By Ewa Smuk Stratenwerth
“We’re no society. We’re a great big national flag. One day I may be hanged by well-meaning people for the truths I’ve been repeating for a dozen years or so, but if I had a noose tightening round my neck, I’d still croak that Poland is at the very bottom as far as societies on this planet are concerned, but at the same time the foremost among nations. When someone has one leg as long as the globe’s axis and the other missing, what a lame cripple he makes!”
As a motto for this paper, I have chosen the words of the Polish Romantic poet C.K. Norwid penned in 1862. Norwid (1822–1883), a contemporary of Grundtvig, died in extreme poverty and neglect, far away from his beloved homeland, in a hostel for the homeless on the outskirts of Paris. During his lifetime, he was unable to reach Polish readers with his challenging poetry, living in the shadow of the other great poets of the Romantic Revival, like A. Mickiewicz or J. Słowacki. His poetry did not come into its own until the twentieth century, as only then we seemed to be ready to discover the beauty of his verse and the significance of his message.
Norwid wrote those words 67 years after Poland’s loss of independence. The Romantic Revival reached Poland when it was no longer on the map of Europe. But it lived on in people’s memory, in their hearts and souls. Their love of their homeland manifested itself in constant strife for independence, culminating in armed national rebellions, the November Uprising of 1830 and the January Uprising of 1863, each cruelly quelled by the occupying powers.
The Romantic Revival reached Poland when it was no longer on the map of Europe. But it lived on in people’s memory, in their hearts and souls.
Ewa Smuk Stratenwerth
I mention this because – just as the Danish national consciousness was moulded by N.F.S. Grundtvig and other poets of the Romantic period – our Polish soul was also shaped by the Romantics, although mostly by poets other than Norwid, concerned with – as we would say today – the civic society, namely by Mickiewicz and Słowacki. Both extolled romantic individualism and patriotism, raising Polishness to the pedestal of world history.
My task here is not to analyse Romantic poetry. I just wanted to highlight the backdrop, the environment in which I grew up before being exposed to the idea of folk high schools. I was brought up on Romantic literature. Poland was for me, as for many of my contemporaries, a chosen nation marked in a special way by suffering. In today’s globalised world few young people would understand this, but such was the mind frame of many young Poles cooped-up behind the Iron Curtain.
The discovery that my homeland was not the centre of the world came later, when during my travels I could observe other cultures and national traditions.
The first encounter
I first encountered folk high schools in Silkeborg in 1992. Thanks to my friend Toke Møller, together with a group of colleagues from a Warsaw cultural centre where I worked, I visited the folk high school there. Over a period of two weeks we became acquainted with the practice and history of folk high schools. That was a watershed experience for me, a true “enlightenment”. The more so that I knew I was going to move from Warsaw a year later to a Mazovian village, to my husband’s organic farm, and was keen to find a niche for myself. I wrote down on a piece of paper my goal: “Polish folk high school”. I was not even aware at the time that folk high schools already had a long tradition in Poland. Grundtvig fired up my imagination. Having been educated in the schools of the Polish People’s Republic with curricula overloaded with dry didacticism, I was fascinated with the idea of “learning by doing”, of a teacher-student partnership, and first of all with the atmosphere of interaction. From the very beginning I was helped along by Danish friends, like Toke.
Grundtvig fired up my imagination. Having been educated in the schools of the Polish People’s Republic with curricula overloaded with dry didacticism, I was fascinated with the idea of “learning by doing”, of a teacher-student partnership, and first of all with the atmosphere of interaction.
Ewa Smuk Stratenwerth
Toke collaborated with me when I was still living and working in Warsaw. Thanks to him, we set up, in the Polish realities of the 1990’s, a strong team consisting of mothers, midwives and doctors which embarked on a project called “Quality of birth – quality of life”. The project evolved into the “Give birth humanely” campaign, actively supported by the journalists of the leading national newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza of the time, which in a matter of just a few years produced a significant social change: Polish women were now able to give birth to their babies in an atmosphere of support and respect for their privacy, personal dignity, and intimacy. That experience of excellent team-work, moderated by Toke, demonstrated to me how powerful and effective good cooperation can be.
Old traditions and new technology
After I had moved to the countryside, that elation sank. The reality of a small Mazovian village was a far cry from the mood in Warsaw, where the political transformation of 1989 inspired hope and faith in a better tomorrow, where it was easier to awaken enthusiasm and involvement. The rural areas were left behind, the structures that had driven rural development had disappeared, a free market set in alongside democracy, which village inhabitants had no idea what to do with. The indifference and apathy of the Polish village in the early 1990’s was striking.
But on the other hand, dedicated funds appeared intended to help rural inhabitants keep up with the rate of development in urban communities. I started writing applications and implementing community projects. I organised local events such as the Day of the Earth, started a local newspaper, organised workshops for children and young people as well as a drama circle producing our own shows. I tried to tap on my own education and experience, and the whole of the urban heritage, to build bridges and to network with the rural communities while becoming better acquainted with their traditions, problems and challenges.
Around the year 2000 I decided to launch the first folk-high-school course for the local inhabitants. I wrote the syllabus for a course lasting a few weeks with daily classes in four subject areas: 1. Health and ecology, 2. Handicraft and art, 3. Personal development, 4. IT. My intention was to combine older traditions such as handicrafts, which were about to disappear, with new technologies that were in great demand in villages and small towns. My co-workers were at first sceptical about the whole project but we were all taken by surprise when we saw a packed room during the inaugural meeting. That initial success was a stimulus for greater involvement, especially when the Socrates-Grundtvig program was launched in the EU. Over a period of eight years (2001–2009) we ran more than 40 courses, each lasting several weeks, for over 1000 adults from 26 rural or small-town communities in Poland, Ireland, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Denmark.
My co-workers were at first sceptical about the whole project but we were all taken by surprise when we saw a packed room during the inaugural meeting.
Ewa Smuk Stratenwerth
In 2014, as the Ecological and Cultural Association ZIARNO, an organisation with substantial experience in rural community work, the Villum and Velux Foundations gave us an opportunity to build a small folk high school with boarding facilities, which enables us to run longer residential courses. Under that project I wished to cooperate with my husband who runs an organic farm, having completed, before moving to Poland, a course in biodynamic farming in Switzerland.
Dirtying the hands with soil
Our mutual dream came true in 2015, in the form of the Ecological Folk High School, where we started running two-year courses in organic farming. We were fully aware that this project would not take off without broader collaboration. Thanks to a project under the Erasmus+ Program, we put together an excellent international team which from the very beginning supported us through their involvement in designing the curriculum, proposing the teaching methods, and sharing their experience. Again, I could feel the power of close and fruitful cooperation. The same applies to our work with the Polish team. Apart from some of the graduates of our early courses, it consists of teachers and ecological activists from all over Poland, both from urban and rural communities, people who recognised the creation of our Ecological Folk High School as an important new chance for our country. The chance which improves the quality of rural education and fosters understanding between citizens of urban and rural areas. Most students attending our school are well-educated adults, who often gave up their carriers in big corporations or elsewhere, generally city dwellers, who have been always dreaming about dirtying their hands with soil.
In our divided, polarized world to create spaces where the people from different backgrounds can meet, talk and learn together strengthens social cohesion and builds bridges so desperately needed in the modern world.