The idea of the folk high school can be traced back to Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig, a Danish priest, historian, poet and public educator (1783 - 1872).
He presented the vision of a "School for Life" as opposed to the formal, rigid secondary and higher education of his own time. It was Grundtvigs intention to dissolve the gap between the elite and the common man, but this should be brought about on the premises of the common man. His dialectics are universal and the means of transmitting them, "the Living Word".
Thus reading is not the primary method of obtaining knowledge at a folk high school, but dialogue, not the lecture, but debate and discussion. The first folk high school were founded by people inspired by Grundtvig, but original and independent. First in Denmark, Grundtvigs own country, in 1844, then in Norway in 1864, in Sweden in 1868 and in Finland in 1889. Folk high schools have also been established in Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and in the Åland Islands and among the Samic peoples, as agents in the struggle to maintain the cultural identity of the area or the minority.
The folk high school in present time
There are about 400 folk high schools in the Nordic Countries. The Nordic folk high schools claims to be pedagogically the freest school in the world. It is a unique educational set-up, evidently the only great pedagogic-philosophical idea ever born in the Nordic countries that has proved almost a universal success. The recognition of ideological freedom as a characteristic feature of folk high schoolscontinues to be the basic resource in present-day folk high school activity. In this way, and with government support, folk high schools in our democratic society carry out a special task not allocated to any other branch of educational system.
Today, a certain interest has been directed also towards groups with special educational needs, e.g. people with short basic education, people with various disabilities and immigrants. Folk high schools are voluntary and available to everyone whatever their educational background. Each one of us, as a unique individual, has personal experience and therefore has something to offer in conversation. It is this deeply democratic view of mankind that is the basic principle of folk high school.
No uniform system in the Nordic countries
There is not any uniform folk high school system in the Nordic countries, but each country has a folk high school system of its own and, not even in the same country are folk high schools exactly similar, because every school has its own characteristics. The mission of the folk high schools in the future Europe is the fight for democracy, for the rights of the minorities, and for discussion and dialogue of equal men for building up a more righteous society.
The Nordic Folk High School Council
The Nordic Folk High Schools have a long tradition of cooperation. Within the Nordic framework, the Council works for the folk high school ideology, pedagogical practice and experiments and exchange of ideas. The Nordic Folk High School Council also works for giving the Nordic folk high school ideology a profile in the Baltic and European context. The Council holds meetings yearly and it also arranges Nordic conferences.