The German word for education is "Bildung," which springs from the same root as the English word "building." Building, of course, exists both as a noun denoting an edifice as well as the progressive form of the verb "to build." To the German mind, education is an ongoing, life-long process of intellectual growth.
In America, thanks to brainwashing by religious fundamentalists and political conservatives, all knowledge has already been built. Both the Bible and the Constitution are considered to be static. We are told that the Bible is the literal word of God and that the Constitution’s reach is limited to the document’s literal text as it was written in 1789 or added to in subsequent amendments.
As a result, evolution, climate change, and any other insights into reality discovered via the scientific method are rejected outright whenever they contradict religious or political dogma.
