“Bildung:” History & Currency
Norm Friesen
July 24, 2009
nfriesen@tru.ca
Overview
• What is Bildung?
• What is its history?
• The destruction and re-birth of Bildung in the 20th
Century
• Exercise: Think of something/someone that
changed you, and is responsible for who you are
today.
• Bildung now: “Structural” (Klafki) or “Existential”
(Mollenhauer)
• Bildung versus the “facilitation of learning”
Bildung
• A German word; translated as:
– Formation
– Growth
– Edification
• Not the same as:
– Education
– Development
– Upbringing
Recent Definition (Biesta, 2002)
“Bildung stands for an educational ideal that emerged
in Greek society and that, through its adoption in
Roman culture, humanism, neo-humanism and the
Enlightenment, became one of the central notions of
the modern Western educational tradition. Central in
this tradition is the question of what constitutes an
educated or cultivated human being. The answer to this
question is not given in terms of discipline, socialisation
or moral training, that is, as an adaptation to an
existing external order. Bildung refers, rather, to the
cultivation of the inner life, that is, of the human soul,
the human mind.”
Emphasis on self-other
• „The developmental opening up of a physical and
mental reality for a person; that is the objective or
material aspect [of Bildung]
• But at the same time, it also means: the
developmental opening up of this person for this,
her reality –and this is the subjective and formal
aspect...“
• “reciprocal interrelationship of world and
individual” (Klafki, 1997)
• Bildung as an intergenerational social and political
process (Klafki)
A Basic Definition
• Understand Bildung in terms of
a kind of fiction, story.
• “Bildungsroman:” The term
Bildungsroman denotes a novel
of all-around self-development
• Huck Finn escapes from his aunt,
and goes down the Mississippi
with Jim, a black slave
• This type of novel is at its roots a quest story, as
both "an apprenticeship to life" and a "search for
meaningful existence within society."
Inclusive Term
• Interconnected developments in education,
growth, socialization, self-understanding,
changes around one
• Occurs through interaction with society, a
given social order
• End result is an autonomous individual,
capable of meaningful self-determination in
relationship to the world around him.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
• Lived during the enlightenment;
the “pedagogical century” (Gudjons)
• Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation into the
limitations and structure of reason itself (1781)
• Kant's "Copernican revolution:” places the human subject or
knower at the center of inquiry into our knowledge, such that
it is impossible to philosophize about things as they are
independently of us
• his invention of critical philosophy, that is of the notion of
being able to discover and systematically explore possible
inherent limits to our ability to know through philosophical
reasoning
• Answer to the Question:
What is Enlightenment?
• Reply to the question posed
an official in the Prussian
government (1784)
• Ending of church and state
“paternalism”
• People be given the
freedom to use their own
intellect.
• Kant praised Frederick II of
Prussia for creating these
preconditions
Kant: What is Enlightenment?
• Task of Education as self-determination
through the exercise of reason:
– “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his selfimposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use
one’s understanding without guidance from another.”
(An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? 1784)
– Unmündigkeit: Mündig – able to speak for onesself.
• Four questions from Critique of Pure Reason:
• “The whole interest of reason, speculative as well as practical, is centered
in the three following questions:”
– “What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope (for)?
Early 1800’s in Germany
Neo-Humanism
• Research into ancient Greek culture; idealization of it
• Emphasis on a general idea of Humanity as a
paradigm, to be attained through Greek language
and culture
W. von Humboldt (1767-1835)
• Minister of Education in Prussian State
• Responsible for aspects of university that are
still important today (e.g. Academic
freedom/independence from the state; the
idea of the unity of research and teaching)
• Defined „citizen of the world“ (Weltbürgertum) are those
who, as autonomous individuals, are bound together in
scholarly pursuit (not economic, professional).
• Bound together in dealing with the largest questions of
humanity: Freedom, justice, exchange of cultures,
relationship to nature.
• „transforming as much ‚world‘ as possible into the actual
person –that is ‚life‘ in the highest sense of the term.“
“Theory of Bildung”
• “It is the ultimate task of our existence to achieve as
much substance as possible for the concept of
humanity in our person, both during the span of our
life and beyond it, through the traces we leave by
means of our vital activity. This can be fulfilled only by
the linking of the self to the world to achieve the most
general, most animated, and most unrestrained
interplay” [freiesten Wechelswirkung] (von Humboldt,
2000, p. 58)
• The self contains the embryo of universal humanity,
and its realization is the inner destiny of the individual.
But by the early
20th Century…
“He who has un
dergone Bildung is someone who does not work with
his hands, who knows how to dress and behave
properly, and who is conversant with what is being
discussed in society. A further sign of Bildung is the
correct use of foreign words: whoever errs in
meaning or pronounciation in this regard will cause
his (level of) Bildung to be judged unfavourably. On
the other hand, his Bildung will be as good as proven
if he is able to speak a foreign language… (Friedrich
Paulsen 1903)
“Bildung – a Cathedral lying in Ruins”
• “The unholy marriage of property and Bildung was secured,
and Bildung was plutocratically misused, valued only for
individual gain, and finally reduced to a number of cannonical
highschool subjects.” (Gudjons, 2003)
• “In the 1960’s Bildung was exchanged for psychological and
sociological notions like qualification, socialization, integration
& learning.” (Biesta, 2002)
Re-birth of Bildung in
the 1980’s
• Klafki (1927 - ): “the task of Bildung
cannot be abrogated…it is required by
the way that democratic societies are
constituted” (inalienability of the concept…)
• Re-read theories of Bildung in terms of the
abdication of the metaphysical absolute.
• Mollenhauer (1928-1989): We are
called to Bildung by the need to pass
on to children that which is good in
our lives
Klafki: Key problems typical for our
age
• Question of peace; problem of self-destruction
• Question of the environment; controlling
technology
• Social inequality; as it is produced by society
• Dangers and possibilities of control, information
and communications media and technologies
• The subjectivity of the individual or self, and
his/her relation to the other.
• Capacity for self-determination: encompasses one‘s
own, personal life relationships and their
value/meaning in interpersonal, professional and
religious spheres.
• Capacity for collective self-determination
(Mitbestimmungsfähigkeit): each individual should
have the capacity to participate in socio-political
relationships, and to engage with them responsibly.
• Capacity for Solidarity: the claim to individual and selfdetermination can only be justified if one attempts to
work to give the same rights to others who are not yet
in possession of them.
Klaus Mollenhauer
• Attempted: “to remember the old questions,
to find out if there is something like the basic
constituents of enlightenment pedagogy, a
minimal cannon of questions, that no one
today could ignore, if they want to be
educators”
• What about your own “significant
experiences?”
5 Questions & Keywords
• Why do we want to have children? (Bildung and
Erziehung)
• What way of life do I present to children by living with
them? (Presentation)
• What way of life ought to be systematically represented
to children? (Representation)
• How can I help children to become self-starters and
support their growth? (Developmental Preparedness;
Self-starting)
• Who am I? Who do I want to be, and how do I help
others with their identity problems? (Identity)
Films (fiction and theory text also used)
• Why do we want to have children? (Bildung and
Erziehung) My Life as a Dog
• What way of life do I present to children by living with
them? (Presentation) Kolya
• What way of life ought to be represented to children?
(Representation) To Be and to Have
• How can I help children to become self-starters and
support their growth? (Developmental Preparedness;
Self-starting) Good Will Hunting The Wild Child
• Who am I? Who do I want to be, and how do I help
others with their identity problems? (Identity) Wit
Bildung vs Learning
• Process that is social &
cultural
• Does not occur through
nature
• Is structured socially, and
school emerges from this
• Is a process of
“Überlieferung”
• Includes education of
“things” and “men”
• Ed. of “nature” seen
insufficient
• Process that is biological,
developmental
• Occurs naturally, and
formally in school; leads
to pressure to “destructure” school
• Sees the “education of
man” as a derivative form
of “education of nature”
and “things”
Nature of Pedagogy
• Pedagogy is aporetic or paradoxical for
Mollenhauer in that it tries to describe and
strengthen that part of the child which is most
fundamentally open and indefinite and about
which nothing final or definitive can be said.
Pedagogy as Aporetical
• The child would essentially remain something
more than that which is immediately
accessible to us through understanding and
explanation. Whoever would want to be an
educator, especially in view of a future that
cannot be reliably reckoned, must attempt to
enter into a relationship with this part of
children's lives which can only be intimated.
(p. 89)
Conclusion
• It [pedagogy] is not a subject for scholarly
specialization. Specialized or scientific scholarship
can easily describe triumphs of human development;
but it can only gesture towards its aporetic
character.... [And the] more finely the net of
pedagogical strategies and institutions is woven, the
greater a contribution that is expected from
pedagogy towards social progress, the more difficult
it becomes to express this [aporetic character].
(Mollenhauer, 1983, p. 88)[1]
Conclusion
• In this context, pedagogy is not a question of solving
practical problems and optimizing learning
processes, it is part of the ongoing mystery and
frailty of human existence.
• Upbringing and pedagogy are not a collection of
means or a set of techniques that can be reduced to
processes of optimization and standardization. It
remains a profoundly personal relation, with the
intention of contributing to the child’s life,
experience, and supporting the child's growth in the
direction of humanity and selfhood.
Bibliography
• Foreignness and Otherness in Pedagogical Contexts
http://www.phandpr.org/index.php/pandp/article/view/4/49
• Friesen, N. & Sævi, T. (in press). Reviving Forgotten
Connections: Klaus Mollenhauer and Human Science
Pedagogy in Canadian Teacher Education. Journal of
Curriculum Studies.
http://learningspaces.org/n/papers/Reviving_Forgotten_Conn
ections.pdf
• Biesta, G. (2002). How General Can Bildung Be?
Reflections on the Future of a Modern Educational
Ideal. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 36, 3.