"ONE OF THE GREAT ANNIVERSARIES OF HISTORY"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 275, 29 September 1944, Page 20

"ONE OF THE GREAT

ANNIVERSARIES OF HISTORY"

A Hundred Years

of Danish Folk-Schools

(From two talks by

H. C. D.

SOMERSET

broadcast by 2YA)

WELCOME with very great pleasure this opportunity to say something to you about what seems to me to be one of the great anniversaries of the world. It is not an anniversary of a battle or a treaty; it is one of those anniversaries we are inclined to overlook because it was one of the quiet victories of peace, On the seventh of November next, it will be just a hundred years since the first folk-school opened in Denmark. I believe that this folkmovement may yet have most important lessons for the whole world in the days to come. Let me hasten to give you a picture of a typical folk-school. I was able to visit about a dozen of the 57 schools in operation when I was in Denmark in 1936, and the memory of it is still vividly clear. I am thinking of one school I visited. Like all folk-schools it was situated out in the country. Imagine a@ spacious old country house built of mellow brick covered with creepers, set in a garden of fine trees. Think of cool lawns, shady walks, bright flower beds. This is the home of the forstander, or principal, his staff and large family of students. Inside we find the house simply and sensibly furnished. There is an atmosphere of peaceful refinement. I used to think that here was life in the country raised to its highest powerall the beauty of growing things added to the charm of good books, music, friendship and conversation. Here are excellent pictures, a fine old grand piano, a lute hanging on the wall, piles of music, little tables covered with magazines from London, New York, Paris. Situated here and there in the garden are the homes of the permanent staff. Students also live in these homes: there are no large dormitories; they live in rooms, usually two to a room. In the garden, too, are to be found the gymnasium, the library, classrooms and study-rooms. In nearly every classroom there is a piano, for there is much music and singing in a folk-school. At meal times the students eat "together with the staff and principal in the dining hall, just as they do in Oxford. But the students are not the sons of a privileged class as many are at Oxford; they are the sons or daughters of small farmers. The fees they pay are small, usually about a pound a week, which covers board and tuition. How long do they spend in 4 folk-school? Usually men come in for five months in winter, women for three months in the summer. What are their ages? From 18 to 30; Students are not admitted before the age of 18. They are people who leave school at the end of the primary or secondary stage and go to work on farms. When they come to adult years, they spend at least one session in an adult residential high school. What do they study during those months in the folk-schools? Not, as you would perhaps think, the things relating to practical agriculture. For those who wish to extend their knowledge of farming, there are schools similar to our agricultural colleges, but the men and women «students come to the folk-schools to learn how to live a life, not how to earn a living. The usual subjects of study in these Danish schools are the cultural

ones; history, music, art, literature, the Danish language, physical culture, comparative religion, craftwork, economics. An English authority has said that nothing the students learn in these schools would be considered in England to be any good to them in their trade or calling. They come because they find it good to leave farm work to fill their minds and their hearts with the spirit of the folk-schools. There is hardly a farm in the whole country that has not been profoundly influenced by the teaching of these schools. More than half of the members of the Cabinet in the Danish Parliament were ex-folk-school men, when I visited the country in 1936. In the opinion of those who have observed affairs in Denmark over a long period, it is the folk-schools that have made Denmark a country that has carried the principles of democracy and co-opera-tion farther than any other. And these people’s universities-for that is what folk-schools are — have done this not by setting out to teach subjects, but by showing men and women how to live more abundantly. . The Man Behind it All And all this began a hundred years ago. The man who thought out the principles of this unique form of rural education was the poet-pastor-teacher-historian Nicolai Frederick Severin Grundtvig, a man who has been justly called the great prophet of the north. Grundtvig was born in 1783, and was the son of a country parson. Destined for the Church himself, he passed through the Latin School at Aarhus, in Jutland, as a preparation for the university. While there Grundtvig developed a deep hatred of the monotonous and unimaginative routine of the Latin schools. Like many another student of active mind and body, he soon learned that the type of education the school was supplying was not suited to the needs of the people. He wanted , to liberalise education. In place of the Latin classics, which were entirely foreign to the whole spirit of the men of the north, he wanted to substitute the Norse tales, with their gods and heroes. So he took the old Norse mythology. and turned it into verse. This established him as a poet. In 1811 Grundtvig was ordained into the Church. But just as he had rebelled against the narrowness of the Latin schools, he now rebelled against the formal dogmatism of the Church of his day. He advocated a happier, more vital Christianity. It is

no wonder that he met with continual opposition both from men of the school and men of the Church. Often he was without a pulpit, After 17 years he gave up the ministry and devoted himself wholly to poetry and history. Four years later, after a trip. to England, he expressed the idea that had long been forming in, his mind, that of a people’s university or folk-school. He

had come to have a-profound faith in the ordinary, patient, hard-working man, He believed that if the Danish peasants could be inspired by what he called "the living word," they would re-make the Danish nation. He had in mind for the working of this miracle a new type of organisation — a school where there would be taught a living religion, where the Danish language as a means of expression would be studied, where the old Norse folk tales would be kept alive and where the virile poetry of his race would be lived. At first his ideas met with little support. Few would believe that the rough, uncouth peasant lads still in the feudal age could profit

by a liberal education. Teachers who had taught nothing but Latin and mathematics to the chosen few could not believe that there was enough in the contemporary scene for a whole new system of education. They smiled tolerantly, and went back to the security of their Latin particles. A True Prophet But Grundtvig kept on. There was now an urgency about his appeal. It was not only as an educationist that he spoke and wrote in those days. He spoke also as a patriot, as one who saw national disaster ahead if the people could not be given a new sense of

responsibility. He had lived through troubled times in a _ rapidly-changing Europe; times remarkably like our own, He was 10 years old when news of the terror of the French Revolution came through to Denmark. There followed the Napoleonic wars, culminating for Denmark in a humiliating peace with the loss of Norway. Now there came a new fear, the fear-of German pressure from the south through Schleswig and Holstein. Later events showed him to be a true prophet. At last when Grundtvig Was 61 years of age, the first folk-school was opened, at Rodding, in Northern Schleswig, on November 7, 1844. It opened with 20 pupils. The Rédding School owed its establishment to a small group of people who agreed with Grundtvig about the need for defending the Danish language and culture against German encroachment. The chief supporter of the new school was Christian Flor, a professor of Danish at the University of Kiel. An outline plan of the new school submitted to the King for approval described something entirely new, a school for the sons of small farmers and middle classes, controlled by a board of directors consisting of seven persons, three of them farmers. The curriculum was to include the Danish language and literature, history, civics, Swedish, natural sciences, singing and gymnastics, drawing and surveying. For the next 20 years the school encountered all the difficulties of a pioneer. It was near to closing entirely at the end of its first year; but Christian Flor resigned his professorship and took charge for two years. For Practical Living In 1850, Sofus Hogsbro, a man imbued with Grundtvig’s philosophy, took charge of the school, and guided it through the next 12 difficult years. His work was important in that he established some principles that have guided the folk-schools ever since. There were those who wanted to introduce purely vocational studies; others wanted examinations and diplomas; others wanted to design courses leading to the university, H6égsbro resisted all these. "This institution," he wrote, "has no desire to under-estimate the importance of technical knowledge nor the developing of a clear and incisive mind. It’s aim, however, is essentially to educate for practical living. We deem the development, of the will and the emotions more important than the exercisine of

the memory and the intellect." How magnificently this accords with modern educational theory! A Disciple Carries On The tale of the folk-school at Rédding is, however, only half the story of the origin of these schools. The other half belongs to a_ disciple of Grundtvig, who did more than anyone else to put the schools on a sound footing. He was

Kristen Kold, a man of tremendous vigour and originality. The son of a Jutland shoemaker, he refused to follow his father’s trade, and elected to become a teacher. His career promised to be short-lived, however, for he had all Grundtvig’s contempt of the narrow academic work of the schools of his day, He consequently gave up his teaching and went on a five years’ trip to Turkey, as assistant to a missionary. On his return to Denmark he bought a piece of land, collected a small sum of money from friends, and with the help of some lads from nearby farms, set out to build a folk-school. It was ready in 1851, and Kéld issued a prospectus from which I shall quote a few paragraphs. "The school session will run from November first to April first. "Twenty pupils will be accepted; of these 10 can be lodged in the school; the rest. will be accommodated in the village and surrounding country. The tuition fee has been fixed at 20 kroner and the cost of food and lodging at 40 kroner. "Two teachers will be appointed if the Minister of Education will contribute to their salaries. "The course has been arranged to occupy two winter sessions. "The studies will comprise universal history, the Bible story, church history, the history of Denmark and Norse mythology, geography in broad outline, selected writings from Danish authors, singing with special reference to the old lays of the heroes. "Finally, instruction in the usual school studies will be continued in a way to teach students their practical use, where in most other schools these studies are simply memorised mechanically. "The cost of tuition and maintenance for five months will be 60 kroner. While this charge is as low as it is possible to make it, it is higher than many people who would like to give their children a thorough education, can afford. We have, therefore, arran to distribute the payments over a num of years. For instance, a man who wishes to send his son at once need pay only 20 kroner the first and second ‘vinter and the remainder of the ccst, if necessary, may be extended over the following five, 10, 15 or 20 years. On the other hand, some other man whose son has not yet reached the required age, may begin his yearly payments at once, which will be placed to his credit, to be drawn upon later." I have no means of estimating the value of 60 kroner in the Denmark of 1851 in terms of New Zealand currency to-day, but it could not have been more than £10 to £15 for the five months’ board and tuition. Kold’s method of distributing the cost over a number of years gives us some idea of the poverty of the people on the land at that time. His method of finance has remained to this day. The folk-schools are privately owned, Often the principal owns the land and buildings; sometimes they are owned by small groups of people or by some society. "Rouse Them And Teach Them" I can best sum up Kold’s philosophy. by quoting his own words: "I do not believe," he wrote, "that I can do as much to instruct as to inspire my students. I want first to rouse them and then to give them instruction, or at least to stimulate and to teach them at the same time. This seems to me the right way, because stimulation is éssential at the beginning. If one asks how I, who am no prophet and really never had any schooling, should have attempted to inspire and teach the people, my answer is that when I began I found that not until the enthusiasm of my students was aroused were they ready for any instruction. They were simple folk, who had never been taught, and whose minds had first to be awakened."