Folk high school
Folk high schools are institutions for adult education that generally do not grant academic degrees, though certain courses might exist leading to that goal. They are most commonly found in Nordic countries and in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. The concept originally came from the Danish writer, poet, philosopher, and pastor N. F. S. Grundtvig. Grundtvig was inspired by the Marquis de Condorcet's Report on the General Organization of Public Instruction which was written in 1792 during the French Revolution. The revolution had a direct influence on popular education in France. In the United States, a Danish folk school, called Danebod, was founded in Tyler, Minnesota.
Image:Jämsän opisto.jpg|thumb|Christian folk high school in Jämsä, Finland
Despite similar names and somewhat similar goals, the institutions in Germany and Sweden are quite different from those in Denmark and Norway. Folk high schools in Germany and Sweden are in fact much closer to the institutions known as folkeuniversitet in Norway and Denmark, which provide adult education. However, unlike the folkeuniversitet, folk high schools in Sweden are not connected with a regular university. The Finnish adult education centers called työväenopisto, kansanopisto and kansalaisopisto are also part of the adult education tradition. Note that the Finnish kansanopisto and kansalaisopisto are completely distinct institutions and function very differently despite having similar names.
Other countries have also been inspired by Grundtvig's concept of popular education. In Nigeria, the United States, and India, a few schools have been built upon Grundtvig's principles for education.
History
, regarded as the founder of the folk high school, received inspiration for the concept from the English boarding schools, but Grundtvig's focus was not on formal education but on popular education. The idea was to give the peasantry and other people from the lower echelons of society a higher educational level through personal development; what Grundtvig called "the living word". The language and history of the fatherland, its constitution and main industries along with folk songs should be the guiding principles for an education based on a Christian framework.The first folk high school was established in 1844 in Rødding, Denmark. The school in Rødding, however, was somewhat aristocratic as chiefly civil servants and rich farmers were enrolled.
Another pioneer for the folk high school was the teacher Christen Kold. His, for that time, highly unorthodox way of teaching gave the folk high schools a broader democratic basis in comparison to the initial religious focus. The teaching took place from November to March because students did farm work the rest of the year. Kold's goal was for students to return to the school regularly in the winter to continue their education. In the beginning only young men could attend the courses, but in 1861 young women also gained access to folk high schools when teaching began being offered from May to July. The men still only attended during winter.
The breakthrough for the idea was the Second War of Schleswig in 1864 when Denmark had to surrender a large part of its territory. This incident allowed the growth of a new Danish consciousness and nationalism based on enlightenment of the people. Denmark's loss of territory to Prussia hit the Danish national consciousness hard, which became a catalyst for a new Danish identity. They established folk high schools all around the country and by 1867 twenty-one folk high schools had opened. Almost everyone working at the folk high schools had been an apprentice of Grundtvig. In 1918 the number of folk high schools in Denmark had reached 68.
Modern folk high schools vary significantly. Some still have a religious focus but most of them are secular. The schools are still Grundtvigian folk high schools which means that their focus is on enlightenment, ethics, morality and democracy although they are not taught explicitly. The Grundtvigian philosophy is embedded in the teaching of various subjects, e.g. the arts, gymnastics and journalism. Most of the schools have an area of expertise, such as sports, music or writing. Since no degree or diploma is awarded at the end, the teaching is freer and more informal than at ordinary educational institutions. Most Scandinavian folk high schools are boarding schools where the students live for from two to six months, though some schools offer programs for an entire year.
Philosophy
The movement started as a row with the old school. Grundtvig fought for a public education as an alternative to the university elite. The folk high schools should be for those wanting to learn in general and to help people form part of human relations and society.The folk high schools have changed naturally – some also radically – through time, but many of Grundtvig's core ideas about the folk high school are still to be found in the way they are run today. The folk high school of today is engaged in a complex modern reality and influenced both by national, international and global questions.
One of the main concepts still to be found at the folk high schools today is "lifelong learning". The schools should educate for life. They should shed light on basic questions surrounding life of people both as individuals and as members of society.
To Grundtvig the ideal was to give the students a sense of a common best and focusing on life as it really is. Therefore, Grundtvig never set down guidelines for the future schools or a detailed description of how they should be run. He declared that the folk high schools should be arranged and developed according to life as it is and the schools should not hold exams because the education and enlightenment was a sufficient reward.
The essential element was and is the life at the schools. A folk high school becomes what it is because of the individuals of which it is made. Learning happens across social positions and differences – the teacher learns from the student and vice versa in a living exchange and mutual teaching. For Grundtvig dialogue across differences was essential – the ideal was that people must learn to bear with the differences of each other before enlightenment can be realized.
Features
The character of folk high schools differ from country to country, but usually institutions have the following common features:- Large variety of subjects
- No final exams
- A focus on self-development
- Pedagogical freedom
- Courses last between a few months and one year, with per-course fees
- No numerus clausus
Europe
In addition to the Nordic countries and Germany there are also folk high schools in Switzerland, Austria, Poland, and France. The Association for Community Colleges advocated for European transnational Folk High Schools.Denmark
The first folk high school was founded in Rødding, Denmark, in 1844. It began on the initiative of Christen Kold, who was a follower of Grundtvig. The school was inspired by the need to educate those not fortunate enough to have an education and the poor, or peasantry, who could not spare the time or the money to attend a university. Among the other old folk high schools in Denmark are Testrup Folk High School, Askov Højskole and Ry Højskole in Jutland; Vallekilde Folk High School in Zealand, and Rødkilde Højskole on Møn. The International People's College in Helsingør is unique among the Danish folk high schools in that it is the most international one in Denmark, with classes taught in English and teachers and students from countries all around the world attending.There are around 70 folk high schools in Denmark. The principal subjects of instruction vary from the creative arts such as music, arts, design, writing, to intellectual courses such as religion, philosophy, literature and psychology. Some schools even have courses that specialize in sports. Tuition varies, but is typically around 1300 Danish kroner per week, including board and lodging.
In recent history, globalization has exercised an increasingly important influence on Danish schools. Many courses are open to foreigners as well as Danes, and many courses include travelling or voluntary stays in other countries as part of the curriculum.
Finland
In 1889, Sofia Hagman started the first folk high school in Finland in Kangasala. Public, private, secular and religious folk high schools are common in Finland, and there are also worker's high schools, which are governed by the labor movement. There are 184 folk high schools in Finland, with an annual course attendance of 650,000, in 2 million hours of lessons, which are substantial numbers for a country of 5.5 million people. Unlike in Finnish public education, there are tuition fees, per-course and per-lesson fees. The most common subjects are handicraft skills, music, languages, physical education, visual arts, theater and dance. Christian folk high schools offer religious instruction for laymen. The schools offer also courses from the primary and secondary school curriculum, which allows for improving the grades from these levels later in life, even if the student has already graduated.France
In 1866, during the Second Empire, Jean Macé founded the Ligue de l'enseignement, which was devoted to popular instruction. Following the split between the Anarchists and the Marxists at the 1872 Hague Congress, popular education remained an important part of the workers' movement, especially in the anarcho-syndicalist movement which set up, with Fernand Pelloutier, various Bourses du travail centres, where workers gathered and discussed politics and sciences. The Jules Ferry laws that were passed in the 1880s established free, secular, mandatory public education as one of the founding principles of the Third Republic. In addition, many teachers were strong supporters of Alfred Dreyfus during the Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s. Afterward, some teachers set up free educational lectures on humanist topics in order to struggle against the spread of antisemitism in France.In more recent times, following the 1981 presidential election Minister of Education Alain Savary supported Jean Lévi's initiative to create a public high school that would deliver the baccalauréat but would be organized on the principles of workers' self-management. This high school took the name Lycée autogéré de Paris. The LAP was explicitly inspired by the secondary school Vitruve, which opened in 1962 in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, Oslo Experimental High School, which opened in 1967 in Norway, and Saint-Nazaire Experimental High School, which opened six months before the LAP. Theoretical influences include the works of Célestin Freinet, Raymond Fonvieille, Fernand Oury, and other theoreticians of the institutional pedagogy, institutional analysis, and institutional psychotherapeutic movements.