Getting Modern Confucian Education Right

     A story in yesterday's Christian Science Monitor describes a school in Guangdong (it doesn't tell us what city or town) that integrates Confucian classics and traditional Chinese cultural practices into a modern elementary school curriculum: 

"Now the government ... pays attention to ancient Chinese culture," Ms. Chan observes. "Ancient Chinese culture is seen to have advantages in teaching students very moral things."

But as the government asks schools like Bowen [the Guangdong school] to focus more on classic Chinese literature and art - including the teachings of Confucius, who emphasized traditional values and respect for elders - recent national curriculum reforms also call for more creativity and critical thinking in the classrooms, including some approaches to teaching and learning more traditionally found in the United States and Europe.

The apparent contrasts in teaching trends reflect China's ambitions to forge ahead as a player in the world economic scene without completely absorbing Western cultural values along the way.

So while some lessons transport the children back to ancient China, others aim to prepare the students for a more modern, global future. Even as the children at Bowen practice their ancient recitations, Chan points out some of the school's other telling features, including summer foreign-exchange programs and a new 10-story international center that towers over the rest of the campus.

Wang Jiajun, the principal of the Beijing Huijia Private School, says the goal is simple: "We want our students to become world people with Chinese hearts."

   This combination of modern teaching goals (creativity and critical thinking) and engagement with classic texts sounds to me like a better approach to bringing the old books into contemporary life than the anachronistic school, the Meng Mu Tang Institute, in suburban Shanghai, which doggedly copied outmoded traditional teaching methods and lessons. 

     Indeed, I see no real contradiction between Confucian ethics and critical thinking.  While it may be true that Confucianism was made into a dogmatic and rigid ideology through its appropriation as a tool of state power (via the civil service examination system), it is also true that it can function as a more fluid and adaptable set of principles for personal moral reflection.  As regular readers of this blog know, I am influenced strongly here by the interpretation of David L. Hall and Roger Ames, who argue that the Confucian adept must constantly be attuned to the subtleties of social context as he or she orchestrates proper behavior.  There is a great deal of creativity in working to understand and perform "the right thing."

     Another thing that this story brings to mind is the notion of cultural heritage.  It may be good for Chinese students to study and learn from the Chinese past as a way of appreciating the historical forces that have contributed to their contemporary lives.  It is good for them to see what "Chinese culture" implied a hundred or two hundred years ago to better understand what "Chinese culture" can and does imply now.   This is not a matter of trying to recover an irrevocably lost past but of opening more cultural resources for negotiating the present.

     That being said, I want to push a bit further and say the value of engaging ancient texts, for Chinese students and for Americans as well, also promises something more than an understanding cultural heritage.  If we understand Confucianism - and I do understand it this way - as not simply an element of "Chinese culture," but as a cultural resource applicable and available to global humanity, then a serious consideration of the philosophy (and the same could be said for Taoism) can contribute to creative ethical outcomes in many different cultural contexts.  Simply put, Confucianism is not exclusively Chinese; it is a universal philosophy.  And, I believe, Confucius and Mencius meant it to be a universal philosophy.  They were not nationalists, they were moralists.

     If that is true, then the students (of any nationality) who study Confucius may become world people with good and humane hearts that are not restricted to only a Chinese cultural context.

 

Comments

[Chris]

I too am a brainwashee (implied in the nicest of ways) of the Hall and Ames school of thinking, and so have a hard time thinking of Confucian ethics and critical thinking (or aesthetics) as separate. In fact, it seems to me that rote mimicry of the past Li is disrespectful to one's ancestors.

Of course, my guess is that Ames' view is not the reigning one in China on Confucius, no? I'd guess that something more of the Hansen/Munro/Fingarette view would prevail there, which would be more in line with what the article is saying. I'm not sure, though, as I'm not schooled on modern native Chinese thought on Confucius (and I don't mean the thinking that prevails in the philosophy department of the University of Hong Kong!).