The Bildung Rose

An Educational Framework for Grasping Complexity

Abstract

The world is becoming more complex and local decisions may have global impact. To grasp these complexities, education must provide the ability to see the full picture, to approach decision making and professional as well as individual choices from several perspectives, and it must promote the development of the moral courage to think and act according to personal conscience. Bildung can be defined as the combination of knowledge about the world and the emotional and moral to engage and take responsibility. The Bildung Rose is a heuristic model that depicts society as consisting of seven domains: Production, Technology, Aesthetics, Power, Science, Narrative, and Ethics. The purpose of this article is to introduce the Bildung Rose as a tool for addressing, grasping, and taking responsibility for society. Bildung is the combination of education and moral and emotional development; the cultivation and development of personal character, autonomy, and sense of responsibility. In order to thrive in one’s society, to be an active and engaged citizen, and to see society from a system’s perspective, one needs to understand some of all seven domains; deep knowledge in one domain is professionally crucial, but the complexity of the world and of most jobs demands that individuals can contextualize decision making into a wider societal context. This article presents the Bildung Rose, explores the universality of the model, and suggests how it can be practically applied both at the macro-level when designing educational systems and organizations, at the meso level when developing programs, and at the micro-level when educating or making decisions. The model as of yet is a sketch and a heuristic model that requires further examinations and exploration.