Formative education (i.e., what Germans call Bildung) is the result of a continuous process of interaction between individuals and the environment. Children are formed by their experiences with parents, teachers, peers, and even strangers on the street, and by the sport teams they play for, the shopping malls they frequent, the songs they hear, and the shows they watch. The citizens of the next century will be a product of these various social forces. Schools, while certainly important, contribute only a relatively modest fraction to the education of the young.
(Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Daedalus, FALL 1995)
