According to the recently released World Happiness Report, all four Nordic nations are in the top 10, with Finland and Denmark leading the way. What is the secret to their success?
In 2020, David Brooks asked the same question:
Progressives say it’s because they have generous welfare states. Some libertarians point out that these countries score high on nearly every measure of free market openness. Immigration restrictionists note that until recently they were ethnically homogeneous societies.
None of these explanations, it turns out, is sufficient. The answer is education, specifically, education policy guided by an understanding of human nature and development captured by the German word Bildung.
Lene Rachel Andersen is a futurist and cultural philosopher who not only tells the Nordic success story, but explains how Bildung can and must be adapted for the 21st century. Can Bildung provide the cultural and institutional DNA for a new Renaissance?
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SHOW NOTES:
- Lene’s Website
- David Brooks, New York Times, “This is How Scandanavia Got Great”
- Lene’s Books:
