24 Bille—A History of the Banes in America. 
at the time of the establishment of the Elk Horn high school 
there were at least sixty thousand Danes in America, and that in 
1890 there were a hundred thirty-two thousand, the support 
which they have given the high schools is exceedingly small. 
The influence which the high schools have exerted on the Danes in 
America is still smaller. It is safe to say that not one of a 
thousand of the persons in the United States of Danish parentage, 
has attended one of these schools; and that the average time of 
attendance has not been more than four months. This being the 
case, the influence exerted by these schools on those who have at¬ 
tended, as well as on those who have not attended, must be al¬ 
most infinitesimal. Moreover, there is no prospect that this in¬ 
fluence will increase in the future, because they are not the kind 
of schools favored by the Danes here, and all the efforts of the 
Grundtvigian ministers can not make them so. The case of the 
Elk Horn school seems to prove this most conclusively. Since 
1890, when it was reorganized so as to give prominence to the 
English branches, the attendance has more than tripled. In 
1893-94, it had an enrollment of one hundred seventy-eight, 1 
while all the other schools run on the Grundtvigian plan had no 
increase whatever, their total enrollment for the year amount¬ 
ing to only seventy-six; this, in spite of the fact that the 
Grundtvigian ministers, who were still largely in the majority, 
strongly opposed the Elk Horn school and favored the others. 
THE PAROCHIAL SCHOOL. 
To keep the children within the fold of the Danish Lutheran 
Church was the desire common to all the Danish ministers. But 
here, as in the case of the high schools, the Grundtvigian idea 
that this could be done only by maintaining the Danish spirit, 
language and tradition was still the dominant one. Indeed it 
was commonly asserted by them that it was next to impossible for 
a Dane to be a good Christian and renounce either his language 
or his allegiance to his mother country. They found it difficult, 
however, to convince their parishioners of the necessity and 
utility of their scheme of education, which consisted in an attempt 
to supplant the common school with a Danish parochial school, 
1 Catalogue of Elk Horn College for 1893-94. 
