Good piece. Been thinking about this a lot recently as I near the end of undergrad. The problem is people respond best by being shown, not told, & what they’re shown are success narratives that seem reducible to function. If you want to change this, you need to somehow show people that this reduction doesn’t work, and that Bildung is needed. Or else that the narratives are wrong about what success is.
Brendan, this guy is spot on. How would you respond to his comment, and address an incoming freshman about how to structure his collegiate life, or how to think about consulting/banking/any kind of finance senior year?
It's true that formation can't be training -- establishing end states sets the path in stone. But it's a problem that vexes any institution operating at some scale. Standardization is required, and that means establishing hard targets. Further, in education the institutions, themselves, are judged on job and graduate school placement rates. Goodhart's Law takes hold and missions are corrupted to varying degrees. That's why reforms, like Frey's at Tulsa, keep failing. The church was once the place to go for formation. The strong telos of the church kept it from succumbing to short- and mid-run incentives like market forces. Now that schools have taken up the mantle of moral formation as the church has faded, how does an educational institution internalize a better telos? What does a secular institution anchor on that could loosen the grip of the market?
The title alone is a bold stance in the futurist and tech world in 2026, even if people might like to suggest otherwise, so, respect for keeping it as it is.
Donald Winnicott and his wife Clare wrote about the “holding environment” for the development of a child from a mid-century social work perspective. Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky repurposed it towards thinking about the container within which sustained moral change can take place. They called that leadership.
Your piece spoke to me about the environment needed to help shape humans with virtue. I’ll call it leadership for higher education.
Tomas Bjorkman and Jonathan Rowson have gone ahead and set bildung as the third pillar in helping our society reorient towards the metacrisis.
I think you’re onto something crucial. I wonder though, if universities can course correct or whether the economic incentives will always be perverse?
Fantastic piece. The emphasis on designing an optimal environment rather than a curriculum is critical. In K12 there's often so much noise around the "what" and not enough serious contemplation around creating the conditions for becoming to emerge.
Good piece. Been thinking about this a lot recently as I near the end of undergrad. The problem is people respond best by being shown, not told, & what they’re shown are success narratives that seem reducible to function. If you want to change this, you need to somehow show people that this reduction doesn’t work, and that Bildung is needed. Or else that the narratives are wrong about what success is.
basically. we need to rethink the society reward system.
Brendan, this guy is spot on. How would you respond to his comment, and address an incoming freshman about how to structure his collegiate life, or how to think about consulting/banking/any kind of finance senior year?
It's true that formation can't be training -- establishing end states sets the path in stone. But it's a problem that vexes any institution operating at some scale. Standardization is required, and that means establishing hard targets. Further, in education the institutions, themselves, are judged on job and graduate school placement rates. Goodhart's Law takes hold and missions are corrupted to varying degrees. That's why reforms, like Frey's at Tulsa, keep failing. The church was once the place to go for formation. The strong telos of the church kept it from succumbing to short- and mid-run incentives like market forces. Now that schools have taken up the mantle of moral formation as the church has faded, how does an educational institution internalize a better telos? What does a secular institution anchor on that could loosen the grip of the market?
The title alone is a bold stance in the futurist and tech world in 2026, even if people might like to suggest otherwise, so, respect for keeping it as it is.
Donald Winnicott and his wife Clare wrote about the “holding environment” for the development of a child from a mid-century social work perspective. Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky repurposed it towards thinking about the container within which sustained moral change can take place. They called that leadership.
Your piece spoke to me about the environment needed to help shape humans with virtue. I’ll call it leadership for higher education.
Tomas Bjorkman and Jonathan Rowson have gone ahead and set bildung as the third pillar in helping our society reorient towards the metacrisis.
I think you’re onto something crucial. I wonder though, if universities can course correct or whether the economic incentives will always be perverse?
Fantastic piece. The emphasis on designing an optimal environment rather than a curriculum is critical. In K12 there's often so much noise around the "what" and not enough serious contemplation around creating the conditions for becoming to emerge.