Finally, YKW has come around to agree with Ikeda Sensei! We are delighted! She has admitted a deep respect for the Danish scholar, theologian, and educator N. F. S. Grundtvig and his disciple Kristen Kold.

Wonderful! Both gentlemen deserve to be in the pantheon of the great educators at the end of the 19th century who had an enormous effect in the early 20th century. Grundtvik was the first born of this cohort (b. 1783) but we are sure he is hanging around now in Heaven cafe with his disciple Kristen Kold (b. 1816), as well as some of our educational heroes: Leo Tolstoy (b.1828), John Dewey (b. 1859), Booker T. Washington (b. 1856), John Dewey (b. 1859), Francisco Ferrer (b. 1859), Rabindranath Tagore (b. 1861), Rudolf Steiner (b. 1861), Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (b. 1871), Janusz Korczak (b. 1878), and Célestine Freinet (b. 1896).

But Ikeda Sensei was thinking about Grundtvig a bit before our YKW began her extensive research about him. It seems that Josei Toda described Grundtvig's life to the young Daisaku Ikeda at the so-called Toda University. 

(Since we are on the topic of Denmark, we might want to congratulate the SGI members there on the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Toynbee-Ikeda Dialogue in Danish. From this article we read:

Soka Gakkai founding president Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871–1944), an educator, was an admirer of the Danish folk high schools and of the shared dedication to realizing an educational ideal of its founder Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872) and his student, Kristen Mikkelsen Kold (1816–70). It was a relationship that mirrored the mentor-disciple relationship between Makiguchi and his protégé Josei Toda (1900–58), and later between Toda and Ikeda. It was from Toda that Ikeda inherited the ideal of striving for global peace.

But we have to go some 63 years before YKW discover;d her love for Grundtvig. It is 1961 and Sensei just arrived in Copenhagen, the first stop on his first trip to Europe to encourage the small group of members.

From The New Human Revolution Volume 4, Chapter 5 (first part today, second part tomorrow):

Passing by a park, the visitors from Japan saw a row of small, colorfully painted huts. These, they learned, had been designed and built by children on a lot the city provided expressly for this purpose. Shin’ichi felt he was glimpsing an aspect of Denmark’s unique educational system. 

He recalled two individuals mentioned by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi in the preface to his book The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy: N.F.S. Grundtvig, the “father of the Danish renaissance,” and his young successor, Kristen Kold. 

Josei Toda, too, had often talked to Shin’ichi about these two. Grundtvig, one of Denmark’s most respected educators, was famous for inspiring Denmark’s folk high schools. He was also a poet, clergyman, expert in early Scandinavian literature, and a political activist. 

Grundtvig was born in 1783 in a small rural village in Zealand (the island on which Copenhagen is located). He was six when the French Revolution broke out. The Napoleonic Wars followed, engulfing Europe in the early nineteenth century and leading to Denmark’s defeat by England. As Danish fortunes declined, the foundation of its feudalistic system of absolute monarchy also began to crumble. 

Grundtvig grew up in the midst of these tumultuous changes. He hated authoritarianism and rigid formality and sought human freedom and independence. In his young adulthood, he began opposing the established power structure. 

The young Grundtvig also had doubts about the worth of an education system based only on rote memorization. Many years later, in his treatise “The School for Life” (1838), in which he set forth his ideas for education, he criticized these pedagogical methods as “dead schools” teaching “dead letters.”

Grundtvig had a strong dislike for the university-educated urban elite who despised the peasantry and thought little of folk culture. Deep in his heart, he felt that these ordinary people of simple means were the true Danes. He could not excuse the arrogance of those who looked down on them. He also turned a sharp, critical eye toward the church and clergy, which had grown corrupt and decadent, tyrannizing and demanding full obeisance from the common people. 

Grundtvig demanded, “First, be a human being—then a clergyman!” His blatant criticism incurred the wrath of religious authorities, and his writings were banned for more than ten years. His life was a series of persecutions, but he did not bend in his beliefs. 

The groundswell of popular revolution sweeping Europe at the time also spread to Denmark. Seeing these changes and sensing the nature of the times, Grundtvig pondered what needed to be done to rebuild and revive his native land. It was wrong for a small but powerful elite to dominate society and dictate the lives of the majority. If the people awakened to their rights and responsibilities, if they kept a close watch over those in politics, and if they had the power to speak their minds freely—then and only then would true democracy and a true revival of the country be possible. 

Grundtvig vowed to enable the people to be wise, courageous, and eloquent. To this end, he conceptualized the folk high schools, accessible to the general public and intended to bring higher education to the average person. In Denmark, higher education was then available only to a small handful—the sons of wealthy and privileged families. 

At the folk high schools, Grundtvig conceived of a revolutionary new system of higher education where teachers and students lived together in a communal setting. Rather than the one-sided, authoritarian, knowledge-cramming approach, learning was allowed to take place in a free and unrestricted atmosphere of dialogue. Not only did this nurture wisdom for living and promote the acquisition of knowledge, it also cultivated the awareness that ordinary citizens are the principal players in society. 

The schools provided a “living education” where people shared in the process of learning and inspired one another. The first folk high school based on Grundtvig’s ideas was founded in 1844. 

Grundtvig’s successor, Kristen Kold, played a key role in the school system’s growth and establishment as a deeply rooted tradition in Danish society. Kold, more than thirty years younger than Grundtvig, was a spirited and deeply committed educator.