EDUC 5020; July 18, 2011

Ideas Behind the Book Norm Friesen

Recap from Yesterday

• Course basics: classes and assignments– Outlines, material, email (xopher@shaw.ca)

• Who is presenting whom• Who you are, what you do, who influenced

you? • A person, relation or moment of “upbringing”

in our lives

Relation & Upbringing• A person or a relationship; affected our “self” or our

values, our understanding of education• A moment that is very specific: report card meeting,

talking to students as adults/persons• The person for who they were: black in a racially

uniform community; driving a pink Cadillac; jeans and cowboy boots; bringing the world into the classroom –or class into world

• Upbringing: Grandparents influenced education; teachers influenced our lives

To do Today

• Ideas behind the book: how to read, timeline, questions, process of translating

• Short Film: “Changing Teachers” (11 min. 1963, Alexander Kluge, Director)

• Discussion of film• Presentation from Shannon Lowe on “the

Concept of Formation”

Overview

• How to read the book• Timeline of events important to the book• “Upbringing” – what does it mean to you?• Bildung and its history

How to read the book• “This book is written in a relatively informal

manner …appropriate to the subject. I have not set out to assess and critique current views in the field of education, and I do not attempt to construct a linear argument.”

• “My approach owes much to the arts and to the concrete examples provided in fiction and painting. It is through artistic and cultural illustrations that I endeavor to bring the relevant problems and issues to life.”

How to read the book, con’t

• Chapter 4: „we can only talk coherently and relevantly about Bildsamkeit if the process that gives rise to it is translated into a narrative; for only this process allows us to deal with Bildsamkeit as an empirical reality. Without these narratives, Bildsamkeit remains fiction, albeit one that is necessary for upbringing and education to be set into motion.“

Practical Pointers

1. First read Friesen, N. & Sævi, T. (2010)2. Next, read Chapter 1 (a good introduction)3. Don’t worry if some sections don’t make sense:

Its topic is paradoxical, too much to keep track of, not a set of points to explain

4. The book is like a collage or is “multi-faceted,” with many sides with different qualities

5. Tell me which don’t make sense; Reflect on the sections that DO make sense.

Timeline: Classical Antiquity800 BCE – 400 AD

• 800 BCE: Homer: “bards have a share of honor and reverence, because the muse has taught them songs.”

• 480 BCE Plato: truth exists as eternal ideals, from which human souls are alienated when they are on earth.

• 4 BCE -33 CE Jesus of Nazereth: “Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world.” I John 4:4

Middle Ages• 397 CE Augustine writes his Confessions: “My

mind withdrew its thoughts from experience, extracting itself from the contradictory throng of sensuous images.”

• 1300 Meister Eckhart: “in our time, the soul does not show itself to be full or fully formed“

• 1490’s Conquest of the indigenous Americas• 1500 Dürer paints his Self Portrait in a Fur

Collared Robe

Baroque Period Wars, confusion, a "hall of mirrors"

• 1629 Rembrandt paints his Self Portrait as a Young Man

• 1656 Diego Velázquez paints Las Meninas

• 1658 Publication of Orbis Pictus by John Amos Comenius

Baroque Period,con’t• 'Thus the way of

the world.’• avoid the slippery

slope of worldly things and to follow the divine path

Enlightenment/Romanticism

• 1762 J.-J.Rousseau publishes Émile: or, on Education

• 1784 Immanuel Kant publishes “What is Enlightenment?” in 1784

• 1786 Karl Philipp Moritz’s autobiographical novel Anton Reiser is published

• 1789 The French Revolution occurs• 1793 Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi writes the

letter from Stans

Industrial Revoltn: 1800’s

• The industrial revolution, full-fledged in England, begins to take hold in Germany (and America)

• 1805 Kleist writes “On the gradual formulation of thoughts while speaking”

• 1812 "Fort Cumcloups" (Kamloops)• 1828 Kaspar Hauser appears one

morning in a square in Nuremberg

Rejection of tradition, crisis of the self

• 1890 Van Gogh commits suicide, two years after completing the self-portrait in the text

• 1919 Franz Kafka writes Letter to his Father• 1976 Thomas Bernhard Publishes The Cellar

Questions and Eras1. Why do we want (to be with) children?2. What way of life do I present to children?

(Antiquity; Middle Ages)3. What way of life to systematically represent to

children? (Renaissance, Baroque period)4. How can I help formable children/young to act for

themselves? (Romanticism/Enlightenment)5. Who am I? Who do I want to be, and how do I help

others with their identity problems? (Modern)

What has been forgotten?• Illustrated through educational vocabularies in

different languages• Education: used to be “process of nourishing or

rearing a child/youth or animal” or “‘bringing up’ young persons”: “Education and instruction are the meanes... to make our naturall faculty of reason... better.”

Education

• now is "systematic instruction, schooling or training“ (OED)

• “discipline that is concerned with methods of teaching and learningin schools or school-like environments as opposed to variousnonformal and informal means of socialization” (Britannica)

Specialization vs nonspecialization

•Psychology unavoidably introduces instrumental ways of thinking; these are encoded in psychological vocabulary.•Has become increasingly professionalized and

instrumentalized• ‘non-specialized’ meanings of older terms are

gradually re-defined or replaced with terms or meanings that are specialized, and instrumentally or psychologically charged.

Education as a Technology

• Development• Learning (as natural)• Behavior• Affective Domain• Cognitive Strategies• Needs Assessment• Learning Objectives • Task Analysis • Performance

• Upbringing• Child rearing• Background• Senses, feelings• Atmosphere• Call of the Child• Hope for the future• Children’s own plans

and projects

Bildung: A Basic Def’n• 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."

Recent Definitions“it is the condition in which one can take responsibility” (Weniger 1952)as an intergenerational social and political process (Klafki)“developmental formation of an individual’s unique potential through participation in the social practices and institutions of culture” (Hegel, as quoted in Garrison, 2007). „transforming as much ‚world‘ as possible into the actual person –that is ‚life‘ in the highest sense of the term.“ (von Humboldt)

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)

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.

Bild-sam-keit

• One can reflectively cultivate onesself• One’s identity emerges (through others)• One finds a place in society with others• One becomes part of the world among others• As teachers, we see and influence this process• We know we may set the direction for others

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 …misused, valued only for individual gain, and finally reduced to a number of cannonical highschool subjects.” (Gudjons, 2003)

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

5 Questions & Keywords• Why do we want to have children? (Upbringing)• 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? (Bildsamkeit; self-activity)• Who am I? Who do I want to be, and how do I help

others with their identity problems? (Identity)

Bildung and Upbringing are Aporetical or Paradoxical

• It tries to see and strengthen that part of the child which is most fundamentally open and indefinite and about which nothing final or definitive can be said.

• The adult takes responsibility for the child so that he or she can become autonomous and take responsibility for him/her self.

• It is simultaneously a question of technique, and of culture and relation.

To Re-Cap: Background of Book

• How to read the book• Timeline of events important to the book• “Upbringing,” Education and unspecialization • Specialization and psychology• Upbringing and Bildung• Education and upbringing as aporetic

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