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Pedagogical Journeys or Pleasure Trips: Danish Schoolteachers’ Educational Journeys, 1898–1932

In the last decades of the nineteenth and first decades of the twentieth centuries, a wide range of pedagogical ideas were disseminated in Denmark, influencing both primary schooling and everyday school life. Many of these ideas, along with the desire for educational reform, originated in other European countries and were transferred into a Danish context. During the period 1898–1932, the Danish Ministry of Education awarded 874 grants to Danish male and female primary schoolteachers, enabling them to embark on educational journeys at home and abroad. The author analyses these journeys as an example of educational borrowing to determine the exact nature of the new, inspirational concepts and knowledge to be acquired and to ascertain which countries were perceived as being educationally progressive. From a broader perspective, this article contributes to our understanding of how academic and professional discourses of education crossed borders and contributed to national educational systems becoming more and more alike. The article concludes that the majority of teachers wanted to embark on a Bildung journey, visiting Nordic countries and Germany, with the experience of foreign culture, language and education as their desired purpose. These teachers did not seek big changes, but rather sought to incorporate new concepts and practices into their daily work. Only a minority of the group applied for grants in order to obtain inspiration for widespread reforms or pedagogical renewal. These teachers were national experts in a particular field and belonged to a wider international group, which contributed to the construction of international grammar of school reforms.


Introduction
In 1925, Sigfred Degerbøl received a travel grant from the Danish Ministry of Education so that he could go to Germany to study the new German educational ideas. He was a teacher at Vanløse School in Copenhagen, where pedagogical reforms were being piloted. He visited, among other institutions, the Odenwald School in Hessen, led by the German reform pedagogue Paul Geheeb, where he saw that the "principles of the new free school ideas actually can be implemented and that they are implemented means an extremely high educational progress. " 1 In the same year, the village teacher, Hans Jørgen Hansen, from the small school in Frederiksberg in West Zealand was also granted a scholarship. It was a different kind of foreign inspiration he wanted to experience. He chose Sweden, but as he travelled during the summer holidays, schools were closed. Nevertheless, he noted in his travel report to the Mi-nistry that he benefitted from seeing Swedish schools and exchanging thoughts with Swedish schoolmasters. 2 These two teachers were employed at Danish public primary schools, which, according to the 1814 School Acts, were divided into three categories of institution according to their location. Each was governed by different legislation and taught different curricula: the capital's primary school (almueog borgerskolevaesenet i København), the market town schools (almueskolevaesenet i købstaederne) in the cities and the village schools in the country side (almueskolevaesenet på landet), had created three kinds of teachers. 3 In the capital of Copenhagen, there were both public schools with better-educated teachers for the majority of children and private schools for parents who could afford to pay for their children's education. Outside of the capital, in market town primary schools, many of the teachers were educated beyond the basic teacher exam and provided children with longer school days and an extended curriculum compared to the village schools that the majority of children attended every other day, which had a shorter school day and offered fewer subjects, and since the majority of teachers had achieved no education except basic teacher training.
The overall purpose of all three divisions of public schooling remained, in the words of the 1814 School Acts, that children should be moulded into "good and righteous people, in accordance with the Evangelical-Christian doctrine, as well as giving them the knowledge and skills necessary for them to become useful citizens in the state. " 4 They were to become good human beings and acquire basic skills.
However, in the years around 1900, a number of educational ideas emerged which, combined, might be described as 'new pedagogy' (nypaedagogik)-a precursor to the reform pedagogy of the 1920s and 1930s-which gained support amongst teachers in Copenhagen and the cities. New pedagogy was not a coherent theory of childhood and upbringing, but rather a mosaic of educational thoughts and practices. The new pedagogy promoted an alternative view of what was useful for children to learn, in opposition to the 1814 School Acts' narrow focus on basic skills. The child should develop his or her senses and 'learn to learn, ' rather than being taught factual knowledge such as hymns or king dynasties. Exploring and understanding the child's soul life was vital; there was, therefore, a close connection between psychology and pedagogy. 5 Moreover, Danish schools' political framework and curricula underwent revision during the first third of the twentieth century, especially due to the Danish Social Democratic Party. The party emphasised school reforms and new school legislation as important tools for implementing their social welfare policy and thereby improving conditions for the working class. 6 After World War I, an educational reorientation took place in Denmark, where alternative forms of education were advanced under the term 'reform pedagogy' (reformpaedagogik). 7 The core of the pedagogical-psychological new orientation was a belief that the child was able to take care of his or her own development. Schooling should therefore exploit children's inherent potential to mould themselves into future citizens rather than transforming them into obedient soldiers. This new orientation gave rise to debates in academic and educational journals exploring the 'working school' (Arbeitsschule) and the 'free school' (freie Schule), 8 as well as discussing the experimental schools which had sprung up in major Danish cities. 9 This period was also characterised by the emergence of the practice of school psychology in Denmark. 10

Aim and research questions
These pedagogical reform movements influenced the content of primary schooling, everyday school life, didactics and working methods. However, how the new ideas were disseminated to and received by the thousands of male and female Danish teachers is difficult to establish. One approach would be to examine school journals and other periodicals to see how the new ideas were presented to a Danish audience of teaching professionals. 11 Another approach would be to examine which new ideas teachers sought to learn more about, or even 'borrow, ' and to identify how they went about this. Several teachers embarked on educational journeys as a way of improving their skills and many were involved in school experiments. In Denmark, between 1898-1932, teachers were, by means of grants from the Danish Ministry of Education, given the opportunity to cross national boundaries and seek inspiration and new methods abroad. Although it was just a tiny proportion of the total number of teachers who actually travelled-even fewer who took part in school reformsthe influence they exerted on the public debate and their local environment was somewhat impressive. 12 This article aims, firstly, to analyse these educational journeys as an example of educational borrowing by examining the attraction of Danish schoolteachers to foreign educational systems and pedagogical ideas deemed worthy of consideration and replication. Secondly, in a broader sense, this article will contribute to the existing research by demonstrating the transposition of international academic and professional educational discourses to nations in a period of the emergence of mass schooling. It will, additionally, illustrate the long-term contribution of educational borrowing to national educational systems, which, over time, came to closely resemble its international counterparts. 13 This case study also highlights how governments could assume a strategic role in facilitating planned knowledge transfer, and focuses specifically on identifying what kinds of knowledge the Danish government actually wanted the teachers to borrow. Indeed, the source material reveals whether it was ideas conducive to pedagogical and educational reforms, or rather the increased exposure of teachers to wider-ranging, general educational practices, that the government strived for. The article is, however, not a study of the actual transfer per se, as this would access to alternative types of source materials and adoption of a different theoretical framework.
The Ministry of Education's facilitation of foreign travel for Danish teachers can be understood as an expression of 'governmental internationalism'-that is, a government or an institution's strategy of organising the exchange of information by offering subsidies to their most interested members (experts, foremen, apprentices). 14 The teachers wanted to borrow policies, philosophies and concepts and transpose them into a Danish context-some openly by declaring that their ideas and reform plans were influenced by international debate; others through the subtle process of 'silent borrowing, ' where international influences are not openly acknowledged by policymakers and educationalists. 15 For the first group, it is easy to identify the borrowing, as it was-more or less-openly declared; for the latter group, it can prove more difficult to identify 'silent borrowing. ' One way to attempt this would be to examine the isomorphisms and equivalences between the teacher's praxis and international educational discourses, a method previously employed by German educa-tional researcher Florian Waldow, for example, to examine the equivalence between the international and the Danish school garden movement or to explore the foreign travels of educational forerunners. 16 Common to both groups was their openness to seeking more 'modern, ' efficient or effective educational reforms already practised in other educational systems and to import these educational reforms and institutions. 17 Thus, the research questions are as follows: Why did Danish teachers and borrowers seek inspiration and new knowledge abroad? Which countries were perceived to be progressive by the Ministry and the teachers? And which subjects did the Ministry and the teachers want especially to examine and borrow?
I will analyse the teachers as a group because it is their collective, rather than individual behaviour, that is primarily of interest. However, the source material does allow us insight into the lives of the individual teachers and also enables us to examine trends within the sub periods of the years under investigation. The grants extended for domestic journeys between 1918-32 are not discussed in this article because they afforded travel only to national schools, especially for teachers from the southern part of Jutland (Sønderjylland) which became a part of the Danish primary school system after the reunification in 1920. 18 For budgetary reasons, the Copenhagen School Administration's travel grants from 1919/20 onwards are not included in this article. 19 After the introduction, I will describe the formal rules of the grant system and the process by which teachers were chosen within a selection system often biased by the personal convictions and the preference of the overseeing minister. In section two, I will examine which countries the applicants and the Ministry perceived to be progressive or expressed to be of potential educational interest. Thereafter, I will analyse the kinds of knowledge or subjects the teachers desired to borrow, that is, those which formed the purpose of their educational journeys. Finally, I will summarise the Danish educational journeys undertaken between 1898-1932.

Literature review and theoretical approach
As noted by Florian Waldow, educational transfer-with a focus on 'lending' and especially 'borrowing' across national boundaries-is one of the main concerns of comparative education. Research into educational borrowing can be divided into two overarching categories: the first has tried to answer the question "What can we learn from abroad?", whilst the other has been more focused on how and why knowledge crossed national boundaries. 20 The German educationalist Jürgen Schriewer has ex- 16 Waldow (2009) ), 58. 19 Københavns Borgerepraesentations Forhandlinger 1919/20 (Copenhagen, 1920, 611-12. The purpose of these grants was to give male and female teachers the opportunity to study abroad. Cf. Nørgaard (1977), 58-59. 20 Waldow (2009) amined the politics of educational borrowing and lending to ascertain why and how references to foreign educational systems are used to advance domestic educational reforms. According to Schriewer, references to external systems (externalisation) are mobilised to add meaning, weight or legitimacy to domestic reforms. 21 The reformist movement, at the end of the nineteenth century, was characterised by the circulation of educational information and pedagogical ideas between Western European countries. 22 Therefore, educational journeys, world exhibitions and school assemblies as forums for sharing professional and specialised knowledge have been the focus of studies in recent decades concerned with mapping the 'international argument' and transnational knowledge transfer. 23 Focusing on social or imagined educational spaces, the German historian Sylvia Kesper-Biermann highlights the exchange and transfer of knowledge on pedagogical trips. 24 She shows how there was interaction between the international space and the local space when, for example, a schoolteacher travelled to a foreign educational institution and returned with experiences, which he possibly published in a regional periodical and eventual-ly converted into praxis at their own school. 25 In a Danish context, the historian Ellen Nørgaard has analysed the school reform and reform pedagogy of the 1920s and 30s, including these exploratory journeys, to map why and how the new reformist orientation was spread amongst, as well as received by, teachers. 26 The historian Christian Ydesen has made similar use of the reports in his dissertation on tests conducted in primary schools designed to identify the countries from which teachers gained pedagogical knowledge. 27 Two British scholars, Kimberly Ochs and David Phillips, developed a model for understanding why educational borrowing became attractive to potential borrowers, which constitutes the theoretical framework underpinning this article. 28 Educational borrowing is defined by Ochs and Phillips as the borrowing of ideas from one or several foreign educational systems ('educational borrowing'), by a teacher, politician or government official, in order to transpose the ideas into a domestic context ('educational transfer'). 29 In a Danish context, the focus is on teachers' planned borrowing from foreign educational systems with the aim of transposing concepts and practices into a domestic context.
In this article, I focus on a particular category of educational borrowing. Ochs and Phillips operate with five different categories of educational borrowing: 1) imposed by an authoritative regime; 2) required under constraint in a defeated or occupied country; 3) negotiated under constraint, that is, mandatory through a bilateral or multilateral agreement; 4) borrowed purposefully with planned copying of policies and practices observed abroad; and 5) introduced through influence, that is, discerning the general impact of educational ideas and methods. 30 In this case study, the focus will be on categories 4 and 5 because the purposes of Danish schoolteachers' educational journeys were planned ahead and exploring the general impacts of ideas was a priority. This article will also address a specific stage of educational transfer. According to Ochs and Phillips, educational transfer takes place in four stages: 1) transnational attraction: why is a country's educational system interesting to imitate?; 2) how is the foreign example used in the decision-making process?; 3) implementation; and 4) internalization, being the adopted policies or practices integrated into the existing system. 31 The first stage, transnational attraction, is the focus of this article, as its purpose is to examine which countries and subjects Danish teachers planned to borrow from and visit. 25 Kesper-Biermann (2013), 24, 27. 26 Nørgaard (1977), 58-59. Cf. Gjerløff et al. (2014) 39, no. 4 (2003), 451-61. 29 Ochs and Phillips (2004), 7. 30 Ibid., 9. 31 Ibid., 9-11.

Travel grants conferred at the Minister's pleasure
The second half of the nineteenth century featured numerous educational journeys, from visits to foreign educational institutions to attendance at world exhibitions. 32 This was also the case in Denmark as such experiences were recommended by proposed reforms, such as the 1845 Gymnasium Ordinance, the 1894 Teachers Training Act, as well as by teacher training colleges with an extended curriculum in 1895. 33 In this regard, a series of countries were regarded as especially interesting to visit: the Nordic countries, German states such as Prussia and Bavaria (as the German school system was seen as exemplary), 34 and France. However, far-flung destinations, such as the United States, also were visited. 35 These kinds of knowledge exchange activities belong to Ochs and Phillips' categories of planned copying and general impact, as the visitor either intended to adopt the policies and practices they observed and apply them to a domestic context, or was influenced to pilot foreign ideas and methods in their home country. 36 From 1898, the annual support awarded to teachers by the state for the funding of educational journeys assumed a more permanent character. In 1894, a new Teacher Training Act was introduced, closely followed by the 1895 reorganisation of continuing and further education programmes for teachers (Statens Laererkursus). 37 Travel grants were proposed by the Danish Teachers' Association to the Conservative Minister for Church and Education, H.V. Sthyr, in 1897, as an initiative designed to improve the skills of teachers. 38 The minister brought the proposal before Parliament. 39 After negotiations with the leader of the opposition party (The Farmers' Party), the teacher J.C. Christensen, the minister was able to secure an amount of 3,000 DKK (28,000 euros today) for travel grants to primary and folk high schools. 40 The original amount, as well as the subjects covered by the grants, was continuously increased and by the 1920s, the grant amounted to 10,000 DKK (38,336 euros today) and covered eight subjects. The grant ceased in 1932, due to general cuts to the ministerial budget. 41 For each financial year, a clerk in the Ministry noted the name, position and school name of each grant recipient, together with the amount awarded, in a small accounting book. 42 The accounting book can be used to identify grant beneficiaries between 1898-1932 since it provides a complete overview of recipients in this period. Each year, clerks at the Ministry read the applications and included the main relevant points into a schematic overview, supplying information on applicant, destination, desired purpose, recommendations and remarks. Additionally, one also finds accounts of the internal discussions within the Ministry and the Minister's final approval of the grant application. 43 I use the clerks' application résumés, rather than exhaustively reading each application, since each résumé reflects facts which the clerks felt pertinent to emphasise. Moreover, the applications are often so short that one cannot extract more information by reading the applications themselves. 44 There were no formal guidelines on how to write a grant application; the applications therefore varied in style and format. They were usually brief, conveying their intended journey in general terms and not detailed descriptions of the intended journey. However, they all displayed a reverent, almost submissive tone towards the Ministry in order to convey respect; they are written in a way designed to elicit financial support, that is, the teacher included only information, which he/she suspected would probably trigger conferral of a grant.
One of the Ministry clerks then drafted a schematic overview, which, together with the applications, was handed to the Ministry's national consultant for primary school affairs. Sophus Sørensen, the consultant between 1899-1903, merely commented on the applications, 45 but his successors N.A. Larsen (1903-30) and F.C. Kaalund-Jørgensen (1930-48) took a more active part in the process. Larsen pointed out those teachers who deserved a scholarship. Applications that were not submitted through the official line of command were not considered. 46 The same was the case with young applicants. On the other hand, teachers with good recommendations 41 Rigsdagstidende 1931/32, volume A (Copenhagen J.H. Schultz, 1931 were prioritised, especially "the elderly and very well-deserved and those who have a keen interest in a particular school subject. " 47 Thus, it was a subjective (non-neutral) evaluation of which subjects the national school consultant prioritised and which teachers he felt deserved support. 48 On the basis of the recommendation of the national consultant, the deputy head of the department devised a priority list, commented upon by the head of department and the Minister -a list that could result in the selection of a different group of candidates from those suggested by the consultant. 49 This was especially so after 1901, when J.C. Christensen, the first Minister from the Opposition, was appointed Minister for Church and Education. Christensen was keen on demonstrating that he was in charge. If the civil servants tried to influence his decision, he obstinately chose the opposite course of action to that suggested. 50 In his capacity, Christensen did not merely approve the candidate list; rather, he changed the names on the final list, as well as the proposed amounts. 51 Subsequent ministers acted in the same way when they wanted to prioritise a particular field or a certain educational movement. 52 Thus, grant conferrals were determined more by Ministry's priorities, in respect of subjects and applicants, and less by the wishes of the applicants.
The Ministry awarded 872 grants during the period 1898-1932 (see Figure 1). There were more market town schoolteachers represented among travel grant applicants than there were village schoolteachers. 53 Whether it was because market town teachers were more interested in learning about foreign impulses, or could more easily request a colleague to take over their position for a short while than a village teacher, who was often the only teacher in the small village school, is not known. Even though there were more market town teachers (408 grants) who received scholarships than their village counterparts (382 grants), the distribution evened out during this period. The low number of participating Copenhagen teachers (82 grants) was due to the fact that the City of Copenhagen also financed educational trips; therefore, the Ministry allocated only two or three grants to the capital's teachers. The gender distribution was unequal throughout the period, as only 10 percent 47  of the funds went to women, mainly from Copenhagen and the market towns, where they enjoyed more favourable employment opportunities than in the countryside (where usually the village teacher was a man). 54 There was a huge demand for travel grants. At least 2,000 teachers wanted to travel abroad during the investigated period and, especially during the latter half of the 1920s, there seems to have been a great deal of interest, which might be interpreted as evidence of an increased interest in learning about foreign school matters and becoming more skilled in one's own subjects. On average, around 25 grants were awarded yearly. In the years 1908/09-1922/23, during which the central government's finances were beneficial, some 35 persons were awarded a grant every year; in the late 1920s, with the onset of recession, the number decreased to between 15 and 20 persons. 55 Thus, only every third applicant received a grant. Bestowal of a grant, therefore, seems to have been perceived as a sign that one's efforts at the school were appreciated; indeed, many teachers emphasised that they were awarded this form of funding. 56

Leading nations and old-fashioned countries: desired destinations
As Ochs and Phillips have noted, some countries (or lending systems) held cross-national attraction for a teacher planning a visit and for the Ministry selecting candidates. 57 Indeed, Kesper-Biermann argues that there was a hierarchy wherein certain states were perceived to be leading nations and others were regarded as old-fashioned. 58 This seems also to have been the case for both Danish teachers and the Ministry. In their applications, the teachers listed the country or countries which were their preferred destination. There are 1,068 destinations listed (see Table 1). Some teachers wanted to visit a particular country, such as Norway, while others wished for a journey incorporating the visit of two or more countries, for example, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Therefore, when one lists the number of planned destinations, the number of destinations is necessarily higher than the grants awarded. The country most often cited as the preferred destination was Sweden (195 destinations), closely followed by Germany (194), Denmark (164) and Norway (150). This distribution of 'interesting' countries was also shared by those who did not receive travel grants. 59 Indeed, 61 per cent of village teachers stated the Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) as their favoured destinations, whereas the percentage for teachers from Copenhagen and the market towns was only 37 percent. Teachers did not undergo lessons in foreign languages (German, English and French) at the teacher training colleges; 60 therefore, village teachers with fewer language skills, could more easily travel to the Nordic countries. Market town teachers wanted to visit Sweden, Germany and Great Britain, as they were able to speak German and English because they taught at middle and secondary schools (mellemog realskoler), the majority of which were established in market towns and taught English and German as part of the curriculum. 61 Travelling within Denmark, most teachers were curious to see different parts of the country, or to visit other schools in order to learn about specific subjects and didactics, while others embarked on journeys to "historical places" in Southern Jutland (Sønderjylland), which had been a part of the German Empire during the period 1864-1920, but in 1920 was subsequently reunited with Denmark. 62 With regard to why Sweden and Norway held greater attraction for applicants than other countries, several factors must be considered. The Swedish and Norwegian influence on the Danish primary school was limited. However, there was a linguistic and cultural overlap between such countries (the unification of Denmark and Norway ended in 1814) and the school systems in Sweden 63 and Norway 64 resembled closely those in Denmark. It was also easy for a Danish teacher to travel to Sweden or Norway, as he could speak Danish; besides, a trip to Sweden was cheaper than journeying to London and Berlin. The Ministry granted 150-250 DKK for study trips in the Nordic countries, and 250-300 DKK for more remote trips. 65 Due to the infrastructural expansion, it became easier to travel, 66 and the Swedish rail network made it possible to visit major cities anywhere in the country. Perhaps for this reason, many teachers chose to visit cities that lay along the main Swedish railways.
Germany also proved an attractive destination for applicants. 67 In the nineteenth century, the German educational system was perceived by most European educationalists to be exemplary, as the system had proved itself to be a successful scientific model due to its renowned universities and because it offered thriving practical examples of higher and secondary education. 68 During the 1920s, the German school experiments attracted much attention. 69 The great neighbour in the south had for centuries influenced development within the Danish church and educational systems. Many Danes embarked on study trips during the nineteenth century-when the government planned school reforms-seeking inspiration or to avail themselves of lessons learned (as mentioned earlier). In addition, German was one of the main languages taught in the middle and secondary schools and also in many market town schools. Finally, all of the major German cities were easy reach by train from Denmark.
Great Britain was also a desired destination for a great number of teachers, especially during the 1920s. The British school system had a different structure and history compared to the Danish. 70 Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the English language was part of the attraction, since English was also one of the main languages taught at middle and secondary schools, as mentioned earlier. It may have also been the reason why Great Britain was chosen by 75 out of 92 market town teachers as their preferred destination.
Other Western European countries also generated considerable interest, including France and Switzerland. France was the choice of Danish teachers embarking on language studies. 71 The reasons why Danish teachers wanted to visit Swiss schools are ambiguous, yet it is noteworthy that the major proportion of teachers who visited Switzerland combined their trip with a visit to Germany, with the latter being their primary choice of country. 72 With regard to the new countries in Central and Eastern Europe, there was a limited amount of interest, as these countries possessed a very different school structure, wherein there could be language barriers.

Fruitful impulses or reform ideas
The Ministry's application extracts reveal which what the recipients of the 874 grants wished to borrow from and observe (see Table 2). 73 For almost six out of ten of the grants (56 percent or 489 grants), the planned journey can be characterised as an introduction through influence, that is, the teachers wanted to experience the general impact of educational ideas and methods in the visited country. 74 In such cases, the teacher was awarded a grant for a Bildung (almendannende) journey, which emphasised the exploration of other cultures and languages. Such trips afforded the teacher the opportunity to develop their linguistic abilities, or to fully immerse themselves in the values, lifestyles and customs of the country visited. There was not necessarily a desire to influence, or reshape, the domestic school system after a particular educational model. As Hakon Olsen -a teacher in the market town of Hjørring in Northern Jutland -wrote in his travel report: "I did not travel to import systems or methods but more to get a personal insight into our neighbour's school system and perhaps bring fruitful impulses back to my work. " 75 Most of the grant recipients embarking on Bildung journeys undertook holiday language courses and study trips. The courses presented an opportunity to build upon the language skills the teacher had developed at the teacher training college, as well as to experience the country's culture. Several German and British universities offered holiday courses aimed at foreigners, such as the University of London (which made such courses available from 1903). 76 The purpose was to provide opportunities to persons outside of the university -who would otherwise be unable to access them -to enhance their working lives and prospects by learning the English language, culture and history. 77 Danish teachers attended these courses, especially after World War I (with 489 enrolments in the period 1919-35). 78 In Germany, Danish teachers preferred the holiday courses provided by the University of Jena (Deutsch für Ausländer), which was established in 1889. 79 From 1920, there was a holiday course designed only for Scandinavian persons, which included lectures, theatre and concert visits and excursions to historical attractions. 80 N.A. Larsen, the national school consultant, did not think much of these holiday courses. During the 1921 grant distribution, he wrote that the applicants again were persons who […]wish to travel in order to enhance their impressions and promote their personal development or study everyday life or language studies; all this is nothing but a pleasure trip [...] a regular holiday trip with a little addition of school visiting or course attending [...]. 81 One may counter Larsen with the argument that the holiday courses were not conceived as extensive pedagogical journeys to facilitate the teacher's methodical examination of a country's school system in order to identify solutions to a domestic educational issue. Teachers nevertheless were convinced that their experiential impressions could usefully inform their teaching of English history or the French language. As the teacher L. Schmidt wrote in 1923: "It was not only necessary for a language teacher to know the language; he should also know 'Realia' (facts), which one did not get if one had not visited in the country in question. " 82 This seems to have been the reason that the Ministry allocated grants for these types of journeys year after year, even though they did not directly result in new educational initiatives or reforms. Such trips, however, would likely have enhanced the competence of the teacher in a market town, or a small village, school in performing their core duties.
In only in around a third of the grants (228 teachers or 26 percent), can the expressed travel purposes be categorised as the desire to borrow purposefully. In such instances, the teacher visited countries and institutions in order to copy/translate foreign school policies or practices into a domestic context, 83 for example, visiting a British high school, a Swedish youth school or experiencing the implementation of new educational ideas in German schools. Many of the teachers that undertook such travels were national experts in a particular subject. Collectively, they formed a wider social and cultural group, which gradually constructed an international grammar of school reforms on the basis of the expertise and knowledge they had acquired regarding foreign systems of schooling. This experiential knowledge also helped legitimise their suggestions for reform. 84 One of these Danish experts was the female teacher Eline Hansen from Copenhagen public schools, who was one of the pioneers of Danish culinary (school kitchen) education. She lobbied for the introduction of teacher training courses in culinary education and was appointed head of pedagogical guidance and school kitchen methodology at the Royal Danish Teachers' School (Statens Laererhøjskole). In order to build the case for introducing school kitchen education in Denmark, Hansen embarked on educational journeys to Belgium, Germany and Great Britain, where the subject had been taught for decades. She thereby gathered experience from an array of international educational practices and used this as the basis for her innovative campaign and further work.  Ochs andPhillips (2004), 9. 84 Matasci (2015), 227. 85 Jytte Larsen et al., eds. Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon (Copenhagen: Rosinante, 2001), vol. 2, 9-11. On However, as noted by Swiss educational historian Daniel Tröhler, although one did borrow quite consciously, this did not mean that foreign ideas were uncritically transposed into local settings. Indeed, foreign educational ideas and practices were actively 'translated' and reshaped to ensure their felicitous application into local contexts. 86 Such was the case for the 11 teachers (out of 874 grants) who, according to their application, ventured abroad to study pedagogy and psychology. Before 1920, only one teacher seemed to have studied psychology; this was Jens Olsen, a teacher in the market town of Varde in Western Jutland, who was awarded a grant to journey to Great Britain in 1903 in order to study child psychology and language. He subsequently introduced American 'child studies' to Denmark as a precursor to child psychology. In child studies, one examines the thoughts of children, expressed in the form of a questionnaire, within their immediate social and cultural context. Olsen derived his inspiration from travels to Great Britain, translating the ideas he acquired there into a Danish context. 87 Only few recipients stated directly in their application that they wanted to learn about reform pedagogy in the 1920s and 30s. There may have been others who wanted to learn about the new school ideas, but these applications singularly indicated that they would study, for example, 'only' German school matters. The Ministry seems also to have rejected applications expressing their purpose in terms of pedagogical reforms. When the county school inspectors for Southern Jutland wanted to study modern school ideas, the national school consultant, N.A. Larsen, wrote: "There is so much written about the so-called new school ideas that anyone who wants can become familiar with them. Dr Naesgaard will keep us updated on what appears in this regard. " 88 He referred to the Danish psychoanalyst Sigurd Naesgaard, who was a great supporter of the free school ideas and wrote about such ideas in school journals. 89 Two other teachers wanted to study the pedagogy of Italian Maria Montessori. The first was Miss Anne Marie Ventegodt, a teacher at a kindergarten, based on Montessori principles, in Frederiksberg (near to Copenhagen). 90 The other visited Belgian psychologist Ovide Decroly's school in Brussels, where the pedagogy was based on a psychological understanding of children's development. 91 Thirty-nine out of 874 grant recipients wanted to see youth schools (ungdomsskoler) and continuation schools (fortsaettelsesskoler) in order to examine whether the ideas underpinning these forms of schooling could be translated into a Danish context; indeed, the Danish youth school was the subject of much debate from 1910 onwards. The aims of the Danish youth school were to maintain and enhance the primary school curriculum and to assist the youth in obtaining future employment. 92 The work school (Arbeitsschule) pedagogy of Georg Kerschensteiner was introduced in Denmark in 1909 and became the topic of Danish parliamentarian debate, receiving public funding from 1914. 93 Teachers began visiting youth schools abroad, especially from 1916, with Sweden and Norway being the favoured destinations. Sweden was obvious choice for travel because the country had introduced two years of compulsory continuation schooling in 1918 as preparation for the practical youth school. 94 Many teachers, the vast majority of whom were village teachers, were interested in actual school buildings and the school's immediate surrounding environments, espe-cially school gardens. 95 The Danish school garden movement was established around 1900 and reached its peak in the 1920s and 30s. 96 Furthermore, school buildings and school inventories attracted interest. 97 This included visiting school museums. In the early twentieth century, these were not actual museums in the modern sense, but rather exhibitions on state of the art of school inventories, as was the case with the Danish School Museum 1887-1934. 98 Amongst the grant recipients was Frederik Thomassen, Museum Curator between 1899-1918, organiser of Danish and Nordic school assemblies and participant in foreign educational conferences. He journeyed abroad to visit school museums in the Nordic countries, as well as in Europe, in 1901Europe, in , 1909Europe, in , 1914Europe, in and 1917 and wrote about foreign school museums in the leading Danish educational journal "Vor Ungdom. " 99 The subject for which the Ministry awarded most of its grants was educational handcrafts or sloyd (sløjd). In total, 23 teachers wished to see how sloyd was practised in other countries. Taking considerable inspiration from the Swedish sloyd training college in Nääs, 100 sloyd was introduced in Denmark from the 1880s as a way of developing the (male) child's spiritual and physical abilities. By teaching the child to stand in the correct position and work in a systematised way, sloyd shaped the child's body and personality. 101 The Ministry also awarded grants to teachers who wanted to specialise in a topic of interest, for example, churchyards, buildings, music, Danish nature, geography and geology, or to visit the old 1721 crown schools (rytterskoler) and publish their findings in a book.

Conclusion
During the period 1899-1932, the Danish Ministry of Education awarded 874 grants to Danish male and female primary schoolteachers, enabling them to embark on educational journeys both at home and abroad. This article, firstly, analyses the journeys as a case of educational borrowing by examining Danish schoolteachers' attraction to foreign educational systems and pedagogical ideas. Secondly, this article contributes to the existing research by shedding light on the transposition of academic and professional discourses of education from abroad into a domestic educational system, thus contributing to the assimilation of national educational systems over time.
The purpose of this article is, therefore, to analyse the funding of teachers' educational journeys as an expression of 'governmental internationalism' by the Danish Ministry of Education. The article explores the first stage of educational borrowing, that is to say, the attraction to foreign educational systems and ideas. Thus, the article does not seek to examine the perceptions of the visited institutions or demonstrate the actual impact of the journeys on schooling and school policy in Denmark. Instead, this article presents the specific kinds of knowledge and ideas that the Ministry and the teachers planned to transpose into the Danish national educational system. The teachers wanted to borrow policies, philosophies and concepts to adapt and apply to the Danish context -some were open about their intent; others did so through a process of 'silent borrowing. ' Based on case files and travel reports from the Ministry's archives, the article analyses which countries were perceived to be 'progressive' by the Ministry and the teachers, as well as which subjects the Ministry and the teachers were keen to examine and borrow from.
This article has shown that some countries were favoured as destinations, having cross-national attraction, both by the Ministry and grant applicants. The vast majority of visits were to Sweden, closely followed by Germany and Norway. This result is not unexpected. There was a linguistic and cultural connection shared by the Scandinavian countries and their school systems were very similar. The German educational system was perceived by most European educationalists to be exemplary. In addition, the German school experiments during the 1920s attracted much attention. The selection of Great Britain seems to be attributable to the desire of some teachers to improve their linguistic skills, as English was also one of the main languages taught in middle and secondary schools.
For a smaller number of teachers, the purpose of their journeys was to visit foreign countries and institutions in order to copy or translate school policies or practices into a Danish context. These teachers were national experts in a particular field whilst belonging to a wider international social and cultural community of experts. The vast majority of the grant applications, however, came from teachers wanting to embark on a Bildung (almendannende) journey, affording them the opportunity to experience the culture, history and traditions of their chosen country, or to use their travels to enhance their linguistic abilities, whilst also observing foreign systems of schooling. That was particularly the case with the many teachers who applied for holiday courses.
The difference in expressed travel purposes can be understood as representing two different ways of fulfilling the role of schoolteacher and relating to one's local community, according to Finnish educationalists Erkko Anttila and Ari Väänänen, who usefully apply the concepts of 'local' and 'cosmopolitan. ' 102 The large group of teachers who embarked on a Bildung journey can be described as 'local influentials' due to their interdependence on local social networks, as well as their keen interest in local social life and public matters. According to their stated purposes for travel, they did not want to change the public school, or necessarily introduce new methods, but rather focused on honing their own skills in respect of their teaching subjects. The smaller group of teachers who expressly sought new ideas and wished for reform, might be characterised as 'cosmopolitan influentials' because they based their status on, amongst other things, knowledge that they had acquired beyond the small town, as they took a keen interest in what was happening outside in the wider world. 103 Even though it was only a small proportion of the Danish male and female teachers who embarked on educational journeys, the journeys which were undertaken seemed to have had a definite impact on the daily life and development of the Danish school. In a period preceding a six-week summer holiday, a grant for an educational journey would have afforded the teacher an inexpensive travel opportunity and supplied new inspiration for the teaching of European languages or history. Similarly, the journeys could have been valuable for those teachers who wanted to visit schools and institutions in order to acquire new knowledge or as a part of a reform agenda. They would have gained insight into educational debates, made cross-border contacts and imported academic and professional knowledge into the Danish educational system.
Amongst several other factors, the educational journeys undertaken by Danish teachers between 1898-1932 contributed to the transfer of academic and professional educational discourses, thus providing a partial explanation as to why the Danish educational system, over time, increasingly came to share many similar features with its counterparts in European countries. 104 However, further research is needed to examine the impacts of these educational journeys, that is, to ask what the teachers actually observed, how they interpreted their experiences, and, not least, to determine how the borrowed subjects and ideas were implemented, or used to legitimise educational reforms, in the Danish context. 105