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Folk Education Movement: History and Philosophy

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Folk Education Movement: History and Philosophy

ADULT EDUCATION AND CIVIC VITALITY:
LESSONS FROM THE DANISH FOLK ENLIGHTENMENT
R. Oakley Winters.
v.12 #3-4, p.8-13. 6 pages.
After sketching the historical background against which the folk-high-schools arose, Winters concludes that "the impact of the folk highschool on civic life in Denmark has been profound." This kind of education was a means to a specific end, however, not an end in itself. It seems difficult to export the folk highschool entire. However, several of Grundtvig’s educational principles can be universally applied. Education should "offer a larger vision of what can be". It should teach citizens to become "loving skeptics, always questioning the status quo." Citizens should "assume responsibility for their own choices." Effective teaching transmits "both knowledge and passion for using knowledge." Finally, "all citizens are capable of making informed judgments and assuming civic obligations."

ASHLAND FOLK SCHOOL CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION
Chester A. Graham.
v.12 #1-2, p. 9-14. 5 pages.
Ashland Folk School in Grant, Michigan is no longer operative, but this account of its development under the Grahams gives valuable clues and interesting historical-social details. "A major reference was made to the past experience of the students, including employment experience, and to the social conditions in the student’s home community." As to methods used, "understanding of cooperation is sought through cooperation... Democracy is taught through a total democratic procedure in the daily life of the school." A list is given of the subjects taught during a ten-week session: Group responsibility and group action; history & literature as the story of human experience; developing one’s own philosophy of life; communication skills; basic economics; creative self-expression.

THE BECOMING OF THE PEOPLE
N.F.S. Grundtvig, trans. by Erling Duus and Jan Schøler Nielsen.
v.6 #2-3,p.17-18. 3/4 page
"The people are all those who participate in the memory and hope which is the people’s life." Grundtvig’s concept of what is meant by folk or people is fundamental to the folkhighschool movement. Here it is briefly and clearly set forth.

BETWEEN THE POETS AND THE PEOPLE
John Ramsay.
v.1 #2, p.3-5. 1 1/2 pages.
Cultural differences enrich the world and should not be lost in the tyranny of standardization. Poets, especially those arising from ethnic roots, help us to understand these cultural gifts. But to continue to have life, they need to return to the people from whom they sprang. In Scandinavia, the folkhighschool has provided such a meeting place

CHARACTERISTICS OF A FOLK-COLLEGE
Kathryn Parke.
v.1 #2, p.10-11. 1/2 page.
A brief characterization, by an American educator who experienced one year at such a school.

"CHOCOLATE PUDDING"
John Ramsay ("Morris Caper").
v.4# 3, p.5-6. 2 pages.
In the context of the 4th national meeting of the Folk-School Association of America, Ramsay protests against the need that intellectuals have, to classify and define everything. "Full understanding was often thwarted by ... insisting that every-thing... be rational..... Until we go beyond where rational thought patterns lead, we cannot put life into the perspective which is required of a folk school worthy of the name.... We believe in life itself as the only window on the TRUTH which we can know."

EDUCATION AND THE DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT
Keith Jackson, the rector of Fircroft College, near Birmingham in England.
v.15#1, p. 16-22. 9 pages.
There is a tendency to "identify democracy with capitalism." But "democracy is a set of ideas and aspirations, bringing power into the hands of all the people. It cannot be a stable situation." "Education is a dynamic, not an ornament." It should challenge such limitations as a focus on property rights, a tendency to make purchasing power more important than political power. Educators need to be "‘in continuous dialogue’ with ourselves and our times." The basic principles of folk-high-school education include "the assertion that education available to civil servants should also be available to all. Fircroft College is "concerned with the education of adults who have almost exclusively been failed by mainstream schooling which did not recognize and bring out their talents and ability." It resists the "Access" approach of other schools, which focus more upon enabling adults to progress to higher education than upon educating the person holistically. It uses the insights of voluntary organizations such as those promoting "the peace movement", "the women’s movement", and "the green movement." It uses and contributes to the society outside the college. Its Centre for Active Citizenship trains community leaders to be effective in achieving definite victories for groups such as "residents in economically declining neighborhoods" and minority groups "asserting their rights as equal members of a pluralistic democracy". Exchange with similar institutions across national boundaries is sought

"EDUCATION FOR LIFE"
Jindra Kulich, remarks at the closing session of the Grundtvig bicentenary in 1983.
v.8#1, p.12-14. 2 1/4 pages.
Grundtvig’s version of a folk-high-school never existed, but the basic idea, growing organically from grassroots inspiration, spread to Poland, Germany, and Hungary. Why doesn’t it transplant to the United States, for example? The four cornerstones are: school for life, not for [making a] living; historical-poetical and the living word; folkelig - that is,sprung from and serving the folk; residential school for adults. The third concept, folkelig, is the special problem for North America, as the United States and Canada are too young to have developed a real cultural identity. The other "cornerstones" are as vital as ever in the modern world.

FOLKEHØGSKOLE?
Johannes Knudsen, editorial drawn from an article "The Folk School,"
earlier published in Kirke og Folk.
v. 3#3, p. 1-2. 2 pages.
An attempt to characterize what is meant by a folk-high-school. Knudsen sug- gests, tentatively, eight usual features: 1. Every person has value and potential. 2. Human values are not only individual. 3. The individual realizes his/her potential in fellowship with a people, cooperatively. 4. Sights must be lifted beyond immediate material goals. 5. The school is not partisan. 6. Nor is it a church. 7. "The educational vehicle... is the lore of mankind, the lore of a people. 8. Immediate personal contact, the word, is creative.

FOLKELIGHED - A KEY GRUNDTVIGIAN IDEA
Enok Mortensen.
v.2#1, p. 6 3/4 page.
What is the meaning of Grundtvig’s "folk-likeness" or "folk-equality"? The term may mean either of these, but in essence is hardly translatable. It is basic to Grundtvig’s philosophy of life-education.

FOLK-COLLEGE (DEFINITIONS)
v. 1#1, p.3. 1 page.
Seven short definitions of the folkhighschool (sometimes called folk-school or folk-college) by Scandinavian educators with long experience as teachers or administrators of such schools.

THE FOLK-COLLEGE IN AMERICA
Kathryn Parke.
v.1#2, p.7-8. 1 page.
A short history of attempts that have been made to import folkhighschool ideas to the U.S. What were the results?

THE FOLK-COLLEGE IDEAL,
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY REVOLUTIONS AND TODAY
Richard B. Drake.
v.2#2, p.95-97. 2 pages.
How can American ideals and problems fit into the folk-college idea? In comparing the American Revolution with the French Revolution, one finds that liberty is essential, but that even liberty, if applied in an absolute way, can be dangerous.

FOLK-COLLEGE INITIATIVES BY DANISH IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA
Otto Hoiberg.
v.2#2, p.65-70. 3 1/2 pages.
A historical sketch of folk-schools founded in the U.S. between1878 and 1955. They served Danish immigrants very well, but failed to adjust to the needs of later generations, those that did not carry the Danish heritage so preeminently. "Their modus operandi may not have had survival value in the United States", but "the basic educational concept which they espoused not only has survival value but is truly international and timeless in scope." Residential adult education in an atmosphere of complete intellectual freedom, with aims of self-fulfillment and the deepening of human insights - this is not a parochial concept of education.

FOLK EDUCATION: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF FEAA
John Ramsay.
v. 16#1, p. 7-13. 7pages.
A sketch of the first 12 years of the Folk Education Association of America, with brief descriptions of the annual conferences of those years and their educational themes. Followed by a consideration of democratic organizational action as partic-ularly observed in Denmark at a meeting of the Danish Gymnastics and Youth Organization. "Instead of a monarchy of the majority, delegates ... listened to each other and ...were free to apply their best judgement in their home communities.... Here was the next step toward freedom, the secret to empowerment of the people." Some prin-ciples on which Grundtvig based his philosophy of education are highlighted: 1) that humankind are made in the image of God (not God in the image of humankind); 2) that "it is our sacred duty to use our lives to enhance life on earth"; and 3) that we are indiv-iduals but also social beings. Freedom a condition of society, not of individual rights.

FOLK EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES
Chris Spicer.
v.15,#2, p.3-11. 9 pages.
The Folk Education Association of America was originally based on supporting and promoting the Scandinavian folkehøgskole in America, but eventually decided that "folk education" describes a set of fundamental ideas: 1) student-centered education, 2) a community of learners - collaboration between teaching and learning, 3) holistic learning - not exclusively intellectual, and 4) learning based on experience and dialogue, rather than experts and books. Examples of such initiatives include widespread adult education opportunities, popular education as espoused by Paulo Freire and Myles Horton, and associations of educators who pursue holistic education in elementary and secondary as well as higher education, or who are concerned with the issue of social change. Folk education should "create a bridge between individual and community needs, between the needs of the powerful and the powerless." Some institutions that work in this area include the Arthur Morgan School in North Carolina; Interlocken, an international camp in New Hampshire; Highlander in Tennessee; the Coady International Institute in Nova Scotia; the Inter-national Institute for Cooperation and Development in Massachusetts; the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina; the Danebod Folk School in Minnesota; The Clearing, also in Minnesota, and Elderhostel, with programs in many locations. Some degree-granting colleges with similar educational attitudes include Berea College in Kentucky, Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, and Goddard College in Vermont. Community-based learning centers, Study circle groups, and other experiments are discussed, as well as international collaboration in this field.

FOLK HIGH SCHOOLS IN DENMARK TODAY
Jonell Kristensen.
v.4#1, p. 17-20. 3 1/2 pages.
Jonell Kristensen came to Denmark from America as an adult with American education. Here she examines "what is special about folk high schools", describing first the financial support given them by the Danish government, and then outlining the advantages which students and teachers receive by participating in such schools. She feels that "the non-competitive full-time school for adults which offers many different experiences for the same persons, with the same persons, is an idea ripe for plucking in the United States."

THE FOLK-HIGH-SCHOOL EXPERIENCE - ADAPTATION OF AN IDEAL
Chris Spicer.
v.13#1/2, p. 3-15; and v.13#3/4, p.17-22. 20 pages.
Why and how has the idea persisted for well over 100 years? Why do the some-400 folkhighschools in Scandinavia continue to attract interest, and how might this idea be adapted in the U.S.? A study of Scandinavian folk-high-schools made in 1986-7 by the then chairperson of the Folk Education Association of America is reported here. Spicer characterises the folk-high-school as one which follows Grundtvig’s theory that "learning will be inspired by what comes from the heart, that if we under-stand who we are - as an individual and as a society - we will better understand our day-to-day needs and responsibilities." Can adaptations of this basic Grundtvigian philosophy fit the needs and values of a different time and place? Modern Scandinavian folk-high-schools use such adaptations to serve (and to survive in) changed times as: addition of short-courses and specialized curricula; adjusting evaluation procedures to satisfy demands for credentialing; serving stud-ents with special needs (foreign and refugee students, people with a below-average social maturity or even semi-serious psychological problems, and unemployed students); and accommodating day students. Other questions of format include affiliation with special interest groups, and increasing size. Spicer’s conclusions are: "what is still going on in the 1980’s is "heart-oriented learning". Short courses and specialized offerings are here to stay, even though the long courses continue to be dominant. A balance must be maintained between the accommodation of special-needs students and the preservation of "an otherwise mature and directed student body." Questions of evaluation are still hot discussion topics. Affiliation with religious, political, and social organizations, a long-standing feature, doesn’t seem to damage the essential spirit of a folk-high-school. Nor do slightly larger student bodies (more than 100 students) nor the presence of some day-students significantly compromise this spirit, though both need to be carefully watched. Can the folk-high-school idea be used in the United States? Efforts have occurred over a century or more, with marginal success. But "outside the name of fhs" proliferating examples of non-credit courses, church conference centers, outdoor education programs, camps, study circles, etc. show some resemblance to the fhs. "Without the tradition and financing of folk highschools that Scandinavia enjoys, we still have forms of such education." Thousands of students look for such experiences.

FOLK SCHOOLS: FIRE IN THE ASHES
Svend A. Godfredsen.
v.8#2, p.7-12. 6 pages.
The people of Appalachia "are the people for whom the Folk School movement holds a hope and a promise.... The affluent society doesn’t care enough..." C. P. Højbjerg, who ran a folk-school in Minnesota in the 1940’s, said "A human being may be fundamentally changed ...[by] the spirit of the spoken word... our civilization is built on paper, not on personality." Myles Horton, the founder of Highlander Folk School, said "those of us interested in human beings... should take every opportunity to promote the idea of people learning as a group rather than as individuals." We need to understand our society, and to have a vision of a better one. Highlander has certianly "served the needs of the people of... the South in general."

THE FOLK SCHOOL THAT NEVER WAS
R. Alex Sim
v.20#2, p. 20-23 4 pages.
This is a prospectus that Sim developed in 1938. But the school planned was never realized. He says that it still "looks good to me...as... a notion for tomorrow." The article constitutes a concrete supplement to the previous longer memoir, and should be read in conjunction with that.

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
v.10#1-2, p. 2-5. 3 1/2 pages.
Why is there little or no notice of anything called a folk school? "In our pre-vailing histories little notice is taken of the unnotable voices ... struggling to articulate their visions and to create their own destiny. Much ‘people’s history’ remains untold." Yet people’s movements often submerge rather than dying, and later re-emerge. Perhaps this is a time for the folk school movement to return, in a form appropriate to America.

FROM [FOLKEHØGSKOLE] IDEAS TO EVERYDAY PRACTICE
Johan Norbeck.
v. 15#1, p.11-15. 4 1/2 pages.
Speaking from his experience in a Swedish fhs, and sketching also the long history of the fhs in Scandinavia, Norbeck says, "What distinguishes us from other adult education schools is that we promote the development of whole human beings," people who are free to be themselves, and are willing to behave democratically at all levels. But our practice needs to be consistent with our aims, which requires constant alertness. Teachers must remember the importance of students’ participation in their education, and must show that they also, the teachers, are learning. Students should become increasingly responsible; learning is facilitated by the group; the traditional division of subjects must not imprison thinking. Students must gain skill in study techniques and in finding and evaluating sources. Criticism should be constructive. The factual information offered by the teacher should be appropriate to the situation.

GRUNDTVIG’S DEFINITION
Kathryn Parke.
v.7#3-4, p.32-33. 1 1/4 pages.
The answer to Grundtvig’s own idea of education may be found in his famous poem "What sunshine is for the black earth". A translation of this poem is given. It is basic to an understanding of the Danish philosopher-educator’s point of view

GRUNDTVIG ON MAN AND SOCIETY
Knud E. Bugge.
v.7#3-4 p.24-31. 5 pages.
Bugge, a foremost scholar of Grundtvig’s life and thinking, spoke at a bicenten-nial celebration of Grundtvig’s life, at Grand View College, Des Moines, Iowa, in 1983. The essay contains a summary of Grundtvig’s concepts of Man, the responsibilities of humankind, what it means to be a human being, and the impact that Grundtvig has had on Denmark’s culture and religion (and by implication, upon the development of culture and religion elsewhere). .

GRUNDTVIGIANISM AND THE FOLK-COLLEGE DISCUSSED
v.2#2, p.56-63, condensed. 3 1/2 pages.
Discussion of some of the major ideas presented at the Folk Education Association’s first national conference. Griscom Morgan, Erling Duus, John Ramsay, Myles Horton and others were the major participants in this interchange.

N.F.S. GRUNDTVIG’S CONTRIBUTION TO HIGHER EDUCATION
Per Himmelstrup.
v.14 #1, p.2-3. 2 pages.
The folk-high-school is not a "high school" in the American sense, but is an "alternative university" for the people, founded in opposition to the elitist Dano-European University of Copenhagen. That university was more connected with research than with teaching, until after World War II, when Grundtvig’s ideas began to be seriously considered there also. "Culture should develop from its own basis", teaching by "the living word", and freedom from credentialing are the principal tenets.

N.F.S GRUNDTVIG’S INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE ON EDUCATION
Per Himmelstrup.
v.14#1, p. 4-12. 9 pages.
Since World War II, Grundtvig’s idea of nationality - of a homogeneous culture - is being re-discovered everywhere. "People feel a need to belong." "You must be local, to be able to act globally." In Poland, Hungary, and the Baltic states, folk-high-schools comparable to the early Danish ones are arising. Also there are stirrings within the Danish empire (Greenland and the Faroe Islands), and in France (Brittany) "to develop the potentials hidden in the people." Such folkelighed need not result in nationalism, but in cooperation from people to people. The ideas are now being taken up in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, in Nigeria, in Great Britain. But the Danish example cannot be literally exported, though the ideas can be imported. "There must be some correlation between the folkelighed expressed by the school and the community in which you live, to be meaningful." In America, schools founded strictly on the Danish model did not survive long - they lacked the active commitment which was the strength of the Danish schools. Himmelstrup mentions Highlander in America, several schools in England and one in Nigeria, to explain the interchange of educational ideas which he feels will be fruitful. He mentions several questions which future conferences on folk-high-school-like education (or adult education in general) might profitably address, including the American problem of credentialing, and the communication gap between specialists and common people.

"IF IT CONTRIBUTES TO LIFE THEN IT IS GOOD..."
John M. Ramsay
v.5#3, p.9-10. 1 1/2pages.
What is a folk school? "A folk school is an institution that affirms life as good and sacred; that seeks to understand life through the self as well as through others; that encourages people to come together in the wonder of life, both individually and in diversity; and that awakens this spirit among people."

IMPEDIMENTS TO THE CULTIVATION OF THE FOLK SCHOOL SPIRIT
IN A NORTH AMERICAN CONTEXT: THE CASE OF GRAND VIEW COLLEGE
Dennis Bielfeldt.
v.19#2, p.23-27. 4 1/3 pages. Grand View College, which originated in the Danish folk-high-school tradition, has had to adjust to its current student population, which seeks only upward occupa-tional movement. Currently, "the college years become a time to develop foundational skills, basic cultural literacies, and to receive specialized career training." The results "accord better with the ‘dead letter’ than the ‘living spirit’....Our time in America is characterized by an overwhelming disinterest in language and tradition. We are lost in the everydayness of jobs and work, and cannot see another way.... We are, in effect, rotting from within.... Perhaps a new folk school is the only thing that can save us."

LAND OF THE LIVING
A review by Jonell Kristensen of the book by Steven Borish.
v.16,#1, p. 31-34. 4 pages.
Kristensen, an American who has adopted Denmark as her current homeland, rejoices to find that Borish has thoroughly understood the national characteristics of Denmark - "balance and moderation; hygge (an ability to be together creatively and warmly); and social responsibility." Borish considers the history that has enabled Denmark to "slide into" democracy and modernization without the bloodshed that characterized such revolutions in other countries. In addition to the achieving of constitutional democracy via royal decree in 1848-9, "the secondary agents of change were the grass roots social movements, including ‘the folkehøjskoler, cooperatives, agricultural schools,... independent congregations... the landless farmers’ movement," and similar sources of local activity. Borish suggests some "universalistic principles" that "speak to the problems of human development: 1) the folkehøgskole with its faith in people; 2) the concept of folkelighed -" the belonging of the people with each other...which...[nevertheless] ‘steadfastly refuses to devalue other cultures;’" 3) the continuity of learning through a lifetime, nourished by the folkehøjskole ‘s social network and teaching of students to think for themselves; 4) "not only a national identity but a value system based on revitalization and self-improvement"; 5) " that each folkehøjskole was originally established for one particular group, aiming to build pride and self-confidence... without teaching them to... feel superior to anyone else." Important for American readers is the warning that there are limits which should be respected! We are challenged to-day "to develop the resources... to meet (our) own needs... working with the unchangeable limits."

THE ONTARIO FOLK SCHOOL MOVEMENT
AND RURAL ADULT EDUCATION, 1939-1965
Anne Gillies.
v.20#2, p. 24-49. 20 pages plus bibliography.
In five parts: I. The Roots of Rural Learning - farm populism, the United Farmers of Ontario, and the New Canada Movement. II. The Ontario Folk School Movement in Foundation, 1939-1959: folk school promotion in Ontario, the Ontario Folk School Council, and the Ontario Farm Radio Forum. III. Building the Folk School Network: activities and themes of folk schools in Ontario, contrasted with earlier and later trends in folk schools. IV. Folk Schools in Transition, 1958-1965: gradual decline of support. Merger of the Ontario Folk School Council with the Ontario Farm Radio Forum. V. Rural Adult Education in Ontario: Understanding the Past and Analyzing the Future: "the continued need for critical rural adult learning based on concepts of broader social change."

RADICAL HUMANISM IN PRACTICE:
THE SCANDINAVIAN FOLKEHØG- SKOLER
David W. Leslie.
v.18#2, p.17-40. 14 pages.
This careful study by an American professor of education is perhaps the best short reference to help other American educators know what the folkhighschool is all about. Leslie, accompanied by his wife as interpreter, spent three months in one Danish folkhighschool and subsequently visited others in Norway, Sweden, and Finland, making semi-structured interviews with teachers, students and administrators. He compares U.S. post-secondary institutions with the Scandinavian folkhighschool, and pays special attention to the Grundtvigian ideology which gave rise to these schools. From his observation and interviews, he describes in some detail the experiences of students, teachers, and administrators at such schools. Finally, he remarks that Grundtvig "was radically committed to the idea of civic development through shared life experiences. In a society as riven with diversity as the United States, perhaps a 150-year-old idea bears reconsidering as a way to strengthen the human bonds and the civic culture of a society that seems increasingly fractured along lines of race, gender, economic class, and ideology."

RESIDENTIAL ADULT EDUCATION: A CANADIAN MEMOIR, 1927-1979
R. Alex Sim.
v.20#2, p. i - vi, 1-19. 25 pages, including bibliography and editorial intro. "Sometimes in order to move forward, we must first look back... to assess a tradition, to learn again from it, to reinterpret and reapply it in the present, or simply to gain inspiration." [Cattani]. "how can civil society be secured, sustained and invigor-ated in our time?" [Cattani, quoting Michael Welton, In Defense of Civil Society] Sim, who was a long-time leader in adult education activity in Canada, tells of his fascination with the idea of folk-high-school, when he first met it as a teen-age high school drop-out. Several educators during the 1920’s visited Danish folkhighschools and reported that the idea could be imported into agricultural western Ontario. A few such schools were founded under the auspices of the United Farmers of Ontario, and more-or-less flourished, in varying formats, from 1930 to 1979. Sim’s conclusion is that the descent from initiation to imitation was a mistake. "Imitation is a flabby substitute for creativity." *

TO BE A FOLK-SCHOOL TEACHER
Frederik Christensen, translated by Jonell Kristensen.
v.11#1-2, p. 13-18. 6 pages.
Some have said that a folk-high-school must be political, critical, and revolu-tionary. Perhaps so. But if there is no JOY, if people are not strong in what is their own, such a school will not become a force for a people’s revolution. "First you must learn to love, then you can change things." 1. Cultivate creativity. 2. Discover that life is larger than you had counted on. This is the difference between the ironist and the humorist. Christensen advises folk-high-school teachers to learn 25 good stories - narratives about life. Stories that lift the heart, that tell us that life is larger than we thought. "Life must be conquered, not just in a material sense but also spiritually."

"YOU MUST TEACH THEM TO LOVE LIFE,
EVEN IF IT MAYBE DOESN’T BECOME BETTER..."
Fredrik Christensen.
v.4#1, p.15-16. 1 1/2 page.
A teacher at a Danish folk-high-school tells what he believes is the essential of such schools. "It is always the single person, the individual... never the state, the system, or an idea." "The folk high school is a personal school." "Therefore, it is only through our students and their joy in being at the school, that we can prove our right to existence.

**WHAT IS "FOLK-LIKE"?
Albert Haugesund, trans. edited, and with an introduction by Kathryn Parke. v.18#2,p.4-13. 5 pages.
To comprehend the meaning of "folk" as the Scandinavian folkhighschool movement understands it, one must read what Grundtvig and other Scandinavian writers (in this case, a Norwegian) say about it. . "Cultivation of human life must begin with cultivating the life of a folk", said Grundtvig. Folkelig can hardly be translated directly, but it means that which falls together with and is one with "that part of the people who can be considered to have a more or less conscious spiritual life". "The true meaning of the word contains the idea of universality...spiritual life in its most inclusive form." To be a real person, one must be "folkelig opdrages (brought up), oplives (enlivened), and oplyses (enlightened)." "Folkelighed is... poetry but not sentimentality... self-confidence but not prejudice." First, one must understand where one belongs, and appreciate one’s own history and cultural background. For Grundtvig, this meant Danish and Christian - but with the realization that the "folkly" was in place before Christianity. Further, he said, "the lack of living folk-likeness is spiritual folk-death.

 

Folk Education Leaders

ARTHUR E. MORGAN, GRUNDTVIG, AND EDUCATION FOR LIFE
Griscom Morgan.
v.1#4, p.11-13. 2 pages.
Morgan’s son describes his father’s pioneering philosophy in rejuvenating Antioch College. The kind of education promoted by both Morgan and Grundtvig did not primarily train young people for success in urban, sophisticated careers, which would estrange them from their roots, but taught them to enrich personal life and to participate effectively in community life, wherever they are located.

THE BECOMING OF THE PEOPLE
N.F.S. Grundtvig, trans. by Erling Duus and Jan Schøler Nielsen.
v.6,#2-3,p.17-18. 3/4 page.
"The people are all those who participate in the memory and hope which is the people’s life." Grundtvig’s concept of what is meant by folk or people is fundamental to the folkhighschool movement. Here it is briefly and clearly set forth.

FAREWELL TO A PIONEER; MYLES HORTON 1905-1990.
v.13#3-4, p.2-4. 3pages.
The founder and director of Highlander Research and Education Center was featured in a two-part interview by Bill Moyers, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Other biographical sources are named, and a number of quotations from his sayings and writings are offered. Example: His life principle: "Live for a cause you are willing to die for.

GRUNDTVIG AND THE FIRST FOLK HIGH SCHOOLS
Kurt Kristensen.
v.4#2 p.9-13. 4 1/2pages.
Grundtvig’s visit in England inspired him to put faith in the common people, and to embark on his lifelong mission of awakening the Danish folk, through "folkly" , civil education - which Kristensen explains is not the same as "popular" education. It rests on the special character of the people, developed through their history. The schools of the first period, 1851-1901, emphasized fellowship, enough information to allow the farmer students to take part in the democratic political struggle, self-understanding, love for life itself and for their country. Kristensen says "If we will revolutionize the world, we must find courage and strength in areas of life which are not political - and in a philosophy of life which is not critical."

GRUNDTVIG IN MY EXPERIENCE
Johannes Knudsen.
v.2#2 , p.31-39. 5 1/4 pages.
A key speaker in the Folk Education Association’s first national conference, Knudsen introduces the Danish poet-philosopher and sketches the influence that Grundtvig’s ideas have had, not only in Scandinavia and America, but in many other parts of the world. Knudsen and two other Danish collaborators recently published a book of translated selections from Grundtvig’s writing, little of which is otherwise accessible to non-Danish-speakers.

N.F.S GRUNDTVIG’S INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE ON EDUCATION
Per Himmelstrup.
v.14#1, p. 4-12. 9 pages.
Since World War II, Grundtvig’s idea of nationality - of a homogeneous culture - is being re-discovered everywhere. "People feel a need to belong." "You must be local, to be able to act globally." In Poland, Hungary, and the Baltic states, folk-high-schools comparable to the early Danish ones are arising. Also there are stirrings within the Danish empire (Greenland and the Faroe Islands), and in France (Brittany) "to develop the potentials hidden in the people." Such folkelighed need not result in nationalism, but in cooperation from people to people. The ideas are now being taken up in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, in Nigeria, in Great Britain. But the Danish example cannot be literally exported, though the ideas can be imported. "There must be some correlation between the folkelighed expressed by the school and the community in which you live, to be meaningful." In America, schools founded strictly on the Danish model did not survive long - they lacked the active commitment which was the strength of the Danish schools. Himmelstrup mentions Highlander in America, several schools in England and one in Nigeria, to explain the interchange of educational ideas which he feels will be fruitful. He mentions several questions which future conferences on folk-high-school-like education (or adult education in general) might profitably address, including the American problem of credentialing, and the communication gap between specialists and common people.

GRUNDTVIG’S THOUGHT AS SEEN BY AN AMERICAN
Erling Duus.
v.2#2, p.48-54. 4 pages.
Duus maintains that Grundtvig is not compatible with "middle-class, secularistic liberalism" and that his principles have been distorted by attempts to make them fit the modern bourgeois mind. To understand Grundtvig, one must accept his spirituality. Humanity is "a divine experiment", combining dust and spirit. Myths are prophetic. Human speech is our link with our Creator, but it must have vigor, truth, and love, to be living. Grundtvig saw Christianity not as a break with Paganism, but as a higher evolution of the folk-spirit, still based on the vividness, the heroism, and the romanticism of Paganism. To create a Grundtvigian school, "we must develop a sacramental sense of language, song, and movement (dance) - one that springs from the life, experience, and memory of the people."

HOW I BECAME A FOLK-TEACHER
Christen Kold.
v.4#4, p.5-13. 8 pages.
A classic of folk-high-school literature. Kold’s life-story, from childhood in a poor but resourceful family, through efforts as a teacher to lift the level of his students, an abortive experience as a missionary’s servant in Smyrna, and finally his introduc-tion to Grundtvig. At first, the two men were somewhat at odds, but Grundtvig believed in the young man and supported his efforts. Kold wanted to teach people "to love God, their neighbor and their fatherland." As to method, "I enliven first, and then enlighten afterward." Kold’s school became the model for many subsequent folk-high-schools.

"LIBERATORY" EDUCATION;
MEETINGS WITH PAULO FREIRE AND IRA SHOR
Marilyn Jackson.
v.14#2, p. 27-30. 4 pages.
Freire’s approach to the two conferences at which Jackson met him showed that "he didn’t intend to play guru. He wasn’t the entire answer; the answer lay in the process created by the whole group." Shor conducted a presentation on liberatory education in the same way, "developing a strong presence and then ‘disappearing’, creating a vacuum . He asked groups of two or three to consider what issues they wanted to discuss. One group said that "school is often an interference with what matters most to students." Yet another person said that "school, as confining as it is, is very liberating for some, compared with their home environment." Freire and Shor both promote "dialogic education", avoiding "the verbal density of an over-trained intellectual" which too easily silences inexperienced students.

NIKOLAI FREDERIK SEVERIN GRUNDTVIG
Frederik Christensen, from a lecture given in Tanzania, November 1983.
v.11#3-4, p.2-8. 6 1/2 pages.
Christensen sketches the grim situation of the Danish peasantry after the Napo-leonic war in the early 19th century. Grundtvig asked "if these people could survive as a nation." He came to understand that people will fight for something only if they love it. This is his important concept of folkelighed - folke (people) + lighed (equality). Equality belongs "to those whose identity is found through the same values, the same language, the same history. That is, what you are born into." It applies to any nation, any culture. But folk-identity is not static, but dynamic, achieved not through the rising status of an elite, but through the enlivening and enlightening of the common people. Grundtvig’s vision of a folk-high-school - a school for life - "gave the heart first place." Governmentally supported schools that aimed to give peasants more skills eventually disappeared, because they left these students with a feeling of inferiority. Grundt-vigian folk-schools, which emphasized "the living word" (native speech, and oral teaching rather than bookish), and which thus encouraged a good feeling of identity, have proliferated. The problem of elitism still remains, however. The folk-high-school’s task is "to get our students to be fond of their own lives, their own settlements, their own countries and people." Nowadays, we must counter the tendency of technology to "make people passive instruments in a gigantic process of alienation."

ON THE ADAPTATION OF SORØ ACADEMY AS A FOLK COLLEGE
N.F.S. Grundtvig, trans. and abridged by Kathryn Parke.
v.16#1,p.2-6. 3 pages.
One of the basic documents of the folkhighschool is this proposal which Grundtvig offered to the Danish king in the 1830’s. Temporarily quashed by the educational authorities of the time, it nevertheless describes clearly the elements of education that Grundtvig felt were essential for citizens in a newly democratic land. What all Danes have in common are Humanity, Fatherland and Mothertongue. So full attention should be given to these commonalities. Further, although "one can hardly imagine an educational institution that doesn’t require examinations for both entrance and graduation.... it is as clear as the sun that at a folkhighschool one must either give them up or give it up."

PIONEERS AND HEROES; Part I European.
v. 17 #1. 30 pages.
This whole issue gives basic information about some of the greatest figures in the folkhighschool movement as it developed in Scandinavia. N.F.S.Grundtvig (Danish), the philosophical founder; Christen Kold (Danish), one of the first practical exemplars of the idea; Christopher Bruun (Norwegian), who took the folkhigh-school to Norway and gave it a special mythological life; Peter Manniche (Danish), who founded the International People’s College in Denmark; and Oscar Olsson (Swedish), who developed the popular Study Circles, on the basis of Grundtvig’s ideas - the lives and thought of these leaders are described. A brief index of articles in OPTION dealing with these and other folk education leaders follows. 20 copies of this issue exist, and can be purchased.

PIONEERS AND HEROES; PART II FROM THE AMERICAS.
v. 17 #2. 44pages.
Americans who have advanced folk education, some but not all of whom were influenced by Grundtvigian ideas, are celebrated in this issue. They include Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House in Chicago; Moses M. Coady and A.B. McDonald, the founders of the Antigonish movement in Nova Scotia, Canada; Eduard C. Lindeman, proponent of adult education in the U.S.; John C. and Olive Dame Campbell, whose desire to bring appropriate education to the Southern Appalachians resulted in the John C. Campbell Folk School; Myles Horton, founder of Highlander Folk School (now known as Highlander Research and Education Institute); Septima Poinsette Clark, folk-teacher extraordinaire; Paulo Freire, the Brazilian whose efforts for grassroots education, adult literacy and critical consciousness are well known; James Dombrowski, educator and activist; Royce Pitkin, founder of Goddard College; Arthur E. Morgan, promoter of a different kind of education at Antioch College.

PORTRAIT OF A FOLK-COLLEGE TEACHER
Einar Arne.
v.1#3, p.5-6. 1 page.
A former student reflects on the style of Martin Birkeland, a Norwegian folkhighschool teacher. He had "a knack to step in, not down." His sense for the poetry of life, emotion, growth was basic to his ability to identify with young people.

TALKING WITH JOHANNES KNUDSEN
Carl Glover.
v.2#1, p.3-5 3 pages.
The life of a Danish-American, a leader in American church and educational life. Brought up in his father’s Danish-American folk-school and then educated further in Denmark, he understood both countries, and was especi-ally interested in the "period of norm reconstruction" which he felt the U.S. is currently undergoing.

 

Folk Education:
Contemporary Reflections and Practice

APPALACHIAN ADVENTURE
Johannes Knudsen.
v.5#1, p. 5-7.
A seminar on "The Folk School", given at the John C. Campbell Folk School in western North Carolina, gives a brief description of the JCC Folk School itself, and results in three observations relating to the success of such an institution: A folk school has to be native, indigenous, "to grow in the soil of the community". It requires dedicated and understanding personnel. The traditions of the area are a fruitful source for program.

CULTURAL DEMOCRACY, FOLK SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: SOME ETHICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES
David A. Brose.
v.16, #1, p.26-30. 5 pages.
Brose raises questions regarding the continuation of the John C. Campbell Folk School. The school was founded in southwestern North Carolina in 1925, by Olive Dame Campbell, who admired the folk-high-school as she saw it in Denmark and other Scandinavial countries at that time. Campbell’s intention was "to serve ‘all that is native and fine’ in the indigenous cultural community." Now, more than 65 years later, the school continues to value the folksong, music and dance traditions of its Appalachian setting, but has broadened its program to meet the interests of students from other parts of the United States and indeed of the world, who "share a love for and obsession with their favored dance, music, art, craft, and folkloric genres." Brose asks what should be the attitude of such a school toward cultural democracy. How can "western European thought and the Anglo-American traditions" be balanced with "an ever growing populace representing many world cultures and a vast array of visual, literary, and performance traditions"? And what are the present-day needs of the local community, which such a school as the John C. Campbell Folk School may be obligated to meet.

CULTURE, THE ROOTS OF COMMUNITY SPIRIT AND POWER
Jane Sapp.
v.19#1, p. 25-30. 5 1/2 pages.
The "cultural program" at Highlander Research and Education Center "is the people who make Highlander their school." The key word is community, "a series of living relationships among people and between people and their land." Neither "high culture" nor "pop culture" are neglected, but the strength of "traditional" culture is discovered. (Traditional people don’t use the word "folk" to describe their values.) "Highlander works with community groups on the nuts and bolts of taking charge of their own cultural programs."

THE DANISH AND THE POLISH FOLK HIGH SCHOOLS
Jindra Kulich.
v. 4,#3, p. 9-14. 6 pages.
Poland is one of the few countries outside Scandinavia where the folk high schools (general education, non-credit, residential institutions for young adults) have been successfully established. Kulich juxtaposes Denmark and Poland in terms of Historical-Social-Economic Setting, the Folk High School Ideas, Early Folk High Schools, Current Situation, and Development. Among his conclusions are the fact that Danish folk-high-schools, by serving nowadays a mixture of rural and city young adults, have lost significance as regards the rural population, whereas the Polish schools have always served the rural population exclusively, and thus have played "a significant role in the life of the villages."

A FLEXIBLE SABBATICAL SYSTEM
John Ramsay.
v.12#3/4, p.19-21. 3 pages.
Unemployment can be turned from a curse to a blessing, if a system of earned unemployment - sabbatical leaves - is designed for general application, not merely in educational or professional settings. A model for such a system is sketched, and the advantages of it are declared.

A FOLK-COLLEGE EXPERIENCE IN VERMONT
Jack Hunter.
v.2#2, p.87-93. 3 3/4 pages.
Hunter’s experience in the Scandinavian Seminar’s yearlong exposure to folkhighschool in Denmark, followed by study with Professor Hans Koch, led to an experimental winter program related to the Farm and Wilderness Foundation camps. He describes life in the Tamarack Farm Community, and refers also to several other programs in New England - Project SEAL (apprenticeships in the Massachusetts coastal area) and Maine Reach in Wiscasset, Maine.

FOXFIRE - A FOLK-SCHOOL?
Review of Moments: the Foxfire Experience
Eliot Wigginton.
V.6#1, p. 9-10. 2 pages.
The book describes Wigginton’s innovative approach to the teaching of English through encouraging students to interview people with Appalachian cultural background, and to publish their findings in a self-supporting magazine.

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK.
v.10#1-2, p. 2-5. 3 1/2 pages.
Why is there little or no notice of anything called a folk school? "In our pre-vailing histories little notice is taken of the unnotable voices ... struggling to articulate their visions and to create their own destiny. Much ‘people’s history’ remains untold." Yet people’s movements often submerge rather than dying, re-emerging later. This may be a time for the folk school movement to return, in a form appropriate to America.

GRUNDTVIGIAN FOLKELIGHED AND THE CULTURE WAR
Erica Simon.
v. 8, #3/4, p. 6-10. 5 pages.
An excerpt from a longer article, in which Simon compares the problems of present-day Israel with those in 1870’s Denmark, which Grundtvig’s concept of "folkliness" attempted to counter. "‘Folkliness’ carries a strong protest against ‘elite culture,’... which is a real threat against the continued existence of a folk." This protest is "the background for what in Denmark is spoken of as the Culture War." The Danish elite of the time were afraid that re-structuring the university by including Nordic elements along with the then-prevalent Latin ones would result in barbarism. At the time, the elite won out. But the "culture war" spread and continues. Now it’s" rebellion in the culture war of the minorities." And "all the ‘Fourth World’ fights the same fight." The "third world" too, especially in Africa. Will there be victory for the oppressed cultures? Or is "the prestige of the majority cultures" too great?

GRUNDTVIGIAN INFLUENCES ON
HIGHLANDER RESEARCH AND EDUCATION CENTER
Myles Horton.
v.12#1-2, p. 5-8. 4 pages.
Although Horton was first looking for a model school, to help him answer the problems of the Appalachian South, he found that it wasn’t the school, but the methods that he needed to learn how to apply. The essentials were: students and teachers living together; peer learning and group singing; freedom from state regulations and from examinations; non-vocational education; social interaction in a non-formal setting; a motivating purpose; clarity about what one is for and what against. Avoidance of institutionalization is also essential. "organize a school just well enough to get teachers and students together and see that it gets no better organized."

THE GULLY OVEN FOLKSCHOOL
Meleta Murdock Baker.
v.14#1, p.15-18. 4 pages.
Description of a short-term experience of cooperative education, in which teachers and their families all participate, both as teachers and learners. The Gully Oven folk-school had then been active for four years - 3 to 5-day sessions, in winter and summer. It was influencing the learning process in the Maine public school where Baker was a teacher, and elsewhere - in Massachusets, for example.

HIGHLANDER FOLK SCHOOL
Myles Horton.
v.2#2, p.78-81. 4pages.
Horton tells how he first heard of the folk-school philosophy, and how his experience in Denmark was later transmuted into the school that came to influence Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, among many others. "One thing I learned... is that the leaders of those... schools had a very clear-cut, kind of emotionally charged purpose... something they believed in....They knew where they stood."

HINDMAN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL, in Kentucky,
a program at POWELL HOUSE in NY State,
GRACE GRAHAM VACATION COLLEGE in Oregon.
v.5#2, p.8-11.
More short descriptions (1 to 2 pages) about folk-school-like settings in 1981.

HITTING HOME
Alan Furth.
v. 19#1, p. 36-42. 5 pages.
Furth describes in some detail his use of local resources and local experiences in teaching a 5th grade class in Maine. The class conducted interviews with local people which resulted in their facilitating a concert by a local folk-singer. A near-failure was turned into a great success by giving respectful attention to the children.

"HOMESTEADING...",
"THE CLEARING",
"THE TRAVELING FOLK SCHOOL",
"ELDERHOSTEL",
"BEREA COLLEGE".
v.5, #1, p. 9-16.
Brief descriptions (1 to 2 pages) about folk-school-like opportunities that were offered in 1981, some of which already had a long history and continue into year 2000.

IN DEBT TO HERITAGE
Elise Hermansen Olsen, ed. by Ardis Petersen.
v. 13#1/2, p.17-24. 8 pages.
Olsen grew up in the Danish-American community of Nysted, Nebraska, about the turn of the century. She attended folk-high-schools in the U.S. and in Denmark, taught at Dalum fhs. in Alberta, Canada, and at Danebod Folk School in Tyler, MN, and later became the wife of a leading folk-high-school director. She describes the warm background of a close-knit Danish family and community in Nysted and elsewhere, and regrets that World War I and the Depression of 1929, together with the changing demands of young people who no longer care seriously about a Danish heritage, slowly brought the folk-high-school movement to an end in America. Yet "the values from the life I experienced there continue....That life had its roots ... in a love of life that knows neither time nor space.... It was a way of life and living."

IN GRATITUDE FOR NORDIC ROOTS
Clare Danielsson.
v.19#2, p.1-19. 17 1/2 pages plus bibliography.
Folk-high-school and adult education, as experienced in Sweden by an American teacher of conflict resolution who accompanied her Swedish parents to a folk-high-school run by the Swedish Labor Organization. She also visited some other folk-high-schools and the Swedish Center for Adult Educators at Linkøping University. She mourns the demise of several similar attempts at residential adult education in America, and muses on the difference between Scandinavian perspectives (educa-tion of the whole person in community) and American ones (education for individual economic growth). While she envies the Scandinavians their long tradition of free education, she feels that the Swedes can also learn from American volunteerism, especially as related to religious groups, and from such movements as the newer community and restorative justice initiatives and the peer mediation movement. A major source of Danielsson’s own work with mediation is J. L. Moreno’s Who Shall Survive? which she found is also influential in Sweden. "Family leadership trainings, validations for the extended family or village way of life... may be a major adult educa-tion topic for the 1990’s."

THE JOHN C. CAMPBELL FOLK SCHOOL.
v.6#1, p. 6-8. 3 pages.
A very brief history of this school. Courses which were currently offered in 1982 are described.

THE LEARNING ALLIANCE and
CLASSROOM EARTH ADVENTURE SCHOOL
are two alternative learning situations that were described at the joint FEAA/ NAAPAE conference at Goddard College in 1996.
v.20 Special issue, p. 33-35. 2 1/2 pages.

LETTER FROM DENMARK
Jonie and Kurt Kristensen.
v.3#3, p. 9-10. 2 pages.
Jonie (an American Dane) and her Danish husband Kurt describe four days at the Danish folk-high-school where they are teachers. The "one permanent factor in the daily rhythm at a folk high school... is: variation!"

MYTHOLOGY AS A BASIS FOR THE FOLK-COLLEGE EXPERIENCE
Erling Duus.
v.2#2, p.82-86. 2 pages.
A description of an experiment in conquering alienation by exposing young people from "the middle-class world" to the life of the Appalachian mountains, in a mythological atmosphere. OPTION v.9#1/2 "This issue is unique in that we have used it largely to spotlight on-going programs in the U.S. related to the folk school concept." Pages 4 - 13 deal briefly with Friendale Farm School of Living (no longer functioning, in 2001), TheClearing in Wisconsin, and Danebod Folk Meeting in Minnesota.

CIRLCES PINES CENTER in Michigan
and The JOHN C. CAMPBELL FOLK SCHOOL in North Carolina
are profiled in this issue.
v.9#3/4.

SAMPLES OF FOLK-HIGH-SCHOOL-LIKE OFFERINGS,
MOSTLY IN THE UNITED STATES.
v. 10#1-2, p. 15-23. 9 pages.
Short announcements of programs current in 1986 at Wilder Forest, Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota; International People’s College, Helsingør, Denmark; Circle Pines Center, Delton, Michigan; Hindman Settlement School, Hindman, Kentucky; The Clearing, Ellison Bay, Wisconsin; Grace Graham Vacation College/University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon; Dacotah Folk School of the Northern Plains, Hot Springs, South Dakota; Danebod Fall Meeting, Tyler, Minnesota.

THE SOKNA MODEL
Benedicte Hambro and others, of Ringerike Folk- high-school.
OPTION, v.20,#1, p. 17-27. 11 pages.
A fascinating description of the collaboration between a Norwegian folkhigh-school and the public school system of a neighboring community, to combat anti-refugee feelings in the community. The 24-hour role-play of the flight of refugees brought home to the participating students how fear, confusion, exhaustion, and the need to deal with hostile forces affect the attitudes and actions of refugees.

THE STORY OF PLAZA RESOLANA
Kathleen Jimenez.
v.20, Special issue, p. 24-26. 2 pages.
This is a conference center committed to "social change... to find new ways of relating to each other and moving forward into the next century", and to diversity in both staff and guests, reflecting the region we live in (northern New Mexico). "La resolana" is both a place and a process - a place where people gather to share their stories and wisdom, and "out of which a body of community knowledge" is formed.

Review of
TO KNOW AS WE ARE KNOWN: A SPIRITUALITY OF EDUCATION
Parker Palmer. Review by Olga Ahrens.
v. 14#1, p. 19-22. 4 pages.
"Relationships, not facts and reasons, are the key to reality." This means that students and teachers work together to create space for the kind of knowledge that comes from "a personal relation between the knower and the known." Silence and consensus are useful tools in such teaching.

WARREN WILSON COLLEGE - LINKING LEARNING WITH PRODUCTIVE WORK AND SERVICE IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Chris Ahrens.
v.12,#3-4, p.14-15. 1 1/2 pages.
The College’s International Development Programs, located in local communities rather than in universities in the host country, are sketched against the background of Warren Wilson’s long-term plan of combining work and service with conventional study.

WAYFARER FARM SCHOOL
Kathryn Parke.
v. 3#1, p.5. l page.
Description of the school operated at that time by David C. and Dorothy Davis. David C. Davis, the author of Model for a Humanistic Education, was attempting to put to work what he had learned in the folk-high-schools of Denmark. (The school later closed, for want of sufficient funding.)

 

Economy/Environment in Folk Education

CONVERSATIONS ON THE EXPERIENCE:
WHERE ENVIRONMENTAL AND FOLK-EDUCATION MEET
Laurel Talbot.
v. 21#1, p. 46-52. 6 pages.
Talbot’s experience with the Audubon Expedition Institute showed her clearly that environmental education and folk-education together empower individuals to help make social change. Meetings with staff members of Highlander Research and Educaion Center, and with the unregulated industrial environment of Matamoros, Mexico, and finally the experience of personally killing a chicken shaped her attitude toward life-long learning and activism.

DENMARK: WELFARE STATE REAPPRAISAL
Leif Beck Fallesen.
v.4#3, p. 15-19. 4 1/2 pages.
At the time of writing (1980), the economic editor of Radio Denmark declared that Denmark, while "not dismantling the welfare state" was "stopping the clock for the time being and allowing appraisal and the passage of time to lower the economic safety net from the very generous to the merely but sufficiently adequate level. And there are perhaps some lessons for other Western industrialized democracies."

THE EARTH, CONSERVATION, AND LIFE STYLE
Sudhanshu S. Palsule.
v.16,#2, p.14-15. 2 pages.
An alternative view of the world is needed, which would embody three critical principles: integrity, connectedness, and dignity. "The Earth belongs to the dead, the living and the unborn."

ECONOMY/ECOLOGY
David Wheeler.
v.16#2, p. 6-10. 4 1/2pages.
"The first principle of the human economy is ‘preserve the system that gives life to all.’ .... The industrial growth system has not been good to the mountains." Change is occurring, and it behooves us to pay attention to it. In the Southern Appal-achians, we have a model of independence, but compassion and cooperation are also needed.

"THE EXTRAORDINARY EDUCATIONAL JOURNEY"
Coleen O’Connell and Louie Carl.
Special issue, p. 26-28. 2 pages
Audubon Expedition Institute, founded as a traveling experiential school, is a fully accredited graduate and undergraduate program, using special buses as classrooms, which travel the continent for one-to-four semesters. Students earn degrees in environmental education and environmental studies, by directly experiencing real people and places, living outdoors with nature, visiting traditional communities affected by environmental degradation, and learning community processes. "The power and effectiveness of folk and popular education" are experi-enced in "music, art, conversation, celebration, and collaboration."

FROM MOTHERHOOD TO SISTER-SOLIDARITY: HOME-MAKING AS A COUNTERDISCOURSE TO CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTING
Robert J. Hill.
v. 21#1, p. 25-33. 9 pages, including a1-page bibliography.
Six women protesting the industrial contamination of their Appalachian town learned that solidarity made it possible to "say unsayable things" and to assert that women’s traditional, unhonored role as maintainers of home and hearth must be valued and taken into account.

THE OUTDOORS AND RECREATIONAL ATHLETICS PROGRAM
AT HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE
Karen Warren.
v.20 Special issue, p. 29-31. 2 pages
"In my outdoor leadership class, we look at under-represented views on how to lead and teach in the outdoors.... The study of egalitarian decision-making models, small group development emphasizing the contributions of all, feminist leadership, and non-adversarial relationships with nature are components of the course." Like the Folk Education Association of America, a goal is to educate "for a just and sustainable world."

RESIDENTIAL ADULT EDUCATION: A CANADIAN MEMOIR, 1927-1979
R. Alex Sim.
v.20#2, p. i - vi, 1-19. 25 pages
"Sometimes in order to move forward, we must first look back... to assess a tradition, to learn again from it, to reinterpret and reapply it in the present, or simply to gain inspiration." [Cattani]. "how can civil society be secured, sustained and invigor-ated in our time?" [Cattani, quoting Michael Welton, In Defense of Civil Society] Sim, who was a long-time leader in adult education activity in Canada, tells of his fascination with the idea of folk-high-school, when he first met it as a teen-age high school drop-out. Several educators during the 1920’s visited Danish folkhighschools and reported that the idea could be imported into agricultural western Ontario. A few such schools were founded under the auspices of the United Farmers of Ontario, and more-or-less flourished, in varying formats, from 1930 to 1979. Sim’s conclusion is that the descent from initiation to imitation was a mistake. "Imitation is a flabby substitute for creativity."

The following three short articles by Alan Furth should be read as a unit:

FALSE FRONTS: THE VIEW FROM GREGORY BALD,
GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK
Alan Furth.
v. 21#1, p. 34-39. 5 1/2 pages
The call of a Red wolf, imprisoned in the National Park and otherwise extinct, and the view of hydrocarbon haze, on an otherwise clear day, in a formerly beautiful valley motivated Furth to write a protest song. He adds, "This thick, heavy mass of contaminated air flows, glacier-like, into other toxic basins... which flank the industrial belts of this United States heartland. The margins are getting thin.

" A RESPONSE TO ROB BALDWIN’S FACULTY DEVELOPMENT SESSION QUESTIONNAIRE: "EXPLORING PERSONAL ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION PHILOSOPHIES"
Alan Furth.
v. 21 #1, p. 40-42. 3 pages
Furth’s experiences with nature, as a young person enrolled in Trailside Country School, fixed his love for wild places and wild life, and made him a poet as well as an environmental educator.

A STRONG WIND: A MOVEMENT. PAPER ON COMMUNITY....
Alan Furth.
v. 21 #1, p. 43-45. 2 1/2 pages
"When a community tends to its own story, the ground is prepared for the individual to find him or her self." Further, we need to rescue our unique roots, and become actors, rather than spectators, of our individual development. Community living, authentic experience and recognition of the environment form the substance of the Audubon Expedition Institute as an educational institution.

 

Art/Creativity in Folk Education

ACCESS ARTS AND NAOMA POWELL’S EXPERIENCES
Kathryn Parke.
v.19#1, p.21-24. 3 1/2 pages
Arts should be a part of everyone’s education. After a year in a Danish folk-high-school, Naoma Powell carried her knowledge of art, and her experience in folk-education into the Appalachian milieu. Her philosophy is "‘trusting that things will work out all right and working like the devil to see that they do.’" Access Arts is a program that brings "disabled and non-disabled, wealthy and low-income students of all ages" together in the same classes. Powell’s personal specialty is ceramic art. Her poem "On Firing the Smoke-Toned Pot" presents the interaction of fire and clay; it can be applied as a metaphor for life.

DANCE AND COMMUNITY
John Ramsay.
v.19#1, p.31-36. 5 pages
"Traditional dance, especially... ‘set running’ ... provides an effective, fun, and very human means of teaching." Ramsay sketches the relationship between tradi-tional dancing and community, and describes the dance programs sponsored by Berea College, in its home state of Kentucky and also internationally.

THE ESTHETIC LIFE. THE IDEA OF FORMING
Øyvind Aksnes and two students.
v.19#1, p. 7-21. 13 pages
"We live in an environment of the unknown.... Creative people are ready for new situations and new problems." How do we nurture creativity? "The esthetic life is involved not with subject-categories, but with forming human experiences and with forming methods of approaching tasks." Forming is not limited to specifics like drawing, ceramics, photography - it is concerned with process, not with finished results. It is a "gathering principle", and the goal is self-development. The method is dynamic - always new - and based on the acceptance and empowerment of each individual student. "We must try to open [the students’] eyes for the values our forefathers have given us.... We must try to stimulate the ability to ‘live with’. Forming is a style of education that challenges and creates daring in students, yet with regard also to other people and society.

WATER CEREMONY
Naoma Powell.
v.16#2, p. 26-29. 4 pages
A poetic celebration of Water, created for a speech choir consisting of five men and nine women.

 

Culture and Folk Education

APPALACHIA DISCOVERED & REDISCOVERED
Loyal Jones.
v.4#2, p. 3-8. 6 pages
A native son of the mountains sings the praise of his homeland and sketches the history of the area. "Nothing remains the same.... Mountains too have changed... because the world changed around them and they inevitably reacted and responded....We... hope that the transactions with the greater culture will mostly be on their[Appalachian] terms, and that the charm and beauty of the culture will endure."

CO-OPERS HAVE A FOLK MISSION
Jim Wyker.
OPTION v.5#3, p.13-16. 3 pages
Description of a plan for an intentional community which would be based on the ideas of respect for land, money as servant, not master, service rather than profit, and family-like cooperation.

COUNTRYSIDE: MIRROR OF OURSELVES
Joe Amato.
v.6 #4, p.3-5. 2 pages.
Tacitus, Rousseau, and Jefferson are examples of philosophers who idealized country living as moral, simple, innocent. Is this a myth, and what does it mean for us in contemporary America?

CUMBIAS, CORRIDOS AND LOVE POTIONS:
OWNING OUR COMMUNITIES FOR THE FUTURE
Phil Dahl-Bredine.
v.20#1, p.11-16. 5 pages
The story of Ms. Brewer, a Black woman who revolutionized her town in New Mexico by encouraging her fellow-citizens to "learn to do business, to do it well, and to do it as a community." Along the way, she served as "alternative financing" for her neighbors. In the course of the story, Dahl-Bredine refers to the Zapatistas in Mexico, as a different example of how small people will protest against the take-over of their culture by global corporations. "I’m with those people who... continued to live with a passion to build a future out of what they loved about their communities." "We need to own our communities by doing business well and as a community."

GRUNDTVIG COURSE AT EUROPA HØJSKOLE
Kathryn Parke, with DANILO DOLCI’S SICILIAN PARABLE.
v. 8#1, p.9-11. 2 1/4 pages
Summary of an experience on the Danish island Møn, with field trips into rural Denmark. Dolci’s talk, "What Is Culture" was an example of folk-school pedagogy. Culture, in Dolci’s view, is more related to love and dignity than to wealth and formal education.

GRUNDTVIGIANS IN THE WILDERNESS
Erling Duus.
v.6 #4 p6-10. 4pages
Duus describes, from his own family’s experience, what he views as the regrettable transformation, even denial, of Grundtvig’s dictum: "Human being first, then Christian." Grundtvig believed that a sense of folk, a sense of history, were necessary to a vibrant Christian life. But the Grundtvigian folkhighschools and independent churches of late-19th century America, most of them in the Middle West, were unable to resist the growing materialism of the surrounding American culture, Duus says. In giving up their Danishness, their preservation of the Danish language, they lost their essential Grundtvigianism. "In a country without an identifiable folk culture, what could [the folk culture that Grundtvig emphasized] possibly mean?" Duus sees the change as a betrayal.

MAKING MYTHS
Robert J. Schneider.
v.2#3, p.3-4. 1 1/2 pages
"Myths are living, shaping stories and therein lies their great power." They arise from some experience of estrangement, which leads to an insight about one’s world; usually a turning point, a beginning. We need (and may be receiving) new myths capable of capturing the imagination.

LAND MYTHOLOGY IN THANKSGIVING
Stew Simpson.
v.6#4, p.12-14. 3pages
Thanksgiving should be viewed not only as a harvest festival, but rather as " a rehearsal of our social values." In a time when we are threatened with rootlessness, our traditional Thanksgiving should be seen as a positive American myth of our beginnings. "In entering into the history of the new land, with Thanksgiving a part of it, we begin to make space into place." The idea of covenant (exemplified in the history of the Israelites) can lead to a more responsible land-ethos. We need to remember that "we are here as guests, not conquerors. We will remain as strangers until we make space into place."

MY AMERICA
Hans P. Hansen.
v. 3#2, p. 5-7. 2 pages.
A Danish folk dance leader and folk-high-school man spent a year (1978-9) studying American culture as viewed in rural Kentucky. He compares Danish culture (no minority groups) with American (many immigrant minorities, but quickly homo-genized) in terms of family, school, and church. Super-commercialization troubles him. He also comments on the Danish-American folk-high-schools that existed from the 1870’s onward, and ruminates on "what a Danish idea with 125 years behind it will develop into in America."

ON THE STREETS OF CALI (COLOMBIA)
Erling Duus.
v. 14#1, p.26-28. 2 pages
The former Chairman of the Folk Education Assoc. of America observes and recounts a brief scene illustrating the relationship of two women, a grandmother and granddaughter, in an age-old culture which assumes "a bond unshakable, surpassing sentiment and even love, forged... out of the rudimentary iron of existence.... [The actions of neither grandmother nor granddaughter] suggest in any way the possibility of distance from each other."

THE PLACE WHERE LIFE HAD BEEN
John Ramsay (under the pseudonym of Morris Caper).
v.3#3, p. 7-8. 1 1/2 pages.
A family reunion brings thoughts about lost childhood, but also a call to "place your past at your back so that your future is before you." Uncle Henry says, "Cabin building ought to be left to them what can see through what’s goin’ on and can take up the pioneer axe and clear new ground."

PROMOTING OUR POTENTIAL
John Ramsay.
v.4#2, p.9-11. 2 pages
"Certain cultural values" of the Southern Highlands and the small farm "are needed today more than ever." "One way to solve... problems is to create a climate of progress by promoting what we already have." Grundtvig’s principle was that "the culture of a country is the setting in which development should root. [It is] a basic resource in educating the people to build their community and nation."

TESTIMONY
Don West.
v.4#2, p. 14. l page
A poem from West’s book O Mountaineers. "I identify with the poor of all places... a feeling of love is deep-rooted in my own land for my own people... Know art and poetry belong to you....

 

Study Circles, Alternative,
and Community-Based Adult Education

ADULT EDUCATION AND CIVIC VITALITY;
LESSONS FROM THE DANISH FOLK ENLIGHTENMENT
R. Oakley Winters.
v.12#3-4, p.8-13. 6 pages
After sketching the historical background against which the folk-high-schools arose, Winters concludes that "the impact of the folk highschool on civic life in Denmark has been profound." This kind of education was a means to a specific end, however, not an end in itself. It seems difficult to export the folk highschool entire. However, several of Grundtvig’s educational principles can be universally applied. Education should "offer a larger vision of what can be". It should teach citizens to become "loving skeptics, always questioning the status quo." Citizens should "assume responsibility for their own choices." Effective teaching transmits "both knowledge and passion for using knowledge." Finally, "all citizens are capable of making informed judgments and assuming civic obligations."

ADULT EDUCATION AND WORLD CRISIS
Harley J. Gibson.
v.8#1, p. 16-25. 8 pages.
Adult education identifies with the unmet needs of common people. Ecological healing should also be a top priority. Needing to counter the unfortunate side effects of industrial growth, it is promoted mainly by voluntary associations. It is related to the consumer cooperative movement, as well as to Grundtvigian principles. Academic education lures people away from life on the land, but " the folk school was not to alter their station in life." The indigenous culture, the humanities, improved citizenship have been the folk-schools’ chief subject-matter. Their influence has resulted in many small study clubs in rural places, as well as in such folk-schools as Ashland in Grant, Michigan, which Gibson attended in 1932. Here were modeled democracy in education, cooperation, and community recreation. Although the school never achieved financial viability, much of value was started there. "Every community needs at its heart something in the nature of a folk school as a leaven and catalyst."

BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE 1933-1957
Mary Parker.
v.16#1, p. 14-22. 9 pages.
A general description of this remarkable, short-lived college, which influenced forward-looking education and especially the development of the arts in America. Although there seems to have been no conscious connection of BMC with folk-high-school principles, it did exemplify a thoroughly democratic basis for education - the lack of hierarchy in its organization, the freedom given students to develop their own courses of study, the informality of life (very radical for its time, which preceded the 1960’s). Perhaps, in its apparent failure after 24 years, it also exemplified the danger of an idealistic foundation that depended too heavily upon leading personalities. The College never was able to conquer the problems of financing and recruiting. Yet, its effect continues to be widely felt to-day.

THE CLEARING: A DANISH FOLK SCHOOL WITH STRONG TIES TO THE AMERICAN POPULIST AND PROGRESSIVE TRADITIONS
Patricia A. Takemoto.
v.16#1, p.23-25. 3 pages.
Jens Jensen, a Danish-born landscape architect, founded this summer school in Wisconsin, using the "folk school traditions of communal living, open admission, no grades, the spoken word, work with hands, and small classes," which he had experi-enced as a young man in the Danish folk and agricultural schools. After Jensen’s death, The Clearing was rescued from extinction by the cooperation of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation and the University of Chicago. "Both saw The Clearing as a setting for educational programs promoting the belief that knowledgeable, independ-ent thinkers were vital to a strong democracy." Continuing the liberal education emphasis offered in the late 1940’s by the University of Chicago’s Basic Studies Pro-gram, now an independent, non-profit institution, it offers primarily week-long courses on nature studies, creative writing, fine and folk arts, literature and philosophy.

COMMUNITY-BASED DEVELOPMENTAL PROGRAMS
Hubert Sapp.
v.14,#2, p. 7-14. 8 pages
In a short talk and subsequent discussion, a former director of Highlander Research and Education Center considers the ways that the folk-school model may support community-based programs, such as those needed by Black-belt South, Indian reservations, rural communities that feel "left out", young people looking for meaning. "Folk" programs should not be aimed at the nostalgic preservation of folk-customs, but rather should support change, whether in a group or in individual lives.

COMMUNITY-DETERMINED LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION:
An academic program for Native Americans at Evergreen State College
Russell Fox and Carol Minugh.
v.16#2, p. 17-22. 5 pages
Evergreen State College has initiated a program that hopes to give the Native American community power to have its special knowledge validated in the First World. It uses the triad of the student, the student’s community, and the institution/program/ faculty. Resources are shared with a nearby tribally controlled Community College.

DEMOCRACY "BY THE PEOPLE"
Anthony Henry Smith.
v.19#2, p.20-22. 3 pages
Democracy varies according to one’s definition of it. Perhaps it "can be defined as a social process by which we both acquire and utilize knowledge." It should be "characterized by the incorporation of the principles of equality, shared decision making, individual responsibility and mutual respect." It "can not easily be imposed upon or taken away from the general populace." "Wisdom, that is, the ability to utilize knowledge, is our most precious national resource."

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION: LIFELONG LEARNING IN SWEDEN
Ross Carson.
v.15#2, p. 12-16. 5 pages.
A brief history of the development of adult education, with some attention also to the 128 folk-high-schools in Sweden.

EDUCATIONAL ALTERNATIVES IN AMERICA
Dyckman Ware Vermilye.
v.2#1, p.7-9. 2 1/2 pages
Though not necessarily called folk-schools, there are many alternative educational programs available in the U.S. at present. NEXUS, a telephone answering service, and INTERVERSITAS are described as worthwhile efforts to put educational experimenters in touch with each other. Another example, perhaps closer to the folkhighschool, is St. Olaf College’s unit called the Paracollege. Each of these examples "has an underlying concern for student growth and learning that is central to folk-school programs." *

EXPERIENCES IN EDUCATION
Svend Godfredsen.
v.14#2, p.15-24. 10 pages
Leaving formal degree education after a two-year exposure, Godfredsen found active, cooperative adult education more useful for ordinary workers. He became an "educational activist", especially in connection with labor union programs, promoting adult education tailored to the needs and wishes of such organizations, but always with a view of "achieving for the individual an identity with history." His 16-year experience, covering especially the years of the Great Depression, indicates that the Danish Folk School idea "is applicable" to industrial workers. "The biggest problems we had were lack of funds to carry on, and lack of personnel with an understanding of the tremendous promise the program held in terms of full citizenship." He regrets the loss of "a comprehensive social philosophy" in to-day’s labor movement, and feels that competition and selfish individualism have much too large a place in today’s education. Godfredsen’s experience also included several years in Europe as a staff officer of the Marshall Plan and nearly ten years as Assistant to the President of Roosevelt University, but he left higher education, feeling that current elitism and affluence are damaging to our social structure.

FOLK DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION IN SWEDEN
Johan Norbeck.
v.14,#1, p.23-26 3 1/2 pages
A teacher in the Adult Education Training Department of Linkøping University, Sweden, describes several forms of education currently used for folk development in Sweden: Folk High Schools, Study Circles, Folk Libraries, Lecturing Societies are all used in this way. Folk Development Education is democratic, participatory, aimed at human development rather than formal qualification. It is handled by non-govern-mental organizations, but the central government gives large grants, with very little interference in the activities. This freedom is essential.

FOLK EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES
Chris Spicer.
v.15,#2, p.3-11. 9 pages.
The Folk Education Association of America was originally based on supporting and promoting the Scandinavian folkehøgskole in America, but eventually decided that "folk education" describes a set of fundamental ideas: 1) student-centered education, 2) a community of learners - collaboration between teaching and learning, 3) holistic learning - not exclusively intellectual, and 4) learning based on experience and dialogue, rather than experts and books. Examples of such initiatives include widespread adult education opportunities, popular education as espoused by Paulo Freire and Myles Horton, and associations of educators who pursue holistic education in elementary and secondary as well as higher education, or who are concerned with the issue of social change. Folk education should "create a bridge between individual and community needs, between the needs of the powerful and the powerless." Some institutions that work in this area include the Arthur Morgan School in North Carolina; Interlocken, an international camp in New Hampshire; Highlander in Tennessee; the Coady International Institute in Nova Scotia; the Inter-national Institute for Cooperation and Development in Massachusetts; the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina; the Danebod Folk School in Minnesota; The Clearing, also in Minnesota, and Elderhostel, with programs in many locations. Some degree-granting colleges with similar educational attitudes include Berea College in Kentucky, Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, and Goddard College in Vermont. Community-based learning centers, Study circle groups, and other experiments are discussed, as well as international collaboration in this field.

THE FOLK SCHOOL THAT NEVER WAS
R. Alex Sim
v.20#2, p. 20-23 4 pages.
This is a prospectus that Sim developed in 1938. But the school planned was never realized. He says that it still "looks good to me...as... a notion for tomorrow." The article constitutes a concrete supplement to the previous longer memoir, and should be read in conjunction with that.

IN GRATITUDE FOR NORDIC ROOTS
Clare Danielsson.
v.19#2, p.1-19. 17 1/2 pages plus bibliography.
Folk-high-school and adult education, as experienced in Sweden by an American teacher of conflict resolution who accompanied her Swedish parents to a folk-high-school run by the Swedish Labor Organization. She also visited some other folk-high-schools and the Swedish Center for Adult Educators at Linkøping University. She mourns the demise of several similar attempts at residential adult education in America, and muses on the difference between Scandinavian perspectives (educa-tion of the whole person in community) and American ones (education for individual economic growth). While she envies the Scandinavians their long tradition of free education, she feels that the Swedes can also learn from American volunteerism, especially as related to religious groups, and from such movements as the newer community and restorative justice initiatives and the peer mediation movement. A major source of Danielsson’s own work with mediation is J. L. Moreno’s Who Shall Survive? which she found is also influential in Sweden. "Family leadership trainings, validations for the extended family or village way of life... may be a major adult educa-tion topic for the 1990’s."

GRUNDTVIGIAN INFLUENCES ON
HIGHLANDER RESEARCH AND EDUCATION CENTER
Myles Horton.
v.12#1-2, p. 5-8. 4 pages.
Although Horton was first looking for a model school, to help him answer the problems of the Appalachian South, he found that it wasn’t the school, but the methods that he needed to learn how to apply. The essentials were: students and teachers living together; peer learning and group singing; freedom from state regulations and from examinations; non-vocational education; social interaction in a non-formal setting; a motivating purpose; clarity about what one is for and what against. Avoidance of institutionalization is also essential. "organize a school just well enough to get teachers and students together and see that it gets no better organized."

HIGHLANDER FOLK SCHOOL
Myles Horton.
v.2#2, p.73-81. 4pages
Horton tells how he first heard of the folk-school philosophy, and how his experience in Denmark was later transmuted into the school that came to influence Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, among many others. "One thing I learned... is that the leaders of those... schools had a very clear-cut, kind of emotionally charged purpose... something they believed in....They knew where they stood."

THE ONTARIO FOLK SCHOOL MOVEMENT
AND RURAL ADULT EDUCATION, 1939-1965
Anne Gillies.
v.20#2, p. 24-49. 20 pages + 4 pages of bibliography
In five parts: I. The Roots of Rural Learning - farm populism, the United Farmers of Ontario, and the New Canada Movement. II. The Ontario Folk School Movement in Foundation, 1939-1959: folk school promotion in Ontario, the Ontario Folk School Council, and the Ontario Farm Radio Forum. III. Building the Folk School Network: activities and themes of folk schools in Ontario, contrasted with earlier and later trends in folk schools. IV. Folk Schools in Transition, 1958-1965: gradual decline of support. Merger of the Ontario Folk School Council with the Ontario Farm Radio Forum. V. Rural Adult Education in Ontario: Understanding the Past and Analyzing the Future: "the continued need for critical rural adult learning based on concepts of broader social change."

STUDY-CIRCLES
Paul Aicher.
v.14,#2, p. 3-6. 4 pages
Following a brief history of study-circles in the United States and Sweden, the work of the newly constituted Study Circle Resource Center in Connecticut is described. The question-and-answer period brings out information about the prob-lems a study-circle may encounter, and deals with the question of how to connect discussion with action.

THE STUDY CIRCLE EXPERIENCE IN SWEDEN
COMPARED WITH THE UNITED STATES
Paul J. Aicher.
v.15#2, p. 17-23. 5 pages.
Study Circles differ from other forms of adult education in being more student-participatory. In Sweden, cultural subjects are more frequently than social issues the subjects of such programs. In the United States, social issues are the favored ones, yet such programs are more developed in Sweden than in the United States, even though they are secondary to cultural subjects. Simplistically, "in the United States, the pedagogy is seen as a tool to effect change. Swedes, on the other hand, approach the pedagogy as a tool for enrichment." The method differs too - materials used in Sweden are not typically broken down into sessions with time limits, but allow the study circles to go at their own pace. Much of this material is locally produced. The Swedish leader is considered more important than the material, yet special leadership training and required standards seem to be lacking. In the United States, Aicher believes, more structure is more effective. But he notes that this may have to do with the shorter time that American study circles meet. He feels that more study of the movement is needed, to establish its value.

WHAT DOES IT REALLY TAKE?
Kathryn Parke.
v.12#3-4, p.16-17. 2 pages
Can folk-schools be adapted to American needs and expectations? Short-term conferences seem to be comparable in purpose and effect. A one-day "New Priorities Workshop" is described as an example.

WRITING IN WATER: A LIFE IN FOLKHIGHSCHOOL EDUCATION
Susanne Botfeldt (Baring folkhighschool) interviewed by Clay Warren
v.20#1, p. 1-10. 10 pages
Botfeldt’s experience in a folkhighschool extended from 1967 to the present (1993). She sees herself as changing from willingness to be dominated by the male director of the school and other male teachers, to being able to speak UP, especially for her subject (sewing), which wasn’t valued much at first. The interests of students have also changed. Baring folkhighschool has always been democratic, in that teachers’ opinions and preferences have counted, and students’ desires have been listened to, but it’s only in recent years that the gender gap has been addressed.

 

Folk Education Association of America:
History and Conference Proceedings

1978 F-CAA CONFERENCE AT YELLOW SPRINGS, OHIO.
v. 2#3, p. 5-9. 5 pages
Quotations from participants Erling Duus, John Ramsay, Myles Horton, Paul Hoover, Al J. McKnight. Notes and comments by Dyckman Vermilye, who adds quotations by Vishwanathan, Jack Miller, Jim Dunn.

CONVERGING FOR THE LONG HAUL: WHAT WE BRING TO THE TABLE
Chris Spicer.
v.20, Special issue, p. 1-12. 11 1/2 pages
The joint conference of the Folk Education Association of America and the North American Alliance for Popular and Adult Education in 1996, had as a major goal, "building personal connections to produce concrete action." Spicer’s key-note address described the situation of the FEAA at the present time. There are differing (and contesting) points of view among the members. What they have in common is "dialogue, group-centered and participant-directed learning, honoring culture and community identity." "Strengthening one’s self identity and role as a member of community, and building a base for democratic social action" is the foundation of the folk-high-schools of Scandinavia.

FOLK EDUCATION ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA - JUST WHAT IS IT?
v.13,#3-4, p.9-10. 1 1/2 pages
Description and brief history of the Association from its founding in 1977 to the 1990 date.

FOLK EDUCATION: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF FEAA
John Ramsay.
v. 16#1, p. 7-13. 7pages.
A sketch of the first 12 years of the Folk Education Association of America, with brief descriptions of the annual conferences of those years and their educational themes. This is followed by a consideration of democratic organizational action as Ramsay observed it in Denmark, particularly at an annual meeting of the Danish Gymnastics and Youth Organization. "Instead of a monarchy of the majority, dele-gates simply listened to each other and then were free to apply their best judgement in their home communities.... Here was the next step toward freedom, the secret to empowerment of the people." Some of the principles on which Grundtvig based his philosophy of education are highlighted: 1) that humankind are made in the image of God (not God in the image of humankind); 2) that "it is our sacred duty to use our lives to enhance life on earth"; and 3) that we are individuals but also social beings. Freedom is a condition of society, not of individual rights.

IMPRESSIONS
(of the 3d national FCAA conference).
v.3#3, p. 3-6. 2 1/2 pages.
Five attenders tell what struck them most importantly. A Danish-American wrote of singing, a modern dance performance "The Legend of Prairie Star" by Margaret Fargnoli, and the presence of Danes and Danish-Americans. Two Kentuckians commented on the evolution of the Association through three conferences. A New Yorker rejoiced in the singing, the meeting with Danes, and the prairie country. A third Kentuckian saw a "sense of place" as a root of the folk-school spirit, and ruminated on the importance of myth and of the Living Word. *

"READY FOR THE LONG HAUL"
A Report on the Joint FEAA/NAAPAE Congress
Mary Cattani.
v.20, Special issue, p. 13-19. 7 pages
A broad spectrum of educational approaches was represented by the attenders at the joint conference of the Folk Education Association of America and the North American Alliance for Popular and Adult Education in 1996. "Naming the Moment" was a process used as a means of structuring the conference program. This included identifying ourselves, naming and analyzing the issues, and planning for action. Music throughout the conference was an important contribution. As well as the plenary meetings, small "reflection" groups, and "interest" groups encouraged personal dialogue, during which the differences and the common grounds of the two sponsoring associations were explored. Some joint "next steps" were identified: A resource exchange manual listing the resources of each member institution; a joint task force on the environment; a scholarship consortium, to support students in attending programs; a Popular Education Campaign to mobilize millions of North Americans, and especially among young people; participation in the 1997 UNESCO International Conference; enhancing access and use of the internet; combined publishing of a joint journal or newsletter.

WHAT IS NAAPAE, THE NORTH AMERICAN ALLIANCE
FOR POPULAR AND ADULT EDUCATION?
v.20 Special issue, p.31-32. 1 1/2 pages
Taken from NAAPAE literature, the history of this networking organization is sketched. It stems from the International Council for Adult Education, based in Toronto, and from the ICAE World Assembly in Bangkok in 1990. The method is cooperation with existing organizations, many of which gathered in Toronto, February 1993. The coordinating committee is comprised of 3 members from Quebec, 3 from the rest of Canada, 6 from the U.S., and two from Indigenous organizations. NAAPAE "is an alliance of organizations which are in solidarity with popular struggles around the world and for which education is central to bringing about social change." "Folk education tends to start with the celebration of life and popular education starts with the fight for life." Strategies differ, but they have a common end goal. Some believe that the capitalistic system needs to be changed first, "change from outside", then the schools would follow. Others want to work on "change from within", helping to liberate all kinds of educational institutions, without necessarily opposing the system. Educating and organizing are complementarily supportive. The difference is in the emphasis given to each aspect. How to serve both oppressed and privileged oppressors? The concept of liberation is valid for both. How can we be inclusive? What networking or support functions can we bring to bear on this goal?