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1. The Relationshipbetween the State and the Private school System in Denmark

   Ove Korsgaard, Faculty of Arts, University of Aarhus
2. Grundtvig – The Key to Danish Education?Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 2006 The priest, politician, historian and poet N.F.S.Grundtvig (1783-1872) has for many Danes become an icon of what it is to be Danish. His name and his achievements have become an inseparable part of Danish history and self-conception. Grundtvig and what is “Danish”, so to speak, are often so closely interwoven that it can be difficult to gauge where one starts and the other ends. Within education, especially, Grundtvig has been a key figure whose influence has spread like ripples in water.
3. Christian Kold 1816-1870 Christen Kold is the spiritual and educational father of the Danish Free school tradition. In 1851 he opened a People’s high school in Ryslinge and in 1852 the first free school in Denmark. He was influenced by N.F.S.Grundtvig and led to a great extent Grundtvig's educational ideas into practice.
4. Ryslinge Friskole
5. The FreeSchoolAct in 1855 In 1855, after three years of negotiating, the Free School Act was passed by parliament. Parents were now allowed to found their own schools, pay the costs and also appoint the staff. It was stated that the education in private schools had to be on par with the levels in public schools.
6. The principle of free schooling includes five concepts of freedom Normative freedom: the right for a non-governmental school freely to choose its own religious, politically or normative basis for its function and at the same time object to other understandings. Pedagogical freedom: the independent right to choose content and method for the teaching in the school. Economical freedom to decide how the economical support, including the support from public authorities, is used in the school. Freedom of employment, including freedom to hire and dismiss in accordance with pedagogical, religious, political or other normative foundations of the school. Freedom with regard to pupils, that is: free right for the school to choose the pupils for the school without any interference from public authorities.
7. Numbers af pupils 600.000 pupils attend public schools in Denmark, whereas around 125.000 pupils attend the non-governmental schools, organised in seven different organisations, suggesting the variety of normative ideas behind the schools. Of these, 28.500 pupils attend non-governmental schools (efterskoler) for one year in a special boarding school system for 9th or 10th grade, a school year spent on a school away from the parents and the family home with focus on sports, music, theatre or other elements and with a normative ideological standpoint, (religious, political or other norms).
8. About 260 residential schools. The Efterskole is a unique Danish independent residential school for students between 14 and 18 years old.
9. Diversity of ideas The non-governmental schools thus include a group of schools with religious identities, some of which are based on the normative Grundtivigian model of free schools; whereas others are more clearly religious, including the evangelical protestant faith based schools; the Muslim schools; the Catholic schools; and a Jewish school.
10. Seven organisations for the non-governmentalschools DeutscherSchul- und Sprachverein organisations 10-20 schools, kindergardens etc. For the Germanminority. The association of private GrammarSchools (schools for students in 10thto 12thschoolyears) with 21 schools. The Small Schools, an off-spring of the 1968 anti-authorirarianmovement, withabout 60 schools. The Danish Association of Private Schoolsorganises 131 non-governmentalschools. The Danish Association of FreeSchoolswith 256 schools as members. The Association of CatholicSchoolsorganises 21 schools. The Association of Christian FreeSchoolsorganises 35 schools.
11. Economic support from the state Free schools, which apply for economic support from the state, must comply with certain conditions in the law on free schools. They must thus be organised as independent funds based on articles, formulated by the founding group and approved by the state with regard to their economic, legal and organisational dimensions. Only the organisers of the school decide (within the limits of course of law and constitution) over the goal and normative ideas. (LBKnr 755 af 24/06/2010, Bekendtgørelse af lov om friskoler og private grundskoler m.v., chapter2).
12. Free schools, Democracy and Cultural Autonomy Can the democratic state undermine cultural and religious autonomy in its attempt to secure democracy through education? Or, can the democratic virtue of freedom be undermined if the state is idle and does not secure children’s democratic upbringing? Free schools, obviously, are bound to respect the nation’s laws. But are the schools also obligated to give the children a democratic upbringing? Can schools choose to give children an anti-democratic education? Can a free school, for instance, be established if it draws on Nazi ideology, and perhaps even works to undermine the constitution’s ideals of freedom and democratic values, while at the same time being protected by that very constitution?
13. Blut-und-Bodenideology This dilemma was aggravated after 1933 when many of the German free schools in Denmark began adhering to Nazism. In several of the schools, the Nazi doctrine Blood and Soilwas indoctrinated and the Home into the Realm policy became an aim. Nazism in the German schools became more widespread in 1939, when the Danish parliament permitted German schools and school departments in southern Jutland their own school counsels and gave them their own special school consultant.
14. Concernsabout a growingnumber of evangelical and not least Muslim schools Today, the question is raised loudly whether or not a school based on Muslim ideas and focussing also on other languages than Danish, may function as dis-integrative factors in the public space. This is the background for several changes in the legislation on free schooling, introducing a set of normative limitations into the system of free schooling.
15. Preparing for living in a society of freedom and democracy In 2002 the Danish parliament made it a legal requirement for free schools to prepare their students to live in a society of freedom and democracy. In 2005 the parliament tightened the requirements, so now the free schools are obliged “in accordance with their objective and in all their work to prepare the pupils for the living in a society as the Danish with freedom and democracy as well as to develop and strengthen the pupils’ knowledge of and respect for fundamental freedoms and human rights, among them equality between the genders”.
16. Strongerstate supervision The state supervision with the free schools 2010-2011 was especially focusing on the obligation to prepare for a free democratic society. The decision to do that was taken by the government on basis of a governmental plan from January 2009: “A common and safe future. A plan for preventing extremist attitudes and radicalisation among youngsters”. As a result of this scrutiny, 4 of the 16 schools being supervised have been met with directives to change their teaching in order to come ‘on a par with’ the teaching in the public schools.
17. Increase of stateinterference The general conclusion is, that state interference into the education in the private schools has very much increased during these last 10-15 years. The public argument has been based on a fear of not least Muslim sectarianism, but the general result is a much larger state control with all the free schools than ever before – and a general understanding that the state can formulate the norms and values of our lives on a democratic basis. (Professor LisbetChristoffersen, RUC, 2012)
18. Three positions within the Liberal discussion in the United States A liberal state can not legitimately prioritize a certain conception of the good life. The fundamental freedom in a liberal state is Freedom of Association (Kukathas 1992) A liberal state must require that children receive an education that enables them to function in a liberal society, so society can maintain the principles that ensure diversity in the perception of the good life. (Tolerance). (Galston 1995). A liberal state must ensure that citizens are able to exercise their political autonomy in a competent manner. It involves a reflective relation to what serves the public good. (Gutman, 1995).
19. Law versus constitution According to Minister of Education Ole Vig Jensen, the school system of ‘Tvind’ was in conflict with the law, which in1996 led to the passing of a special law in parliament, which removed the legal basis for the praxis of the Tvind-schools. In 1999, however, this law was deemed unconstitutional by the Danish Supreme Court because it did not respect the principle of the separation of power.
20. Constitution versus law? The free schools are obliged “in accordance with their objective and in all their work to prepare the pupils for the living in a society as the Danish with freedom and democracy as well as to develop and strengthen the pupils’ knowledge of and respect for fundamental freedoms and human rights, among them equality between the genders”.