This article analyzes the post-war Norwegian education policy through three education reform periods, the first in the 1950s and 60s, the next in the 1990s and the latest in the 2000s, known as Knowledge Promotion. Although education policy reform is the subject of political compromises and pragmatic solutions, it is not irrelevant who is sitting at the helm and drive the reforms through. The first two reforms were both initiated and implemented by The Labour Party, and had the comprehensive school as their main project. The latter was initiated by the Labour Party, designed by the Conservatives in a bourgeois coalition government, and finally implemented by The Socialist Left Party under a red-green coalition government. The article builds on a previous study of the first two reforms as social democratic school project, which concluded that the social democratic school project in the first reform period would be through a solidarity gathering culture, while the next reform period emphasized knowledge solidarity through a common knowledge and cultural basis (Volckmar 2005; Volckmar 2008).

In this there was also an understanding that there had been a shift in the political conditions for buildung, from providing for a more ethical self in the student's meeting with the contemporary society and in interaction with students from different social layers in the first reform period, to a more pre-defined self in the student’s meeting with a pre-defined common knowledge and cultural basis in the second period.

This article questions 1) how Knowledge Promotion as the latest Norwegian education reform articulates itself and the relationship between knowledge and solidarity, and 2) the conditions for buildung.

Habermas’ theories of the social state project serves as the theoretical framework for the first question, while the second question relies additionally on theories of buildung and an understanding of buildung as both an internal and external process.

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