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Learning
has a social dimension in the Nordic countries,
which is quite unique in the world. This you will
not find elsewhere in Europe to the same extent,
where people educate themselves professionally
or to gain a degree. People attend courses in order
to develop their own personalities, to learn for
the fun of it, like going to the theatre or to
the movies.
The concept of folk high schools evolved in Denmark,
where the aim was to defend the Danish national
character against a presupposed germanisation.
The Danish peasants were to be made to understand
the value of their own culture as something to
maintain. This was to happen through education
and enlightenment. The main inspirator and “founder” of
the folk high school idea was Grundtvig.
The folk high school idea spread to the rest of
the Nordic countries, where it found an unexpectedly
good soil in the Finnish attempts against the Russification
processes at the end of the 19th century. The first
folk high schools were established with Swedish
as the instruction language.Most folk high schools
in Finland receive state subsidies for their course
activity. Since the mid 1990s, however, the sum
of money received per student per week has gradually
decreased at the same time as the costs for staff,
administration and kitchen have gone up. This has
been particularly hard on smaller folk high schools
in the rural area, with less than 30 students per
year.
The solution to this has been cooperation networks
of different kinds with other educational forms
such as
adult education centers
study center networks
universities
polytechnic schools
In order to attract students, other methods of
learning has also been developed, such as distance
courses, multiform courses with only a few group
meetings and individual work in between, individual
learning programmes with individual tutoring etc.
You can recognise 5
different “waves” of
folk high school foundation ideology:
The first
ones
were founded against the Russification processes,
they were considered to be dangerous to the Russian
authorities and had to hide their nationalistic
agenda behind phrases like housekeeping and farming
purposes.
The second wave
had to do with the Swedish language,
in order to maintain it along the “language
borders” of Swedish-speaking areas.
The third wave
fought against the secularisation
of the Finnish society. Folk high schools established
during this period aimed at showing the youth a
way to a more Christian lifestyle.
The fourth wave
was the political left-wing and
labour unions folk high schools, established during
the post-war period (1950 onwards).
The fifth one?
Well, nobody knows that for sure
yet... |
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