Find what it is you want to do

By Christian Hjortkjær

You know what they say about young people these days? They say that they are lazy. That they are egoists. That they just do as they like. That they think only about themselves. Have no sense of duty. Too much drinking and too little sense of shame. In a word, the young aren’t what they used to be. And we know what that means.

When it comes down to it, this is an incredibly poor picture of the young generation attending a folk high school today. For they drink less, smoke less, have fewer criminal tendencies and are far more dutiful than many generations that have preceded them. They are far from being the shameless egoists that people so often accuse them of being. To put it bluntly, the problem today is not that young people break rules but that they cannot live up to ideals.

From proscription to presciption

The heading demands, of course, some explanation. There are very few things nowadays that young people are not allowed to do (that are proscribed), but there are a vast number of things that they have to do (that are prescribed). They have to have qualifications. For some reason or another, these have to take a long time. And they have to be the right ones. This last is the most difficult demand, for choosing the best course to take is entirely up to the indi­vidual – though it is taken for granted that it is something they really want to do. This is what we, the adults, tell them:

“Find something that you’re really enthusiastic about. Don’t let common sense make your decision, fol­low your heart. You have so many opportunities, so choose something you really want to do.”

In this way we have resurrected the notion that a qualifi­cation is a vocation, something we are ‘called’ upon to do.

This can be described as a transition from a culture of proscription to one of prescription. In the past, a young person – let’s just say a folk high school student – would have been subject to a set of prohibitions and rules. In visual terms, the young person was framed in a circle of rules, which he or she was not allowed to step out of and so trans­gress. If he or she did so regardless, there would be conse­quences. “So far and no further!” At which point, he or she would have to apologize and hurry back inside the circle.

Today, however, there are very few young people who grow up inside the circle. In fact, young people are often told that the circle has completely disappeared. “Young people today have so many opportunities,” people say. And for that reason, those same people are also so sur­prised when those young people give so much trouble and when many of them suffer from eating disorders, stress and anxiety. The answer may be that the circle of rules that previously lay around them have now become a set of ideals that lie above them. And an ideal is not something that can be transgressed. In fact, it can’t even be reached. That is what is so unpleasant about ideals. We are always behind when it comes to an ideal. We are never good enough. We are always inadequate. Or, as my students manage to put it, “I feel I’m wrong, even though I always try to do everything right.”

The dual role of the folk high school

This is where the folk high school plays an interesting dual role. On the one hand, folk high schools lead the way when it comes to providing an education for young people who live up to another of the folk high school precepts, “Find what you are good at!” In that way, folk high schools fall far short of being the ‘free’ school they boast of being. On the other hand, however, folk high schools offer a very spe­cial opportunity for young people to take time out and talk about that very prescriptive culture that is putting such pressure on them.

One thing I have learnt as a folk high school teacher is to appreciate the sense of relief that washes over young people when they find they can express what this prescrip­tive society means for them. For many of them, coming from upper secondary school, it is an eye-opener both to hear from an adult that they really are under pressure, and to dis­cover how many prescriptions, whether visible or hidden, we are all subjected to today.

One example that I use in my teaching is taken from my smart phone. Every time I open Google Calendar, I can read “Make the most of every day”. Why is Google telling me that? And what does it mean? In itself, there is some­thing weird about Google presenting me with a prescrip­tion telling me what I should do. What right do they have to say this to me? And is there any way in which I can rebel against it, if I simply won’t accept it? Most important of all, though, is it even possible? No, it is not possible. “Make the most of every day” is not a rule but an ideal. It is unat­tainable. But nevertheless, it is something that I myself try to live up to every single day. And this personal experience is something I share with my students. My diary is full to bursting with teaching, meetings, lectures I have to listen to, lectures I myself have to hold, three weddings over the summer period, two student interviews next week, parents evening tomorrow and so much more besides. Many of these things are good. Most of them are. But it is also, all of it, an attempt to live up to the prescription, “Make the most of every day”. So I go on doing it, again and again, day after day. And still, I never achieve enough.

And my students have horrifying examples of the same thing. All in all, I have a sense that young people have to live up to an awful lot of prescriptions. You have to live a long life, live healthy and well, you have to think positive and put thoughts into action, have to stay fit, keep up to date, you have to be social but remember to find time to be alone, be original but not a weirdo, distinguish yourself from the crowd but still remain part of it, keep control of your anger but give free rein to thoughts and feelings, keep your blood pressure down and your spirits up, you have to save the planet and be the best possible version of yourself. And so on.

Pleasure as criterion of acceptance

I know of no place like the folk high school that allows young people the time to step off the social locomotive and in so doing let them see, firstly, that it is a train they are travelling on and secondly that the forces that are driving its passengers onwards are immensely powerful.

The very fact that at folk high schools we live together means that discussions and thoughts can flow from the classroom directly across to the lunch table and on to the student’s room or out into their hammocks. It is not like at a university, where people all arrive from their own particular place – one from a practice room, one from the underground station, one from the gym – and afterwards all hurry back to their own place again. Everyone is here. And no one is going on anywhere else. This allows oppor­tunities for in-depth discussion and awareness. Here there is time for reflection and reconsideration – for the thought that comes after the initial thought.

Nevertheless, there are grounds to be more self-critical than normal when we start thinking about the folk high school’s relation to the culture of prescription. Let’s just consider the book you are sitting and reading right now. It is called “Learn for pleasure”. An odd pre­scription, which not only emphasises that that is not a free choice but also places the folk high school in the precarious situation of prescribing a particular approach to learning. Learning is not enough – you have to learn for pleasure! And the students know this full well. They know that they are not in a free space neutered of all val­ues. They know that they have to be prepared to be open to wonder, motivated and, above all, involved. This is the flip-side of a school free from exams. Of course we don’t go round ticking students off on a list to see whether they have turned up for school, for Christ’s sake! Instead, they are tacitly given to understand that when they do turn up, they also have to find pleasure in learning. Pleasure is the criterion for admission to the holy halls of Grundtvig. No pleasure, no learning.

It begs, though, the question. When, as a student, do you have sufficient pleasure to be allowed to be taught without disapproving looks from you teachers?

The 10 prescriptions

The book of Exodus articulates the commandments that our entire culture is built upon. We know them first and foremost as a set of moral proscriptions: Thou shalt not lie. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. We know them, even though we may not always abide by them. In a time like ours, these commandments seem to be strangely patronising and morally oppressive.

Not surprisingly, eight of them as proscriptions. It is perhaps more surprising that there are, in fact, two pre­scriptions: You must remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. And you shall honour your father and mother. With a strange irony, these are the two commandments that now seem the most out-dated. Isn’t it the complete opposite today? If there is one thing we are brought up to today, it is to rebel against authorities and gain our independence. And there is no room for a day of rest in a society whose members have to make the most out of every single day. All shops are open on Sundays these days, and the day of rest has shrunk to an hour of mindfulness during working hours. In truth, it comes as no surprise to hear that the number of young people suffering from stress is rocketing.

What does this citadel of edification, the folk high school, have to offer on the occasion of its 175th anniver­sary? An updated version of the 10 commandments – as prescriptions. Not a single proscription – God forbid! We do want to hold young people back. We have to be preach­ing moral virtues. On the other hand, you get no less that 10 prescriptions for our time:

1. Become yourself, 2. Learn for pleasure, 3. Be a folk, 4. Learn for life, 5. Take responsibility, 6. Learn with your body, 7. Sing together, 8. Tell stories, 9. Learn together, 10. Live together.

These are good commandments. And I have no doubt that they were formulated with the best of intentions. But the road to a society of diagnoses is paved with good inten­tions. And here, the folk high schools ought simply to have had the courage to follow their own precepts – to reject the din of today’s society and act as a counterweight to its prescriptive tendencies. What young people today are short of is neither knowledge nor engagement. It is dem­ocratic edification and enlightenment about life they are lacking. And today this means – just as it did 100 years ago – the ability to put our own time into historical perspec­tive to allow us to expose its wearisome tendencies. It is prescriptions not proscriptions that put us under pressure today. And prescriptions are no less morally insistent than proscriptions. They just sound as though they are. And it is pretty much a basic rule of sociology that a society with heavy moral control always has significant levels of mental ill-health.

So, dear dutiful young people. This is the paradoxical demand that you have to live up to today: Become yourself. Learn for life. And learn for pleasure. And when you ask yourself, “But, when do I have enough pleasure? And when am I sufficiently free? And is it at all possible to force some­one into freedom and pleasure”, then direct the question critically at the folk high school. For it must be up to them, at the very least, to be able to provide an answer.