The Folk High School
The Folk High Schools in Denmark are institutions of non-formal and continuing adult education.
Translated into Danish "Folk High School" is: "Folkehøjskole"
History
The first Folk High School was founded in Rødding, Denmark, in 1844, by Christian Flor who was inspired by the educational thinking of Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig. Grundtvig identified a growing democratic need in society - a need of enlightening the often both uneducated and poor peasantry. This social group had neither the time nor the money to enroll at a university and needed an alternative. The Folk High School was to help people qualify as active and engaged members of society, give them a movement and the tools to change the political situation from below and be a place to meet across social boarders.
Of course many things have changed at the schools since then, but they are still characterized by multiplicity and great variation concerning both students and subjects.
Main Features
The common features of the Folk High Schools today are:
- A stay is usually from a half to one year of duration.
- Boarding school-like - you sleep, eat, study and spend your spare time together
- A large variety of subjects
- No finishing exams
- Pedagogical freedom
- Personal development and social skills
- Social and democratic participation
Similar Traditions
The Folk High Schools lead an non-formal and, to many, an atypical way of teaching and learning, but the main ideas of this school system are to be found in other traditions and cultures around the world.
You find tendencies similar to the Grundtvigian tradition in the Brazilian Paulo Freire's philosophy of education and "Pedagogy of the Oppressed". Among other things Freire focused on the reciprocity between teachers and students; the teacher learning from the student and the student teaching the teacher are the basic elements of classroom participation in this tradition.
Also the Indian poet, novelist, composer, Nobel Prize winner and political activist Rabindrath Tagore (1861-1941) has conceived educational ideas and a university focusing on "the study on humanity", both with resemblances to Grundtvig.
In Norway, Sweden, Germany and Finland you find similar schools, working on almost the same principles as the Folk High Schools in Denmark.
These schools spring from the same movement and all have references to N. F. S. Grundtvig who originated the idea of the Folk High School, "folkehøjskolen".
The German and the Swedish schools are closer related to the formal educational system, than the Danish folk high schools are.
In France you find the Université Populaire also with strong resemblances to the Folk High Schools.