What does our Family Camp have to do with the Civil Rights Movement in the US?

I love our Italian school, ARCA.  I posted in December about a great week of class where we each shared about something we had some expertise in.  For all of us it was some kind of cultural phenomenon, from Opera, to wine-making, to Thai buddhism practices.  

For my presentation, I shared about the Folk School movement, from its origins in the 1830's in Denmark, to the family camp we attend today in Tyler, MN.  I was pretty proud of myself for being able to talk about this in Italian.  Doing research to be sure I wasn't misrepresenting anything reminded me of the incredible value of the Folk School approach to community and learning; it's the kind of engagement with each other the world needs LOTS more of these days.  The best way, I think, to grow a thing is to practice it.  It helps, too, to understand how it came to be and the ways it has touched the world.

The following is a summary of my research and presentation, translated for you into English.  I offer this as a starting place for more community research and remembering:

Every summer, I go with my family to an historic place in our region.  It's called Danebod Folk School and there we practice some of our cultural values.

The Folk school movement started in the 1830's in Denmark.  It represented a refusal of traditional classics instruction, based on Greek and Roman studies, which, according to the movement's founder NSF Grundtvig, created a gap between school and real life.  Instead, Grundtvig wanted to bring dignity to countryside farm living, the life of most of Denmark's population.  According to him, having a national culture and a passion for learning were fundamental for the transition to a successful democracy.  Creating Folk schools would serve as the foundation to develop a peaceful and just society.

At its roots, the Folk school holds central the importance of human identity, which is made up of individual identity, cultural identity, and democratic or community identity.  The movement to create schools according to these ideals between 1850 and 1870 held a vision of creating a space in which farmers could transform their society, their community, and themselves.  It was a decentralized movement, guided by the farmers themselves.  My great-grandfather participated in developing one of the first Folk schools in Stovring (pictured, left).

Here are some of the foundational ideas of Folk schools:

• Instruction should take into account the nature and needs of the people learning
• Students need time to develop emotions and appreciation before memorizing facts and developing skills
• Oral culture is central
• The fullness of the individual is realized in the context of community
• The objective of education is to respond to the challenges and needs of the people
• Education involves the heart (or spirit), mind, and body
• The point of education is not memorizing facts, but awakening to full living
• Schools should be free from control of the state and shouldn't have tests, grades, or certifications
  

Four key lessons of the Folk schools are: 1) Real education starts with a personal sense of purpose, and all can acquire the skills and knowledge to achieve their purpose.  2)Folkelighed- a kind of patriotism that values identity and culture and at the same time recognizes and appreciates those of other cultures.  3)Learning is for all of life and lifelong.  4) The impetus for schools should be local, decentralized, and of the people it serves.

Folk schools came to the US with Danish immigrants in the late 1800's and early 1900's.  In 1888 the Danebod Folk School was built in Tyler, MN.  Another American example of the movement is the Highlander Folk School (see reference links below), founded in 1932 in Tennessee and aimed, initially, at responding to the needs of the local people of the Appalachian hills.  The founders were seeking an alternative to American schools of the time that offered a one-size-fits-all curriculum for students.  They wanted a more motivating and emancipating form of learning.  Not long after its founding, the school served as an incubation space for the American Civil Rights Movement, including leaders like Rosa Parks (pictured above at the Highlander School), the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, and the mother of the Civil Rights Movement, Septima Clark (follow the link to learn more if you don't know her, also see photo right).

Here's a photo of my chicken scratchings in Italian :)

References:

https://www.folkschoolalliance.org/a-brief-history-of-folk-schools

https://tnmuseum.org/junior-curators/posts/highlander-folk-school

https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/alliances-relationships/highlander/

https://www.rebildporten.com/tourist/planlaeg-din-tur/stovring-museum-gdk1095290

https://danebodfamilycamp.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septima_Poinsette_Clark