Almost everybody admires the Nordic model. Countries like Denmark, Norway and Finland have high economic productivity, high social equality, high social trust and high levels of personal happiness.

几乎所有人都欣赏北欧模式。在瑞典、丹麦、挪威和芬兰等北欧国家，经济生产率高、社会平等、社会互信、个人幸福。

But Nordic nations were ethnically homogeneous in 1800, when they were dirt poor. What really launched the Nordic nations generations of phenomenal educational policy.

但在1800年，北欧国家种族单一，当时的他们一贫如洗。真正失去这些国家发展的是数代人卓越的教育政策。

The 19th-century Nordic elites realized that if their countries were to prosper they had to create truly successful "folk schools" for the least educated among them, and that they were going to have to make lifelong learning a part of the natural fabric of society.

19世纪的北欧精英意识到，要想国家繁荣，他们就必须为其中受教育程度最低的人创办真正有效的”民间学校“， 并将终身学习变成神人的一种常态。

The German word they used to describe their approach, bildung, means the complete moral, emotional, intellectual and civic transformation of the person. It was based on the idea that if people were going to be able to handle and contribute to an emerging industrial society, they would need more complex inner lives.

他们用德语词”BILDUNG教化“来描述自己的教育方式，它的是一个在道德、情感、智力和公民性方面的彻底改变，基于的理念：如果人们想要适应一个新兴工业社会并为其做出贡献，他们需要更为丰富的内心世界。

Bildung is devised to change the way students see the world. It is devised to help them understand complex systems and see the relations between things.

Bildung旨在改变学生们看待世界的方式，帮助他们理解复杂的体系，了解事情之间的关系。

That educational push seems to have had a lasting influence on the culture. They have the lowest rates of corruption in the world. They have a distinctive sense of the relationship between personal freedom and communal responsibility.

这一教育上的努力似乎对他们的文化产生了持久影响。北欧国家拥有全世界最低的腐败率，他们对个人自由和集体责任之间的关系有着独特的理解。

The Nordic Model 北欧模式

Dirt poor 一贫如洗（Very poor)

Dirt cheap 非常便宜（Very Cheap)

Phenomenal adj.现象级的

The fabric of society 社会结构

Civic adj.公民的

Be devised to do sth 被设计用来做某事

Distinctive adj.鲜明的，与众不同的。