaug and MediåsTelhaug and Mediås (2003, 190ff), the school directors were usually welcomed by municipalities as advisors but sometimes centralization led to conflicts between school directors and other bodies on the local level. In case of such disagreements, both the county school boards and the school directors had the right to appeal to the ministry. The center party representatives and the conservative representative, Christie, suggested a change to the law text. They did not like the fact that the school director, a single individual, could appeal to the ministry by himself, whereas a majority of the county school board had to consist of at least three people. Instead, they suggested that each member of the county school board and the school director should be allowed to appeal to the ministry as long as one more member of the board supported them in the appeal. The two other conservative representatives, and all the Labor Party representatives, thought that there was no reason to change current regulations (Innst. O. II [1959], 7). This illustrates that the center parties were critical of attempts by the central government to control reforms in rural areas with the aid of the school directors.

An important reason for the center parties’ representatives voting against the law of 1959 was that they were worried that it would lead to excessive centralization, implying long distances to school or an increase in boarding schools. They opposed boarding schools and school centralization, especially in the first six years of the primary school, and argued that reforms had to be based on the existing school infrastructure so that “elastic” transitions to nine-year obligatory comprehensive schooling would be possible (Innst. O. II [1959], 10f).

During the 1960s, school centralization and the discussions about it continued. By 1963, around 72 percent of all students in the folkeskoler across the country went to schools divided into yearly age groups. In the cities, this was 96 percent. In the rural districts, the percentage had increased from 41 percent in 1953 to 63 percent in 1963. Still, around 22 percent of students in the countryside attended schools that were divided into only four or five age groups and around 15 percent attended schools that were even smaller, and in 1 percent of the cases without any differentiation by age (Innstilling frå Folkeskolekomitéen av 1963 [1965], 151). Furthermore, 5076 primary school students lived in boarding schools or boarding homes close to their school (Innstilling frå Folkeskolekomitéen av 1963 [1965], 282). The folkeskole committee projected in its report of 1965 that better roads, improved transport conditions, and the decreasing rural population would lead to even more centralization. The declared aim was to get rid of the smallest village schools, since these were considered pedagogically inferior and too expensive. There was also a lack of qualified teachers, especially in the rural schools (Innstilling frå Folkeskolekomitéen av 1963 [1965], 151f).Footnote ⁸

For the youth school, the pressures of centralization were even greater than for the folkeskole. The reason was that the folkeskole did not have organizational differentiation. The early curricula of the youth school, which were based on tracks, ability groups, and elective subjects, implied that a certain number of students were required. The folkeskole committee suggested that a youth school should have at least three parallel classes in each grade (Innstilling frå Folkeskolekomitéen av 1963 [1965], 155). In some urban areas, the enthusiasm for differentiation led to extremely large youth schools. In Bergen, there was one youth school with fourteen parallel classes (Innstilling frå Folkeskolekomitéen av 1963 [1965], 279).

To the Center Party, the centralization of the folkeskole was the bigger problem. As the Center Party representative Undheim put it in the school debate of 1963,

Undheim further argued that the rural folkeskoler had managed to teach children just as much even though there had been tuition on just three days of the week. The reasons for this were that the children spent more time studying at home than was usual in the cities, that they were taken better care of at home, and that they were not as “overly schooled” as city children. He was also worried that rural children would lose touch with the local economy and would be raised to become “city youths,” uninterested in and incapable of doing “the hard toil on farms tough to cultivate” (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, May 21, 1963, 3343). Here, the Center Party’s opposition to centralization was coupled with an opposition to the city’s curricula and cultural standards, which were seen as detrimental to the rural way of life. In this regard, the Center Party was more conservative than the Labor Party, whose politicians enthusiastically supported not only the structural but also the curricular changes that resulted from the equalization of regulations for rural and city schools. Presumably, not many Labor Party representatives would have agreed that the rural schools were actually “better” than the city schools. This was an unusual point of view, for despite some reservations voiced by the center parties there was a broad consensus that a certain degree of centralization was necessary to improve rural schools.

In some cases, the pressures of centralization led to fierce conflicts, for example between the individual schools’ boards, the municipality’s school boards, the county’s school boards, the school directors, the ministry, and the local population. In one instance, namely in the small mountain village of Vats in central Norway, parents and teachers decided to found a private school to replace the fourth to sixth grades of the public folkeskole. These upper grades had been closed down and centralized even though the municipal school board had voted against it with a slight majority. The school director had reluctantly accepted the municipality’s decision, but the county school board had objected and appealed to the ministry. The Labor Party minister Sivertsen had ruled in 1961 that the upper grades of the folkeskole should be centralized in the village of Leveld, 12.8 km away. This was unacceptable to the parents of Vats, who wanted their children to be able to walk to school and who were afraid that once the upper stage of the folkeskole vanished, the lower stage would vanish too (Innstilling IV fra Privatskoleutvalget [1968], 24). The report of the private school committee of 1968 included the claim that this conflict is “in many ways typical of the centralization debates across the country” (Innstilling IV fra Privatskoleutvalget [1968], 32). It was, however, the only case in which the village population took the matter into their own hands, built a new school building collectively, and hired their own teacher. To the administration, the school was a “difficult case, because it would be impossible to implement the large nationwide plan for the folkeskole if all district regulations were annulled” (Innstilling IV fra Privatskoleutvalget [1968], 32).

Over time, the enthusiasm for larger schools began to wane. It was now said that very large schools led to pedagogical and administrative problems and made it difficult to develop “a good school atmosphere” (Innst. O. XIV [1968–9], 10). The pedagogical trend of the late 1960s and 1970s was to differentiate less in the youth school. Large schools were therefore no longer as necessary. In its report on the primary school law of 1969, the parliamentary education committee unanimously supported the suggestion of the Christian democratic minister Bondevik that youth schools should have a maximum of six parallel classes. Youth schools with only two parallel classes were allowed but should usually be connected to children’s schools. In the case of very isolated areas such as islands, even smaller, one-class youth schools were allowed based on exemptions (Ot. prp. nr. 59 [1966–7], 38 f; Innst. O. XIV [1968–9], 10). According to Jakob Reference AanoAano (1991, 124), this was another example of Bondevik’s capacity to withstand pressure, in this case from rural education politicians who were disappointed that a minimum of two parallel classes remained the norm and who had expected the non-Labor government to go further in its correction of the “centralized school expansion the Labor Party had initiated.” This interpretation is supported by a remark by the Center Party representative Hovdhaugen in the parliamentary debate on the primary school law of 1969:

Representatives of the Liberal Party and the Christian Democrats also uttered their concern regarding exemptions for youth schools that had only one class. The minister assured them that exemptions would be granted liberally and pointed out that the number of small youth schools with one or two classes had risen from 62 in 1966–7 to 107 in the forthcoming school year of 1970–1 (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, April 21, 1969, 369). The Labor Party representative Per Karstensen remarked in response to this,

Presumably, he was referring to changes in the forms of differentiation in the youth school. At this point, the Labor Party had begun to support pedagogical differentiation within the classroom and thus no longer saw the need to insist on larger school units at any cost.

The Center Party also suggested a change to the law proposal according to which one- and two-class youth schools would be allowed to remain independent of children’s schools. Their representatives argued that such a connection between the children’s and the youth school would lead to overly large schools and would weaken the small youth schools pedagogically, leading to a lack of qualified teachers trained for the youth school level. The proposal received no remarks from the other parties. It received thirteen votes, all presumably from the Center Party, and was rejected (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, April 21, 1969, 368ff).

Finally, with regard to the merging of school districts and the relocation of schools, the law of 1969 contained a small change. In paragraph 3, it was specified that the population of the school district should only be allowed to vote on such changes if the municipal board or the municipal school board requested this. In the previous laws, special rules had applied to rural municipalities, which had been allowed to vote on such issues in all cases. The votes were nonbinding. The aim was now to create equal rules for rural and urban municipalities, which was the reason why all parties apart from the Center Party agreed to the change. The parliamentary education committee underlined that it should remain usual to let the population of rural municipalities have a say (Innst. O. XIV [1968–9], 11f). The Center Party was not satisfied with this and suggested that all school districts should be allowed to vote on such issues in all cases. The proposal received seventeen votes, which indicates that a few other representatives besides the Center Party’s voted for it (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, April 21, 1969, 371). However, the Center Party was clearly most concerned about these issues.

In the 1970s, “decentralization” became a buzzword used by all parties. In the name of democratization and decentralization, it was demanded that the individual school, teachers, students, and parents should be given more influence. For the different parties, the term “decentralization” did not have the same meaning. The conservative Lars Roar Reference LangsletLangslet (1977, 101) summed up his view of decentralization thus:

As discussed in Chapter 4, the conservatives used the decentralization argument to argue for the abolition of the Experimental Council and against the central regulations of 1979 that forbade permanent ability grouping (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, May 11, 1979). The regulations of 1979 were, however, not of much consequence for rural schools, which is probably the reason why the Center Party and the Christian Democrats did not oppose them with the same ideological fervor as the conservatives. The Labor Party and the Liberal Party, on the other hand, emphasized that local schools should receive pedagogical influence but not with regard to whether there should be ability grouping.

For the most part, the Center Party and the other center parties accepted the youth school reform, not least because the introduction of the youth school in many cases meant that rural students received two years of additional schooling. This was especially true for the northern counties. In the words of the leftist school reformer Kjell Horn:

It should be added that the Labor Party was strong in the northern counties. In many rural areas, it had local politicians who supported the introduction of the youth school and forged alliances with center party politicians. The youth school was welcomed in the countryside because it was connected to the introduction of nine-year obligatory schooling. Even though the conservatives sometimes succeeded in building alliances with the center parties based on the argument of centralization, the issue overall did not contribute much to the cohesion of the non-Labor camp. The conservatives were still perceived by the center parties as an urban party that did not really prioritize rural interests. The Labor Party’s efforts to increase the quality of education in rural areas were more believable from the center parties’ point of view. Therefore, the urban-rural conflict over centralization was no obstacle to the prolongation of comprehensive schooling. On the contrary, the trend for decreasing organizational differentiation made it even easier to introduce the youth school throughout the country.

Debates about Rural Schooling and Centralization in North Rhine–Westphalia

In NRW, many farmers and Christian laypeople were organized in the CDU. The CDU was strong in rural areas, where small Volksschulen were common, and emphasized the value of smaller schools. During the 1960s, the party’s position changed and modernized somewhat, but it continued to support decentralization in its manifestos for the NRW elections of 1975 and 1980. In the CDU manifesto for the national elections of 1980, the party stated,

The SPD continuously opposed small “dwarf schools,” as social democrats termed them. Even though the SPD had its strongholds in the cities, it justified this with the wish to improve living conditions in the countryside. Social democrats did not believe that the quality of small Volksschulen could ever be on a par with larger schools. For this reason, the SPD’s manifestos suggested using school buses and centralizing schools. During the 1960s, the SPD’s irritation was focused on the undivided or little divided denominational Volksschulen.

The FDP also favored the centralization of schools and the equalization of opportunities for city and rural youth. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, liberals fought against denominational and private schooling, partly because these schools were too small. During the CDU-FDP coalition of 1962–6, FDP speakers supported some of the SPD’s motions for the establishment of central schools. In the following, the debates about the undivided – and in many cases, denominational – Volksschulen, the introduction of the Hauptschule during the 1960s, and the cooperative school during the 1970s are reviewed once more, this time with a focus on centralization.

There were surprisingly many undivided Volksschulen in NRW during the 1960s, compared with both the much less populated Norway and the other federal states. In 1960, there were 895 one-class schools, 1050 two-class schools, 779 three-class schools and 509 four-class schools out of a total 6365 Volksschulen (Reference DüdingDüding, 2008, 492). In 1959, the average number of students per class was 39.2 and the average Volksschule had 5.7 classes, even though it comprised eight age groups or grades (Statistisches Landesamt Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1960, 44, own calculations). In 1963, there were still around 2000 one-class or two-class Volksschulen, as the SPD politician, and later minister of education, Fritz Holthoff, lamented in several parliamentary debates (Landtag NRW, April 10, 1962, 3009; Landtag NRW, May 14, 1963, 535). The CDU minister of education, Paul Mikat, pointed out that undivided one-class schools were attended by only 1.8 percent of all students, while 40.4 percent of Volksschule students attended schools with at least eight classes; 82.7 percent of the students attended schools with five or more classes (Landtag NRW, May 14, 1963, 545).

In April 1962, the NRW parliament debated the shortage of teachers in the Volksschule, in response to an interpellation made by the FDP (Landtag NRW, April 10, 1962). Even though the small schools were not the main topic of this debate, they were mentioned several times. The SPD politician Fritz Holthoff and the FDP politician Ernst Günther Herzberg argued that the lack of teachers was partly a result of the large number of “dwarf schools” (Landtag NRW, April 10, 1962, 3009, 3019). These schools bound up too many teacher resources and made the teaching profession unattractive to young people. They suggested that Volksschulen should be centralized to overcome the “medieval” structure of the system (Landtag NRW, April 10, 1962, 3020). The CDU representative Albert Pürsten defended the small schools and emphasized their value to the village. He thought that it would be an undesirable “mechanization of our pedagogical life” if six-year-old children from fifteen different villages were driven to a central school (Landtag NRW, April 10, 1962, 3012). Herzberg replied that the school was no longer the “intellectual center of a village” because more and more teachers commuted from cities and refused to live in the village (Landtag NRW, April 10, 1962, 3019).

In its manifesto for the elections of 1962, the SPD NRW included the following sentences:

The CDU won the NRW elections of 1962 and formed a government with the FDP. In the following years, the SPD parliamentary group continued to advocate central schools. In February 1963, the issue came up in a budgetary debate (Landtag NRW, February 12, 1963). Holthoff (SPD) suggested that the small Volksschulen should be replaced by central schools (Landtag NRW, February 12, 1963, 251). To this, Pürsten (CDU) replied:

In response, Herzberg (FDP) remarked again that the school might have been the intellectual center of the village in earlier times, “when one still traveled by means of the post cart or horse,” but no longer (Landtag NRW, February 12, 1963, 278). The young SPD representative Johannes Rau argued that the current school system was adapted to the “first half of the nineteenth century.” He lamented that young teachers risked being placed in tiny schools “in the dark countryside” without any colleagues and without public transport facilities to maintain contact with family and friends. CDU representatives reacted with yells to his words, suggesting that he should tell the voters during election campaigns that they were living in “the dark countryside” and arguing that the result of centralization would be that all students would have to commute, instead of just one teacher (Landtag NRW, February 12, 1963, 287f).

Shortly after this debate, the SPD proposed a motion for the introduction of central schools (Mittelpunktschulen) (Landtag NRW, April 2, 1963). These schools should comprise grades five to eight of the Volksschule. For this level of schooling, the motion suggested, a well-regulated school operation (geordneter Schulbetrieb) could only be guaranteed if all age groups or grades were taught in separate classes. The term “well-regulated school operation” referred to the Constitution, in which the CDU had made sure in 1950 that one-class schools were defined as such. All Volksschulen that could not comply with this should be shortened to four years so students could attend a central school from grade five. The federal state should pay for the use of school busses. The motion ended with the following remarks:

In the parliamentary debate on the motion, speakers of the CDU mentioned this paragraph several times, emphasizing that centralization could indeed not be brought about by coercion and voicing doubts about whether the SPD really understood this. The minister of education, Mikat (CDU), replied carefully. He did not want to “glorify” the rural schools, but was aware of their “great value” (Landtag NRW, May 14, 1963, 546). He supported the merging of small schools “where it seems reasonable” (Landtag NRW, May 14, 1963, 548). On the other hand, to him it was an “open question” whether dividing schools into classes for all age groups always meant better performance (Landtag NRW, May 14, 1963, 547). Transporting students by bus was undesirable and “shrunk schools” comprising only grades one to four were not sufficient to uphold the “originality of the rural schools” (Landtag NRW, May 14, 1963, 549). He suggested that only grades eight and nine – once the ninth school year had been introduced – should be centralized. Mikat refused “any leveling, not only between city and countryside but also between differently structured rural areas,” while claiming that the problem had to be solved in different ways in different places. In his view, “differentness but equal rights and equal value” characterized “the relation of city and countryside today” (Landtag NRW, May 14, 1963, 546). The emphasis on “differentness but equal rights” sums up one of the main arguments of the CDU, not only in this but also in other education-political debates.

Two other CDU representatives, Peter Giesen and Anton Volmert, spoke more passionately about the small village schools than Mikat. Giesen warned against taking the older students from the school and thereby “executing” it and emphasized the pedagogical advantage of teachers living close to the students’ parents (Landtag NRW, May 14, 1963, 570). Volmert, who represented the rural municipality of Warburg, explained that the introduction of central schools for grades five to eight would mean an increase in one-class schools in his municipality. The reason was that a two-class school, which would lose its oldest students, would then be reduced to a one-class school for grades one to four. He was appalled by the motion:

The SPD speakers justified the motion by pointing to the unequal educational results in cities and villages and underlined that their aim was to promote the talents of the rural population. Holthoff (SPD) pointed to the USA, Sweden, and Norway, where centralization of the school system was taking place. One-class schools were an “anachronism” in the twentieth century (Landtag NRW, May 14, 1963, 532f). The FDP representatives Herzberg and Luchtenberg showed sympathy for the SPD motion and rejected the CDU speakers’ plea for the small village schools, even though they were in a coalition with the CDU at the time.

In January 1965, the SPD once again attempted to initiate a reform of the Volksschule. This time, the social democrats suggested that all Volksschulen – not only those in the countryside – should be divided into a four-year primary school and a five-year Hauptschule, which would become an independent secondary school. The primary school could in exceptional cases be undivided but the Hauptschule should always consist of at least five separate classes. The SPD proposed a change in the school laws and in the Constitution so that only separate classes for all age groups in the Hauptschule would be considered a “well-regulated school operation” (Landtag NRW, January 12, 1965a; Landtag NRW, January 12, 1965b).

Shortly afterward, Mikat proposed a new obligatory schooling law that prolonged obligatory schooling to nine years and introduced a distinction between primary school and Hauptschule but with no real administrative separation (Landtag NRW, January 28, 1965). The amendment of the law and the SPD motions were discussed in three parliamentary debates (Landtag NRW, February 23, 1965; Landtag NRW, May 10, 1966; Landtag NRW, May 25, 1966). Mikat now supported centralization more clearly than in 1963. He stated that the students in grades five and six could under no circumstance be taught in the same class as the students of the primary school and declared that those who did not share this view could not claim to be aiming for a higher number of Abitur graduates in the countryside (Landtag NRW, February 23, 1965, 1831). On February 23, 1966 – exactly a year after the first debate on the SPD motions – Mikat issued a decree for the introduction of central schools (Landtag NRW, February 23, 1966). He stipulated that grades seven to nine had to be centralized so that two classes for each grade would become the norm. In rural districts, one class for each grade would be acceptable. Grades five and six should be taught in at least one class for each grade. In exceptional cases, grades five and six could be taught in one class but under no circumstance with grade one to four. The first four grades of primary school should be taught in separate classes, but it was permissible to combine a maximum of two grades in one class. Furthermore, central schools could either comprise all nine grades, so small schools would be disbanded completely, or central schools could comprise grades seven to nine or grades five to nine. These decisions should be made case by case. Mikat’s new rules were significantly stricter than previous regulations and meant that great changes had to be made in NRW’s rural districts.

However, it was an open secret that Mikat stood in opposition to many of his party colleagues regarding these – and other – education-political issues. In the parliamentary debates this fact was commented on by the SPD speakers, but Mikat dismissed such comments light-heartedly. He had not given up his personal opinions when becoming minister, he declared:

Presumably, Mikat’s difficulties with his parliamentary group were the reason why he refused to change the Constitution and to split the Volksschule into a separate primary school and a Hauptschule. He argued that a change to the Constitution should be an “ultima ratio” and that the necessary centralization could be achieved without it (Landtag NRW, February 23, 1965, 1827). In addition, he argued that the Hauptschule would remain the obligatory school for any child who was not attending the Realschule or the Gymnasium and that it would not help the Hauptschule to be considered a new secondary school (Landtag NRW, May 10, 1966, 2776f). Some of his fellow party members became more emotional, stating that the SPD aimed at “breaking up” the Volksschule (Landtag NRW, February 23, 1965, 1838).

In response, the SPD speakers pointed out that, constitutionally, allowing one-class Volksschulen was a real obstacle. Some municipalities continued to build one- or two-class schools because the Constitution sanctioned this practice. A change in the Constitution was necessary. The separation of the Volksschule into a primary school and a Hauptschule was also more than a matter of wording for the social democrats. Turning the Hauptschule into a secondary school was a sign of respect and an upgrading of this school type. This time, the FDP speakers did not side as clearly with the SPD but supported Mikat’s argument that a change in the Constitution was unnecessary and that the primary school and the Hauptschule should remain one unit (Landtag NRW, February 23, 1965, 1840). Presumably, both Mikat and the FDP politicians knew that a change in the Constitution’s school articles would not have received a majority from the CDU parliamentary group (Reference DüdingDüding, 2008, 494).

Mikat also supported the expansion of Realschulen and Gymnasien in rural areas. His aim was to “increase the number of higher schools and Realschulen especially in those urban and rural districts where the relative school attendance for these school types is below the federal state’s average” (Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs of NRW, 1965, 7). Social democrats and liberals, as well as the representatives of rural areas within the CDU, supported this, so the expansion of secondary schooling did not create the same amount of debate.

After the NRW elections of 1966, the SPD formed a government with the FDP. Generational changes within the CDU parliamentary group made a new attempt at a change in the Constitution more likely to succeed. The compromise of 1967–8 between the SPD, the FDP, and the CDU entailed not only that denominational schooling was given up on the Hauptschule level but also that the Hauptschule should consist of two classes for all grades and be considered an institutionally separate secondary school type. The primary school should consist of at least four classes. In exceptional cases, two-class primary schools and five-class Hauptschulen were permitted (Landtag NRW, June 20, 1967b; Landtag NRW, February 21, 1968b). The Constitution was changed and no longer contained the sentence that sanctioned one-class Volksschulen as “well-regulated school operations” (Landtag NRW, June 20, 1967a; Landtag NRW, February 21, 1968a). This change received 172 of 200 votes, implying that 28 CDU representatives voted against it or abstained (Landtag NRW, February 29, 1968, 1106).

Centralization of the school system was now conducted rather swiftly. In the years before the reform, the number of Volksschulen had decreased only slightly, from 6530 in 1964 to 6255 in 1967 (Statistisches Landesamt Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1968, 52). By 1969, the total number of primary schools was 3643 and the total number of Hauptschulen was 1463. The average primary school now had 7.1 classes and the average Hauptschule had 12.3. There were 341 Volksschulen that had not yet been divided up into primary schools and Hauptschulen. These had on average 5.8 classes per school (Statistisches Landesamt Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1970, 48, own calculations). In other words, separation into age groups had finally become the norm. This development created some unrest. The CDU was criticized by its political grass roots. It initiated a parliamentary debate about the implementation of the new school laws, during which several CDU representatives complained about the speedy centralization process (Landtag NRW, June 12, 1968a; Landtag NRW, June 12, 1968b; Landtag NRW, June 26, 1968). The CDU representative Peter Giesen made no secret of his dislike of excessive centralization and claimed that the government had not kept its promise to implement the laws in a cautious way (Landtag NRW, June 26, 1968, 1388). The SPD speakers denied the criticism. They pointed out that the unrest created by the new laws had been foreseeable and could have been avoided if the CDU had accepted earlier reforms. These debates were, however, a rather irrelevant footnote in the wake of the decisive battles and negotiations; despite the internal unrest the CDU had to deal with, the compromise held. By 1979, only six Volksschulen remained that had not yet been included in the reform and all of these consisted of separate classes for all grades (Landesamt für Datenverarbeitung und Statistik Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1980, 126).

During the conflict over cooperative schools in the 1970s, centralization again became a topic. For example, the FDP’s manifestos appealed to the rural population, arguing that cooperative schooling would make it easier to preserve a good supply of education in rural areas. At this point, the number of students had begun to decline, which implied that rural schools would have to be shut if no other solutions were found. The SPD also advocated cooperative schooling as a compromise designed for rural areas.

Opponents of the cooperative school did not have a united response to this. Some of them denied that the demographic development was a problem, while others argued that cooperative schools would not solve it (Reference RösnerRösner, 1981, 168). A few local CDU politicians in rural municipalities who were worried that their Realschule or Gymnasium would have to close because of the declining birth rates supported the cooperative school (Reference RösnerRösner, 1981, 139). These were a small minority whose utterances played little role. The petition against the cooperative school received most signatures in typical CDU municipalities, meaning in rural, Catholic-dominated areas (Reference RösnerRösner, 1981, 226). One of the most important arguments used by the cooperative school protagonists was thus mostly ineffectual.

It can be concluded that the CDU for the most part successfully managed to integrate rural interests by giving voice to demands for decentralized school provision to some extent. The FDP and the SPD did not manage to build bridges with the rural population in these debates, even though they tried. However, the centralization conflict was not as dominant as the conflicts over denominational and comprehensive schooling. Rural politicians did not manage to determine the policy of the CDU entirely. CDU minister of education Mikat eventually ushered in the centralization of primary schools. During the cooperative school debate, declining birth rates in rural areas were not considered a valid argument by the conservative opposition. In other words, the rural-urban cleavage was not as salient as other cleavages and was overshadowed by the state-church and class cleavages to a large degree.

Norwegian Debates on Gender Roles, Girls’ Education, and Homemaking Education

The most important actors in the debates on gender and education in Norway were the women’s organizations and not least the female teachers. Norwegian male and female primary schoolteachers were organized separately between 1912 and 1966. The story of the Female Teachers’ Association is a fascinating piece of organizational history, which cannot be explored in detail here (but see Reference HagemannHagemann, 1992, 135ff). Female teachers were a central element in Norway’s first women’s movement, even before they had their own organization. For the female teachers, one of the most important political aims was to achieve recognition for women’s work – both their own work but also the work of the many Norwegian women who were housewives. They struggled for an ideological recognition of the contribution women were making in society but also for material recognition, in the sense of equal wages for female teachers, equal representation in the teachers’ organizations, and rights to holidays for housewives. To increase the social status and competencies of housewives, Norwegian women founded “housewife schools” (husmorskoler) from the 1860s, where girls were trained to become housewives and teachers of homemaking (Reference FuglerudFuglerud, 1980). In the first half of the twentieth century, these schools were greatly expanded. Female teachers cared about the living conditions of the population, which they thought needed to be improved with the help of health education, mothering education, sex education, and lessons in cooking and homemaking (husstellundervisning) in primary and secondary schools. Many female teachers saw great value in the comparatively new school type the framhaldsskole (continuation school), which they considered to be suitable as further education for girls. Many of these schools were for girls only or included homemaking tracks and were important workplaces for female teachers.

The Norwegian women’s movement was politically independent, but well connected to political parties. During the first wave, many women activists belonged to the liberal movement. For example, the pioneer in homemaking education Helga Helgesen was a member of the Liberal Party and its only representative on the city council of Kristiania (Oslo) from 1923 to 1925. Another example is the first leader of the Female Teachers’ Association, Anna Rogstad, who was also the first woman in the Norwegian parliament. She represented a small liberal party (Frisinnede Venstre), which cooperated with the Conservative Party. In 1917, she joined the Labor Party. Most female teachers did not stand this far to the left, presumably due to their higher-class backgrounds.

The class cleavage also resulted in an early split in the Norwegian women’s movement. In 1904, the Norwegian Women’s National Council (Norske Kvinners Nasjonalråd) was founded by various women’s organizations. In 1914–15 the newly founded associations of Norwegian housewives and Norwegian homemaking teachers joined. But the Women’s Union of the Labor Party (Arbeiderpartiets Kvindeforbund), which had been founded in 1901, preferred to remain independent. The conflict behind this was that the labor movement’s women supported the struggle of housemaids for better working conditions, while the Association of Norwegian Housewives opposed it. Nonetheless, from 1914, the Labor Party’s women’s organization supported the idea of education in homemaking (Reference FuglerudFuglerud, 1980, 84f). Until the 1950s, “housewife ideology” remained strong, also within the labor movement (Reference Danielsen, Larsen and OwesenDanielsen et al., 2013, 270; Reference PedersenPedersen, 2001, 22).

The Female Teachers’ Association was not as enthusiastic as the male primary schoolteachers about the comprehensive school reforms begun in 1959, even though they supported the idea of extended obligatory schooling. They were worried that the advantages of the framhaldsskole would disappear and that education in homemaking would lose ground. Many of them did not have the necessary qualifications to teach in academic secondary schools, so the reforms potentially threatened their jobs (Reference HagemannHagemann, 1992, 270ff). The development of the youth school from 1959 did weaken the Female Teachers’ Association because they lost the influence they had had through the framhaldsskole (Reference HagemannHagemann, 1992, 274ff). As the expert Kari Lie remarked in our interview, from the 1960s it became less understandable to young female teachers why they should have a separate organization. The reunification of the primary schoolteachers’ organizations in 1966 was a logical consequence.

At the same time, a new women’s movement was taking shape during the second wave of women’s political mobilization, culminating during the 1960s and 1970s. “Housewife ideology” lost ground and the early movement’s acceptance of separate gender roles was questioned. New women’s organizations were founded that were more radical and leftist. Even though the Association of Norwegian Housewives still had 50 000 members in 1974, with only 5000 members organized in the new women’s organizations, they were more active politically and had many sympathizers (Reference Danielsen, Larsen and OwesenDanielsen et al., 2013, 293). Some of the new organizations, such as the Women’s Front, had ties to the small Workers’ Communist Party. The older women’s organizations of the political parties also still played a role. Not least, the labor movement’s women gained influence though the Labor Party’s rise to power. However, the women’s movement continued to exhibit a spirit of independence. For example, in the municipal elections of 1971, women of all parties came together in several Norwegian cities in a “women’s coup” with the aim of increasing the number of female politicians on the municipal councils. Female voters were taught how to strike out male candidates on the ballot papers and replace them with female ones. The campaign, which was prepared in secret, succeeded to such a degree that women became a majority on the municipal councils of Oslo, Trondheim, and Asker. Male politicians were not pleased, but the action contributed to an increase in women on the parties’ lists (Reference Danielsen, Larsen and OwesenDanielsen et al., 2013, 313f).

In the party manifestos published between 1957 and 1977, immense ideological changes can be traced. The Labor Party’s manifestos went from a long paragraph on the rights and living conditions of housewives in 1958 to suggesting that “married women must receive realistic possibilities to take work outside of the home” in 1969 and asking for “actual equality” and the overcoming of “traditional differences between men’s and women’s jobs” in 1974. In 1969, the Labor Party suggested that school curricula should be revised so that men and women were no longer represented as assigned with specific roles in society. From the 1970s, the party’s manifestos stated that measures had to be taken to induce both genders to choose nontypical types of education.

The manifestos of the Conservative Party also changed markedly. In 1958, the manifesto stated that it was worrying that economic and demographic development would presumably lead to an increase in married women in the labor market since “the housewife is the midpoint of the home and her wholehearted dedication there is of the very greatest importance both for every single family and for society as a whole.” It was also suggested that schools should include “elementary consumer economics in homemaking lessons so young girls can learn how to handle money and examine quality and prices.” In the 1960s, the manifestos continued to demand that education in homemaking had to be prioritized but, from 1961, the Conservative Party also demanded “full equality with equal wages for equal work and equal advancement conditions for women and men.” In the 1970s, the term “housewife” (husmor) vanished entirely from the manifesto, which now only spoke of homemakers (hjemmeværende). It was stated that the Conservative Party wanted to “work for a change of mentalities and for practical reforms that make it possible to divide responsibilities and rights in society equally between women and men.” From 1973, the manifesto demanded that curricula should not include “antiquated gender role thinking” and that the schools should take into account “that girls and boys shall share equal rights to vocational and other further education.”

Among the smaller parties, both the Socialist People’s Party and the Liberal Party included radical demands for gender equality in their manifestos. In its first manifesto, from 1961, the Socialist People’s Party demanded that equal wages for women had to be introduced immediately, “not in the course of the next seven years as intended by the agreement between Landsorganisasjonen and NAF,” meaning the unions and the employers’ organization. But even here it was stated that “the question of better access to holidays and free time for housewives must be broached,” though “access to part-time work for housewives” was also demanded. From 1965, the Socialist People’s Party demanded that curricula should become “equal for girls and boys,” and from 1969 that teaching material should be “considered carefully so that differential treatment and gender role thinking are changed in accordance with the principles of equality and equal rights.”

The Liberal Party was the first party to include the following demand in its manifesto in 1957: “Boys and girls must have the same amount of teaching both in practical and theoretical subjects.” This referred especially to lessons in homemaking, which at this point were still mostly reserved for girls. In 1977, the party made the radical demand that gender quotas should be applied in all educational institutions after primary school “in order to create a better balance in the distribution of women and men in our educational institutions.” From 1973, it suggested that all discriminatory representations should be removed from schoolbooks and that a change in attitudes was required to overcome “traditional gender role thinking.”

A change of rhetoric can also be discerned in the manifestos of the Christian Democrats and the Center Party, even though they more clearly emphasized the housewife ideal and stuck to it longer. The Center Party’s manifestos demanded from 1957 to 1965 that “all girls should receive good and adequate housewife education.” Otherwise, the manifestos did not include any demands regarding the situation of women. Only in 1977 did the Center Party include a paragraph about gender equality in its manifesto, suggesting that the school system should contribute to a change of attitudes so “both genders shall have the same possibilities and responsibilities with respect to the home, work, public life, and so forth.” The manifestos of the Christian Democrats advocated separate gender roles until 1973, when they made an effort for the first time to formulate their demands in a more gender-neutral way. They now demanded that “housewife schools […] must receive increased capacity and necessary equipment in order to provide a modern education, also for male students.” They also stated that economic reasons should not force both parents – mentioning no longer only mothers – of small children to work outside of the home and that part-time jobs should be made available for men and women alike. They did, however, continue to emphasize the value of marriage and homemaking, and their support for housewife schools at a time when the other parties had abandoned the term “housewife.”

The development of the school subject of homemaking is a good indicator of how gender issues affected education politics in this period. From 1936, homemaking had been an obligatory subject for girls in the cities’ primary schools. From 1946, it had been obligatory for girls in continuation schools (framhaldsskoler), if at least four girls attended such a school. In 1949, the commission that had been tasked with evaluating the school system (Samordningsnemda for skoleverket) published a report about homemaking. Here, it was stated that homemaking should become obligatory as soon as possible for girls all over the country. This demand had a financial dimension, since cooking classes required school kitchens, which were expensive. Arguments were made as to why strict gender separation might not be the best solution:

This was supported by the Norwegian Teachers’ Association, which had commented in a letter to the commission that while girls often received some instruction in cooking at home, boys most often did not. They pointed to studies about the diets of lumberjacks and fishermen that showed that these men ate poorly. They suggested that the municipal school boards should have the possibility of offering homemaking lessons to boys, even if it would be impossible to make the subject obligatory for all boys (Samordningsnemda for skoleverket [1949], 9).

In 1952, a commission was put in place to discuss homemaking. In its report of 1954, it suggested that the subject should become obligatory for all girls (Innstilling fra Utvalget til å utrede skolekjøkken- og husstellopplæringa, 1955). When the youth school reform was prepared in the late 1950s, the Labor Party ministry issued a document that built on the commission’s conclusions but suggested that homemaking should become obligatory for both girls and boys in primary schools and in the youth school (St. meld. nr. 61 [1957] Om heimkunnskap og husstell). This was justified by the fact that the content of the subject needed to be expanded to include not only cooking, handling clothes, and other domestic chores but also knowledge about bookkeeping, housing, furniture, nutrition, and health:

The opposition in the parliamentary committee responsible, meaning the representatives of the center parties and the Conservative Party, thought that it would be too costly for the time being to make homemaking obligatory for boys, even if it would be desirable. As long as homemaking could not be offered to all students for financial reasons, they thought that girls should be prioritized (Innst. S. nr. 294 [1958], Tilråding frå den forsterkede landbrukskomité om heimkunnskap og husstell, 472).

This was debated in parliament in January 1959. It became clear that not all representatives really did consider it desirable that boys should receive homemaking lessons. The Center Party representative Hans Borgen stated that he personally thought that “there is reason to consider in more detail whether it is a reasonable usage of our educational possibilities and of students’ school time to press boys through the exact same educational program in homemaking as girls should have and hopefully also will have gradually in the general schools” (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, January 20, 1959, Heimkunnskap og husstell, 61). The Labor Party representative Olav Meisdalshagen, who had been the leader of the committee of 1952, expressed doubts about the feasibility of introducing homemaking for all boys and all girls, for whom it was “despite of everything so much more important that they [girls] receive this education” (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, January 20, 1959, Heimkunnskap og husstell, 75). This was not in line with the view of the female Labor Party representative Guri Johannessen, who considered the decision to include boys in homemaking lessons to be extremely important and who praised the ministry under Birger Bergersen for having underlined this. Her main argument was that increased respect for the housewife’s occupation required boys to have more knowledge about it (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, January 20, 1959, Heimkunnskap og husstell, 79). She was supported by her party colleagues Peter Kjeldseth Moe and Rakel Seweriin. Kjeldseth Moe pointed out that if resources were insufficient to introduce homemaking for all students, it should be introduced for one age group at a time, instead of one gender. In his view, it was about time to “break down barriers built on prejudices that do not belong in our time” (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, January 20, 1959, Heimkunnskap og husstell, 91). Rakel Seweriin, leader of the Women’s Union of the Labor Party from 1953 to 1963, and one of the few influential female politicians at the time, chose the following words:

The conservative Mons Arntsen Løvset and the liberal Olav Hordvik both felt prompted to reply. They rejected the charge that they were in principle against including boys in homemaking and repeated that they merely thought that girls should be prioritized due to a lack of resources (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, January 20, 1959, Heimkunnskap og husstell, 98ff).

Since the Labor Party had the absolute majority and the majority of the Labor Party supported the ministry, the caveat was ignored. The folkeskole law of 1959 included homemaking (now called heimkunnskap) as an obligatory subject for students of both sexes. In the experimental curricula of 1960 and 1964, homemaking was included as an obligatory subject from the fourth until the eighth grade and then became a separate track in the third youth school year (Forsøksrådet for skoleverket, 1960, 369ff; Forsøksrådet for skoleverket, 1964, 288ff). In the upper grades, the curricula included topics such as “a democratic family life,” family finances, housing and furniture, nutritional knowledge, and childcare and care for the elderly. The subject of homemaking had to be organized in cooperation with the subjects of manual training (forming) and civics (samfunnskunnskap), which were supposed to cover additional topics such as handicrafts, family law, and housing politics (Forsøksrådet for skoleverket, 1964, 309).

A related debate in the 1960s was the question of how the upper-secondary housewife schools should be regulated, what they should teach, and to whom. In 1961, the Ministry of Education set up a working group that was to discuss which place these schools should have in the future school system. Based on this group’s report of December 1962 and a report by the Council for Homemaking (Rådet for heimkunnskap og husstell) of 1964, the Labor Party minister of education, Helge Sivertsen, presented a white paper in May 1965 (St. meld. nr. 101 [1964–5] Om yrkesskoler i husstell). The parliamentary education committee commented on this paper in February 1966, and it was debated in parliament in March 1966 (Innst. S. nr. 94 [1965–6] Innstilling frå kirke- og undervisningskomitéen om yrkesskoler i husstell [St. meld. nr. 101]; Forhandlinger i Stortinget, March 10, 1966). There was now agreement that housewife schools served several aims. They no longer exclusively prepared women to be housewives but also for several occupations on the labor market. The name of the schools was therefore changed to “occupational schools for homemaking” (fagskolene i husstell).

The development of the housewife schools, which mostly ended up as one of many tracks in the reformed upper-secondary school in the 1970s, cannot be analyzed in detail here (but see Reference FuglerudFuglerud, 1980). But it is interesting to note that the parliamentary debate of 1966 again revealed that the Labor Party representatives, especially the female ones, expressed most clearly their belief that homemaking was no longer only for girls and that these schools should therefore be open to boys as well. They also emphasized that homemaking schools served as a form of vocational education. The Labor Party representative Gunvor Eker remarked,

The speakers of the Conservative Party did not make such far-reaching remarks, but they were clear in their support for homemaking as a vocational form of education. For example, the conservative Jo Benkow pointed out,

For this conservative representative, the important matter was to regulate the educational expansion that was also taking place among women in a way that would not threaten academic education in the upper-secondary school. The Center Party politician Karstein Seland insisted that the most important role of the homemaking schools should still be to educate housewives – “the most important of all occupations,” as he put it (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, March 10, 1966, 2303). He thought that it was strange that the Labor Party ministry had argued in its white paper in 1965 that it was hard to estimate the exact need for spaces in these schools, since one did not know exactly the number of “employees” in the occupation of housewife. In his view, the fact that around 24 000 marriages were registered in Norway each year was a sufficient estimate. Each one of these 24 000 newly wed housewives should have access to a housewife’s education, not only a meager 15 percent, as was the case at present (Forhandlinger i Stortinget, March 10, 1966, 2303). The reference to the number of marriages was repeated by various nonsocialist representatives, such as the Christian Democrat Jakob Aano. The Liberal Party representative Borghild Bondevik Haga also agreed that it was a shame that so many young housewives could not be offered a housewife’s education. At the same time, she seemed unsure whether only women needed this:

The additions made by both Bondevik Haga and Benkow with respect to men and boys show that mindsets were changing fast and that politicians felt compelled to adapt their wording. There was a trend in the 1960s toward equal curricula and coeducation on all levels. The folkeskole committee of 1963 expressed in its report in 1965 that since the division of labor in the home was now “less marked” than it had been, it was right that curricula should no longer distinguish between boys and girls. All differentiation should be based on interests, not gender (Innstilling frå Folkeskolekomitéen av 1963 [1965], 116).

In the expert interviews, this trend was confirmed. The introduction of coeducation that took place in many urban municipalities during the 1950s and 1960s had not been heavily debated but had simply been an expression of the spirit of the times. In rural areas, the coeducation of boys and girls had been the norm anyway, since there were not enough children to divide them by sex. Of all the experts interviewed, only Torild Skard could remember that the introduction of coeducation had been opposed by anyone, namely by the school reformer Anna Sethne, who had been the chair of the Female Teachers’ Association from 1919 to 1938 and who continued to take part in reform debates until her death in 1961. According to Skard, Sethne argued that girls could easily be dominated by boys in mixed classes and that separate teaching for girls and boys was therefore required in some cases. In the early female teachers’ movement, there was no agreement about this question (Reference HagemannHagemann, 1992, 178f). During the 1960s, separation by sex within the school system became a thing of the past. With the curriculum of 1974, it was made officially binding that girls and boys should always attend mixed classes and should not be separated in any subject (Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet, 1974, 23f). As the expert Theo Koritzinsky pointed out in our interview, the curriculum of 1974 was one of the most radical curricula in Norwegian history with respect to the equality of the sexes.

Overall, it should be underlined that the strong Norwegian women’s movement stood for an independent political struggle that sometimes crisscrossed other lines of conflict. During the waves of increased political mobilization by women, the gender cleavage became comparatively more salient. During the second wave, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Labor Party and the Socialist People’s Party supported the claims of the radical women’s movement. Girls’ postwar educational expansion based on a conception of equal gender roles was integrated into the labor movement’s school reform project. The Center Party and the Christian Democrats were the most reluctant to give up their insistence on separate gender roles. Presumably this is related to their more rural and Christian voter base. The postwar Liberal Party and the Conservative Party often supported the claims of the less radical, older women’s organizations, such as the Female Teachers’ Association. Both parties organized some well-educated upper- and middle-class women who belonged to the women’s movement. The nonsocialist parties thus had different positions with respect to the gender cleavage. This was an additional factor that weakened non-leftist alliances.

Debates on Gender Roles, Girls’ Education, and Coeducation in North Rhine–Westphalia

For the German women’s movement, girls’ education was also one of the most important aims (Reference Hervé and HervéHervé, 1990). From the beginning, the movement was divided into social democratic, liberal, and conservative wings (Reference Hervé and HervéHervé, 1990, 12ff). The liberal/conservative wing was united under the umbrella of the Bund deutscher Frauenvereine (BdF, Union of German Women’s Associations) founded in 1894, but splits existed within it between social liberals, national liberals, and conservatives (Reference Wurms and HervéWurms, 1990). In addition, the women’s movement was split along lines of denomination. The conservative Deutsch-Evangelischer Frauenbund (German-Evangelical Women’s Union) became a member of the BdF but the Katholischer deutscher Frauenbund (KDFB, German Catholic Women’s Union), which still exists today, did not. Membership of the liberal BdF would have been irreconcilable with the rootedness of the Catholic women’s activists in the Catholic milieu that had developed during the cultural struggle (Reference SackSack, 1998, 38). When a new national umbrella organization, the Informationsdienst für Frauenfragen (Information Service for Women’s Questions; since 1969, Deutscher Frauenrat, German Women’s Council), was founded in 1951 the Catholic women’s movement was, however, included (Reference IllemannIllemann, 2016, 112ff). Besides the KDFB, the Catholic women’s movement comprised organizations such as the Verein katholischer deutscher Lehrerinnen (VkdL, Association of German Catholic Female Teachers), founded in 1885, which also still exists today. This association had its strongholds in the Rhineland and Westphalia, where there were higher numbers of female teachers than in the Protestant areas of Prussia. The reason was that the coeducation of boys and girls was rarer in Catholic areas. Separate girls’ schools meant greater possibilities for the employment of female teachers (Reference SackSack, 1998, 115ff). The Catholic women’s movement cooperated with the Center Party and later with the CDU.

There was no agreement between the currents of the women’s movement regarding the content and structure of girls’ education. The liberal and the conservative divisions of the early women’s movement supported traditional gender roles and argued that most girls should receive an education that befitted their destiny as mothers and housewives and that would improve the status of these roles. Even though the liberal women also struggled for the admittance of upper- and middle-class women to secondary schools and universities, it was understood that the destiny of most women was to marry, which excluded active participation in the labor market. Only the social democratic women’s movement represented the interests of working women from the start. Nevertheless, ideas of the special “character” of women were adhered to here too (Reference TornieporthTornieporth, 1977, 221ff). In the decades after the Second World War, the situation gradually changed. Working women became more usual and one spoke increasingly of the “double role” of women as housewives and employees. In the liberal and social democratic parts of the women’s movement, more and more women supported coeducation – the further to the left they stood, the more they argued for coeducation in principle, not merely as a workaround (Reference PfisterPfister, 1988, 35). These trends were intensified after 1968, when the second wave of women’s mobilization reached its peak and radical women’s organizations mushroomed (Reference Doormann and HervéDoormann, 1990, 255ff).

The Catholic women’s movement continued to oppose coeducation in principle and clung to the idea that the freedom of women consisted in the choice between marriage and motherhood or maidenhood and career (Reference IllemannIllemann, 2016, 179ff; Reference Pöggeler and HeinemannPöggeler, 1977, 372ff; Reference SchultheisSchultheis, 1994, 200ff, 254ff). Until at least the 1950s, the VkdL expected its members to remain single to concentrate completely on their vocation.Footnote ¹¹ It opposed married teachers, even though the celibacy requirement for female teachers had been abolished during the Weimar Republic (Reference IllemannIllemann, 2016, 180; Reference SackSack, 1998, 128ff). This can only be understood against the background of Catholic theology and practice, which offered limited possibilities of emancipation to women who chose celibacy. Especially in the Rhineland and Westphalia, Catholic female orders had stood for the development of girls’ education (Reference SackSack, 1998, 30). The VkdL’s support of separate education for girls had its roots both in pedagogical convictions based on traditional gender roles and in vested interests. With good reason, Catholic female teachers were worried that they would not receive equally good conditions of professional advancement in coeducational schools (Reference SackSack, 1998, 133). The Catholic female teachers also supported denominational schooling, in contrast to the rest of the women’s movement. In the expert interviews for this study, frequent derisory remarks about this organization illustrated that many politically active people in NRW did not take the Catholic female teachers very seriously but considered them a relic of the past. Their importance should therefore not be overemphasized. Nevertheless, the VkdL had influence, especially within the many Catholic girls’ schools, and it was included in all parliamentary hearings about education politics. It joined the campaign against cooperative schools in 1976 and was thus a part of the conservative anti-reform alliance.

In the party manifestos of the SPD, the CDU, and the FDP from the 1950s to the 1970s, all parties included more and more detailed comments regarding the situation of women. However, significant ideological changes in gender roles can first be traced in the second half of the 1970s. The early party manifestos of the CDU contained almost no references to women. The Hamburg manifesto of 1953 only stated that even though the CDU supported “equal rights of men and women” – which had been proclaimed in the new Constitution after long struggles – the “natural order of family and marriage” was the CDU’s principle with regard to a possible revision of the family law. In other words, husbands’ legal predominance should not be abolished completely. Indeed, equal rights in family and marriage law first became a reality in 1976, under the social-liberal national government. The CDU managed to modernize its manifestos while continuing to represent traditional ideals of motherhood and homemaking. For example, the manifesto of 1972 stated,

The CDU continued to take it for granted that the “tasks of family and household” were primarily women’s but widened its view of women so that the interests of employed women would also be represented. Like the Catholic women’s movement, the CDU emphasized in its manifesto of 1976 that “the position of the housewife and mother is of the same value as that of the employed women” and that “the occupation of the woman in the family is to be put on a level with professional occupations outside of the family.” “Small children especially need the security of the parental home,” the 1976 manifesto also stated. In its manifesto of 1980, the CDU stated that there had been “a lack of progress in the equal rights of man and woman, which must not be limited to the social betterment of the childless employed woman.” The CDU also passed a comparatively more radical declaration entitled “Woman and Society” at its party congress of June 1975, in which it was stated that “already in the upbringing of children in the parental home, gender typical role clichés must be avoided” and that boys and girls should receive education in pedagogy and homemaking to be prepared for “their task in the family based on partnership.” The declaration suggested that more girls should be motivated to choose nontypical occupations, that housewives should receive possibilities for further training, and that upper-secondary homemaking lessons should be developed further so that they would qualify for various occupations.

In comparison with the CDU, the SPD included more detailed suggestions for women’s politics in its early manifestos, but here too the housewife ideal stood strong. In its manifesto for the elections of 1957, the SPD suggested that all girls in general and vocational schools should receive homemaking lessons. Being a housewife and mother was described as “the natural task of the woman.” Women were said to be “of equal value” but not of “equal character” to men, which meant that women had a right to “special protection.” In contrast to the CDU, the SPD demanded in 1957 that the woman’s status in marriage and family law should be equal to that of the man. As the Godesberg manifesto of 1959 stated,

In its youth-political guidelines of 1965, the SPD had not come much further. Here, it was stated that “full employment of mothers is difficult to reconcile with the upbringing of infants and school children” and that “part-time work offers the possibility to realize the child’s right to motherly care and education and the right of the woman to an occupational development of her own.” That the child could also have a right to fatherly care was not considered. In NRW, the SPD prided itself in its manifesto of 1962 on having defended the monthly paid “housework day” for employed women, which had been introduced in NRW after an initiative by the Communist Party in the early postwar years (Reference Hervé and HervéHervé/Nödinger, 1990, 202). It was in its manifesto for the NRW elections of 1980 that the NRW SPD first pointed out that part-time work should be available to men and women alike. It was still assumed that combining family and work was mostly a problem for women:

That schoolbooks or curricula should be changed to change gender roles was not a major topic of debate during the 1970s (but see Reference ZinneckerZinnecker, 1972, 83ff). This was first debated in the NRW parliament in the early 1980s, and in 1985 the SPD-led Ministry of Education in NRW published a regulation on the topic (quoted in Reference PfisterPfister, 1988, 261f).

Like the CDU, the FDP did not include demands for women in its early manifestos. In 1961, the national manifesto merely included the sentence that “social, pedagogical and domestic women’s occupations are to be valued more highly socially and economically.” From 1969, the FDP demanded independent pensions for housewives. The national manifesto for the elections of 1976 underlined in more detail that the FDP had contributed to the reform of marriage and family law that finally allowed women to choose freely whether they wanted to work, without needing their husband’s consent. Nevertheless, the manifesto conceded that “many disadvantages” persisted and that women needed to receive equal chances in the education system and employment. Here too, it was stated that “the occupation in the household must receive the same value and appreciation as any other occupation.” In the manifesto for the federal state elections of 1976, the NRW FDP mentioned that “housewives’ work” should be recognized but that “practical life support,” such as “company kindergartens” or “day nannies,” was also necessary. In its manifesto for the national elections of 1980, the FDP demanded an antidiscrimination law and suggested that “the traditional view of the family hierarchy, for example in schoolbooks,” should be dismantled.

In education politics, the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by ideological and structural continuity with respect to gender. Girls’ education in the region had long been dominated by the Catholic Church, which had filled the vacuum left by the Prussian state in secondary schooling. In the postwar decades, a large percentage of private secondary schools were still Catholic girls’ schools. In 1953, 20 of the federal states’ private Realschulen were for girls, 8 were for boys and 9 for both sexes. Among the public Realschulen, 34 were for girls only, 41 for boys only, and 108 for both sexes. Among the private Gymnasien, 50 were for girls only, 19 for boys only, and 10 for both sexes. Among the public Gymnasien, 96 were for girls only, 155 for boys only, and 112 for both sexes (Statistisches Landesamt Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1954, 80ff). In 1979, 2433 of the 3141 students (77 percent) who passed the Realschule exam at a private school were still girls. A total of 25 202 girls passed the Realschule exam at a public school, so private school Realschule graduates made up about 9 percent of all female Realschule graduates. Among the Abitur graduates of private schools in 1979, 3469 of 5365 students (65 percent) were girls. A total of 15 896 girls passed the Abitur at a public school, so about 20 percent of female Abitur graduates had attended private schools (Landesamt für Datenverarbeitung und Statistik Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1980, 134). Even though some private schools were Protestant or nonreligious, most of them were Catholic. In other words, the influence of the Catholic Church on girls’ education remained significant.

The NRW Schulordnungsgesetz (law on the regulation of schools) of 1952 stated that the different “character of the sexes” should be taken into account in the structure of the school system. Compared to other West German federal states, NRW was in a leading position regarding the separate education of girls and boys. In 1967, a total of 70.8 percent of all Gymnasien were either boys’ or girls’ schools. Only the Saarland had a higher percentage (Reference ZinneckerZinnecker, 1972, 67). This was a result of the Catholic Church’s influence on education in the federal state but also of the many densely populated areas, which made coeducation for practical reasons less necessary (Reference ZinneckerZinnecker, 1972, 68).

The postwar years saw the reestablishment of the Frauenoberschule, a secondary school exclusively for girls with roots going back to 1908, when girls’ education had been regulated for the first time by the Prussian state. During the Weimar Republic and under the National Socialist regime, this school type had been developed further. It was revived only in NRW, the Rhineland-Palatinate, and Lower Saxony (Reference ZinneckerZinnecker, 1972, 72). The reestablished Frauenoberschule, from 1966 dubbed the Gymnasium für Frauenbildung, did not award a general qualification for university entrance but qualified students only for entrance to a pedagogical academy in order to become a primary schoolteacher, for university education as a secondary schoolteacher in specific subjects, and for some administrative state careers, for example in public libraries. Talented students could take an additional exam in Latin or French and mathematics to acquire a full Abitur. Under the National Socialist regime the Frauenoberschule had awarded a general qualification for university entrance – dubbed “Pudding Abitur” by contemporaries (Reference EichEich, 1987, 166; Reference NeghabianNeghabian, 1993). The first female minister of education of NRW, the Catholic teacher Christine Teusch (see footnote 11), was responsible for the demotion of this school type’s leaving certificate and enforced this policy against considerable protest. Reference EichEich (1987, 170) suggests that Teusch preferred a more scientific girls’ education and opposed the Frauenoberschule. If that is correct, Teusch was unsuccessful in reducing the importance of this school type. The Frauenoberschule remained a relevant, downgraded version of the Gymnasium. In 1965, 133 such schools had 23 879 students, which made up almost 22 percent of all female Gymnasium students (Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs of NRW, 1965, tables 6 and 7, own calculation). Its curricula did not include Latin and “the scientific subjects ma[d]e way from the ninth grade on for the subjects of women’s work,” meaning homemaking and pedagogy (Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs of NRW, 1965, 13). As the Ministry of Education under Mikat (CDU) declared,

In 1967, SPD minister of education Holthoff proudly declared that educational expansion had affected girls to the extent that they now made up 50 percent of all Realschule students and 44.4 percent of all Gymnasium students (Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs of NRW, 1967, 28). The last number, however, included 29 215 students at the Frauenoberschule, now termed the Gymnasium für Frauenbildung, so a significant number of female Gymnasium students still did not take a full-value Abitur exam. Furthermore, 22.5 percent of girls left the Gymnasium after the tenth grade, compared to 11.2 percent of boys (Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs of NRW, 1967, 33). Only in 1972 was the Frauenoberschule abolished in the course of the Gymnasium reform. Until then, many different Gymnasium types had existed. Girls had mostly attended modern languages Gymnasien or Frauenoberschulen, while boys more often attended classical or mathematical–natural scientific Gymnasien (Reference ZinneckerZinnecker, 1972, 70). All these types were now merged and reduced to elective subjects in the upper-secondary level. Homemaking and pedagogy became elective subjects open to boys and girls alike. They were still chosen mostly by girls, so they became a type of “women’s school within the comprehensive Gymnasium” (Reference NeghabianNeghabian, 1993, 216).

The curricula of the Volksschule and the Realschule were also dominated by traditional gender-role thinking throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The curricula of the NRW Volksschulen of 1955 included eight hours of “life-practical education” for girls during the eighth grade. During the same time, the boys had three hours of manual training, one hour of mathematics, three hours of physics and chemistry, and one hour of German (Reference Hagenmaier and PfisterHagenmaier, 1988 [1969], 250). When the ninth Volksschule year and the Hauptschule were introduced in 1966, coeducation became the rule in this school type; centralization also made this necessary. Nevertheless, the curricula differentiated between the sexes. For grades seven, eight, and nine, girls were allotted five to six hours of “life-practical education” (including homemaking, biology/physics/chemistry, needlework, and art) and two to three hours of physical education. During the same time, boys were taught three hours of biology/physics and chemistry, two hours of manual training, and three hours of physical education (Landtag NRW, June 13, 1966; Landtag NRW, November 29, 1966, quoted in Reference Dowe and FrommbergerDowe/Frommberger, 1968, 303ff, 309f). In the NRW Realschule curricula of 1965, two hours of needlework and three hours of homemaking were reserved for girls in the ninth grade. During the same time, the boys had two hours of mathematics, one to two hours of physics and chemistry and one hour of biology (Reference Hagenmaier and PfisterHagenmaier, 1988 [1969], 250).

The NRW curricula for the Hauptschule and the Realschule of 1968 and 1973 gradually included boys in homemaking lessons, though at the beginning this was elective. In 1968, Holthoff stated in a parliamentary debate that even though he thought it could be useful for boys to learn how to cook, he thought that their participation should not be obligatory (Landtag NRW, October 22, 1968, 1595). Homemaking was given up as an individual subject and instead included in a broader subject named work studies (Arbeitslehre) (Reference TornieporthTornieporth, 1977, 340ff). Only in the Hauptschule and in the integrated comprehensive school did elements of homemaking remain obligatory parts of the curricula for both sexes. Subjects that included homemaking elements remained girls’ subjects in all other educational institutions because they were chosen mostly by girls (Reference Bartsch, Methfessel, Kampshoff and WiepckeBartsch/Methfessel, 2012, 203; Reference Methfessel, Kettschau and GlumplerMethfessel/Kettschau, 1994, 90). Reference Methfessel, Kettschau and GlumplerMethfessel and Kettschau (1994, 90) conclude with respect to homemaking lessons that “coeducation, even where it is realized formally, is undermined in real terms, or only takes place in adaptation to male biographies.”

In the Realschulen and the Gymnasien, coeducation was realized from the late 1960s onward. This was not so much a result of purposeful political decision-making but mostly a result of changed preferences in the population. In October 1968, the topic was discussed in the NRW parliament because the SPD representative Bargmann had directed a question to the minister of education, Holthoff. The question was, “Does the federal state government welcome the tendency of many school operators to introduce coeducation also at Realschulen and Gymnasien, analogous to the development of the secondary Hauptschule school?” (Landtag NRW, October 22, 1968, 1593). Holthoff replied that he supported coeducation because boys and girls grew up “into the same cultural, social, and political reality” and should be made capable of realizing “the political-legal equality of the sexes” (Landtag NRW, October 22, 1968, 1594). To this end, they needed to practice cooperation in school. At the same time, Holthoff emphasized that coeducation was only desirable if it was ensured that “potential gender-specific interests” could come to expression (Landtag NRW, October 22, 1968, 1594). For this reason, one had to make sure that the number of female teachers was sufficient and that the principal and the vice-principal of the school were, if possible, a man and woman. Holthoff stated,

In the following exchange, SPD representative Bahr asked whether this meant that the ministry would now decree that coeducation had to be introduced at the public Gymnasien. To this, the minister replied that he would not do so because he thought it was better to let things grow:

Anne Ratzki, former principal of a Gymnasium in Cologne that was founded in 1967 and turned into one of the first comprehensive schools in NRW in 1975, described the development at her own school and at other similarly newly founded schools in our expert interview:

Other experts agreed that by the late 1960s, opposition to coeducation had been greatly reduced and the only antagonistic force at this point was the VkdL. As the former chair of the Education and Science Workers’ Union Ilse Brusis put it, any remaining opponents gave up their opposition because “they were just making fools of themselves” (expert interview). By 1980, there were 600 coeducational Gymnasien in NRW (65 of which were private schools), with 14 boys’ Gymnasien (11 of which were private schools) and 31 girls’ Gymnasien (28 of which were private schools) (Philologen-Verband NRW, 1981, 620). A small number of boys’ and a slightly higher number of – often Catholic – girls’ schools remain now.

Overall, women’s demands were not prioritized by any of the parties from the 1950s to 1970s (Reference Doormann and HervéDoormann, 1990, 272ff). While the social democratic women’s organization suggested many policy changes, few of these made it into the agendas of the social-liberal governments (Reference Doormann and HervéDoormann, 1990, 274). It therefore seems that the influence of the German women’s movement on party politics was relatively limited. Changes in the situation of girls in the education system took place from the late 1960s onward, but the ideal of the housewife remained strong throughout the period. Conservative opponents of school reform found willing partners within the women’s movement, such as the VkdL. Even though the VkdL represented mostly Volksschule teachers, social democrats and liberals could not forge an alliance with this group because of its connection to political Catholicism. The Catholic women’s movement belonged to the Catholic milieu, which, historically, had sympathized with economic policies serving the working class. But culturally, the Catholic female teachers were too far removed from social democracy. Social democrats and liberals only forged a weak alliance with more radical parts of the women’s movement. In other words, the dominant state-church cleavage undermined the unity of the women’s movement and the gender cleavage remained comparatively latent. The women’s movement did not represent a threat to the conservative alliance against school reforms; on the contrary, the Catholic women’s movement was integrated into this alliance.