N.F.S. Grundtvig was a priest, historian, poet, and founder of the Danish Folk High School. He believed that education for adults should be geared to adults and wanted schools to be independent of the church. Grundtvig was among the first to call for Denmark's schools to use the native Danish language. Grundtvig believed that each group or culture of people who shared the same language had its own national spirit or folk's spirit that should allow for free and fruitful interaction between generations and all social classes. He advocated establishing folk schools that would cater exclusively to the life experiences of adults, and he envisioned the folk school's mission as helping students think for themselves, learn to distinguish between true and false values, provide useful subjects that students wanted to know, and arouse students' interest and widen their horizon with a new view of the world. According to Grundtvig, folk schools would include time for individual work in a library, and conversations. Grundtvig's influence extended to the United States, where he also influenced the work of several specialists in adult education, including Malcolm Knowles, Martin Knowlton, Olive Campbell, and Myles Horton and the development of institutions such as Ashland College, Elderhostel, Campbell Folk School and Highlander Folk School. (Contains 12 references.) (MN)