One hundred years ago, Olive Campbell made history when she set out on her year long voyage to the Danish folk schools. She simply HAD to understand Grundtvig and the folk schools. She succed well and to this day, she remains one of the biggest inspirations for the American folk school movement. A movement that is still alive and thriving and, to a great extent, still builds on a foundation laid by Grundtvig’s thoughts and ideas.
By Søren Prehn and Joan Rask
It’s on the table in front of us.
The book that holds the answers to a lot of the questions that have come up during our work with the podcast-series “In Search of Grundtvig in the South”. The book is written by Olive Campbell and describes her thoughts and experiences from when she traveled to Denmark in 1922-23 to visit and study folk schools and the phenomenon that is Grundtvig.
Why did she set out on this journey and what did she find?
That is what we want the answer to.
The first thing we see when we open the book is a personal handwritten message from the author herself. Suddenly, we feel a lot closer to the impressive woman who crossed the Atlantic to visit Scandinavia. Inside this book we gain access to her thoughts and observations.
“How is it that farms and smallholdings choose to spend time on their flower gardens and know the value of good storage spaces? And why do the Danish farmers know how big the yield of a single cow is and that they want to produce quality goods? And why do they carefully plow around the burial mounds when their yield would be much higher if they just leveled them to the ground?"
This is what Olive Campbell writes in her book “The Danish Folk School” published in 1928, only a few years after she established the folk school “John C. Campbell Folk School” in 1925. Today, it’s the biggest folk school in the US. The questions flood her when she, one hundred years ago, disembarks a ship in Copenhagen harbor and sets out on her very own tour of the folk schools.
With her she carries more than two decades of work and research carried out alongside her late husband, John C. Campbell, a teacher and reformer known for his work with social change and conditions. She’s forty years old, has been a widow for three years, and the two daughters the couple had together have both died very young. When she begins her journey, she has no idea that it will change her life forever and, even less so, that she will become a shining beacon of inspiration for an entire movement that will encourage historic change.
General education, craftsmanship and community She’s educated at Tufts College and works as a teacher when she meets John C. Campbell in 1903. He’s already well known for his work and is 14 years her senior. In her time, she’s a highly educated woman. They become colleagues as well as partners and Olive Campbell dedicates her life to the philosophy of lifelong education.
On their research trips to the South, they notice how young people from the backcountry are gravitating toward the bigger cities. This is where the opportunities for a good education and the chances of meeting other young people lie. Both things are impossible to find in the poor and sparsely populated mountainous areas in the South. As a result, the loss of manpower is huge. On top of that, the loss of intellectual capital and capacity is even bigger, since the ones who did well in school and at their craft and work are also the ones fleeing to the cities.
The couple witness a rural population deeply impacted by industrialization. It changes the very foundations of their culture: their songs, dances, crafts and ways of connecting. Here, too many people are malnourished, impoverished both in body and in spirit and lack the capacity to take care of themselves.
The Campbells spend the next two decades searching for a method that can improve the level of education. They hear about Grundtvig’s thoughts on education from a colleague. He tells them about folk schools that successfully attract young sons of farmers and local smallholdings. Even young women from the country attend the folk school. It doesn’t stop there, however. Besides becoming better farmers and wives, the young people also return with valuable new knowledge about literature, history, the world around them and an understanding of the interconnectedness of their local communities.
The dream to cross the Atlantic takes shape, but this takes money, planning and a certain grasp of the Danish language. They’re able to get a lot of this, but John Campbell’s health is failing. He’s getting weaker, but the couple still continue their trips around the inhospitable Appalachian Mountains that stretch along the American east coast. Sometimes the journey takes place on horseback, other times by foot, when the terrain becomes too difficult for even the horses to manage with a rider on their back. John Campbell dies in 1919. The story could have easily ended here. Olive Campbell could have done as many before her and let their shared dreams and goals follow her partner to the grave - but she doesn’t.
The journey to the land of Grundtvig and the folk schools has taken root, and in the summer of 1922, Olive Campbell, her sister Daisy Dame and their friend Marguerite Butler cross the Atlantic. Here, they are met with a Copenhagen described by Olive Campbell as old, sophisticated and lovely.
The farmers think they know everything
The point of the journey is not to enjoy the sweet life in the city, but to get to the bottom of what the Danes call “general education”. Or what Olive Campbell calls the “farmer-bourgeoisie”.
“Ahh, folk schools! That’s for the farmers. Naturally, the schools are very superficial and have been created to make the farmers think they know everything”. This is the response Olive Campbell gets when she asks people from the upper classes of Copenhagen what they know about folk schools.
They offer her some advice.
“Don’t write about the folk schools. They’re socialist and lure the farmers away from the countryside!”
Olive Campbell does the exact opposite. She writes like an ethnologist doing fieldwork. She maps, experiences, tastes and listens her way through 16 Danish folk schools. She’s convinced that the key to understanding the Danish success has to be found - and that Denmark is a success compared to everything she knows. Here, the citizens are more enlightened than the ones at home.
Four weeks at Askov Folk School
On November 3rd 1922, the three American women travel across Zealand, Funen and Jutland. Their destination is Askov Folk School. The train is full of folk school students, and Olive Campbell describes how:
“The passengers all look alike, are of all ages and all sizes, and everyone is so properly dressed that it’s hard to learn anything at all about them. From an American perspective the women lack a little style, but they still look healthy and happy and seem intelligent”
Ahead of them are four weeks at the folk school. The three women get settled in and Olive Campbell observes an almost unending number of details. She studies and dissects the weekly schedules as if the very key to understanding Grundtvig and the Danish folk schools lies with them - and maybe it does? C.P.O. Christiansen, a lecturer at Askov Folk School, teaches a class with the three American women in it. All three of them are clutching an English-Danish dictionary and have worked their way through the text of the day. One on world history. They’ve carefully understood a great deal and Olive Campbell makes notes about Christiansen:
“In the classroom, his manners are direct and familiar. He sits with the “first-year women” and talks about world history. Everyone in the small groups has a short text that they’ve read in advance, and each of them take turns to, voluntarily, list the names of new countries formed after the end of World War I. "What makes a nation, Christiansen asks. What is culture and civilization?”
This shows just how detailed Olive Campbell is in her notes on dialogues and conversations between teachers and students, the methods used in the classroom and everyday conversations, the topics of the lectures and the very way of teaching. Looking back, this is a treasure trove of historical knowledge to anyone interested in the Scandinavian folk school movement in the 1920s.
Her fascination with the students’ commitment and passion is a recurring theme in the book. During lectures they’re all completely quiet, everyone arrives on time and everyone is there because of a simple desire to learn and understand. It doesn’t matter if it’s knowledge about the world, farming, history or the structure of society.
“It’s hard to imagine an institution filled with so much enthusiasm without any exams and grades. But nothing seems more natural at a folk school. You’re tempted to ask: is that all? Young people attend lectures together, sing together, eat together, discuss and play together. They are generally healthy, strong and sensible looking,” writes Olive Campbell.
Maybe that was all? At least it’s part of what she brings with her back to the US. In Brasstown, North Carolina, the John C. Campbell Folk School was successfully established in 1925. This would be the first folk school established in the US without any involvement from Nordic settlers. The school is brought to life by collaborating with locals who donate land, labor and money.
The book becomes the bible
Olive Campbell’s project is a success. The general level of welfare and education in the mountains rises, and thanks to the establishment of co-ops, the opportunity to take out a microloan and strong local communities filled with craftsmanship, song, dance and lectures, the folk school becomes the foundation for social change that quickly spreads to other parts of the country.
Today, Jerry Jackson is the principal of the folk school founded by Olive Campbell. It’s the biggest folk school in the US with around 5-6.000 students every year and more than 80 employees.
“Olive Campbell’s book is almost a bible here. We know it very well,” says Jerry Jackson and smiles broadly."
We’re in the middle of an online interview. It’s been five years since we first met Jerry Jackson. Back then, we visited the folk school for a couple of days. He was brand new to the job as principal and had a bit of a fuzzy understanding of Olive Campbell and Grundtvig. That has all changed!
“Olive’s legacy is more alive today than it’s been in a long time. We always introduce new students to our founder and the inspiration she got from Grundtvig. We’re also working on a video for new teachers to make sure they really understand what it means to teach at a folk school, what kind of energy we represent, what the non-competitive based teaching is all about and what freedom means to the individual,” he says.
A newsletter from the past
Back in Denmark we flip through Olive Campbell’s old book filled with photographs. A pamphlet falls out - an old form of newsletter dated April 1928, no. 5.
In it, Olive Campbell writes about the school year 1927-28 where seven students are enrolled at the school. They learn about world history, geography, the bible, song, dance, gymnastics and their own as well as their country’s history. They meet all kinds of lecturers that teach them about everything from how to run a modern farm and how to put down water pipes, to how to nurse the sick and the connection between good health, rest and diet. Here, the male students are invited to meet the nurse who also gave a lecture to the female students. Olive Campbell writes:
“Just about 50 strangely different looking fathers, grandfathers and brothers showed up, and all of them were weighed, measured and examined. We’re not big eaters in this country and we’re used to hard work, so it came as no surprise that everyone except for two men were very underweight. Everyone was very amused when, a few days later, the phone rang and a message got out: Ask that nurse how long she told — (he) should rest. He does nothing but rest!”
Olive Campbell runs the folk school until her death in 1954. Afterwards, her friend Marguerite Butler takes over as principal. The current principal, Jerry Jackson, is also the chairman of the board of the association for the American folk school movement, “Folk Education Association of America”, which includes 43 folk schools.
“Generally speaking, the folk schools in the US are strongly based on Grundtvig, and on the board of the association, we try to encourage that development. Grundtvig’s way of thinking about education is actually very easy to explain! This way of being together and connecting is what we, as people, need and what a lot of people are searching for in this crazy world,” he says.
Here, Grundtvig and Olive Campbell’s legacy isn’t just something that is brought out on special occasions.
“We have access to Olive’s letters and pamphlets, and they are so relevant that it often feels like they were written last week. They’re about what she learnt in Denmark and how she translated and transformed it so it would fit the local community here. Her words are so perfect that we use them as often as we can!” he says.
Pictures from John C. Campbell Folk School - 2017
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