9 minute read
A Nobel Story
Te founding meeting for the Nordic UWC Foundation took place at the Nobel institute in Oslo 1986. As a result, since the inauguration in 1995, fve students and one teacher have participated at the annual peace prize ceremony in the city-hall. Taking part in the Nobel Prize award ceremony marks the highlight of an education that in many ways serves peace.
It is a Tuesday, nine o’clock in the morning, December 2019 in frostbitten Oslo. Some of the teenagers from UWC RKN are nevertheless dressed in thin, silky, and shimmering stockings. Tey are now seated at a café, diagonally across from the Parliament, Edda in her traditional Norwegian costume, bunad, Leanne in her Malaysian silk dress, Manuel in an Italian suit and Ghulam and Elin in their fnest clothes. Tey are this year’s representatives of UWC RKN at the Nobel peace prize award ceremony. It will take place inside the city hall in fve hours.
It is a Tuesday, nine o’clock in the morning, December 2019 in frostbitten Oslo. Some of the teenagers from UWC RKN are nevertheless dressed in thin, silky, and shimmering stockings. They are now seated at a café, diagonally across from the Parliament, Edda in her traditional Norwegian costume, bunad, Leanne in her Malaysian silk dress, Manuel in an Italian suit and Ghulam and Elin in their finest clothes. They are this year’s representatives of UWC RKN at the Nobel peace prize award ceremony. It will take place inside the city hall in five hours. – We have learnt about the relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea at school. We are well acquainted with the problems that have been going on there for nearly three decades, starts Manuel, and he continues: – But we are expecting to learn more about what the prize-winner did for the relations. What was his approach? I already know that I will be using the impressions from this visit in future school essays.
1. No shortage of breathtaking shows. 2. Her Majesty the Queen in conversation with students in Iceland House during her visit in 2014. 3 New employees have arrived: Barbara Anu-Dabu, Heike Katzenheimer, Anna Garner, Marina Willemoes and little Dubie Toa-Kwapong.
Our delegation to the Nobel Peace Prize Award in 2018. The auditorium has always been an important meeting place, herer from a college meeting in 2018.
Experiences with war, visions of peace Next to Manuel sits Ghulam. He has Afghani parents and calls himself Afghani but was born and raised in Pakistan. The war is to be blamed for that. Ghulam’s dad was a soldier in the Afghan army when they were defeated by the Taliban. His father had no choice but to flee with his wife and nine children. Ghulam has few memories from his fatherland. He remembers once returning to get his passport. He feels very much at home in Karachi, Pakistan’s multicultural capital, his birthplace. – I come from a war-torn country and am curious to know what brings about peace. I imagine peace as living in a place where one might find love, knowledge through togetherness, where one has hope and few fears. I had hardly experienced anything like this, before coming to Flekke. But I did know about the Nobel peace prize since Malala is from Pakistan.
Malala was the youngest prize-winner ever, only sixteen years old when she received it in 2014, for the work she did for girls’ rights to education. And as the most iconic of all prize winners, it is only natural
Jordanella Maluka Chagiye Mpoyo is interviewed by Al Jazeera in the Oslo City Hall, following the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018. The Pioneers have arrived.
to mention Nelson Mandela, for his work to abolish apartheid. Until the day he died, Mandela was the Honorary President of the UWC movement. Today, the prize goes to Dr Ably Ahmed Ali, prime minister of Ethiopia for his efforts to reduce conflicts in the region. Since becoming prime minister of Ethiopia in April 2018, he was dedicated to putting in place a peace treaty with Eritrea, after many years of conflict. RCN has a mandate to educate for peace. Therefore five students get to take part in the award ceremony every year. This illustrates how the host nation Norway and the UWC are tied together. The idea being that it is possible to increase understanding and tolerance across religions, cultures, and nations. In the context of UWC, this idea can be traced all the way back to its founding father Kurt Hahn.
UWCs and the history of peace Kurt Hahn was born in Berlin in 1886.1 He studied philosophy at Oxford but was also educated in psychology, pedagogy, art history and social economy. After World War I, Hahn worked as personal secretary for Prince Max von Baden, the last Reich
1 Much of the information in this section comes from Knoll, Michael: School Reform rough «Experiential erapy» Kurt Hahn: An E cacious
Educator (2014) Te idea being that it is possible to increase understanding and tolerance across religions, cultures, and nations.
chancellor of the German Empire. Von Baden was also a peace worker in Versailles. At Prince Max’s family castle Salem in Bavaria, Hahn helped open a boarding school in 1920. The unifying idea there was influenced by his steadfast humanistic-liberal philosophy. The pedagogical program was aimed at challenging pupils and inciting them to have experiences and make experiments in a manner that befitted their age. To learn by doing active social work was, and still is, one of the important principles at Salem-school. Hahn encouraged character-building through physical education, self-discipline, personal initiative, innovation, memory, and imagination. Hahn favored non-competitive physical activities and democratic forms of collaboration instead of what was the norm in similar schools throughout Germany. Every day, students were to go for a silent walk with the aim of experiencing nature and developing their ability to reflect. The school actively sought out pupils from underprivileged homes.
Hahn ran the school for ten years before stepping down and dedicating himself to political writing. As National Socialism was gaining ground in Germany, he became increasingly worried. He is said to have been part of an attempt to stop Hitler from coming to power. Hahn was imprisoned in 1933 after publicly criticising the Nazis’ politics of violence, but was released with help from the previous British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. Hahn fled to England in June 1933 and established a new school that followed the same principles as Salem-schools in Germany. The Gordonstoun School in Scotland contributed to him being called one of the creators of the international school reform. Hahn’s philosophy was a reference for many, also beyond the field of education. In his book civilisation’s eight deadly sins, the Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz wrote that one can achieve lasting influence on one’s character when given the chance to meet and overcome adversity.1
Lorenz had beenstudying the development in English schools and had noticed a change when Hahn founded Gordonstoun. Lorenz writes:” Kurt Hahn has produced tremendous therapeutic results by putting jaded youths who’d lost all interest in everything, to work as lifeguards by the coast. In these situations where they were put to the test and their personality’s deeper layers were immediately accessible, many of them found real healing.”
Kurt Hahn was written into the history of pedagogy as a representative for indirect upbringing and and can be seen in light with pedagogues like Maria Montessori. As is the case with Montessori, Hahn’s pedagogical ideas were, in part, about building trust and
2 Lorenz, Konrad: Civilized Man’s Eight Deadly Sins - Utgivar Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (1974) 3 Myhre, Reidar: Oppdragelse i helhetspedagogisk perspektiv (1994)
Education for peace?
Te basic idea he had already brought from the military school in Paris: To enable (ex-) enemies from diferent countries to join forces and work towards a common goal character through independence and relationships. In the schools that preceded UWC (Salem and Gordonstoun), youths learned to take responsibility through rescue work in the mountains and at sea.
In 1941 Hahn was part of establishing the educational program Outward Bound, where the fundamental idea was that people, especially the young, developed best when being put to the test against the forces of nature. By exposing oneself to challenges, one can make self discoveries and use one’s full potential.
In the 1950’s Hahn visited the NATO’s military school in Paris and met Air Marshal Sir Lawrence Darvall. Hahn noticed how Darvall would let young officers from Germany and England collaborate, and was undoubtedly inspired to see education and exchange happening across what were thought to be unbridgeable gaps of nationality, politics, and culture. Hahn really began taking the idea for an “Atlantic College” seriously and got Sir Darvall to join him and support the work involved in founding the school. The basic idea he had already brought from the military school in Paris: To enable (ex-) enemies from different countries to join forces and work towards a common goal.
Amongst the audience in that room was the director of the NATO school. These two men were to subsequently work together and set up Atlantic College; a Peace College created during the Cold War.
One might say that the Cold War had reached a turning point by the time these devotees actively began working for a Nordic UWC. Tom Gresvig, a former student at Atlantic College, helped create the Foundation, a Nordic United World College at the Nobel Institute in Oslo. Sitting in the Foundation’s board were the Principal of Berg high school Otto Kaltenborn, MP Hans Olav Tungesvik, director of the Nobel Institute Jacob Sverdrup, the CEO of Freia Knut Hjortdal, former Secretary of State Karin Stoltenberg, Professor Ingrid Eide, cultural editor for Aftenposten Finn Jor, former Ministers Helge Seip and Sven Stray, as well as former High Court Judge Einar Løchen.
This was Norway before the Oslo Accords, before the country really established its role as a Nation of Peace. Today, the peace motive runs like a red thread through the Haugland campus; from the former art teacher Simon James’ wooden sculpture of reconciliation by the administration building, via classrooms and the activity center, the pan-cultural Silent House, and the Boarding House where the students live, sleep, and share experiences together daily. All of it is made in a modest style that reflects the local traditions.
4 Stetson, Charles P: An essay on Kurt Hahn, founder of Outwards bound (1941) 5 Ibid
Flekke - in the middle of the world.
