The Bildung Time Journey: Developing a sense of meaning and belonging
In a world of 21st century complexity, children need–more than ever–a sense of belonging and a coherent sense of self. School should allow them to explore their cultural heritage and support them in their personal development and how they make sense of the world. Education also needs to stimulate their critical thinking, curiosity, and ability to connect dots independently. However, as most education has barely changed over the past century, we still expect students to follow instructions and reproduce content instead, while screens are replacing socialization, play, and community.
At Nordic Bildung, we have developed the Bildung Time Journey K-10, which is an educational program that combines history, art, philosophy, creativity, science, civics, and much more in age-appropriate formats. The program is designed around child development, cognitive development, and the Bildung Rose, which allows the pupils to explore historical and cultural development from a number of meaning-enriching perspectives.
Target Audience
Educators in primary schools and lower secondary students / K-10.
| Format | Keynote | Workshop | Course | Collaboration |
| Time | 1-2 hrs | 1-3 days | n/a | Customized |
Backdrop: What we ask of children today makes no sense
Children are still born as “stone age babies,” and when they turn 18, we expect them to be responsible adults who can self-manage in the most complex societies that humans have ever experienced. This makes no sense.
For as long as humans have existed, younger and older children played together, older children looked after younger children, and their play was mainly emulating the lives of the adults. This is what the child brain was “built” for. We have robbed children of this self-organized socialization and education.
Most school systems have also cut down on the humanities and aesthetics: music, history, story telling, the arts, and the creative subjects have become nice-to-haves. But they are, in fact, need-to-haves! We cannot become fully human without singing, dancing, knowing the stories of our elders, drawing, and expressing ourselves aesthetically.
Instead of giving children what allows them to relate to their heritage and the cultural heritage of humanity, we have given them screens and AIs that were developed for profit. No wonder, many kids are miserable.
The Bildung Time Journey gives teachers a way to give children back what they need in order to thrive, to make sense of the world, and to become whole human beings.
Introducing the Bildung Time Journey to the first group of teachers.
Lene Rachel Andersen explains why story telling is a crucial part of the program to a group of college students in Seattle.
Testimonials
There was a lot of spontaneous joy. Very often the pupils got focused very easily, and even within just the theme week, some of them improved significantly. They flourished!
Teachers were worried: “Is this another thing they want us to do?!” Nonetheless, they soon realized it was bringing what they were already doing together in a more meaningful way.
Singing has been a great experience and very powerful: The children really “sang through!” In grades 0-3, they first rehearsed one new song per month; now it is two new songs per month.
Feedback from the first testing, 2024