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Although the folk high school movement originated among the peasant farmers, it is in large part traceable to the teachings of a single remarkable man whose life spanned much of the period during which these critical events occurred. Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig was a man of many talents - poet, educator, historian, theologian, translator, mythologist and mythmaker, composer of popular hymns, prophet, protestor, and social critic. Even this extensive list does not do full justice to his concerns and commitments, his passions and his accomplishments. The man was in truth a living whirlwind. One can only say of him (with little fear of contradiction) that both his own time and the future of Denmark would not have been the same had he not been there to bequeath to them the unique stamp of his thoughts, actions, and feelings.

In those sections of Grundtvig's voluminous writings that deal with education, he bitterly protests the neglect of Danish language and culture found in the classical Latin schools of his time. Through their undue emphasis on Latin, Greek, and medieval classicism, these schools, he charges, "have been at work for hundreds of years widening the gulf between life and learning." It was his deeply held conviction that "life and learning are to go together in such a way that life is to be first and learning is to follow." Viewed from the present, Grundtvig emerges as a major prophetic figure whose views laid the foundation for a profound cultural synthesis that spoke eloquently to the question of nationalism and national identity. It is one that has played a vital role in Danish history from Grundtvig's time down to our own and has significantly influenced the unique path of Danish modernization.

Education was one of Grundtvig's major concerns. He wrote advocating the creation of a unique school that would serve the Danish people at all levels in society, proposing originally to call it the "folkelig højskole" (meaning loosely a school that would be "of and for the people"). His special passion was that these schools would give dignity to the life of the farmer. They would awaken in rural men and women not only a pride in the national culture but a love of learning that would continue long after a student had finished the formal course of study. Grundtvig's positive feelings for the working farmer were equaled only by his contempt for those he referred to scathingly as "the learned." One of his most well known poems, "Enlightenment," begins with these lines, which I have freely translated:

Is the light of the spirit only something for the
learned to spell with? No! Heaven has bequeathed
more good things, and the light is the gift of heaven.
The sun rises with the farmer, and not with those
who possess learning. It illuminates, from top til toe,
the one who is really on the go.

Grundtvig's original vision was a school not only for the children of farmers but for the Danish people at large in all their different walks of life. In 1830 the idea of the folkelig højskole is set forth for the first time in his writings (the first actual school was established fourteen years later). At the opening of a school bearing his own name in 1856, he made these remarks to those present, including the eight enrolled pupils:

I saw life, real human life, as it is lived in this world, and saw at once that to be enlightened, to live a useful and enjoyable human life, most people did not need books at all, but only a genuinely kind heart, sound common sense, a kind good ear, a kind good mouth, and then liveliness to talk with really enlightened people, who would be able to arouse their interest and show them how human life appears when the light shines upon it.

Grundtvig lived to be a very old man. He survived long enough to see the schools whose existence he had envisioned begin to grow and take root. It was an idea that reached fulfillment in his own lifetime. One reason for this was that many of the "really enlightened people" of Grundtvig's day and age came to devote their lives to the burgeoning folk high school movement, attempting to show young farmers "how human life appears when the sun shines upon it." Only a decade after the founding of the first such school in 1844, others began springing up all across the countryside. In the space of a single two-year period (1865 - 67), twenty-five new high schools were formed. By 1870 there were already more than fifty schools; by 1890, seventy-five.

The folk high schools are of particular importance in understanding the role played by farmers and the farming community in the Danish path to modernization. Yet their importance goes beyond this, and it is no exaggeration to say that these schools and the movement to which they belong influenced the path modernization as a whole took in Denmark. This entire fabric of historical events has had its unusual, even remarkable features. Perhaps the most extraordinary of all (viewed from the outside as a non-Dane) is the almost complete absence of armed conflict, systematic political repression, and violent social revolution. Even during an extended period of change, when the conditions of social, political, and economic life were being fundamentally altered, there were few acts of serious mass violence. Where violence occurred, it was in most cases little more than stone throwing and shouting, followed by a shot or two fired into the air, after which all sides gallantly withdrew from battle. The total body count approaches zero. Violence as it is commonly known in the less fortunate countries (accompanied by such doubtful features as inquisitorial tribunals, mob persecutions, police states, death camps, and paramilitary assassination squads) is to my knowledge conspicuous by its absence during this whole period of Danish history.

How did the Danes do it? It can't all be attributed to the good taste of their beer, their friendly smiles, or their open-faced sandwiches. We are faced with an unresolved mystery, a jigsaw puzzle that has not yet been put together. Why did the same or parallel culture change processes that have resulted in violent repression, both in the past (for example, the French and Russian Revolutions) and in the present, occur without widespread social violence in Denmark? What is it about Denmark and the Danes that is responsible for this feature of their response to modernization and cultural change? Is there something of value here that has been missed? Is there anything that deserves closer examination? In a world marked by social violence these facts suggest a historical enigma that has gone for the most part both unnoticed and unexplored.

Let us remember that the contemporary literature of development and modernization is replete with examples of miscalculation and sheer human tragedy. In spite of the Western tendency to regard change as progress, culture change is frequently a harsh, almost inhuman process. In his classic critique of the economics of modernization (1973), the British economist E. F. Schumacher wrote eloquently of the need to develop what he called "technology with a human face." Schumacher's haunting image suggests several questions for this study of Denmark. Can we usefully abstract from the special features of the Danish case a potential alternative model of modernization "with a human face"? Are there any lessons from the Danish experience that should be part of the common knowledge of politicians, administrators, educators, and development theorists? Could any of these lessons, if they in fact exist, be usefully applied outside the Danish context?

The focus offered here is based on a perspective developed in the course of extended ethnographic fieldwork. While in Denmark carrying out this research, I had an insight that gave rise to the perspective set forth here. The folk high school is not merely an interesting school with a particular kind of curriculum. It is much more than that. An observation made by Thomas Rordam, a former folk high school principal, hints at these connections. Rordam wrote that "the Danish national character is reflected in the Folk High Schools, because the core of the Danish nation - earlier the country people but in this century also the townsfolk - took part in their formation." The folk high schools, then, express a unique facet of both the social history and the national character of the Danish people.

The need to make these wider connections is acute in this case because so little is known in the world at large about either the history of Denmark or the Danish folk high schools. It is precisely because so little is known about Denmark - its heroes, history, and traditions - that fundamental questions must be asked. Who are the Danes? Which geopolitical realities have constrained their national and cultural development? What critical turning points can one identify in their history? How has their unique national character been shaped and molded over time? It is only when questions such as these have been addressed that the particular institution of the folk high school can be seen in the proper context and its own special lessons understood. [1]

[1] Steven M. Borish, The Land of the Living: The Danish Folk High Schools and Denmark's Non-Violent Path to Modernization (Nevada City, Calif.: Blue Dolphin, 1991), pp. 15-20.