Preventing Violent Extremism through Education

This article offers a critical policy analysis of Norway’s 2024 Official Report Joint Efforts Against Extremism (NOU 2024: 3), examining how the document frames education’s role in preventing violent extremism (PVE). Over the past decade, Norway has expanded its extremism prevention strategy from security and policing toward social and educational domains, positioning schools as central to democratic resilience. Drawing on Ellefsen et al.’s (2023) identification of three recurring dilemmas in PVE work: civil liberties versus security, local versus national implementation, and intentions versus outcomes, alongside Davies’ (2009) framing of extremism, the analysis interprets how preventive education is constructed at the intersection of democracy and security. The findings reveal that the NOU portrays education as both a safeguard of democratic values and a mechanism of social control, reproducing moral binaries that risk narrowing democratic dialogue. By linking structural policy tensions with pedagogical dilemmas, the study demonstrates how PVE discourse translates national security concerns into moral and educational obligations. The Norwegian case illustrates a broader paradox in contemporary prevention policy: the more education is mobilized to defend a morally defined concept of democracy, the more it risks constraining the pluralism on which democracy depends. This article advances comparative and international education research by examining how PVE policy navigates the interplay of local and national contexts, and how broader theoretical debates of democracy, pluralism, and securitization are translated into educational governance.