The decline of Bildung – Engelsberg ideas

Amateur language learning is apparently booming in the UK. In 2020, Britons took up new languages at double the rate of the rest of the world. According to Duolingo’s own data, the app had been downloaded 20 million times in the UK by 2023, with French, Spanish and Italian leading the pack, all three among the most popular tourist destinations for British travellers. Duolingo frames language learning as a set of formulae that can be mastered in five-minute mental sprints. The app generates rewards for streaks and daily practice. When the user is on the app, it feels immersive – the smartphone pings and buzzes and prompts. Little by little, win by win, users are led to believe that they are building comprehension, mastery and, eventually, fluency.

The irony is that modern life has made redundant many of the routines which were once indispensable to passing language oral examinations. Buying a ticket at a railway station is now either entirely automated or conducted online. The last time I bought a ticket in person, I did so purely for the novelty of stating my destination to another human being, and at what date and time I intended to leave and return. The number of moments in daily life that require people to articulate themselves in a shared, formal register has shrunk markedly, even compared with the recent past.

Tech-mediated improvement plans increasingly shape our attitudes to the body. Long-distance running was once associated with eccentricity, even derangement. The film Chariots of Fire captures the puritanical and self-punishing morality of the runner. Even a person of ordinary physical attributes must now be ‘in training’. Plans dictated by apps such as Strava and Runna offer a clear roadmap, though it is never quite clear what end state the runner is travelling towards. Is it truly healthy to optimise cardiovascular fitness while risking a double knee replacement?

The busyness of the modern knowledge worker follows the same logic. To get ahead, you must constantly display effort, report small ‘wins’, and remark that you are ‘snowed under’. Careers are navigated through a thousand little sprints: an elegantly crafted email here, a well-timed intervention in a meeting there. The self-improvement dilemma highlights a broader puzzle of the internet age: why has increased connectivity, increased feedback and constant activity failed to deliver the transformative productivity gains once unleashed by innovations such as abundant energy, mass transit and female workforce participation?

Real language learning engages the whole human being. It is bounded by the human perspective and by the imperfect physical apparatus we use to convey the full complexity of thought. Words must be moulded by the mouth and tongue – a fleshy protuberance whose connection to the brain can falter under pressure. Most interactions in a second language are fleeting and awkward. Rehearsed formulae can be unsettled by an unexpected twist in the conversation. Even proficient second-language speakers maintain islands of fluency in a sea of incomprehension. A student who has just completed their school leaving certificate may freely discuss topics such as ‘the environment’, but they are as lost as a beginner when the conversation takes a personal, or colloquial, turn.

Learning another language means being ready to submit to the thrill and terror of real interactions with real human beings. The online world flattens those encounters into manageable sequences. Much contemporary knowledge work is designed to minimise unmediated interactions. Remote working, email and messaging platforms such as Slack and WhatsApp mean that ‘progress’ is often measured and mediated through proxies that may not map onto reality.

Conversation depends on other human beings, and is therefore as continually thwarting, unsatisfying and occasionally exhilarating as human relationships themselves. By contrast, the online world privileges values such as efficiency, limitless speed and progress that can be measured. The way that informational territory is constructed and mapped matters to how human beings navigate it. Google Search ranks pages largely by citation count, just like the academic journals the company’s Ivy League founders were trained to consume. Large Language Models use very different maps to order information. Some, like Claude, produce entire paragraphs of text, while ChatGPT often delivers information in bullet points and lists. These structures create deep and lasting imprints on users’ mental landscapes.

Paradoxically, the dominant mode of cultural expression is structured around conversation. Podcasts are well suited to the commute, for the tech frazzled knowledge worker who wants to ‘switch off’ as easy chatter hums through their headphones. The podcast depends on bonhomie and banter, and the promise of intelligent dialogue, providing the extended, unmediated interaction that immersion in technology inhibits. The podcast format remains a sophisticated simulation of real encounters – to ‘disagree agreeably’ may sound ideal but genuine disagreements over opinion and personality rarely unfold so neatly.

Any single path to self-improvement may be beneficial in isolation. It is natural to want to improve our capacities, even if apps are imperfect tools. As a way of life, however, technology promotes constant vigilance and self-surveillance – another expression of the moral code of the modern workplace. It is a cracked mirror of the Enlightenment dream of Bildung: the idea that, through education and inner striving, human beings might move towards an ideal state – free to choose and choosing freedom. The modern knowledge worker chooses the simulation of work in pursuit of leisure, and forfeits both.