By Simon Lægsgaard
More than ten years ago, I took on the job of being principal of a school that had to be rebuilt from scratch. We had very free hands in deciding how we would live up to the demands of the folk high school tradition, of the Zeitgeist and of our curiosity, but at the same time we were hard-pressed by financial and political considerations. It was a mountainous rollercoaster ride, and it was important to hold on tight all the time so that to avoid losing our soul as a folk high school striving to create, in forms of togetherness, a space where we could edify students for personal and global sustainability.
‘The encounter with diversity’ is a challenge that has been a focal point for our school right from the start. It is unrivalled as an instrument for edification and is closely linked to the idea of creating space for the development of citizens capable of contributing to shaping the future of the world. To be perfectly honest, it began with us trying in every way possible to put together that first class at the school by roping in anyone whose arm we could twist. The result was a very small class, which during the autumn of 2008 grew from seven to 14 students. We fought for every student. It was tough to start up a folk high school with so few and when those there were would not themselves even have chosen a folk high school, not to mention each other, if we had not pressed them to it. It was a revelation to see how these people created bonds with each other and, despite major challenges, enriched each other and blossomed in their new surroundings. It costs huge quantities of blood, sweat and tears, but it is hard to think of a more meaningful investment.
It was a revelation to see how these people created bonds with each other and, despite major challenges, enriched each other and blossomed in their new surroundings.
Simon Lægsgaard
During the years that followed, the school took shape without ever losing its pliability. We saw ourselves as pioneers – and I have to admit that we still do. Class sizes grew slowly, and we continued using a scattergun strategy to attract students, which led to us getting a very diverse bunch. In a flock like that there is no hiding behind others who resemble yourself, and it was this that proved hugely significant for our potential to develop. We discovered how, with relatively few and very diverse students, we could create an even greater space for mutual understanding, insight and curiosity, and how this led to cultural development of unbelievably high quality. Slowly, a folk high school crystallized whose most refined focus centred around the encounter with diversity – an encounter that gave rise to so much difficulty that we would never have chosen it if we had not been forced into it.
Gradually, as we became aware of the links between the efforts required and the progress achieved and we could see what a huge difference it made for the students, we decided to make a virtue of necessity. At the same time, we began to sense how significant it could be for the future of the world as a whole if it could be inhabited by people who had experienced the value of what they would not themselves have been able to say. Our school became a space for the development of world citizens.
Threads of a common humanity
The encounter with diversity is a very difficult discipline. It requires us first to meet in a common ‘togetherness’ before we can move on into particulars. It is based on a faith that, despite and for all our differences, it is possible to find threads of a common humanity, which bind us all together like some kind of international extension of the threads that hold us together as a nation and show us what we share across cultures. When this is experienced in a manageable group, we can clearly feel an attachment to ‘the world’, and what binds us to the nation can even come to feel superfluous. But in our understanding of world citizenship, a shared humanity does not replace a shared sense of being a people but supplements it with yet a further dimension of togetherness.
The world invites us to join many forms of togetherness without demanding commitment. When we share a sense of being a people, things are different. For all our differences of opinion and interests, we are held together despite differences through a mutual responsibility by means of a shared background story. And we should not relinquish our identity as a people in our encounter with the world. On the contrary, that sense of being a people is strengthened in an open encounter with the world, centred around edification. Producing nationalist chastity belts to protect our purity, on the other hand, creates havoc, because a protectionist strategy towards cultural values weakens a people’s sense of being a part of those very values. If our identity as a people is isolated from the rest of the world, we create a form of national identity that has nothing to do with the people, since the people cannot identify with it. Our ideal is to transfer the sense of responsibility we have as a people onto the encounter between peoples, which is reinforced each time the individual relates to his or her own story and places it in the context of the story of a shared humanity.
If our identity as a people is isolated from the rest of the world, we create a form of national identity that has nothing to do with the people, since the people cannot identify with it.
Simon Lægsgaard
How do we put this into practice at Brandbjerg?
It is not enough simply to recognise that we belong together as a people and in our common humanity. The muscle that pulls us together may well be given to each of us in the form of a longing, but it requires training in order to be functional. To develop into a world citizen involves both training ourselves to make space for others and developing our self-understanding as a sounding board so that our spaciousness never sounds hollow. Spaciousness is not about abandoning boundaries but about creating a space within whose walls the world picture of other people can resonate.
In our attempts to create a good arena for this encounter, we try to ensure diversity both among our students and among our colleagues. We assemble classes with mixed age groups (typically 18-35), interests, specialisms, qualifications and geographic and social backgrounds with a target of 25% of international students distributed across as many nationalities as possible. In addition, we regularly create encounters between our long-stay students and other target or age groups among students on short courses and among the local population.
Having ensured diversity, we arrange as many settings for the encounter as we can without damaging the sense of togetherness. The encounter with diversity can even threaten togetherness if it is not restricted to measured portions. The encounter between staff and students is also in focus, for there are considerable advantages in bringing the wide diversity of our staff into play to train students to develop the space they can give to others and to nurture insight and empathy. We also involve our ancillary staff in pedagogical tasks. This requires from the outset considerable efforts with mutual respect and understanding for each other’s approaches to the staff.
Universal meeting points
We take active steps to avoid groupings by shuffling students around in every situation by having international students take part in all classes, for example, by having students with different subject interests share rooms, by letting everyone have a say and by facilitating a whole range of greater or lesser ‘encounters’, where we do not remove difficulties from their path but encourage their curiosity. These meetings take place within the framework of our four ‘cultures of edification’: nature, clarification, dialogue and project. Here, encounters are cultivated both in and outside the classroom, during walk-and-talk morning assemblies, when students are encouraged to share their background stories, through training in attentiveness, where a sense of shared humanity is accessed through the body and through breathing, through check-in rounds, where they share personal viewpoints, and through a range of shared projects, where they all feel their dependence on each other. It is worth mentioning ‘Sharing Brandbjerg’ here, where past and present students meet for a series of green projects, which allow them to use their hands to continue to build on a vision of a sustainable world.
‘Sex edification’ as a core subject is another form of training, in which we use discussion and dance to allow ways of seeing the body and perceptions of gender to meet and be broken down in a space that respects privacy and confidentiality. Or there is ‘The Challenge’, where our students spar with the teaching staff to select and carry out some personal challenge significant for their past and their future and which they present in any form they choose for the rest of the school.
The purpose of it all is for them to become familiar with the mainsprings of each other’s actions, because that allows the individual’s ethical compass to be aligned to a map of the world that has been experienced and can be shared.
Simon Lægsgaard
In brief, we aim both to challenge and to cherish our students by offering them a range of universal ‘meeting points’, which allow them to create space to cultivate those common threads of humanity. They cannot get away with avoiding these encounters, but they have considerable influence on their form and content. The purpose of it all is for them to become familiar with the mainsprings of each other’s actions, because that allows the individual’s ethical compass to be aligned to a map of the world that has been experienced and can be shared. And the encounter woven around these common threads allows a vision of the future to emerge – a map with a whole range of common landmarks, which they can use to find their way in the future. We do not all share a history, but we do all share a future from the moment we know each other. And this is one of the most important points about world citizenship – that from human encounters arises a common destiny that commits us and motivates us towards a sustainable way of living that requires us to consider the footprint we leave on the world whenever we make a choice – a common destiny with a common aim, namely to create a meaningful life for everyone.
The pedagogical paradox
The encounter with diversity is an extremely difficult discipline both to facilitate and to take part in, and our efforts are far from successful every time. It is important not to underestimate the toughness of the linguistic, social and cultural mountains that have to be climbed along the way. But, if we look at it in the longer term, it proves always to have a substantial and positive influence on students’ readiness for edification, and we are never in doubt as to its contribution to creating a better world. An ethical compass is something that students to a large extent build for themselves. Nevertheless, we also struggle with one of those eternal paradoxes that accompany any attempt at edification: that of exporting values.
Our highest task is to establish a workshop in which values can be shaped, but this never can and never should become a space of neutral values. Spaciousness has boundaries that cannot simply be shifted, and this, of course, has an effect on the space in which the ethical compass of world citizenship is to be assembled for the individual. On the other hand, it is not we who should be determining either its needle or its north. This is a paradox that, as an institution working with edification, we ought constantly to be grappling with and open about. And, in truth, this may be an art that is hard to practise, but it is worth all the trouble.
