Ecologizing Bildung: Educating for the eco-social-cultural challenges of the twenty-first century

Abstract

This paper has two main purposes. The first, more informational, is to introduce, re-introduce, the German-Nordic concept of Bildung to Canadian environmental education. This includes a brief attempt to define, a short overview of its history which stretches back to the Eighteenth century at least, and then an exploration of why and whether Bildung might still have some relevance and value in a postmodern, post-humanist, world filled with social crises and myriad human injustices that need attending to. The second purpose, is more theoretically expansive and experimental, wherein we explore ways this modern humanist concept of Bildung might not only be updated as an educational response to today’s human problems but might even be ecologized. Our reading shows that some of the former has already been considered but that there has been almost no work done on the latter. Finally, as a way to consider practice, we very briefly turn to Klafki’s five Bildung inspired questions for didactical analysis in order to illuminate implications for environmental education. This allows possibilities to emerge in spite of the need for further development.