(DOWNLOAD) "Bildung and Moral Self-Cultivation in Higher Education: What Does It Mean and How Can It Be Achieved?(Report)" by Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table " Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Bildung and Moral Self-Cultivation in Higher Education: What Does It Mean and How Can It Be Achieved?(Report)
- Author : Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table
- Release Date : January 22, 2008
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 293 KB
Description
One of the most fundamental questions that can be asked about education is what it is for. Why do we need education? Which are its most fundamental purposes? The most obvious and generally accepted answer is that education aims at providing students with knowledge and skills which match the demands of employers, thus enabling students to find jobs and employers to find employees--call this the vocational goal. However, many thinkers and traditions of thought have stressed the importance of non-vocational goals of education. In Greek thinking, the ideal of paideia included the development of moral virtues and logical and rhetorical skills which were thought essential for becoming a good human being and democratic citizen. In a similar vein, today's liberal education in the US and other countries aims at providing students with a basis of general, non-specialised knowledge and skills which allow them to contribute actively and positively to society. In German philosophical and educational thought, J. G. Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Hans-Georg Gadamer and others have developed the concept of Bildung, a word which in its most literal sense means formation, but which here refers more specifically to formation or cultivation, in education or otherwise, of human moral virtues and other capacities. (Herder 2002, Humboldt 1791-1792/1993, Gadamer 1960/1989.)