Humboldtian education ideal

The Humboldtian model of higher education (German: Humboldtisches Bildungsideal, literally: Humboldtian education ideal) is a concept of academic education that emerged in the early 19th century and whose core idea is a holistic combination of research and studies. Sometimes called simply the Humboldtian Model, it integrates the arts and sciences with research to achieve both comprehensive general learning and cultural knowledge, and it is still followed today.

The concept of holistic academic education (compare Bildung) was an idea of Wilhelm von Humboldt, a Prussian philosopher, government functionary and diplomat. As a privy councillor in the Interior Ministry, he reformed the Prussian school and university system according to humanist principles. He founded the University of Berlin (now the Humboldt University of Berlin) and appointed distinguished scholars to teach and research there. Several scholars have called him the most influential education official in German history. Humboldt sought to create an educational system based on unbiased knowledge and analysis, combining research and teaching and allowing students to choose their own course of study. The University of Berlin was later named after him and his brother, naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.

Humboldt's model was based on two ideas of the Enlightenment: the individual and the world citizen. Humboldt believed that the university (and education in general, as in the Prussian education system) should enable students to become autonomous individuals and world citizens by developing their own reasoning powers in an environment of academic freedom. Humboldt envisaged an ideal of Bildung, education in a broad sense, which aimed not merely to provide professional skills through schooling along a fixed path but rather to allow students to build individual character by choosing their own way.

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