The education we need in the 21st Century is not the same as generations ago: The world is changing fast and we can all find all kinds of information online.
Yet, most education has barely changed. We still expect students to memorize content. We still expect everybody to learn the same in more or less the same way at the same pace.
nowledge cannot be replaced by online searches. We still need a background tapestry of understanding that will allow us to filter truth and facts from nonsense.
What we need is both broad and deep knowledge, critical thinking, curiosity, and the ability to connect dots and ask good questions. This redefines what is good education.
Bildung to the Rescue
The Nordic countries have more than 150 years of experience with the kind of education we need in the 21st Century: Bildung.
Please contact us if you and your organization would like to collaborate.
2022-2025 we are collaborating with the public school, Nordbyskolen, Falster, Denmark, making bildung concrete and tangible, not least to the teachers.
The school year 2022-23, we are adding more story-telling, singing, and dancing to the lessons across all ages, and both pupils and teachers are enjoying it tremendously. It strengthens cultural heritage, expands vocabulary, and promotes conversation — besides being fun and meaningful in itself.
For 1st, 4th, and 7th graders there will be education designed around the Bildung Rose, and we will also make the first metamodern experiment and give them a historical deep-dive:
- 1st grade will focus on Ancient Greece
- 4th grade will focus on the Renaissance
- 7th grade will focus on the Enlightenment
Nordbyskolen is a public school with approximately 460 pupils and 50 teachers, some 100 kilometers south of Copenhagen.
Since 2020, we have been involved in the Erasmus+ project BILDUNG where we delivered the first Intellectual Output in 2021: the booklet What is Bildung? The Bildung project is a collaboration among 11 European organisations dedicated to support adult education and learning.
DVV International is the Institute for International Cooperation of the German Adult Education Association (DVV), which represents the interests of approximately 900 adult education centres (vhs); they are the project coordinator. Among the project partners are The European Association for Education of Adults (EAEA) and the Danish umbrella organization for education of adults (DFS).
FORWARD is a program under the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, RMIT, for future skills and workforce transformation. Nordic Bildung was invited on board when it started in 2022 along with contributors from around the globe.
FORWARD: https://medium.com/rmit-forward
In January 2022, we joined the #LearningPlanet Festival; 2023, Lene Rachel Andersen will be on one of the official panels, and we are exploring further collaboration. Learning Planet was started by the Learning Planet Institute and UNESCO.
Learning Planet: https://www.learning-planet.org/
2023 Festival: https://festival.learning-planet.org/
De Bildung Academie in Amsterdam was started by students who felt that university was missing something: bildung. They started in 2015, and we have been good friends and colleagues since before Nordic Bildung was started in March 2018.
https://en.debildungacademie.nl/