Europe Meets America: Bildung as an Answer to our Polarization Crisis

“Bildung” is my favorite word in the…German language. In their book The Nordic Secret: A European story of beauty and freedom, authors Lene Rachel Andersen and Thomas Bjorkman describe Bildung as instrumental in building the moral, cultural, and political foundation of several Nordic countries, largely contributing to their current day success. They describe Bildung as such:

“Bildung is the way that the individual matures and takes upon him or herself ever bigger personal responsibility towards family, friends, fellow citizens, society, humanity, our globe, and the global heritage of our species, while enjoying ever bigger personal, moral and existential freedoms. It is the enculturation and life-long learning that forces us to grow and change, it is existential and emotional depth, it is life-long interaction and struggles with new knowledge, culture, art, science, new perspectives, new people, and new truths, and it is being an active citizen in adulthood. Bildung is a constant process that never ends.”

This passage brought tears to my eyes when I first read it. Why? Because Bildung is exactly what we need today to remedy our political and civic crisis of extreme (affective) polarization. In many ways, affective polarization causes us to act in direct opposition to what Bildung proposes: We don’t feel galvanized to adopt further responsibility, unless it benefits our own group or interests. We don’t expand our moral and existential horizons, thus limiting our inner freedom and potential. We don’t continually grow and change, instead becoming ossified into partisan dogmas, and we don’t embrace novel encounters with differing perspectives, knowledge, or people, instead cocooning ourselves further into echo chambers of groupthink. Polarization destroys our civic development and growth as human beings, and that is a very bad thing for both ourselves and society at large.

What I am proposing is an All-American version of Bildung, which includes practices, philosophies, and communities dedicated to holistic civic engagement and personal transformation. This involves cultivating a set of universally applicable meta-skills needed to thrive as 21st century citizens — skills that embolden us to think deeply, relate skillfully, and act wisely, while embracing the…