[PDF] The Folk High Schools And Rural Life Of The Scandinavian Countries eBook

Author : Steven M. Borish
Publisher : Blue Dolphin Publishing
Page : 520 pages
File Size : 29,41 MB
Release : 1991
Category : Education
ISBN :

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The Land of the Living is a study of the Danish folk high schools, a remarkable alternative school form that has endured in Denmark for nearly 150 years. The existence of the folk high schools today allows the Danish citizen to undertake a direct, personal experience in free education. For a limited period in his or her life, any Danish citizen can enter a folk high school and encounter a variety of new ideas, people and places. Beginning with a year's total immersion in three folk high schools, Steven Borish embarked on a personal journey through Danish society. His journey took him from the fields and small towns of Jutland to the busy streets of Copenhagen, and enabled him to see Denmark as few foreigners ever have. Combining his anthropological sensitivity with the broader outlook of the historian, he came to ask a unique and unprecedented set of questions about the path to modernization taken by Danish society. The author's inquiry is centered around an historical puzzle: Why did the same modernization process that was so often accompanied by violent repression elsewhere take place more peacefully and non-violently in Denmark? His research took him back to the remarkable Danish Land Reforms of the late 18th century, and to the life and work of a major prophetic figure, N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783-1872). "The schools for life," the "People's Enlightenment," "the living word" these are some of the ideas set forth by Grundtvig, who in 1830 first proposed the establishment of a new type of school in Denmark. Professor Borish's description of these events provides a living example of how the people of one small country responded to a series of political and economic crises with a non-violent political revolution that enabled them quite literally to "rise from the ashes." Yet the author presents this historical analysis not as an end but as a departure point for understanding the Danish present. In an unusual blend of cultural analysis and personal observation, he brings contemporary Denmark alive for the reader with his description of today's folk high schools. This well-researched and meticulously documented study represents the first definitive account of Danish society to be written by a non-Dane. Its creative use of techniques from anthropology and related fields is certain to attract favorable attention from all those interested in the problems of social and historical analysis.

Author : H. W. Foght
Publisher :
Page : 103 pages
File Size : 44,76 MB
Release : 1914
Category :
ISBN :

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This bulletin contains the third section of Harold W. Foght's report on the rural schools of Denmark. This section of the report pertains almost wholly to the folk high schools, which have by common consent been the most important factor in the transformation in the rural life of Denmark and in the phenomenal economic and social development of that country. In the 30 years from 1881 to 1912 the value of the exports of standard agricultural products--bacon, eggs, and butter--increased from $12,000,000 to $125,000,000. Waste and worn-out lands have been reclaimed and renewed. Cooperation in production and marketing has become more common than in any other country. Landlordism and farm tenantry have almost disappeared. Only 2 per cent of Danish farmers are now tenants or leaseholders. Rural social life has become intelligent, organic, and attractive. A high type of idealism has been diffused among the masses of the people. A real democracy has been established. This is the outgrowth of an educational system, universal, practical, and democratic. Any agency so simple, modest, and inexpensive as the Danish folk high school that can be considered even as one of the important factors in such a result, or rather in such a combination of results, is well worth careful study by the people of the United States. That the Danish folk high school may be successfully transplanted is abundantly shown by the success of such schools in other Scandinavian countries--Norway, Sweden, Finland. That the form of the school must be modified for successful transplanting to English-speaking countries is not only shown by the attempts to establish schools of this kind in England and America, but is inherent in the very nature of the schools and in the principles and ideals out of which they have grown. The purpose of this bulletin is to tell in as simple a manner as possible the story of the Danish schools, emphasizing what they have accomplished for the nation at large and for rural folk as individuals, in the hope of lending some assistance to the earnest men and women who are at this time hard at work to bring about an awakening in some of the retarded byways of our own American rural life. Individual sections contain footnotes. (Contains 5 tables and 6 plates.) [Best copy available has been provided.].