There is nothing like a Dane

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Abstract

There is something different about the Danes, and something equally distinctive about Danish schools. Earlier this year I visited schools in Skoerping Commune in northern Jutland, and was able to observe at first hand the characteristics of school-age education there and compare them with our own approaches in Scotland. My main areas of interest were values and pupil participation, and what I saw in these areas prompted me to look for the roots of Danish practice; roots that run very deep. The figures that emerged from the Danish mists were not Hans Christian Andersen or Soren Kierkegaard, but Nikolaj Grundtvig and his disciples such as Kristen Kold. To say that these men had a fundamental influence on the philosophy underpinning modern Danish education is a bit like saying that Danes like herring.

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