WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT EDUCATION IN DENMARK
On the railway train between Copenhagen, Denmark, and Hamburg, Germany,
I fell into conversation with an English traveller who had been in many
parts of the world and who, like myself, was returning from a visit of
observation and study in Denmark. We exchanged traveller’s experiences
with each other. I found that he had had opportunity to study conditions
in that country a great deal more thoroughly than was true in my case
and he gave me much information that I was glad to have about the
condition of agriculture and the life of the people.
In return I told him something of the places I had visited before going
to Denmark and of the way I had attempted to dig down, here and there in
different parts of Europe, beneath the crust and see what was going on
in the lower strata of social life. I said to him, finally, that, after
all I had seen, I had come to the conclusion that the happiest country
in Europe, perhaps the happiest country in the world, is Denmark. Then I
asked him if he knew any part of the world where the people seemed to
come so near to solving all their problems as in Denmark.
He seemed a little startled and a little amused at that way of putting
the matter, but, after considering the question, he confessed that he
had never visited any other part of the world that seemed to be in a
more generally healthy and wholesome condition than this same little
country which we were just leaving behind us.
Denmark is not rich in the sense that England and the United States are
rich. I do not know what the statisticians say about the matter, but I
suppose that in Denmark there are few if any such great fortunes as one
finds in England, in the United States, and in many parts of Europe. In
fact, there is hardly room enough in this little land for a
multimillionaire to move about in, as it is less than one third the size
of the state of Alabama, although it has one third more population.
Denmark is an agricultural country. About two fifths of the whole
population are engaged in some form or other of agriculture. The farms
in Denmark have been wonderfully prosperous in recent years. I doubt,
however, whether as much money has been made or can be made in Denmark
as has been made on the farms in the best agricultural districts in
America. The soil is not particularly rich. A large section of the
country is, or has been until recent years, made up of barren heath like
that in northern Scotland. Within the past few years, as a result of one
of the most remarkable pieces of agricultural engineering that has ever
been attempted, large tracts of this waste have been made over into
fruitful farm land.
In spite of disadvantages, however, the country has greatly prospered
for a number of years past. People have been coming from all over the
world to study Danish agriculture and they have gone away marvelling at
the results. I am not going to try to tell in detail what these results
were or in what manner they have been obtained. I will merely say that
it seems to be generally conceded that, both in the methods of culture
and in the marketing of the crops, Denmark has gone farther and made
greater progress than any other part of the world. Furthermore, there is
no country, I am certain, not even the United States or Canada, where
the average farmer stands so high or exercises so large an influence
upon political and social life as he does in Denmark at the present
time.
“What’s back of the Danish farmer?” I said to my English friend. “What
is it that has made agriculture in this country?”
“It’s the Danish schools,” he replied.
I had asked the same question before and received various replies, but
they all wound up with a reference to the schools, particularly the
country high schools. I had heard much of them in America; I heard of
them again in England; for 90 per cent. of Denmark’s agricultural
exports goes to England.
It was not, however, until I reached Denmark, saw the schools
themselves, and talked with some of the teachers—not, in fact, until
after I had left Denmark and had an opportunity to look into and study
their history and organization—that I began to comprehend the part that
the rural high schools were playing in the life of the masses of the
Danish people, and to understand the manner in which they had influenced
and helped to build up the agriculture of the country.
There are two things about these rural high schools that were of
peculiar interest to me: First, they have had their origin in a movement
to help the common people, and to lift the level of the masses,
particularly in the rural district; second, they have succeeded. I
venture to say that in no part of the world is the general average
intelligence of the farming class higher than it is in Denmark. I was
impressed in my visits to the homes of some of the small farmers by the
number of papers and magazines to be found in their homes.
In recent years there has sprung up in many parts of Europe a movement
to improve the condition of the working masses through education.
Wherever any effort has been made on a large scale to improve
agriculture, it has almost invariably taken the form of a school of some
sort or other. For example, in Hungary, the state has organized
technical education in agriculture on a grand scale. Nowhere in Europe,
I learned, has there been such far-reaching effort to improve
agriculture through experimental and research stations, agricultural
colleges, high schools, and common schools. There is this difference,
however: Hungary has tried to improve agriculture by starting at the
top, creating a body of teachers and experts who are expected in turn to
influence and direct the classes below them. Denmark has begun at the
bottom.
One of the principal aims of the Hungarian Government, as appears from a
report by the Minister of Agriculture, was “to adapt the education to
the needs of the different classes and take care, at the same time, that
these different classes did not learn too much, did not learn anything
that would unfit them for their station in life.”
I notice, for example, that it was necessary to close the agricultural
school at Debreczen, which was conducted in connection with an
agricultural college at the same place, because, as the report of the
Minister of Agriculture states, “the pupils of this school, being in
daily contact with the first-year pupils of the college, attempted to
imitate their ways, wanted more than was necessary for their social
position, and at the same time aimed at a position they were unable to
maintain.”
All this is in striking contrast to the spirit and method of the Danish
rural high school, which started among the poorest farming class, and
has grown, year by year, until it has drawn within its influence nearly
all the classes in the rural community. In this school it happens that
the daughters of the peasant and of the nobleman sometimes sit together
on the same bench, and that the sons of the landlord and of the tenant
frequently work and study side by side, sharing the personal friendship
of their teacher and not infrequently the hospitality of his home.
The most striking thing about the rural high school in Denmark is that
it is neither a technical nor an industrial school and, although it was
created primarily for the peasant people, the subject of agriculture is
almost never mentioned, at least not with the purpose of giving
practical or technical education in that subject.
It may seem strange that, in a school for farmers, nothing should be
said about agriculture, and I confess that it took some time for me to
see the connection between this sort of school and Denmark’s
agricultural prosperity. It seemed to me, as I am sure it will seem to
most other persons, that the simplest and most direct way to apply
education to agriculture was to teach agriculture in the schools.
The real difference between the Hungarian and the Danish methods of
dealing with this problem is, however, in the spirit rather than in the
form. In Hungary the purpose of the schools seems to be to give each
individual such training as it is believed will fit him for the
particular occupation which his station in life assigns him, and no
more. The government decides. In other words, education is founded on a
system of caste. If the man below learns in school to look to the man in
station above him, if he begins to dream and hope for something better
than the life to which he has been accustomed—then, a social and
political principle is violated, and, as the Commissioner of Agriculture
says, “the government is not deterred from issuing energetic orders.”
[Illustration:
BRICKLAYING AT HAMPTON INSTITUTE
]
[Illustration:
BLACKSMITHING AT HAMPTON INSTITUTE
]
Of course, the natural result of such measures is to increase the
discontent. Just as soon as any class of people feel that privileges
granted to others are denied to them, immediately these
privileges—whether they be the opportunities for education, or anything
else—assume in the eyes of the people to whom they are denied a new
importance and value.
The result of this policy is seen in emigration statistics. I doubt,
from what I have been able to learn, whether all the efforts made by the
Hungarian Government in the way of agricultural instruction have done
very much to allay the discontent among the masses of the farming
population. Thousands of these Hungarian peasants every year still
prefer to try their fortune in America, and the steady exodus of the
farming population continues.
The rural high school in Denmark has pursued just the opposite policy.
It has steadily sought to stimulate the ambitions and the intellectual
life of the peasant people. Instead, however, of compelling the
ambitious farmer’s boy, who wants to know something about the world, to
go to America, to the ordinary college, or to the city, the schools have
brought the learning of the colleges and the advantages of the city to
the country.
The most interesting and remarkable thing about these high schools is
the success that they have had in presenting every subject that an
educated man should know about in such a form as will make it
intelligible and interesting to country boys and girls who have only
had, perhaps, the rudiments of a common school education.
The teachers in these country high schools are genuine scholars. They
have to be, for the reason that the greater part of their teaching is in
the form of lectures, without text-books of any kind, and their success
depends upon the skill with which they can present their subjects. In
order to awaken interest and enthusiasm, they have to go to the sources
for their knowledge.
Most of the teachers whom I met could speak two or three languages. I
was surprised at the knowledge which every one I met in Denmark, from
the King and Queen to the peasants, displayed in American affairs, and
the interest they showed in the progress of the Negro and the work we
have been doing at Tuskegee. As an illustration of the wide interests
which occupy the teachers in these rural schools, I found one of them
engaged in translating Prof. William James’s book on “Pragmatism” into
the Danish language.
I have heard it said repeatedly since I was in Denmark that the Danish
people as a whole were better educated and better informed than any
other people in Europe. Statistics seem to bear out this statement; for,
according to the immigration figures of 1900, although 24.2 per cent. of
all persons over fourteen years of age coming into the United States as
immigrants could neither read nor write, only .8 per cent. of the
immigrants from Scandinavia were illiterate. Of the Germans, among whom
I had always supposed education was more widely diffused than elsewhere
in Europe, 5.8 per cent. were illiterate.
Before I go farther, perhaps, I ought to give some idea of what these
rural high schools look like. One of the most famous of them is situated
about an hour’s ride from Copenhagen, near the little city of Roskilde.
It stands on a piece of rolling ground, overlooking a bay, where the
little fisher vessels and small seafaring craft are able to come far
inland, almost to the centre of the island. All around are wide
stretches of rich farm land, dotted here and there with little country
villages.
There is, as I remember, one large building with a wing at either end.
In one of these wings the head master of the school lives, and in the
other is a gymnasium. In between are the school rooms where the lectures
are held. Everything about the school is arranged in a neat and orderly
manner—simple, clean, and sweet—and I was especially impressed by the
wholesome, homelike atmosphere of the place. Teachers and pupils eat
together at the same table and meet together in a social way in the
evening. Teachers and students are thus not merely friends; they are in
a certain sense comrades.
In the school at Roskilde there are usually about one hundred and fifty
students. During the winter term of five months the young men are in
school; in the summer the young women take their turn. Pupils pay for
board and lodging twenty crowns, a little more than five dollars a
month, and for tuition, twenty crowns the first month, fifteen the
second, ten the third, five the fourth, and nothing the fifth. These
figures are themselves an indication of the thrift as well as the
simplicity with which these schools are conducted. Twenty years ago,
when they were first started, I was told the pupils used to sleep
together, in a great sleeping room on straw mattresses, and eat with
wooden spoons out of a common dish, just as the peasant people did at
that time. This reminds me that just about this same time, at Tuskegee,
pupils were having similar hardships. For one thing, I recall that, in
those days, the food for the whole school was cooked in one large iron
kettle and that sometimes we had to skip a meal because there wasn’t
anything to put in the kettle. Since that time conditions have changed,
not only in the rural high schools of Denmark, but among the country
people. At the present day, if not every peasant cottage, at least every
coöperative dairy has its shower-bath. The small farmer, who, a few
years ago, looked upon every innovation with mistrust, is likely now to
have his own telephone—for Denmark has more telephones to the number of
the population than has any other country in Europe—and every country
village has its gymnasium and its assembly hall for public lectures.
I have before me, on my desk, a school plan showing the manner in which
the day is disposed of. School begins at eight o’clock in the morning
and ends at seven o’clock in the evening, with two hours rest at noon.
Two thirds of the time of the school is devoted to instruction in the
Danish mother-tongue and in history. The rest is given to arithmetic,
geography, and the natural sciences.
It is peculiar to these schools that most of the instruction is given in
the form of lectures. There are no examinations and few recitations. Not
only the natural sciences, but even the higher mathematics, are taught
historically, by lectures. The purpose is not to give the student
training in the use of these sciences, but to give him a general insight
into the manner in which different problems have arisen and of the way
in which the solution of them has widened and increased our knowledge of
the world.
In the Danish rural high school, emphasis is put upon the folksongs,
upon Danish history and the old Northern mythology. The purpose is to
emphasize, in opposition to the Latin and Greek teaching of the
colleges, the value of the history and the culture of the Scandinavian
people; and, incidentally, to instil into the minds of the pupils the
patriotic conviction that they have a place and mission of their own
among the people of the world.
There are several striking things about this system of rural high
schools, of which there are now 120 in Denmark. The first thing about
them that impressed me was the circumstances in which they had their
origin. In the beginning the rural high schools were a private
undertaking, as indeed they are still, although they get a certain
amount of support from the State. The whole scheme was worked out by a
few courageous individuals, who were sometimes opposed, but frequently
assisted by the Government. The point which I wish to emphasize is that
they did not spring into existence all at once, but that they grew up
slowly and are still growing. It took long years of struggles to
formulate and popularize the plans and methods which are now in use in
these schools. In this work the leading figure was a Lutheran bishop,
Nicolai Frederick Severen Grundvig, who is often referred to as the
Luther of Denmark. The rural school movement grew out of a non-sectarian
religious movement and was, in fact, an attempt to revive the spiritual
life of the masses of the people.
Rural high schools were established as early as 1844, but it was not
until twenty years later, when Denmark, as a result of her disastrous
war with Prussia, had lost one third of her richest territory, that the
rural high school movement began to gain ground. It was at that time,
when affairs were at their lowest ebb in Denmark, that Grundvig began
preaching to the Danish people the gospel that what had been lost
without, must be regained within; and that what had been lost in battle
must be gained in peaceful development of the national resources.
Bishop Grundvig saw that the greatest national resource of Denmark, as
it is of any country, was its common people. The schools he started and
the methods of education he planned were adapted to the needs of the
masses. They were an attempt to popularize learning, put it in simple
language, rob it of its mystery and make it the common property of the
common people.
Another thing peculiar about these schools is that they were not for
children, but for older students. Eighty per cent. of the students in
the rural high schools are from eighteen to twenty-five years of age; 12
per cent, are more than twenty-five years of age and only 8 per cent.
are under eighteen. These schools, are, in fact, farmer’s colleges. They
presuppose the education of the common school. The farmer’s son and the
farmer’s daughter, before they enter the rural high school, have had the
training in the public schools and have had practical schooling in the
work of the farm and the home. At just about the age when a boy or a
girl begins to think about leaving home and of striking out in the world
for himself; just at the age when there comes, if ever, to a youth the
desire to know something about the larger world and about all the
mysteries and secrets that are buried away in books or handed down as
traditions in the schools—just at this time the boys and girls are sent
away to spend two seasons or more in a rural high school. As a rule they
go, not to the school in their neighbourhood but to some other part of
the country. There they make the acquaintance of other young men and
women who, like themselves, have come directly from the farms, and this
intercourse and acquaintance helps to give them a sense of common
interest and to build up what the socialists call a “class
consciousness.” All of this experience becomes important a little later
in the building up of the coöperative societies, coöperative dairies,
coöperative slaughter houses, societies for the production and sale of
eggs, for cattle raising and for other purposes.
The present organization of agriculture in Denmark is indirectly but
still very largely due to the influence of the rural school.
The rural high school came into existence, as I have said, as the result
of a religious rather than of a merely social or economic movement.
Different in methods and in outward form as these high schools are from
the industrial schools for the Negro in America, they have this in
common, that they are non-sectarian, but in the broadest, deepest sense
of that word, religious. They seek, not merely to broaden the minds, but
to raise and strengthen the moral life of masses of the people. This
peculiar character of the Danish rural high school was defined to me in
one word by a gentleman I met in Denmark. He called them
“inspirational.”
It is said of Grundvig that he was one of those who did not look for
salvation merely in political freedom. In spite of this fact, the rural
high schools have had a large influence upon politics in Denmark. It is
due to them, although they have carefully abstained from any kind of
political agitation, that Denmark, under the influence of its “Peasant
Ministry,” has become the most democratic country in Europe. It is
certainly a striking illustration of the result of this education that
what, a comparatively few years ago, was the lowest and the most
oppressed class in Denmark, namely the small farmer, has become the
controlling power in the State, as seems to be the case at the present
time.
I have gone to some length to describe the plans and general character
of the rural high schools because they are the earliest, the most
peculiar and unusual feature in Danish rural life and education, and
because, although conducted in the same spirit, they are different in
form and methods from the industrial schools with which I have been
mainly interested during the greater part of my life.
The high schools, however, are only one part of the Danish system of
rural schools. In recent years there has grown up side by side with the
rural high school another type of school for the technical training in
agriculture and in the household arts. For example, not more than half a
mile from the rural high school which I visited at Roskilde, there has
recently been erected what we in America would call an industrial
school, where scientific agriculture, as well as technical training in
home-keeping are given. In this school, young men and women get much the
same practical training that is given our students at Tuskegee, with the
exception that this training is confined to agriculture and
housekeeping. Besides, there is, in these agricultural schools, no
attempt to give students a general education as is the case with the
industrial schools in the South. In fact, schools like Hampton and
Tuskegee are trying to do for their students at one and the same time,
what is done in Denmark through two distinct types of school.
I found this school, like its neighbour the high school, admirably
situated, surrounded by beautiful gardens in which the students raised
their own vegetables. In the kitchen, the young women learned to prepare
the meals and to set the tables. I was interested to see also that, in
the whole organization of the school there was an attempt to preserve
the simplicity of country life. In the furniture, for example, there was
an attempt to preserve the solid simplicity and quaint artistic shapes
with which the wealthier peasants of fifty or a hundred years ago
furnished their homes. Dr. Robert E. Park, my companion on my trip
through Europe, told me when I visited this school that he found one of
the professors at work in the garden wearing the wooden shoes that used
to be worn everywhere in the country by the peasant people. This man had
travelled widely, had studied in Germany, where he had taken a degree in
his particular specialty at one of the agricultural colleges.
Perhaps the most interesting and instructive part of my visit was the
time that I spent at what is called a husmand’s or cotter’s school,
located at Ringsted and founded by N. J. Nielsen-Klodskov in 1902. At
this school I saw such an exhibition of vegetables, grains, and
especially of apples, as I think I had never seen before, certainly not
at any agricultural school.
I wish I had opportunity to describe in detail all that I saw and
learned about education and the possibilities of country life in the
course of my visit to this interesting school. What impressed me most
with regard to it and to the others that I visited, was the way in which
the different types of schools in Denmark have succeeded in working into
practical harmony with one another; the way also, in which each in its
separate way had united with the other to uplift, vivify, and inspire
the life and work of the country people.
For example, the school at Ringsted, in addition to the winter course in
farming for men and the summer school in household arts for women,
offers, just as we do at Tuskegee, a short course to which the older
people are invited. The courses are divided between the men and the
women, the men’s course coming in the winter and the women’s course in
the summer. During the period of instruction, which lasts eleven days,
these older people live in the school, just as the younger students do
and gain thus the benefit of an intimate association with each other and
with their teachers. To illustrate to what extent this school and the
others like it have reached and touched the people, I will quote from a
letter written to me by the founder. He says: “The Keorehave
Husmandskole (cotter’s school) is the first of its kind in Denmark. It
is a private undertaking and the buildings erected since 1902 are worth
about 400,000 crowns ($100,000). During the seven years in which it has
been in operation 631 men and 603 women have had training for six
months. In addition 3,205 men and women have attended the eleven-day
courses.”
In addition to the short courses in agriculture and housekeeping,
offered by the school at Ringsted, some of the rural high schools hold,
every fall, great public assemblies like our Chautauquas, which last
from a few days to a week and are attended by men and women of the rural
districts. At these meetings there are public lectures on historical,
literary and religious subjects. In the evening there are music,
singing, and dancing, and other forms of amusement. These annual
assemblies, held under the direction of the rural high schools, have
largely taken the place of the former annual harvest-home festivals in
which there was much eating and drinking, as I understand, but very
little that was educational or uplifting. In addition to these yearly
meetings, which draw together people from a distance, there are monthly
meetings which are held either in the high school buildings, or in the
village assembly buildings, or in the halls connected with the village
gymnasiums. In the cities these meetings are sometimes held in the “High
School Homes” as they are called, which serve the double purpose of
places for the meetings of young men’s and young women’s societies and
at the same time as cheap and homelike hotels for the travelling country
people.
In this way the rural high schools have extended their influence to
every part of the country, making the life on the farm attractive, and
enabling Denmark to set before the world an example of what a simple,
wholesome, and beautiful country life can be.
No doubt there are in the country life of Denmark, as of other
countries, some things that cast a shadow here and there on the bright
picture I have drawn. New problems always spring up out of the solution
of the old ones. No matter how much has been accomplished those who know
conditions best will inevitably feel that their work has just been
begun. However that may be, I do not believe there will be found
anywhere a better illustration of the possibilities of education than in
the results achieved by the rural schools of Denmark.
One of the things that one hears a great deal of talk about in America
is the relative value of cultural and vocational education. I do not
think that I clearly understood until I went to Denmark what a
“cultural” education was. I had gotten the idea, from what I had seen of
the so-called “cultural” education in America, that culture was always
associated with Greek and Latin, and that people who advocated it
believed there was some mysterious, almost magical power which was to be
gotten from the study of books, or from the study of something ancient
and foreign, far from the common and ordinary experiences of men. I
found, in Denmark, schools in which almost no text-books are used, which
were more exclusively cultural than any I had ever seen or heard of.
I had gotten the impression that what we ordinarily called culture was
something for the few people who are able to go to college, and that it
was somehow bottled up and sealed in abstract language and in phrases
which it took long years of study to master. I found in Denmark real
scholars engaged in teaching ordinary country people, making it their
peculiar business to strip the learning of the colleges of all that was
technical and abstract and giving it, through the medium of the common
speech, to the common people.
Cultural education has usually been associated in my mind with the
learning of some foreign language, with learning the history and
traditions of some other people. I found in Denmark a kind of education
which, although as far as it went touched every subject and every land
that it was the business of the educated man to know about, sought
especially to inspire an interest and enthusiasm in the art, the
traditions, the language, and the history of Denmark and in the people
by whom the students were surrounded. I saw that a cultural education
could be and should be a kind of education that helps to awaken,
enlighten, and inspire interest, enthusiasm, and faith in one’s self, in
one’s race and in mankind; that it need not be, as it sometimes has been
in Denmark and elsewhere, a kind of education that robs its pupils of
their natural independence, makes them feel that something distant,
foreign, and mysterious is better and higher than what is familiar and
close at hand.
I have never been especially interested in discussing the question of
the particular label that should be attached to any form of education; I
have never taken much interest, for example, in discussing whether the
form of education which we have been giving our students at Tuskegee was
cultural, vocational, or both. I have been only interested in seeing
that it was the kind that was needed by the masses of the people we were
trying to reach, and that the work was done as well as possible under
the circumstances. From what I have learned in Denmark, I have
discovered that what has been done, for example, by Dr. R. H. Boyd in
teaching the Negro people to buy Negro instead of white dolls for their
children, “in order,” as Dr. Boyd says, “to teach the children to admire
and respect their own type”; that what has been done at Fisk University
to inspire in the Negro a love of folksongs; that what has been done at
Tuskegee in our annual Negro Conferences, and in our National Business
League, to awaken an interest and enthusiasm in the masses of the people
for the common life and progress of the race has done more good, and, in
the true sense of the word, been more cultural than all the Greek and
Latin that have ever been studied by all Negroes in all the colleges in
the country.
For culture of this kind spreads over more ground; it touches more
people and touches them more deeply. My study of the Danish rural
schools has not only taught me what may be done to inspire and foster a
national and racial spirit, but it has shown how closely interwoven are
the moral and material conditions of the people, so that each man
responds to and reflects the progress of every other man in a way to
bring about a healthful, wholesome condition of national and racial
life.