Introduction People's Education: The Ideas of N. S. F. Grundtvig The Folk High Schools Toward an Understanding of People's Education... Conclusion Footnotes

Table of Contents

Carrying on Despite the Violent Twentieth Century:

A Tenacious History of People’s Education

by Chris Spicer

^

Introduction

There is a story from Middle Eastern tradition about the Hodja, a clever and wise spiritual leader. When the people have assembled for their weekly worship in the mosque, the Hodja asks from his pulpit: “True believers, tell me please if what I am about to say to you, you know already.” Thrown off by his question, the people reply that there is no way they could know of the wisdom of the great Hodja. So he leaves them, saying that it would be of no use to talk about things unknown to them or to him. The gathered followers are larger in number the next week, and the Hodja again puts forth his question. This time, the people respond: “Oh yes, of course we know what you are about to say to us.” But the Hodja again departs, saying it would be a waste of everyone’s time to speak of things everyone knows already. A week later, when the mosque overflows with curious seekers, the people are ready for the Hodja’s question. Half of them stand, confessing ignorance to knowing what the Hodja might say. Then the other half stand, claiming to know exactly what he will say. The Hodja nods solemnly and speaks: “Now I know how I can help you. The half who knows what I am going to say will now tell the other half exactly what that is. For this you have my blessing.”

The essence of people’s education? Is it, boiled down, so basic? We anciently-inspired (from time-honored cultural wisdom), but reactively motivated (against twentieth century institutional oppressions) “progressive” learners/educators speak of the heart, of freedom, of nurturing creativity, of listening to/learning from the earth and its nature, and of reconfiguring the role of “student” and “teacher” in the learning endeavor. Are these represented in this metaphor for the learning potential, waiting to be tapped from our collective human experience, knowledge, and relationships? Can such complexity be represented in a such a basic idea of people coming together to share what they know, to learn from each other, and (we hope) to act on that exchange by incorporating the resulting incites and knowledge into their daily lives?

My quick answer is yes - and no. The critical elements of people’s education may be lurking in the Hodja’s community. But to suggest that real learning will in fact happen in such an unstructured setting would be wrong, if only because it doesn’t guarantee a democratic process (including an accounting of majority/minority power), nor a clarified agenda and reflection. Yet, at the core of the Hodja’s message is a fundamental philosophy: We have in us, collectively, much knowledge and experience, and given the freedom to name our needs and goals, we have drive and passion to pursue them.

In this chapter, I discuss the concept of people’s education, particularly through one set of roots originating in nineteenth century Denmark, but also through an exploration of a twentieth century melding of experiences - including the Danish - in North America that I would suggest needs a new framing and recognition.

^

People’s education: the ideas of N. F. S. Grundtvig

The term “people’s education” is one translation of the Danish folkeoplysning or the Swedish folkbildning, terms originating in the religious and social movements of the 19^th century, and much inspired by - among others - Danish philosopher, poet, educator, and clergyman N.F.S. Grundtvig. It describes the pedagogical ideas of a broad category of non-formal (as opposed to the mainstream, credential-based) learning organizations which grow from the grassroots and include such models as evening schools, folkhighschools (folkehøjskoler) and day folkhighschools, study circles, participatory research projects, and community-based centers (particularly those serving “marginalized” learners, though also some serving mainstream people in such places as public libraries). It is a term which also is translated in other historical and cultural contexts as “folk education,” “folk development education,” and of great importance to the North American context, the Latin American-inspired “popular education,” as exemplified by the work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire.

N.F.S. Grundtvig was a bishop, educator, philosopher, writer, poet, and hymn writer - most certainly having one of the most profound impacts on Denmark and its people. He lived in an extraordinary time, one in which Denmark lived a relatively non-violent response to a violent period of Europe’s industrial revolution. The seeds of its transition from monarchy to democracy - and thus an opening for the ideas of N.F.S. Grundtvig - can be summarized briefly by two significant events: First was a number of late eighteenth century socio/political transformations, including the elimination of the slave trade and censorship of the press, and highlighted by a set of land reforms which transferred significant power to the rural peasantry.¹ Second, was the devastating loss of Denmark’s Norwegian territory to Sweden, which came about from the 1814 treaties ending the Napoleonic Wars. While the emerging democratic movement experienced a major set-back from this social and economic disaster, it perhaps also framed the uniqueness of Denmark’s path to national rebirth and social enlightenment. It was to this devastation of hope and prosperity, and to the German aggression later in the century, that Grundtvig provided a different way out: “What we have lost externally, we must regain internally.”

It is always a serious challenge to attempt a brief description of the foundations of Grundtvig’s thinking. My clearest understandings have come from the folkhighschool teacher and administrator Frederik Christensen, who describes Grundtvig’s pedagogical genius as “the indirect method: First you must learn to love life, then you can reform the world. Nearly all other pedagogical philosophies stress the opposite: First you must reform the world, then you can love.”² The essence of this indirect method was rooted in two beliefs he held about being human and learning: 1) “that the spiritual life which people are meant to live includes a claim to freedom, since ‘freedom is the element of the spirit;’”, and 2) “that every individual is born into a specific society and thus inherits particular traditions, history and language. To be a human being is to accept oneself as part of a certain people with a particular cultural identity and to take pride in it.”³

Building on these fundamentals, I highlight three elements of Grundtvig’s ideas about our human learning needs to set the stage for a discussion about the practical application of these ideas, the folkhighschool. These include his beliefs about our human identity: individual, cultural, and democratic.⁴

Individual Identity and Meaning. Grundtvig was concerned about personal growth as a process of understanding identity as encompassing communal, cultural, and political pieces. Two aspects of the individual are significant. The first is that the individual is only whole as a part of a community of other individuals. Danish scholar Knud Bugge describes it this way: “Grundtvig thought individual freedom could be destructive because if you take it to its extreme, then it means that the individual should have the right to clamp down on other people, suppress them, and use them as materials for his own gains.”⁵

The second point is that the individual, as a common person, is the source of knowledge and meaning. Scholar Steven Borish describes Grundtvig’s belief that the real source of enlightenment is to be found lying latent in the common people and not in “those he contemptuously referred to as “'the learned ones.'”⁶ To Grundtvig, education was for the purpose of responding to the need and struggle of the common people’s lives, to help probe identity and address needs of the community, whether it be to nurture young people into community leadership instead of leaving for “greener pastures”, or to address the spiritual life of the community.

Cultural Identity. For Grundtvig, the individual is connected to a time and place, that is to a particular historical, cultural, and social/political context. As a “fortress” against external (primarily German) aggression, the folkhighschool was a place to immerse oneself in Nordic myths, language, and tradition. Yet, Grundtvig was also concerned about people as members of a global community, requiring us to cross borders of race, class, nationality, culture, and a myriad of community differences. In his smaller nineteenth century world, he envisioned a Nordic university which brought people together across the different Scandinavian cultures. A twentieth century application can be found at the International People’s College which brings together students from all over the globe.

Democratic Identity. Two ideas are central to Grundtvig’s thinking about democracy:

1. Since the source of enlightenment is to be found in the common people, then so is the key to full participation and empowerment in the life of the community.

2. The role of the individual in strengthening democracy is as an active citizen who understands one’s history, and through dialogue, engages in celebration, resistance, and problem-solving to effect democratic social change.

These principles of humanness and learning suggest particular responses that begin with getting to know each other better in an experimental school or community whose primary focus is on building a larger culture of democracy that values differences, promotes dialogue, and shares power. Ultimately, it is about building a civil society that allows and nurtures its citizens to reach beyond their struggles for material survival. Here is where the folkhighschool comes to flower.

^

The folk high schools

Grundtvig’s greatest legacy - the folkehøjskole (folkhighschool) was from the beginning a school for young adults - in their late teens or twenties. Since the first school was founded (not by Grundtvig) in 1844, it has been an evolving structure which has always struggled to balance the need for organization and institutionalization with the necessity of individual and small group freedom. In sum, it can be captured by the following:

1. Purpose: To enliven and enlighten the individual as an integral part of the community; To transform our communities to be more democratic, just, and sustainable.

2. Pedagogy: Learning experiences must honor:
   • A full range of expression, of heart, mind, and body;
     
   • A partnership between students and teachers in a dialogue of free and critical inquiry;
     
   • The community experience (history, mythology, etc.), including analysis which probes its history in light of its current needs;
     
   • A democratic experience, especially valuing the “common person.”

3. The knowledge and skills: “cultural competence” (experience with people different by class, ethnic identity, gender, etc.); critical thinking and communication skills to support analysis and problem-solving.

4. Organizational structures which support the pedagogy. Particularly important are decision-making and evaluation processes which empower participants to name their needs, direct their progress, and measure their collective success.

In practice, the folkhighschool has two defining characteristics:

1. A residential school. The oft-used image of students washing dishes together, talking after meals and into the weary - or wild - hours of the evening describes an environment where personal barriers are lowered much more quickly and completely than in partial day-to-day interactions. The resulting trust and openness would create the learning conditions for significant personal empowerment and transformation. But residential learning is more than connecting with one’s fellow students. It is a demonstration of the very nature of learning.

2. The free pedagogy. Here are such ideas as “the living word,” Grundtvig’s answer to the deadening effect of dependency on books which, as documentation of the past, would provide few inherent bridges to students’ lives. By breathing new life into students, by connecting the past to current events and circumstances, a teacher stands a much better chance of making ideas and history available and relevant to the student. Also central to a folkhighschool class is a shifting of control of direction from the “expert” teacher to the collective knowledge of the students, as coached and supported by the teacher. Students and teachers become co-learners, and the student team collectively drives the agenda and the measure of success in reaching that agenda. Thus, externally motivating measures like examinations and grades have as little relevance as qualifications for embarking in folkhighschool study in the first place.

^

Toward an understanding of people’s education in North America

Our North American efforts to understand and make use of Grundtvig’s ideas is met with a consistent caution from Danish educators and learners. The folkhighschool is not for export. That experience is rooted deeply in Danish history and culture and is not necessarily a model to be replicated. Paulo Freire addresses the same concern: “It is impossible to export pedagogical practices without reinventing them. Please tell your fellow American educators not to import me. Ask them to re-create and rewrite my ideas.”⁷

In fact, our North American history is rich with largely unrecognized traditions of people’s education. To illustrate, I briefly consider the ideas of three educational experiences: indigenous education, as described by Tewa Indian educator Gregory Cajete, women’s “public homeplaces” as identified by Mary Belenky and colleagues, and popular education as practiced by Myles Horton and his colleagues at the Highlander Folk School. Greg Cajete tells us: “In reality, all education is rooted in or has evolved from an Indigenous past.”⁸ If so, then the basic principles he describes ought to identify something universal that appears in experiences over time and cultures. In fact, this is the basis of my argument for this concept of a North American people’s education. The experiences highlighted here suggest some powerful and universal truths. While a stronger case needs to be made by examining the differences among these traditions, my purpose is to begin the conversation by pointing to the common ground.

Indigenous education. For Cajete, learning is a whole, experiential process rooted in everyday experience, “education for life’s sake. Education is, at its essence, learning about life through participation and relationship in community, including not only people, but plants, animals, and the whole of Nature.”⁹ It is a value-laden process using experience, storytelling, ritual and ceremony, dreaming, tutoring, and artistic creation. At its heart, indigenous education is a spiritual endeavor, and “it is no accident that learning and teaching unfolded in the context of spirituality in practically every aspect of traditional American Indian education.”¹⁰ The path toward such learning is firmly centered in both the community of the people, and more comprehensively, the community of Nature. Cajete describes two “triad” foundations of tribal education: One is a set of “winter” or inward elements for the learning about our inner selves: the Mythic, Visionary, and Artistic. The other is a set of “summer” or outward elements: the Affective, Communal, and Environmental foundations. These foundations form a context for all teaching and learning. As Cajete writes: “Nature and all it contains formed the parameters of the school,” but also, “The Life of the community and its individuals are the primary focus of Tribal education… the community is a primary context for learning to be “a human, one of the People.””¹¹

With such educational foundations, it becomes clear why learning is both holistic and experiential, of daily life, and based in the spoken word. Storytelling is a central tool. Cajete writes: “Storytelling related the ever-evolving group life processes and the introductory understanding of its members as part of a unique people.”¹² Of course, storytelling is central not only for the content of the story, but for the skills of listening, memory, imagination, and communication that it helps one to practice. The final point to be emphasized here is the highly contextual nature of indigenous education: “Native Americans taught what needed to be taught in the context they thought it should be taught and at the most opportune time.”¹³ Education is not a process wedged into a particular time and place.

Myles Horton and the Highlander Folk School. Myles Horton co-founded the Highlander Folk School in 1932, shortly after returning from a tour of folkhighschools in Denmark. Having searched for several years to find alternative educational models for the communities in his native eastern Tennessee, he also instinctively knew that there was no formula, but rather a set of principles. The job was to get started without being overly concerned about how the program would take shape. His idea-forming years included contact and inspiration from such 1920s progressive educational thinkers as Reinhohld Niebuhr (Union Theological Seminary), Eduard Lindeman (“father of adult education”) and John Dewey.

Horton was a political activist from the start. First off, he knew from experience that there was no such thing as neutrality. Secondly, from his religious background, “I wanted to work on the side of society that didn’t live by owning. If you’re going to have a democracy, that’s the kind of people you build it on.”¹⁴ Highlander became a school where community leaders examined and developed strategies for confronting labor issues, racism during the civil rights movement, and in recent decades environmental and economic justice issues.

From these fundamentals, Horton’s evolving analysis of society became the basis upon which to implement a compatible approach to learning. At the heart of this were concepts of freedom and power which demanded that learners be in charge of their learning. At the heart of learning at Highlander were two principles: 1) The content of the study was determined by the students, and 2) the process would incorporate drama, song-writing and singing, and dialogue to enable new learning experiences, interests, and needs. As experienced, adult community members, the students demanded an easy exchange with a receptive teacher and enabled an ownership of the process, where role of teacher and student often were switched about.

Other important principles of Horton’s educational thinking, according to adult educator Peter Jarvis, were: 1) The importance of a learning group to enable individuals to develop meaning from experience, and to provide the context for future learning and action. 2) the central role of action: it provides not only the experience from which to learn, but one of the goals of education. Constantly at play during a Horton workshop, as Jarvis summarizes, are crucial operating principles including “a clear goal, shared experience, respect for individual and collective experience, trust in the learner, action, and empowerment of the learner.”¹⁵

Public Homeplaces (Mary Belenky, Lynne Bond and Jacqueline Weinstock). Based on the ground-breaking work identifying “women’s ways of knowing,”¹⁶ Mary Belenky and her colleagues have used their developmental framework to document the work of four organizations serving isolated and excluded women’s groups - which they call public homeplaces. Public homeplaces are community-based, non-formal women’s groups which often begin with specific community projects, but live on to support other organizing and learning activities. They “are places where people support each other’s development and where everyone is expected to participate in developing the homeplace. Using the homeplace as a model, the members go on working to make the whole society more inclusive, nurturing, and responsive to the developmental needs of all people - but most especially of those who have been excluded and silenced.”¹⁷ They add, “Leaders of public homeplaces … are intensely interested in the development of each individual, or the group as a whole, and of a more democratic society.”¹⁸ In fact many of these communities are born from generations of oral traditions that are rooted in African American and other cultures that have been part of the multicultural roots of North America.

As part of their study, the researchers looked for common philosophies and practices in these community organizations, and describe them as “the philosophy and practice of developmental leadership.” I list three of them:¹⁹

• The central role of dialogue. Homeplaces encourage a crucial balance of speaking and listening, using approaches that nurture voice through open-ended questions.
  
• Praxis: the importance of action linked to dialogue. Whether engaging in theater or other art projects, community events or services, the actualizing of ideas and the chance to reflect on the results is central to learning.
  
• Public homeplaces are characterized by feelings of home and family. In describing their experience, leaders and participants use maternal metaphors that emphasize nurturing, cooperation, equality, and “raising up” (vs. their experience of men “ruling over”).

Belenky writes: “Leaders of public homeplaces … are intensely interested in the development of each individual, of the group as a whole, and of a more democratic society … They work to articulate the goals that people in the group have in common… They also look for the strengths in the people’s culture as a building foundation for the whole community… Then they look for ways to mirror what they have seen, giving people a chance to take a new look at themselves and see strengths that have not been well recognized or articulated.”²⁰ Importantly, homeplace participants build connections beyond their local arena. Building a global perspective beyond and connecting to the local is not only essential to the empowerment process, but to a broader understanding of both human need and ways to meet those needs.

Paulo Freire. A discussion of North American people’s education would not be complete without at least a brief mention of the work of Paulo Freire. Freire’s work developed during the politically progressive era of the mid-twentieth century in a Catholic-dominated, multi-cultural Brazil. Freire was concerned about the disenfranchised, illiterate poor, and like Grundtvig passionately believed that learning begins with the people’s community experience. Yet, according to Jarvis, Freire “recognizes that both the dominated and the dominant are in their different ways imprisoned within the structures of society and that both need to be liberated.”²¹

A central Freire concept is “conscientization,” the process of analyzing and understanding one’s cultural reality. His more methodological “problematizing” (or problem-posing education), is a way of seeking “generative themes” which illustrate the reality of everyday life through a process of “codification” of words into visual images. Key to the process of learning for Freire is dialogue and its implications for shifting the roles of teacher and learner. He writes: “Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with student-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with students, who in turn while being taught also teaches. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.”²²

Without space for a fuller immersion into Freire’s ideas, it is nonetheless important to note the contrast between Grundtvig’s “indirect method” with Freire’s more direct call for social analysis and change through the process of conscientization. In more specific terms, the “indirect” Grundtvigian emphasis on enlivening the learner to understand one’s social identity, and to be involved in strengthening that social life can be a strong complement to the Freirian concern about critical analysis and the importance of the fight to change. Both are essential pieces toward the goals of human liberation, democratic community building, and environmental sustainability - goals that are at the center of each - and to a pedagogy of North American people’s education. In fact, there is an easy resonance between the ideas of each educator and the ideas that conclude this chapter.

^

Conclusion

Throughout the educational traditions identified in this brief review, some common themes continually emerge. I suggest these five basic principles to frame a pedagogy of North American people’s education:

• The purpose of learning is enlivenment (love) and to empower communities to solve life’s problems and its injustices: learning for life, for freedom, understanding and love.
  
• Knowledge is based in the life experience of a people.
  
• A democratic educational setting: a community-based approach that supports the growth of relationship-building, analysis, action, and reflection.
  
  • Centrality of Dialogue
    
  • Centrality of the group of learners
    
  • Sharing the role of teacher and learner
    
• Holistic learning: our ways of learning tap a variety of ways of knowing: cognitive, emotional, spiritual, and physical.
  
• Praxis/experience: learning is an experiential cycle that links action and reflection to create knowledge and change.
  

Such principles reflect the learning ideas of many more traditions of non-Western, non-formal education, at the heart of which is a reflection of basic human identity: our spirit, our freedom, and our individual role in a greater community of a local and global people, and of the natural world. That the practices of our North American mainstream institutions of formal education have chosen to ignore a persistent, wise set of voices of educators throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - of wisdom of the ages - is partly a statement about the depth of our challenge to transform ourselves and our world. But that these persistent voices continue to practice and emerge anew is a powerful statement about their vitality and their truths.

* * * * *

^

FOOTNOTES:

1.	S. Borish, The Land of the Living: The Danish Folk High Schools and Denmark's Non-Violent Path to Modernization. Grass Valley, CA: Blue Dolphin Pub, 1991.

2.	F. Christensen, "To be a folk high school teacher." In The Folk High School 1970-1990: Development and Conditions. Ebbe Lundgaard, Ed. Copenhagen: Foreningen for folkehøjskoler (The Association of Folkhighschools), 1991, p. 82.

3.	C. Foucault-Mohammed, "The Danish folk high school: key to the success of democracy." Labor Education, No. 75 - 1989/2. Geneva: International Labour Office: p. 30.

4.	C. Spicer, "Learning from the Danes: charting new waters." In Warren, C. (Ed.) Democracy is Born in Conversations: Recreating Grundtvig for Lifelong Learners Around the World. Nyack, NY: Circumstantial Productions & Folk Education Association of America, 1998.

5.	C. Warren, (Ed.), Democracy is Born in Conversations: Recreating Grundtvig for Lifelong Learners Around the World. Nyack, NY: Circumstantial Productions & Folk Education Association of America, 1998, p. 48.

6.	Borish, p. 170.

7.	P. Freire, Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach. (D. Macedo, D. Koike, & A. Oliveira, Trans.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998, p. xi.

8.	G. Cajete, Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education. Skyland, NC: Kivaki Press, 1994, p.186.

9.	Ibid, p.26.

10.	Ibid, p. 42.

11.	Ibid. p.41.

12.	G. Cajete, Igniting the Sparkle: An Indigenous Science Education Model. Skyland, NC: Kivaki Press, 1999, p.56.

13.	Ibid, p.53.

14.	P. Jarvis, Twentieth Century Thinkers in Adult Education. NY, London: Croon Helm, Ltd, 1987, p. 250.

15.	Ibid, p. 262-3.

16.	M. Belenky, B.M. Clinchy, N.R.Goldberger, & J.M.Tarule, Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind. New York: BasicBooks, Inc., 1986.

17.	M. Belenky, L.A. Bond, & J.S.Weinstock, A Tradition That Has No Name: Nurturing the Development of People, Families, and Communities. New York: BasicBooks (Harper Collins), 1997, p. 13.

18.	Ibid, p. 14.

19.	Ibid, pp 258-275.

20.	Ibid, p. 14.

21.	Jarvis, p. 270.

22.	P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum Publishing, 1989, p. 67

About the Author:

Chris Spicer is Director of the Institute for People’s Education and Action, which offers intensive courses and book/video sales and is a program of the Folk and People’s Association of America (FPEAA), a network of individuals and organizations throughout North America. He acted as Director of FPEAA for over ten years.

ORGANIZATIONS:

Institute for People’s Education and Action, 107 Vernon St., Northampton, MA 01060. 413-585-8755; cspicer@admin.umass.edu

Folk and People’s Education Association of America, c/o Merry Ring, Women’s Center, Lakeland Community College, 7700 Clocktower Dr. Kirkland, OH 44094. 440-975-4706; mring@lakeland.cc.oh.us

Center for Grundtvig Studies, Aarhus Universitet, Hovedbygningen, Ndr. Ringgade, 8000 Aarhus C., Denmark, 45-89-42-22-84; fax: 45-86-13-04-90

Grundtvig Studies Center, Grandview College, 1200 Grandview Ave., Des Moines, IA 50316; Rudolf Jensen, 515-263-2951; www.gvc.edu

Aspen Educational Research Center, PO Box 336, Woody Creek, CO 81656, 970-923-4646; stranah@csn.net

BorderLinks, 710 E. Speedway Blvd., Tucson, AZ 85719, 520-628-8263; Borderlinks@igc.apc.org; www.igc.apc.org/borderlinks

Catalyst Center, 720 Bathurst St., Ste. 500, Toronto, ON Canada, M5S 2R4, 416-516-9546; catalystcentre@web.net; www.web.net/~ccentre

Highlander Research and Education Center, 1925 Highlander Way, New Market, TN 37820. 423-9933-3443; hrec@igc.apc.org

Institute for Human Rights & Responsibilities, PO Box 416, Gelena, OH 43021-0297; 614-965-5118; Djehnsen@infinet.com

National Congress of Neighborhood Women, 21 Park Place, Brooklyn, NY 11217, 718-783-2298.

Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed, PO Box 31623, Omaha, NE 68131-0623, 402-554-2422

* * * * *

^
Table of Contents

---

© Copyright 2000. Chris Spicer - All Rights Reserved.
cspicer@admin.umass.edu
www.peopleseducation.org