Denmark is Tour de Boserup

Instead of another psuedo-political rant, I decided that for this week's post I would simply put up some pictures I took while on a bike ride through the Danish countryside.  I biked around Roskilde Fjord and spent some time in a nature preserve called Boserup Skov.

The ship in the middle is a replica Viking Longboat.  Can't wait to go on that tour.

Traditional thatched-roof house

Long since retired, this tug now stands silent watch over the fjord

Why is it impossible to resist taking pictures of farm animals?

Lightning strike, or something more sinister?

A pheasant?  Or maybe a grouse? I have no idea what the difference is.

Roskilde Cathedral

This week, I'll be on a field trip of sorts to an island called Bornholm.  I'll let you know how it went when I get back. 

Denmark is Grundtvig

Hello All,

This past Friday afternoon, a Danish classmate of mine named Marten taught me how to play an old Viking lawn game called Kubb.  It's a sort of mixture between horseshoes and bowling and is very entertaining.  While we played, Marten and I got into a discussion about the learning environment in Denmark.

I'd already had a little history on Danish academic tradition courtesy of my Fulbright orientation and I learned that a lot of it stems from the work of a 19th century Danish intellectual named N. F. S. Grundtvig.  Grundtvig believed, contrary to popular belief at the time, that all citizens should be educated with the goal of preparing them for active participation in society.  The emphasis, he posited, should be on freedom of expression, creativity, equality and cooperation.

Through Grundtvig's efforts a series of "folk high schools" were established throughout Denmark in which his theories were put into practice.  These schools, and the ideas on which they were based, became intertwined not only with Danish academic tradition but also in the Danish national conscience as a whole.  As part of this legacy, the Danish academic system (and my university in particular) is very student-centric.  Students, the Danes believe, should be encouraged to design their own study plans and to question anything the professor says if they feel it is flawed.

The Master's program I am enrolled is international, and contains students from all over the world.  About a third of the students are Chinese; a nation, I have learned, with a very different academic tradition.  Chinese students rarely, if ever, ask questions during class  When I asked one student why this was, she replied that it would be considered rude in China.  Chinese students, I have found, are also much more likely to complete an assignment by addressing its requirements precisely and ensuring that it has the proper form.  They rarely question motives or established processes.  A Dane once summed it by telling me of a time in class where Danish students were having a lively discussion about government motives and environmental protection while the Chinese students were silent.  The professor asked one Chinese student his opinion and the student replied with something to the effect of: "Sometimes, government just knows best."

It is interesting to me to think about where the American educational focus falls on this entirely unscientific continuum of styles.  While at first glance most of us would reject the "Chinese" model and find a lot to admire in the "Danish" one, I think that we may admire it for the wrong reasons.  It's appeal, in my opinion, is not necessarily the freedom and creativity it promotes, though they are certainly admirable.  It is the emphasis on equally preparing all citizens for participation in their nation's society.  Denmark provides free education, including college, for all its students.  And, lo and behold, China has recently begun to take steps toward ensuring that its poorest residents receive extra money to pay for their children's education.

If, as a nation, we do not do more to ensure that all our students have the ability to get a full college education regardless of wealth, it won't matter whether we promote the free-spirited "Danish" model or the rigid "Chinese" one.  We'll have already failed.

Denmark is Doing something about it

Hello All,

Yesterday (Saturday) I had the opportunity to go on a day long trip to Lolland, an area in the southeast of Denmark.  Lolland's economy is based mostly on agriculture and is Denmark's poorest region.  It was somewhat surprising, therefore, to learn that Lolland is also doing more than perhaps any other part of Denmark to make itself a bastion of sustainability.

We visited a small school whose parking lot featured a shipping container holding the world's most advanced hydrogen fuel cell technology.  The container, in reality a demonstration facility, used wind energy from turbines located across Lolland  to create pure hydrogen by means of electrolysis.  This hydrogen is in effect an efficient way to store energy; always a problem as wind power is plentiful but intermittent.  The hydrogen is pumped to a test area of around 40 homes where it is converted by fuel cells into energy for heating and electricity.

What most impressed me about Lolland was not the high tech fuel cells, however.  It wasn't the presence of the 400+ wind turbines, including the world's original offshore field.  It wasn't even the pilot project in conjunction with NASA to grow offshore algae among the turbines, the most efficient substance for producing biofuels known to man.  The most impressive thing was that a small, resource-and-knowledge-poor area had decided that it was going to succeed by embracing sustainable development wholeheartedly.  Twenty-five years ago, when the last shipyard closed, the unemployment rate on Lolland was over 20 percent.  Today it is 4 percent, less even than Copenhagen's.  In the United States these days, it often seems to me that we have lost our drive to seek bold, innovative solutions to our problems.  For a variety of reasons, such proposals are dismissed as unfeasible pipe dreams.  The next time I hear such naysaying, I will know it to be a fallacy.  I will think of Lolland.

Fact 2: Denmark is windy

I'm coming up on two full weeks in Denmark and I am beginning to settle in.  I'm living in a small apartment (and I mean small: one room, bathroom, stovetop, minifridge) located about a ten minute walk from my university campus.  The town I'm in, Roskilde (pronounced gutteral "r"- oss-kill-duh) is a smallish place located on one of Denmark's many fjords.  It's also a 20 minute train ride from downtown Copenhagen so the big city is accessible if I want it.

My academic curriculum consists of 3 classes that meet at most twice a week, plus a large, semester-long research project.  Right now, it looks like I will be working with a student from India on a project to determine the best way to implement small-scale wind and solar hybrid power stations in rural parts of the developing world.  Should be pretty interesting.  I'm hoping to work with some Danish companies that already produce wind turbines on how they can adapt their technology to impoverished rural areas.  Denmark is pretty much ground-zero for wind power expertise.  The first thing I saw as my plane descended on Copenhagen airport was a line of turbines in the Oresund Sound and I can see a wind turbine every time I walk from my apartment to class.

It's really no surprise, however, because the wind blows here literally all the time.  It's not bad in and of itself, but it is often accompanied by overcast skies and some light rain.  My first weekend in Copenhagen was warm and nice, but I'm starting to worry that it might have been the last good weather until spring.

Once I get a bike, which will hopefully be next week, I plan to do some long riding up and down the fjord.  Roskilde fjord was one of the points from which the Vikings embarked on their voyages around Europe and there are supposed to be cool historical sites all around here.  Additionally, I've discovered that there is a Saturday basketball league organized by the university so I won't have to wait until I'm back in the States to hoop.  Woo-hoo!

Until next time...