Interview with Ole Vig Jensen, who is a long time organiser of popular education, former MP and former government minister for education, on the occasion of his retirement.

(infonet - Michael Voss) On the 15th September 2006 Ole Vig Jensen retired after 46 years of working with education (see box 1).
When asked what has changed from his start in popular education until his retirement, Ole Vig Jensen says:
"For us, who worked with non-formal adult education (see box 2) at that time, it was a primary ambition to promote knowledge to those groups in society that had not had the possibility to learn enough in school and in other parts of the formal education system.
To be able to recruit these people and engage them in study circles and lectures it was a must that the courses were free of charge. Over the years a smaller fee was introduced.
But the balance definitely tipped when the present government as one of its first measures cut down on public funding of non-formal adult education. As we know, the result was a 100% raise in participation fees.
Today you cannot claim that non-formal adult education is a valid offer for the poor of society. On the contrary statistics show that it is the better-off people who participate."
It has not been 46 years of decline, though. Ole Vig Jensen also refers to positive developments in society that have had a big influence on non-formal adult education.
"40 years ago a large part of the population had only attended school for seven years or less. For that reason the basic subjects of Danish reading and writing and arithmetic were a substantial part of the activities in our evening schools," explains Ole Vig Jensen.
"In the meantime society´s level of educations has drastically improved. This means that those subjects are less important today.
Little by little other subjects like crafts, health programs, social and global issues have entered the stage. Also foreign languages have become increasingly important, because people travel much more today than in 1960."

For twenty years Ole Vig Jensen was a member of parliament and for seven years he was a member of government, all the time in charge of non-formal adult education.
"Most important in that period was the reform of the law in 1989. This reform introduced regulations that were much less binding and restricting for the non-formal adult education associations. It became much easier to set up a study circle or a series of lectures and to get public funding for it.
At the same time we introduced the special 10% fund. It means that every local branch of our national associations must earmark 10% of the fund, they receive, for creating debate on social, public and political matters. To me that has always been one of the most important tasks for our sector."

In 2006 the government published a program of reforms with the aim of making Denmark prepared for and able to compete in a globalised world. The governmental progam focused very much on the need of all kinds of education. But non-formal adult education was only mentioned with a few words. Ole Vig Jensen thinks that it was a great mistake.
"Our tradition has something very special to contribute: an offer to the citizens of education by their own choice, completely voluntary, and without exams and grades.
The formal system of education may be better in providing hard core knowledge and competences, but in the non-formal sector the citizens can acquire "life competences", like social competences, communication competences, competences to be able to learn and culture competences.
These competences are very much a result of the personal commitment that comes from the voluntary character of the education."

"But the non-formal education will not survive on historic credentials alone. The tradition must be transformed to the present day. It must be consciously applied to new subjects and issues like globalisation, local democracy, popular health. This will be necessary to be able to prepare the citizens and society for the needs of the future.
And that is a big challenge," says Ole Vig Jensen.

Box 1: Ole Vig Jensen
 Born 17. of May 1935
 Former primary school teacher
 Former deputy head of primary school
 Former chairman of the Free Adult Education Association
 Former chairman of Danish Association of Adult Education
 Former chairman of the Folk High School secretariat
 Former Member of Parliament for the Danish Social-Liberal Party
 Former Minister of Culture and Minister of Education
 Director of the Danish Education Association until 15. of September 2006.


Box 2: The Third Sector in Denmark
Non-formal adult education has a long history in Denmark. Some of its characteristics are:
- Courses and lectures are voluntary chosen by participants
- No restriction on content
- No grades
- No exams
- Organisational independence of state and local authorities
- Public funding if organised in association
- A broad spectre of types of organisations: educational associations, folk high schools (residential and non-residential), issue defined associations (women´s, environmental, artistic, Third World, etc.), co-operatives.
Danish Adult Education Association is the umbrella organisation of this sector: www.dfs.dk