The Danish tradition of popular education for adults

The folkehøjskole is something very unique to Danish tradition. Pronounced follka-hoy-skoaler and literally translated into English as Folk-High-School, the folkehøjskole could broadly be defined as a residential college for adults, which places the emphasis on general, mind-broadening education, and where students and staff live, eat, and share the same daily routines together for the duration of the course.

There are about 100 folkehøjskoler spread right across Denmark, most of them in rural areas or smaller towns. Most schools run long courses of 4-8 months during the winter, and shorter courses of 1-2 weeks during the summer. Over the past few years the average annual attendance has stood at around 60,000. In other words, every year some 2% of Denmark’s entire adult population go to a folkehøjskole.

The schools offer courses in subjects such as literature, history, psychology, ecology, education, music, drama, sport, crafts and art. But the underlying goal in all their activities is to help students to grow wiser –both about themselves and about the world. The idea is not to furnish ready answers, but to nurture a climate where they can emerge.


History of the folkehøjskoler: The work of N.F.S. Grundtvig

The Danish concept of popular education is intimately linked with the work of Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783-1872), a clergyman and writer. Grundtvig was a contemporary of two other eminent Danes – Hans Christian Andersen and Søren Kierkegaard – both far better known in the world at large than he is. Yet from a Danish viewpoint there is little doubt that it was Grundtvig who left the most indelible mark on Danish culture.

During the 1830s Grundtvig sketched out numeours plans for the King to set up a higher civil service school. Here the country’s future administrators would sit side by side in the classroom with the sons and daughters of peasant farmers, fishermen, workmen, tradesmen, housemaids –in short, the people at large- so that the future officers of the kingdom would get to know the wants and needs of ordinary folk and so be better able to serve the Danish people.

For various reasons, all these plans came to naught. But to offset that, Grundtvig’s ideas would came to play a major role for the Danish peasant farmers and for Denmark as a whole. The first højskole opened its doors on 7 November 1844, when eighteen farm labourers gathered at a farmhouse in the small town of Rødding, in South Jutland, to become the world’s first folkehøjskole students.

The last third of the 19th century was the golden age of the folkehøjskoler. The schools helped the farmers to gain the cultural self-confidence to take full advantage of the democratic rights granted to them under the Danish Constitution of 1849. They also formed a special form of organization: the co-operative movement. Together they established co-operative dairies, insurance companies, savings banks and so on. During this period the folkehøjskoler acted as a powerful cultural dynamo, helping to lay the foundation for the modern Danish welfare state.

A few decades after the founding of the first folkehøjskole in Denmark the other Nordic countries began to follow suit. Norway's first school was founded in 1864, with Sweden following in 1868 and Finland in 1889. Today there are over 400 folkehøjskoler across the Nordic countries, including Iceland, Greenland and the Faeroe Islands.


Learning for life

One feature common to all the folkehøjskoler is the varied range of subjects they cover. These are much the same as would be found anywhere else in the Danish educational system: literature, history, psychology, ecology, education, music, drama, sport, dance, art appreciation, photography, pottery, dressmaking, drawing, cookery and so on. Quite a number, though, have chosen to focus on just one or more particular subject areas. Ten of the 100 or so schools, have elected to place the main emphasis on physical education – sport and gymnastics. There are some that concentrate mainly on music and theatre. Others centre their attention on art or crafts. Others again focus on foreign aid work, or on ecology, nature conservation and environmental protection. One school has chosen to devote its courses to film-making and the cinema.

But to understand what is so special about the folkehøjskoler we have to look further than just the subjects they teach. For one of the basic underlying educational principles is that the truly essential factor is not the subjects taught, but the people.

It is in this light that the schools’ teaching of the various subjects has to be seen: as an indirect doorway to personal maturity and self-knowledge, so that people do not simply become experts in one narrow field and illiterate in every other area of human life.

This educational approach is a direct consequence of the legal basis on which the folkehøjskoler rest. They are required by law to provide a general broadening education and are forbidden to compete with traditional specialist educational establishments. They are not allowed to award marks or grades, or to provide specific vocational training. Their principal task is to educate their students for life – in other words to shed light on some of the basic questions surrounding life for people in Denmark today, both as individuals and as members of society.

Of course this does not mean that what is taught in the various subjects is immaterial or not taken seriously. On the contrary: since there are no exams, no institutional constraints, no marking, the folkehøjskoler have to rely entirely on the willingness and commitment of their students and the ability of the teachers to motivate them.


Free schools and popular education in Denmark

In Denmark, popular education means more than just spreading knowledge and technical skills more widely among the population at large. The Danish tradition of popular education rests on a solidly democratic outlook: no one can claim privileged access to the absolute truth – so everyone has a right to have his say.

Characteristically, Grundtvig never set out a detailed description of what his folkehøjskole should look like in practice. His ideas and plans were always couched in very general terms, the essential element being life at the school itself. A folkehøjskole becomes what it is through the individuals of which it is made up.

The folkehøjskoler are what is known as "free schools". This means that they can determine their subject profile and lessons themselves, as long as they abide by the general educational requirement laid down by law. This fundamental view of freedom and humanity is characteristic not just for the folkehøjskoler but also for Danish educational legislation as a whole.

There is no legal obligation to attend school in Denmark, only an obligation to have some form of education. If a group of parents wish to set up a special school for their children because they have their own particular view of man and the world, they are entitled of state support for running it. Parents also have a right to educate their children at home themselves, so long as they can show that it is actually done. There is broad agreement both among the population at large and in Parliament that it cannot be left to a monopoly of public authority to lay down rules on the true way of life.

Of course, this view of freedom did not simply emerge out of the blue. Its background lies in 19th -century Danish history, when various popular forces demonstrated a self-assured rejection of central authority. And ever since then it has been an unquestioned principle in Danish political life that this sense of freedom should remain inviolate.

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