The School for Life

New translation of Grundtvig’s educational writings

After two years working on Grundtvig’s writings on education, translator Edward Broadbridge and Aarhus University Press have just published The School for Life: N.F.S.Grundtvig on Education for the People. The book contains a broad selection of Grundtvig’s writings on education from the period 1827-54 and bears inspiration from his four trips to England, especially to Cambridge University in 1831 where he noted the interaction between teacher and student and came home to argue the case for a People’s High School. So successful was he that the European Commission's Lifelong Learning Programme 2008-2013 is called The Grundtvig Programme.

 

Grundtvig: a man of many trades

Grundtvig produced a major body of work in the fields of theology, education, literature, politics, and history. He was also a poet, a hymn-writer, and a translator – the first modern translator of the great Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. He is best known in Denmark for his hymns, which make up a quarter of the entire Danish Hymnbook. But he is better known worldwide as the founding father of adult education. The new work at last makes available an English translation of Grundtvig’s major ideas on education. Among his innovations are his advocacy of education for all the people and not just an elite, of fruitful interaction between teacher and student, of education lasting a lifetime, and of the abolition of corporal punishment.

The 16 translations are accompanied by essays and introductions placing Grundtvig in his context and outlining his subsequent importance worldwide. The book also comes with an audio-cd with the texts read by Edward Broadbridge and the essays and introductions by Clay Warren.

 

Praise for The School for Life
Advance copies of the book have elicited considerable praise. Chris Spicer, Chair of the Folk Education Association of America speaks of “a long-overdue English rendition of Grundtvig’s educational ideas in a sensitive and highly readable translation that retains the power of Grundtvig’s voice and moreover brings the “living word” alive in the accompanying audiobook”.

Closer to home Niels Henrik Gregersen, Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Copenhagen writes: “This is a long-awaited volume: An extensive translation of the Danish educator, philosopher of culture, and theologian N.F.S. Grundtvig. Grundtvig's theological maxim: "be first a human, then (perhaps) a Christian", is here pursued through his educational writings, which emphasize the need for a cultural self-awareness in tandem with a thorough tolerance towards all expressions of the humane in other cultural contexts."

The School for Life is available from Aarhus University Press and its English and American distributors: www.unipress.dk/en-gb/List.aspx?l=new

By: Heidi Paakjær Martinussen

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