THE 80’s 1987
1986 The Schools’ gymnasium is finished. A new playground area is finished.
A pre-kindergarten group (for 4-yearolds) is opened. CIJS joins the Danmarks Realskoleforening
1989
1988
CIS celebrates its 25th anniversary and CIJS its 15th anniversary with Princess Benedikte. The Friends of the Copenhagen International Schools Foundation is officially dissolved but the Friends continue as a fundraising committee. An after-school program is instituted.
CIS and just beginning to learn English, who read the entire novel with the assistance of a English-Japanese dictionary! In the lingo of my daughter’s generation, that commitment and desire to excel is “awesome”—and it typified CIS students. I recall the annual class trips. Destinations included Venice, Prague, and Dubrovnik (then part of Yugoslavia and soon to become associated with ethnic-cleansing and civil war). In addition, there were trips to Paris with the French class, and a trip to the former Soviet Union that I organized. For most of the class trips, Lorraine Wykes was my co-chaperone—and we had lots of fun. One year, after arriving in Venice, we checked the students into their rooms before having coffee with the owner in the hotel’s ground-level “bar.” We could hear the excited students on their balconies above. Suddenly a balcony collapsed, crashing down on the restaurant roof. Fortunately, the students were able to exit the balcony before the fall. Never was I more proud of my students than during a trip to the Danish Resistance Museum. In class, we had been studying Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and World War II, and the museum visit was the capstone experience for this unit. At the museum, the students broke into groups and went through the exhibits, which document Danish resistance to the German occupation during World War II. After their tours, the students begin to gather at our meeting place. A couple of students told me about a German, also visiting the museum, who warned them that the exhibits were propaganda. At that moment the German walked by, and I asked the students to call him over. It turned out that he spoke little English. However, with an Austrian student interpreting, we waged an impromptu debate on the holocaust right there in the museum. The German denied the holocaust occurred; and the students, to my delight, challenged his denial with evidence and questions that dismantled his claims. That 10 or 15 minute debate was a highlight in my teaching career. (Of course, this German tourist, a holocaust-denier, did not reflect mainstream German thought, any more than neo-Nazis who I met in Europe represented the people of their nations.)
CIS and CIJS set up a joint fund-raising committee to supplement the work of the Friends of the Copenhagen International Schools.
My time at CIS coincided with the end of the Cold War. In the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev introduced glasnost and perestroika. In 1989, people’s power movements in Eastern Europe overthrew repressive regimes in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. For months, I awoke to news reports of revolution, liberation, transformation, and hope. During the Thanksgiving 1989 weekend, just two weeks after the Berlin Wall “fell,” I visited this symbol of Cold War conflict—now a site of excitement and festiveness. Two years later, the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union; and the Cold War moved from current politics to contemporary history.
“At CIS I learned that making exceptions to serve the best interests of individual students did not undermine the rules but rather humanized policies.” Danish taxes were a perennial topic of conversation. Unlike most of my friends, I didn’t complain about high taxes. I defended taxes, even though I paid 70% of my modest salary in income taxes and VAT. Indeed, I often quoted Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a U.S. Supreme Court justice, who declared that taxes are the price that we pay for civilization. To me, Denmark’s highly developed “welfare state” undergirds a humane and civilized society that effectively advances the common good—a real bargain for our taxes. To remain fit in middle age, I no longer eat Danish pastries; however, I do drive a Volvo; I still consider Scandinavia the most human place on earth to live; and I continuously recall my five wonderful years at CIS. Since 2001, I have taught history at Georgian Court University, a small Catholic university in New Jersey, USA. My research focuses on peace history, nonviolence, pacifism, and conscientious objectors.
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