But obviously, the Norwegians are unlikely to understand an ideology which puts the interests of the family before those of the individual in a society where many parents, if not most, breathe a sigh of relief when sons and daughters finally leave the nest at the age of 19-20. Another thorny issue is language and language teaching. While some maintain that Norwegian should be the only teaching language in the schools, others say that children from non-Norwegian backgrounds have a right to be taught in their mother tongue at the same time as they learn Norwegian. In municipalities with many immigrants, children are taught in several dozen languages, from Farsi to Somali. Whether this makes integration any easier for the pupils is a complicated question to which experts have no easy answer.
Religion is another controversial theme.
In Drammen, the town council has since 1975 regularly turned down applications to build a mosque. In Oslo there is now large mosque built in Arab style. Debate raged long over whether the Muslim communities should be allowed to call believers to prayer over a loudspeaker system. Those who supported this pointed out that there is no ban on church bells. This issue has now been settled.