By Lene Rachel Andersen
The wicked problems we face today as a species are problems we have created because we tried to solve other problems.
On the one hand, this is bad news because we keep adding problems to the old problems if we do not improve our understanding and our decision making.
On the other hand, it is great news because it means that we ought to be able to fix our problems. We can in fact improve our understanding and we can make better decisions.
Both the understanding and our decision making can be improved with bildung: better education and more of it, having our viewpoints challenged through deep discussions, learning critical thinking, exploring fields of knowledge that are unfamiliar to us, talking to people who think differently than ourselves, pursuing the arts, particularly the ones that are on the edge of our collective meaning-making, willingness to try new things, imagination, and an openness to pushbacks, to new values, and to being wrong.
Particularly new values and the realization that we may have been fundamentally wrong may be tough to accept. But as a civilization we need to face the possibility that it is our values that need to change and that the ways we used to do things cannot continue.
At the European Bildung Day 2023 conference discuss what kind of bildung we need in Europe to be able to address the wicked problems we are facing. We are also going to produce a European Bildung Manifesto.
Join us for the discussions in Vilnius May 8-9, read more about it, and sign up here: https://www.globalbildung.net/ebd2023/
Photo: unsplash.com/@naja_bertolt_jensen