DENMARK AND THE DANES 



145 



high schools would be 

 able to support them- 

 selves, even if they did 

 not have certain grants 

 from the communes. 



It is understood that 

 the teacher will say what 

 he pleases in his lectures ; 

 and, as the students of 

 mature years choose 

 these schools themselves, 

 they would look on it as 

 a degradation if an arbi- 

 t r a r y examination or 

 standard were imposed 

 on them. 



The foundation of all 

 these schools is religion 

 and nationality. At Ros- 

 kilde it was interesting 

 to note that the modifi- 

 cation of Lutheranism 

 made by Grundtvig 

 showed itself by a slight 

 tinge of the monastic 

 tradition of study and 

 asceticism, for in these 

 boarding schools high 

 thinking is accompanied 

 by plain living. Simplic- 

 ity is not only the rule 

 because it is economical, 

 but because simplicity of 

 life is one of the virtues 

 most inculcated in the 

 svstem of Grundtvig and 

 Kold. 



At Roskilde the school 

 is set in a lovely plain, 

 glowing with green in the 

 spring and lightened by 

 gleams of reflected light from placid 

 waters. The room of each student bears 

 on its door the name of one of the old 

 monasteries, so famous in Danish history. 



HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENTS RANGE FROM l8 

 TO 30 YEARS OF AGE 



The students in the people's high 

 schools, men and women, are generally 

 from eighteen to thirty years of age, and 

 it is considered rather derogatory for a 

 farmer's son or daughter not to have had 

 the advantages of at least some courses 

 in one of these schools. 



As the interesting "Special Report of 



© E. M. Newman 



A GUARD BEFORE THE DOOR OE THE ROYAL PALACE 



The Danish King resided in the palaces at Amalienborg until 

 recently, when he moved to the castle at Christiansborg, just 

 restored after a disastrous fire. 



the Board of Education of Great Britain 

 on Schools, Public and Private, in the 

 North of Europe" says, "The primary 

 aim of these schools is to inform, rather 

 than to impart information." 



That is, the teachers in the schools be- 

 lieve it their duty to increase the desire 

 for information in the minds of the 

 students; to broaden, to stimulate them, 

 to divert them from the every-day drudg- 

 ery of farm life, and to induce them, 

 through an appeal to religion and nation- 

 ality, to feel that their work is noble — in 

 a phrase, to give the agricultural popula- 

 tion a lively interest in all things of good 



