Earlier this week while driving home from Loyola, I had a conversation with my husband about the meaning of the word ‘education.’ He pointed out that in German (his native tongue), one of the words for education, Bildung, has completely different connotations from its English counterpart. ‘Education,’ of course, is derived from the Latin educere, which means ‘to lead out of.’ The connotations here are of the student – a passive, humble, receptive participant in his or her own ascent toward enlightenment. Furthermore, education is in this sense essentially a goal-oriented pursuit, as any ascent would be.

Bildung, on the other hand, can be translated into English as ‘education;’ it equally can be taken to mean ‘formation,’ ‘growth,’ ‘shaping,’ ‘cultivation,’ ‘civilization,’ or ‘refinement.’ Bildung is not limited by specific goal-orientation, nor is it passive. Bildung is ongoing, unlimited in scope and most importantly, encompasses the whole person. No one leads you anywhere. Material is made available, but it is up to the student to put it to use. Bildung is the education you give yourself. A degree, a ‘good’ grade or even a perfect GPA is no guarantor that Bildung has taken place. It is the difference between passing Latin class with reasonably flying colors, and fluency in Latin: that grade can be bestowed upon you by someone else for conjugating verbs correctly, but ultimately, it is what goes on interiorly, or not, that determines if you really know the language. This begs the question, then: what does that ‘A’ on a transcript really signify? A pretty transcript – the ultimate goal of goal-oriented education – will perhaps go far toward landing you that dream job or entrance into the graduate/law/medical school of your choice. It will not, however, provide a measure of how you as an individual have been transformed by your education. Bildung, by contrast, is the commitment, the openness – on the part of educators as well as students – to participating in the most radical of extreme makeovers from the inside out, the results of which cannot be measured in exterior qualifications, but only through the way that you experience the world, and contribute to it.

Of what does this Bildung, or interior cultivation, consist? To be ‘cultivated’ means to have a facile working knowledge of the historical/literary/philosophical/artistic/scientific heritage and ongoing developments of the world in which we find ourselves: a pretty tall order. A truly cultivated person is a kosmopolitis, a cosmopolitan: a citizen of the world in the truest sense. To be kosmopolitis meant to have transcended the boundaries of the parochial, of the particular: to be home not just in your own back yard – or you own head, for that matter – but in the world itself. The cosmopolitan is the polar opposite of the barbaros, the barbarian, the ultimate outsider who is locked into the narrow confines of his/her own language and culture, incomprehensible and uncomprehending.

So, how does one become cultivated? Not by game plans and proficiency levels or by a narrow focus. This is illustrated most strikingly in the film, “The History Boys,” a fictional record of the efforts of two teachers to groom a class of exceptional students from northern England to achieve admission to an Oxbridge college. It was a given that these boys already knew inside and out the material on which they were going to be tested: literature, language, history, philosophy. Next, they had to learn how to internalize it, to manipulate it and shape it into beautiful essays that not only were models in form, but which approached the material creatively, thoughtfully, (gasp!) critically. Thus armed, they were then thrown into the lion’s pit: to defend their ideas on the subject matter in merciless, take-no-prisoners debates with each other, with the teachers, underlining the fact that you don’t own knowledge until you can put it into action.

The second phase of their preparation entailed non-specific formation: field trips to ruined monasteries, extended conversations in French on bordello etiquette, the delectation of poetry for its own sake, group performances of long-forgotten vaudeville hits. This formation was “pointless,” as the enraged principal of the school rightly asserted – but it did succeed in giving the students a flavor of the wider world. It provided them with that cultural facility and broad perspective which ‘education’ alone cannot achieve. The combined effect did reach the desired goal, and every student won the coveted admission-ticket, but in the process, something much greater was achieved: the enrichment and the true transformation of human beings, body, mind, and spirit. This is – or should be – the fundamental goal of any liberal arts university worthy of the name, and of the people – students, administration and faculty – who comprise such institutions. So, as my first grade teacher used to say: pencils at the ready, thinking caps on. Let the Bildung begin.

Lori Ranner is an instructor in the history department.