Economising is trump

The programme is a combination of fact and fiction, based on the current tendencies to crisis in Western civilization, which in Denmark have resulted in increasing unemployment, retrenchments in the national budget and cut-backs in the area of education. The programme portrays the development of a law – a fictitious law invented by the originators of the programme – and the presentation of this imaginary law to the people whom it affects, in this case a number of school children in the top form of some Danish schools. The pupils were not told that the law was fictitious before the filming took place. The imaginary law stated that one third of all pupils in the top forms of the schools would be forced to leave school, “primarily those pupils situated in the row of seats adjacent to the windows of the schoolrooms, unless the pupils themselves could choose a corresponding number from among them”. When the programme was completed, the pupils who participated were invited to view the film and approve it. The pupils did approve it, and affirmed that neither they nor their parents objected to their participation in the programme.