There was an interesting article in the NYT about why the author thinks the Nordic model of education is responsible for their high economic productivity, high social equality, high social trust and high levels of personal happiness. They describe their educational approach as "bildung," which, the author says, does not have an English equivalent. Very basically (read the article!), it means that there is more to education than just teaching a trade or profession. It is also important to understand the relationships in a family and town and the world. Greta Thunberg comes to mind. To me, the closest we have is a liberal education in universities and colleges - which in recent times has decreased - where students learn about great works and how to think critically, rather than only how to take a blood pressure or to calculate return on investment. That is why I made sure our children had a liberal education and why I support baccalaureate degrees for nurses, rather than associate degrees.

Having said all of that, their curricular focus on their country's history, folklore and heritage clearly is different as they are not a melting pot, like we are. However, for the most part, I totally agree and think we should move away from being so worried about developing a skill and look more at developing the person.

Plus - this adds to our discussion about words in other languages ("bildung" comes from German) that don't have an equivalent in English. I know. We can still use multiple words to express the idea...

Sadly in the Uk (probably also the USA) for quite some time now - certainly since before I moved to China - the policy has been based on the idea that the ONLY purpose of education is to get people into work. Courses that don’t have that focus such as literature or music are routinely defunded and diminished.

I had thought that the word was pretty well established in English, but I guess not. One would think it was based on the Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildung

I do think the German language has some very interesting words.