Education, Part 4a
Grundtvig,
Message, Achievement and Comparisons
N F S Grundtvig built a
nation, peacefully, through education.
This is a large but reasonable
claim.
Not that Grundtvig built any
folk high schools. But he was the “vanguard” of the folk-high-school movement
and of the corresponding mass democratic movement that made Denmark the nation
that it is.
Grundtvig’s message, in the
excerpts that we are using, is made up of a few simple juxtapositions. The Dead
and the Living. The Latin and the Danish. Development and Enlightenment versus their opposites. This is a
dialectical method and therefore, a developmental method, where “development”
is taken in the Hegelian sense.
German war on Denmark
In South Africa, we speak of
People’s Education for People’s Power. We speak of Education for Liberation. This
is in the context of our liberation struggle against apartheid and “colonialism
of a special type”. Denmark also had a political context of national
liberation.
Denmark is adjacent to the
much more powerful state of Germany, which made war on Denmark in 1864, and
seized the Danish Province of Schleswig-Holstein. This event caused a sense of
great urgency in the mass education movement in Denmark. Education had become a
matter of survival. Revival of old national symbols would not be enough to
sustain national cohesion.
What these Danes successfully
negotiated in the 19th Century is in many ways analogous to what is
happening now in South Africa, and in other countries, and the theories of
Grundtvig are comparable to those of other liberation educationalists (and by
the way, just to mention: liberation theologists, as well).
Freire and Tagore Compared to Grundtvig
A world-wide sense of crisis
in education has stimulated continuing interest in the general provision of
educational service to the existing populations as a whole.
In Cuba, there is talk of
“The nation becoming a university”, and we will look at that in our next item.
Our own South African
“Communist University” is another such attempt.
We continue to look for other
examples, and other strands of discourse to learn from.
One of these is the
Grundtvigian scholarship that continues to be centred on Denmark, but with
correspondents around the world. The Danish language in which much of this
special dialogue has taken place over the last two centuries remains a barrier.
Grundtvig’s own extensive writings, speeches and sermons are hardly published
in English at all. We are lucky to have access the one-volume collection called
“The School for Life”, plus some copies of learned specialist magazines that
have some articles in English.
Some of these compare
Grundtvig’s approach in popular education to that of Paulo Freire, author of
“The Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, and to that of Rabindranath Tagore, the famous exponent
and moderniser of Bengali culture, who was also a contemporary, friend and
collaborator of M K Gandhi’s.
These comparisons are
helpful. The three are complementary. Comparison illuminates by contrast the
peculiar positive characteristics of each of them (this was also Grundtvig’s
view).
What they all had in common
was that they gave tactical substance to the strategic impetus towards general
education of their respective populations as a whole.
Freire
The Brazilian, Paulo Freire,
who was strongly associated with the mid-to-late 20th-century
“Liberation Theology” movement centred on South America, with both Protestant
and Catholic strands, confronted a similar problematic to the one that faced
Grundtvig.
This was a peasant or
“campesino” population, left behind, in a situation where an older order was
crumbling.
The Communist University has
relied upon the teachings of Paulo Freire from its beginning, and we have dealt,
separately and in more depth during this course, with Freire’s particular
contribution.
Here, we can remark that
Freire’s dialogical principle of education corresponds almost exactly to the
Grundtvigian statement provided at the top of the introduction to the previous
item (noting of course that the statement comes from Wikipedia, and not from
Grundtvig’s own pen).
What is different is Freire’s
reference to the political oppression of the learners. Freire says that
education cannot properly happen without constant, consistent recognition of
the oppressive circumstances surrounding the educational initiative and
process. We take that from Freire.
Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore was the
one out of these three who, as a relatively wealthy man, started and funded a
school from his own pocket – Patha
Bhavana at Santiniketan.
Whether its principles were similar to those of Grundtvig and Freire is hard to
tell. Patha Bhavana does seem to have owed a lot to Tagore’s rather
idiosyncratic and spontaneous inspirations, varying from time to time.
What Tagore seems to have
done in general in his life is to bring his own exquisite and highly-developed
Brahmin culture to the masses of Bengal.
Particularly in terms of the
songs that he wrote, and which became enormously and lastingly popular, Tagore
is credited with creating a modern (Bengali) nation through education and
culture.
This is really what Tagore
has in common with Grundtvig and with Freire, and what is most useful for our
CU course on education. Because we are seeking by any and every means possible,
to expand the common and general culture of the South African population.
Summary, on formality and informality
In South Africa we find a
relentless and apparently insurmountable urge to destroy the informal and to
replace it with the formal. This is not only in education, but it is especially
strong in the field of education. It is something shared between the old and
the new regimes of South Africa, pre-and post-1994.
For communists, who seek a
society without class, and therefore without a state, the rush towards the
formal and away from self-management is dismaying. But in practice the
informal, the general, is the stuff of daily life and cannot in that sense be
suppressed. Nor is formal education going to be suppressed. What N F S
Grundtvig showed was that the formal and the informal could co-exist, and that
it was necessary for them to do so. This was the foundation of the Danish
nation.
The Communist University has
never been sponsored, but it has always been supported by learners. It is
informal in the way of the Danish folk-high-schools.
The struggle continues.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: The School for Life,
1838, N F S Grundtvig, Excerpt #2.
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