Forgotten Connections ― On Culture and Upbringing

Klaus Mollenhauer’s Forgotten Connections: On Culture and Upbringing is internationally regarded as one of the most important German contributions to educational and curriculum theory in the 20th century. Appearing here in English for the first time, the book draws on Mollenhauer’s concern for social justice and his profound awareness of the pedagogical tension between the inheritance of the past and the promise of the future. The book focuses on the idea of Bildung, in which philosophy and education come together to see upbringing and maturation as being much more about holistic experience than skill development.

This translation includes a detailed introduction from Norm Friesen, the book’s translator and editor. This introduction contextualizes the original publication and discusses its application to education today. Although Mollenhauer’s work focused on content and culture, particularly from a German perspective, this book draws on philosophy and sociology to offer internationally relevant responses to the challenge of communicating cultural values and understandings to new generations.

Forgotten Connections will be of value to students, researchers and practitioners working in the fields of education and culture, curriculum studies, and in educational and social foundations.

Klaus Mollenhauer was born the son of a prison teacher and a social worker in Berlin in 1928. Early in his professorial career, Mollenhauer worked to liberate and reintegrate youth forcibly confined in Jugendheime in the West. Deeply influenced by humanist philosophy while a student at Gottingen, Germany, Mollenhauer also taught there from 1972 until his retirement in 1996, and he lived there until his death in 1998.

Norm Friesen studied German at the University of Winnipeg and Johns Hopkins University before completing his PhD in Education at the University of Alberta, Canada. Friesen has worked as a Canada Research Chair at Thompson Rivers University (in British Columbia, Canada), and is currently Associate Professor in the College of Education at Boise State University, USA.