From Schools for Life to Schools for Cultural Understanding: What the Scandinavian Folk School Ethos Offers U.S. Art Education
Across Iceland, Denmark and the wider Nordic region, folk high schools (often framed as schools for life) have long offered a distinct educational promise: communal, story-driven learning that is oriented toward living well with others, not merely making a grade or credentialing. The folk school ethos is a philosophy of education designed for lifelong learning, relying on the relational exchange, inclusivity, trust, joy, and connection to place and culture to build more fulfillment. This definition offers six distinct, practical strategies for U.S. art educators.
The good news is we already live aspects of it in many of our best practices. You can see it in community studios where beginners and experts share tables, in mural making and youth programs where the lesson is belonging, and in craft and cultural spaces where learning happens through making, conversation, and mutual care.
What Scandinavian folk high schools offer us is not a blueprint we must copy, but a name, and a long-running precedent, for what we already know is powerful: Education as lived culture, held together by community, story, and shared responsibility (Lövgren & Nordvall, 2017) can build joy, something we need to cultivate in today’s age.
History of Folks Schools
Across the wider Nordic region, folk high schools (folkehøjskoler) emerged in the mid-nineteenth century as an alternative form of youth and adult education, often associated with N.F.S. Gundtvig’s emphasis on living education, popular enlightenment, and civic-cultural formation (Korsgaard, 200; Rasmussen, 2013; Lövgren et al., 2023). Historic accounts note that the first Danish folk high school opened in 1844 at Rødding Højskole, and the idea spread across the Nordic countries as a distinctive response to social and cultural change (Borish, 1991).
In contemporary terms, folk high schools are commonly described as non-formal, residential learning communities; students live together, participate in discussion-centered courses across practical and theoretical subjects, develop personal, social, and civic competencies through collaboration rather than competition (Lövgren & Nordvall, 2017; Rasmussen, 2013). This tradition is also widely characterized by the absence of high-stakes assessment, often described as having no final exams (Rasmussen, 2013).
If that sounds familiar, it’s because art education in the U.S. has been building the folk school ethos and conditions as much as possible, just under different names. The Folk School ethos, in a nutshell, is education as lived culture: learning shaped by shared life, shared work, and shared meaning. It’s discussion-centered and relational. It prioritizes formation, who we are becoming, over sorting and ranking (Korsgaard, 2000; Rasmussen, 2013). It’s rigorous, but the rigor shows up as attention, responsibility, and the ability to live with others in a learning community (Lövgren & Nordvall, 2017; Rasmussen, 2013).
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What the Folk School Lens Helps Us Notice About U.S. Art Education
Where is folk school energy already happening here? And how do we protect and expand it?
We already teach through experience — or let’s hope we do. U.S. art education has deep roots in experiential learning (Dewey, 1938) which includes making, reflecting, revising, and learning through the consequences of choices in materials and forms. Dewey (1938) argued that education should be rooted in experience and democratic life, not rote transmission. Studio practice embodies that logic every time students learn by doing and every time critique becomes inquiry rather than judgement. Folk schools give us language to defend what many art teachers already know: process is not extra, it is learning.
We know how to build community around creative practice, by transforming collaborative spaces centered on process rather than the “right answer” and creativity makes room to foster mutual trust and dialogue. We can intentionally design collaborative projects, peer feedback sessions, and public exhibitions that connect individual students to a larger collective purpose. By grounding these experiences in inclusivity and shared vulnerability, we can cultivate a sense of belonging that extends beyond the classroom and into the broader community.
The U.S. has folk-school-adjacent spaces, especially in craft and community arts, where learning happens through creating together, sharing stories, and building intergenerational networks. The explicitly folk-school-inspired John C. Campbell Folk School is one example of this lineage in the U.S. grounded in communal learning and cultural practice (John C. Campbell Folk School, n.d.). It doesn’t look like a folkehøjskole on the surface. But if you look at the foundational elements of how people learn, it honors exploration, and a communal, relationship-centered environment for every person. It is Scandinavian pedagogy adapted to its local context, looking for sustainable creative practices within local culture.
But it’s not only institutions. It’s the Saturday studio group that becomes a lifeline. It’s the afterschool art room that becomes a third space. It’s the teaching artist who builds trust first and technique after. It’s the small things that have big impacts.
We Already Practice Civic Art Education — Even When We Don’t Label It That Way
Folk education traditions are tied to civic life. They are ways of learning that help people participate, listen, collaborate, and build shared futures (Korsgaard, 2000).
In today’s classrooms and community programs, many art educators are already doing this through collaborative projects, public facing work, and critique practices that teach students how to disagree respectfully and revise responsibly. Research connecting folk schools to democratic culture and peacebuilding helps articulate why these studio practices matter beyond the art room: they build civic capacities (Klein, 2018).
So, the folk school questions for U.S. art education becomes: How do we cultivate more of the Folk School ethos for U. S. art education and do it with more intention, support and scale?
What Doing More Can Look Like in Practice
If we want art education to strengthen cultural understanding, we need conditions that make cultural understanding possible: time, relationship, shared inquiry, and spaces where difference is engaged rather than managed.
1. Protect Formation Alongside Performance
We’re under pressure to quantify learning, but folk school traditions remind us that who students become matters more. In studio terms, that means assessing growth, risk reflection, and responsibility, not just a polished product (Dewey, 1938; Korsgaard, 2000). Portfolios, process documentation, and reflective critique aren’t soft alternatives; they’re disciplined methods for visible learning.
2. Treat Critique as Cultural Practice, Not a Grading Event
Folk schools emphasize dialogue and shared life. Critique can be designed that same way, less like a defense and more like collective meaning-making. That includes teaching listening, looking, and how to respond, and the expectation that feedback is offered in service of the work within the learning community (Lövgren & Nordvall, 2017; Rassmussen, 2013).
3. Build Thick Community on Purpose
Folk high schools are shaped by social learning, relationships, shared responsibilities, and everyday communal life (Lövgren & Nordvall, 2017). In U.S. settings, thick community can be built through:
- Consistent routines
- Shared material stewardship
- Student-led demonstrations
- Cohort studios
- Collaborative agreement that define what care and accountability look like in practice
(Rassmussen, 2013)
4. Honor Local Knowledge and Cultural Making as Curriculum
Folk education values living knowledge and cultural inheritance (Korsgaard, 2000). U.S. art education can deepen cultural understanding more by growing partnerships with local artists and cultural workers, teaching the lineages of materials and techniques, and designing projects that begin with places like community stories, neighborhood architectures, family traditions, and local ecologies (Rassmussen, 2013).
5. Expand Adult and Intergenerational Participation in Arts Learning
Folk high schools foreground adult learning as culturally meaningful (Rasmussen, 2013). Doing more in the U.S. includes building stronger pathways for youth and young adult learners, teachers, and communities. This means intergenerational studios, community workshops, and programs that treat arts learning as lifelong rather than age bounded.
6. Make Room for Slow Time
Folk school learning values unhurried time, time to revise and live with questions (Lövgren & Nordvall, 2017). U.S. schedules are real, but we can still choose depth over coverage; longer studio arcs, fewer projects with more revision, and critique practices that include silence and writing before speaking.
The Call
Scandinavian folk schools remind us that education can be organized around human flourishing rather than scarcity, ranking, and gatekeeping (Korsgaard, 2000). The good news is that U.S art educators already have built this into the everyday, in classrooms, studios, museums, and community programs. Our task now is to keep doing it and do more. Advocate for strategies that allow for revision, and that teach listening.
Although some may say it’s hard to build community partnerships that honor local knowledge, start by bringing in parents and neighbors who want to share and expand access to intergenerational arts learning through valuing what others know. This form of cultivating cultural understanding doesn’t happen on its own, it happens through practice, over time.
Why This Resonates With What We Do in the University of Florida M.A. in Art Education Program
In graduate art education, the goal isn’t simply to collect strategies, it’s to grow practice. The folk school ethos aligns with what we aim to cultivate in our curriculum:
- Studio work as inquiry
- Learning through community
- Teaching as a civic practice that strengthens learning and cultural understanding
Our call is the same; keep expanding the conditions that make meaningful art learning possible, time, trust, dialogue, and relationship in and with our communities (Klien, 2018; Dewey, 1938).
As we move toward bridging the required to what is needed, folk schools give us a compelling reminder: when learning becomes lived culture, art education becomes less like an add-on and more like a home. Come home to UF and grow your practice!
About the Online Master’s in Art Education From the University of Florida
The University of Florida’s online Master of Arts in Art Education (MAAE) program engages students purposefully in art education theory and practice, contemporary art, and their own studio work. Our dynamic online learning environment fosters meaningful interaction with peers and our world-class faculty as members of a supportive, close-knit community of art educators, artists, cultural workers, and scholars. This flexible program brings you the advanced concepts and immersive, hands-on experiences you need to flourish academically and creatively.
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References
- Borish, S. M. (1991). The land of the living: The Danish folk high schools and Denmark’s non-violent path to modernization. Blue Dolphin Publishing.
- Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. Kappa Delta Pi.
- John C. Campbell Folk School. (n.d.). Our history. https://www.folkschool.org/folk-school-experience/our-history/
- Klein, M. (2018). Folk schools as inspiration for contemporary democratic peacebuilding. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 13(3), 70–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2018.1498374
- Korsgaard, O. (2000). Learning and the changing concept of enlightenment: Danish adult education over five centuries. International Review of Education, 46 (3/4),305–325. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1004078416861
- Lövgren, J., Lysgaard, J. A., Rahbek, R. K., & Hallqvist, A. (Eds.). (2023). The Nordic Folk high school teacher: Identity, work and education. LIT VERLAG GmbH & Co. KGWien, Zweigniederlassung.
- Lövgren, J., & Nordvall, H. (2017). A short introduction to research on the Nordic folk high schools. Nordic Studies in Education, 37(2), 61–66. https://doi.org/10.18261/issn.1891-5949-2017-02-01
- Rasmussen, P. D. (2013). The folk high school: Denmark’s contribution to adult education. In P. Mayo (Ed.), Learning with adults: A reader (pp. 219–229). SensePublishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-335-5_17
