Every self-governing society faces a recurring problem: it must keep producing people who are able to govern. Kings could rule over subjects who could not read. A democracy needs citizens who can weigh evidence, argue without hatred, follow a budget, spot a lie and accept losing a vote. None of these abilities is inborn. They are learned, which makes education one of the deepest foundations of a better future and also one of the most contested.

Schools for life

In the nineteenth century the Danish pastor, poet and historian N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783 to 1872) attacked the schools of his day as places of rote Latin and dead learning. He wanted schools that awakened people to their own language, history and responsibilities. His idea became the folk high school: a residential school for young adults with no exams, built around lectures, discussion, singing and history taught in the mother tongue. The first folk high school opened at Rødding in 1844, and by the end of the century dozens were operating across Denmark, many of them filled with farmers' sons and daughters who spent a winter or summer there.

Many Danes credit folk high schools with helping turn a rural population into confident democratic citizens in the decades after Denmark adopted a constitution in 1849. Historians debate how large the effect really was, since other changes were happening at the same time. The model still exists across the Nordic countries and has been copied elsewhere.

What civic education aims at

Civic education usually aims at three things: knowledge (how institutions work), skills (finding information, speaking, organizing) and dispositions (tolerance, a sense that one's voice matters). Researchers have found that what happens in the classroom matters as much as the textbook. International studies of teenagers, such as the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study, have repeatedly found that students who report an open classroom climate, where issues are discussed and different views are heard, tend to know more about civics and to expect to vote. These findings are correlations, and better schools may simply produce both outcomes, but the pattern recurs across many countries.

The danger of moulding minds

There is an old worry about any education organized by a government. In On Liberty (1859), John Stuart Mill wrote that "a general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another." Mill feared that state-run schooling would press everyone into a single shape chosen by whoever held power. He was not against education. He supported requiring every child to be educated and using public exams to check the results, but he wanted many kinds of schools rather than one official system.

The worry is sharpest for civic education, since a government that teaches citizenship may teach loyalty to itself. One answer came from West Germany, where a country still recovering from Nazi propaganda had reason to fear indoctrination. At a 1976 meeting of educators in the town of Beutelsbach, participants set out principles later known as the Beutelsbach Consensus. Teachers must not overwhelm students with their own opinions; whatever is controversial in public life must appear as controversial in the classroom; and students should be equipped to analyze political situations and their own interests. In short, the goal is to teach how to think about public questions rather than what to conclude.

Learning that never stops

Pressures from AI to shifting work mean that learning can no longer stop at the end of school. Public libraries, adult classes, apprenticeships and online courses all serve as places where adults keep up. A society that expects rapid change needs ways for adults to keep learning throughout their lives, not only a strong start for children. Critics point out that adult learning programs tend to attract people who are already well educated, so the gap between the most and least schooled can widen unless programs reach out deliberately.

Worked example: a dairy with one vote per farmer

In 1882 farmers in the Danish village of Hjedding, in western Jutland, founded a cooperative dairy. Each member delivered milk, shared in the profits according to how much milk he delivered, and had one vote in running the dairy, however many cows he owned. The idea spread with remarkable speed. Within a couple of decades cooperative dairies handled most of Denmark's milk, and cooperatives followed for bacon, eggs and purchasing.

Why did it work so well in Denmark? Prices for butter and bacon in Britain gave farmers a strong reason to improve quality together. But many historians also point to the folk high schools, where young farmers had practiced debating, keeping minutes and trusting neighbors outside their own families. Running a cooperative required exactly those skills: reading accounts, holding a meeting, choosing a manager and accepting a decision one had argued against.

The lesson is not that every country should copy Danish dairies. It is that the habits of self-government can be taught and practiced, and that they pay off in fields far from politics. A school that trains people to deliberate is also training them to run businesses, unions and clubs that resist capture by any single member.