Bildung: Cultivating WellBeing via Education and Development

Bildung is about building character via education and cultural development.

Posted Jul 21, 2020

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THE BASICS

Why Education Is Important

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This guest blog was authored by Lene Rachel Andersen.

There is much attention these days on mindfulness, personal growth, self-improvement,

psychological development, and—especially amid the Covid-19 shutdown—mental health. These
concepts are addressed mostly from the perspectives of psychology and the wellbeing of the
individual. We rarely hear them addressed from the perspectives of education and the culture and
social context within which individuals struggle to thrive. This is strange because culture can hold us,
guide us, and show us that somebody has been in a somewhat similar mess before in a way that
might help us learn and grow.

Bildung connects with psychological development and fulfillment, but the focus is on culture and
education to cultivate it. Bildung is a German word that does not have an exact translation in English.
Probably the word that comes the closest is formation, in that it is fundamentally concerned with the
formation of a person's character.

Although it is not well-known in the United States, bildung has a 250-year-old philosophical tradition
in Europe that explores how aesthetics and education contribute to our development and how this
development relates to political freedom. Crucially, as I lay out in The Nordic Secret, it has a proven
track record in the Nordic countries, which were transformed in the course of a hundred or so years
from countries that were impoverished and struggling to some of the happiest and healthiest places
on earth, according to several global metrics. This development has even contributed to American
history.
Bildung as Education in the General Sense

Knowledge about the world is empowering. Be it science, geography, history, literature, math, or
another language, education is the prerequisite for being able to understand and engage in one’s
society and to thrive as an autonomous, responsible adult. If everybody in a society is well educated,
it furthermore has the advantage that one is surrounded by knowledgeable people who also
understand their society and have the capacity to engage with it and take responsibility.

In the German language, this ‘ordinary’ education is also called bildung. Historically, though, bildung
has meant so much more.

Bildung as Psychological Development

Among the German bildung philosophers was the poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805)
who described three kinds of people:

The Emotional Person, who is in the throes of his emotions and who is therefore not free; he cannot
transcend his own emotions.

The Rational Person, who has shed his emotional bondage by internalizing the moral norms or
"rationale" of society and made them his own. With a modern word, he has become a team player,
but he is not free either, because he cannot transcend the norms of society.

The Moral Person, who has internalized the norms of society and who has reconnected with his own
emotions, which allows him to transcend both. This makes him free to make up his own mind while
also being a good and conscientious citizen.

This emotional and moral development is bildung applied to character, and it matches what modern
developmental psychology describes as the emotional development in late childhood (Emotional
Person), self-governing acquired during our teenage years and early adulthood (Rational Person) and
self-authoring (Moral Person). (For example, see here for Dr. Robert Kegan discussing his views on
psychological development, which overlap significantly with this basic outline).

Aesthetics and Beauty

Schiller explores this development in On the Aesthetic Education of Man. He says that in order for
the emotional person to transcend his emotions, he needs “calming beauty” that can align his
emotions with those of his surroundings. Listening to or watching beautiful aesthetics can bring us in
tune with others and society; Schiller’s time was also the time of Mozart. From this perspective, it is
no surprise that modern teenagers join sub-cultures through certain kinds of music.
According to modern psychology, one can go through life as a self-governing team player who never
questions the norms and expectations of others and society as a whole. But one can also transcend
this and become self-authoring. Typically, this happens as part of a personal crisis (divorce, losing a
job etc.), which turns one’s life upside-down and forces one to reconsider one’s life on one’s own
terms.

Schiller, on the other hand, suggested that this second transition can be promoted by aesthetics. This
time not by calming beauty, though, but by invigorating aesthetics, something that shakes us up! This
could be paintings, plays, or music.

Both this aesthetic education, the developmental process, and the result, Schiller called bildung.

Danish folk-bildung

In Denmark, these aspects of bildung were popularized and became “folk-bildung.” Beginning in the
1850s, young farmhands (both boys and girls) started going to folk high schools in order to be
educated and to become empowered citizens. The schools were boarding schools with a five-month
program where the young people learned the latest science and agricultural techniques, history, and
political science. But most crucially was the fact that they got to ask questions, discuss their
viewpoints, and develop their own opinions. By 1900, some 10% of the annual cohort in Denmark
and the rest of Scandinavia went to those schools, and afterwards they went home to their villages
and became community organizers.

Crucial in the folk high schools were also aesthetics, not least communal singing and, through that,
the stimulation of national (self)awareness. This was a time of transition from feudal, agricultural
societies to modern, industrialized nation states, and the sense of shared peoplehood was an entirely
new emotion, as this popular Danish song from 1848 suggests (NFS Grundtvig, my translation):

Of the people all must be now

’cross the country, head to toe

Something new is surely rising

Even fools already know

But can all that shatters meet up

With the New that’s born and heal up?

Do we know what our wish is,

More than ”bread and circuses”?

Please don’t mind my asking!

Bildung and Political Freedom

Schiller wrote about bildung in the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1789. He did so because he
needed to understand why the French could not handle political freedom and their revolution ended
in a bloodbath. His explanation was as follows: The emotional person is in the throes of his emotions
and thus cannot handle political freedom, but will succumb to violence, and the rational person is
governed by the expectations of others, does what the emotional people do—and thus cannot
handle political freedom either. The only ones who can handle political freedom are the moral
persons who have internalized the norms of society, but who also have the autonomy to feel their
own emotions and tell their fellow citizens if they are morally wrong.

The Danish folk high schools were based on this understanding—which takes us to the US and why
bildung is so crucial:

During the Great Depression, a young teacher from Tennessee, Myles Horton, was looking for
empowering education for the poorest Appalachians and he heard about the Danish schools. He then
went to Denmark in 1931-32, returned to Tennessee, and founded Highlander Folk School, which
became an educational backbone of the Civil Rights Movement. Rosa Parks went there for two
weeks, experienced for the first time Black and White people eating together at the same table, and
later had the moral courage to keep her seat on the bus.
That moral courage was bildung.

Our mental health and well-being

How does this come together as mental health and well-being?

Empowerment gives a sense of hope and the ability to make a difference, and well-educated people
who take responsibility for their society create strong societies and functioning institutions. All of
which contribute to reducing insecurity and anxiety.

Acting together, educating ourselves and exploring cultural heritage and aesthetics together allows
us to bond and reduce loneliness and the sense of being lost. And personally, I have a hard time
finding a better example of what Schiller called invigorating aesthetics than this 60-year-old folk-
bildung song from Highlander: We Shall Overcome.

PS: As I completed the first draft of this post, I learned that John Lewis had passed away. He, to me,
stood out as a giant of bildung, and not having him around anymore is a tremendous loss to all of us.