Educational Concepts in Germany

Many pupils and students in Germany are protesting against the reforms in the educational system. It is therefore fitting that the book “Bildung? Bildung!” (i.e., Education? Education!) was published in the protest year 2009. In it 26 distinguished experts on science and scholarship comment on the idea of education and endeavor to give it a new impetus.

“Education” – for many pupils and students in Germany it is the misnomer of the year 2009. They have taken to the streets in the thousands to demonstrate their grievances against the educational policy of the federal government and states: against the introduction of the Bachelor and Master’s degrees, which in their view has turned the university lecture hall into a school room.

Students are also angry about the tuition fees of 500 euros per semester that have been introduced in many states, and school pupils about the reform of the high school diploma that now requires them to complete high school in twelve instead of thirteen years. Moreover, they fear the increasing dominance of economic aspects in education.

26 Theses on education

Germany must invest more in education – on this point everybody agrees. But nobody really knows how it is to be financed. “The quarrel over responsibility often blocks the way to necessary changes”, writes Andreas Schlüter in the preface to Bildung? Bildung! , which formulates “26 Theses on Education as a Challenge in the 21st Century”. “A sustainable reform is essential; but opinions on how it is to succeed have differed widely for years and decades.”

The book soon demonstrates this itself. Its 26 essays treat very different subjects: the general definition of the concept of education, questions about the communication of knowledge in the age of the Internet, and the connection between career opportunities and social background. They also handle classical themes such as the excellence initiative, which will soon go into its second round, and the new Bachelor and Master’s degrees.

The editors of the book are two education experts who have known the system for a long time: Peter Strohschneider, Chairman of the German Council of Science and Humanities, the most important advisory body in the German university and research landscape, and Andreas Schlüter, former Secretary General of the Goethe Institute and today Secretary General of the Association of Donors for German Science, whose goal is to invest in science, scholarship, education and research. The list of contributors that the editors were able to put together is impressive. They include many high-ranking figures in science and scholarship: for instance, Margret Wintermantel, President of the University Rectors Conference; Matthias Kleiner, President of the German Research Foundation; and Jutta Limbach, President of the Goethe Institute from 2002 to 2008.

The educational concept of the 21st century

One of the key themes of the essays is the search for a concept of education. Thus right at the start of the book the education expert and former Chairman of the German Council of Science and Humanities Winfried Schulze asks how far the new humanistic educational concept, which has determined the debate for so many years, can still hold its own today. Through the Internet, newspapers, books and numerous other source of information, we are surrounded by so much information that no one can any longer say what knowledge is relevant. The definition of a canon, of a binding store of knowledge, Schulze argues, is therefore no longer possible. Instead of a concept of education, he proposes a set of competencies that help people to acquire knowledge, to test it critically and to weed out what is not of use.

Jutta Limbach’s view goes beyond national borders and discusses education in various cultures. Her thesis: inter-cultural dialogue can succeed only if the dialogue partners are ready “to question their thinking, knowledge and action, and open themselves to a mutual process of learning”. After all, the concept of education is increasingly “understood in terms of its socially cohesive force”. The search for a common European identity therefore needs new educational goals.

Plea for more ethics in science and scholarship

All in all, the book broaches many subjects – some very surprising. For instance, the physician and neurologist Gian Domenico Borasio writes about medical training and the incapacity of many doctors to show an interest during consultations in the patient. That doctors, and others, are in the position to develop a “capacity for empathy with ill and dying people, which we will all become some day”, largely depends, in Borasio’s view, on education. What is needed, he argues, is an education of the heart, an intellectual education, which contributes to the “critical examination of handed-down information”, and an ethical education, that is, “the capacity to recognize and to reflect upon our own ethical standpoint”.

The essay by the theologian Friedrich Wilhelm Graf treats the “culture of small calculated frauds” among researchers. In Graf’s opinion, increasing competitive pressure inclines many scientists and scholars to show off in every little lecture and every small publication – and thereby to forget what should really matter to the scientific and scholarly conscience: humility. With a glance at several cases of corruption in Germany, in which scientists or scholars have received doctorates in exchange for money, he calls for greater moral sensibility.

Good ideas, few solutions

Bildung? Bildung! offers the reader many interesting anecdotes, many good explanatory models, many new impulses, many creative approaches and many good ideas – even if it is short on concrete solutions. Yet it is precisely concrete solutions that we need so as not to forgot those whom the subject of education really concerns: the pupils and students who will build the pillars upon which our educational system will rest.