Education as Self-Fashioning: How to Become a Global Citizen or the German Tradition of Bildung.

This course considers education not as training in external knowledge or skills but as a lifelong process of development and growth in which an individual cultivates her or his spiritual, cultural and social sensibilities. This concept of education - education as a formative and transformative process in the development of the self - is called Bildung in German and has a long tradition reaching back to the Middle Ages. The term first appears in the writings of the mystic Meister Eckhart who defines it as self-composure which he regards as a crucial stage in our spiritual development. The concept of Bildung takes on a secular meaning in the Reformation, when Ulrich von Hutten first coined the phrase that has become Stanford's motto: "Die Luft der Freiheit weht". (The wind of freedom is blowing). What he meant is that the cultivation of oneself leads to the freedom of thought, freedom to act, freedom to assert oneself as an individual, freedom to access knowledge, and freedom to determine one's own role in society. This idea of education as an internal and transformative process is central to debates in the nineteenth century (both in Germany and the United States) in which self-reflection is seen as key to the cultivation of an individual's identity and to her or his role as a member of society. In this course we will read reflections on education as self-fashioning by some of the greatest German thinkers spanning from the Middle Ages to the present. We will also enjoy some contemporary parodies of such reflections. These readings and our discussions will help us to understand Stanford undergraduate education as a transformative process of self-realization in our global society.