The prelude, origin and content of the 2019 Icelandic folk high school act

Abstract

In the mid-nineteenth century, new ideas were introduced in Denmark, focusing on different approaches with regard to young people’s education. These new ideas which have mostly been attributed to the Danish pastor, N. F. S. Grundtvig, led to the establishment of a new kind of schools in Denmark, called folk high schools. In these schools, the emphasis should be on the spoken word, discussions and debates, and the students’ participation in all areas through the study, as to best prepare them for future life. No form of examinations was to be used during the study. Folk high schools quickly became popular and in the next decades numerous such schools were established, both in Denmark and in other Nordic countries. In Iceland, during the last decades of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the twentieth, attempts were made to set up folk high schools, but these attempts did not succeed. However, the ideology that laid the ground for these schools more than a hundred years ago has lived on. This can be seen in the fact that in recent years, two schools based on the folk high school ideology have been established in Iceland, the Flateyri Folk High School, situated in the Westfjord-area, and the LungA School situated in the east, in Seyðisfjordur. For years, the Youth and Sport Organisations in Iceland (UMFÍ) have shown interest in establishing a folk high school. It can be stated without doubt that these new folk high Schools and the programmes they offer constituted one of the main reasons for the decision made by the Ministry of Education and Culture that a legal framework for Icelandic folk high schools was needed as part of the Icelandic legislation on education. The purpose of this article is to shed light on the prelude, origin and content of the law-making on folk high schools in Iceland in which two authors of this article participated on request by the Ministry. The work on the bill started in 2018, but the act itself, the Folk High School Act No. 65/2019 took effect on the 4th of July 2019. In the article, the history and ideological background of the Folk High Schools is described in brief, focusing mainly on Denmark and Norway, as these were the countries that mainly served as models when working on the bill. We describe the methodology used to analyse the Danish and Norwegian legislation and report our findings drawn from the analysis. We, then provide an overview of the Icelandic legislation, and lastly, draw conclusions from our work. Our main conclusions are that the new legislation on folk high schools in Iceland will give schools that fulfil conditions under the law a firm ground to develop further. The schools can have formal recognition by law, whereas before no legislation was in force designated for folk high schools alone. In addition, a comprehensive legal framework for the activities of such schools is now established by law. It should be noted, nevertheless, that their independence needs to be ensured in line with the ideas they stem from. Criticism has been raised, for example by those in charge of the folk high schools in Iceland today, about the lack of guarantee in the Act with regard to public financial support. This could be seen when examining the discussions in Parliament, Alþingi, on folk high schools, both in the past, and during the law-making process; that is, when the bill on folk high schools was discussed in Parliament. However, it can be stated that the discourse in Parliament before the bill was finally accepted, indicated a clear will of the legislative assembly, regardless of political parties, to provide the folk high schools with public support in the future.