“Bildung:” History & Currency

Norm FriesenJuly 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 self-

imposed 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 undergone 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 bythe 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 passon 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 self-determination 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 biological,

developmental

• Occurs naturally, and formally in school; leads to pressure to “de-structure” school

• Sees the “education of man” as a derivative form of “education of nature” and “things”

• 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

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_Connections.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.