Bildung, and How That Concept Sits with Traditional Notions of Teaching Students “How to Think” Like Engineers

Book chapter, 2025

Starting from the proposition that higher education is a matter of “learning how to think”, this chapter investigates the meaning of Bildung in the context of engineering education. Following recent calls for a re-evaluation of classical Bildung—more specifically for a turn to a more politically-oriented critical-reflexive version of Bildung—the chapter studies one earlier instance of a re-evaluation of classical Bildung. By exploring how Erik Gustaf Geijer and Carl Jonas Love Almqvist challenged dominant conceptions of Bildung in Sweden during the 1830s and 1840s, the chapter argues that the classical Bildung ideal of forming original human beings who can think for themselves remains a valid objective of higher education. As such, the chapter suggests that recent, more politically-oriented versions of Bildung jeopardize the classical Bildung ideal of intellectual autonomy—an ideal which holds particular value in engineering education.