I've just been reading a fascinating book recommended to me by our librarian: Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West (2012) by Jin Li, Associate Professor of Education and Human Development at Brown University.
The book really stirred me up (as a good book should); below is the email I sent to my librarian. I feel very pretentious making such broad statements in response to such a well-researched and argued book, but I also feel my response is an important one. In the school where I teach, the need to account appropriately for differing cultural perspectives on learning is incredibly important, not just because we want to teach our students well, but also because the ethos of the school is grounded in a belief that we must respect diverse cultures and explore what it means to make a better world for all cultures.
Here are my thoughts:
I found the ideas and arguments fascinating and - for me as a Western reader - very useful as I learn more about teaching students from an Eastern cultural background.
The problem for me is that the book grounds its explanations entirely in ancient philosophy and has nothing to say about modern sociology. The influences on modern Western education stop, according to Jin Li, with Kant. There is no discussion of Max Weber and the idea of the Protestant Work Ethic, for example, and little discussion of the impact of the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution. The general argument about a difference between East and West in education is convincing but grounding the causes predominantly in ancient philosophy leads to the potential to miss the impact of industrialisation on education. In the West, industrialisation has been a 200 year process which has had a dramatic impact on society, family and education (which has been famously slow to catch up). In China, this same process has happened largely in one life-time. Families and culture are different in the East and West as much because of a variation in the modern history of the countries (including the repression of industrialisation in the East as a result of Western colonisation). I would contend that if you compared education in the East and West 200 years ago, the similarities would be much more striking (even given that Jin Li's differences would still be noticeable and important).
Why I think my framing of the differences is important is that Jin Li's account suggests that cultural differences are central, axiomatic and immutable. If, as I am suggesting, the differences are as much grounded in a differing rate of acceleration through the processes of transition from agrarian to post-industrial economies, then we would expect that education practices in Eastern society are likely to change. As teachers, supporting that change isn't disrespectful to the cultural traditions of the East, it is important to preparing all our students for the world of the future.
Cheers,
Ian
Hi Ian,
ReplyDeleteYour reaction to the book is interesting.
One thing that I find interesting about the East (India and China) is how tightly people hold on to ancient philosophies, sometimes consciously but often unconsciously, and how as a result of this, ancient religious philosophies and traditions have survived and thrived unbroken over millenia.
In India, for example, Hinduism predates Ancient Greek religions, but it still survives today. The Hindu marriage vows that my husband and I exchanged, for example, were from the Vedic texts, and they are the exact same vows that people have exchanged for well over 2500 years. (They are significantly different from Western vows -- they conceptualize marriage totally differently.) Similarly, kids in modern India grow up on stories from the epics that are over 3000 years old.
In the West, on the other hand, ancient Greek religions died out a long, long time ago, and no one worships Zeus and Poseidon anymore. Also, the old stories are studied as academic texts but they are not a major part of every child's life. Most Western kids today have no idea what the Iliad is about, but pretty much every Indian kid knows the Indian myths very, very well.
From my conversations with Chinese moms, this is very true in China as well -- most of the stories and proverbs that kids grow up on are ancient ones. I think that part of the reason that the education system in the East is slow to change is that Easterners believe, on some possibly unconscious level, that the costs of these changes are very high. They are not willing to give up those ancient philosophies and the ideas and heirarchies that accompany them (filial piety, family loyalty and unity, more rigid age, gender and class heirarchies, a deep reverence for knowledge and for teachers that prevents questioning etc.). And they fear that loosening their grip on children/child-rearing practices, education practices etc. may open the floodgates for social/cultural change that they don't really want.
I think that on many levels, Easterners believe that the costs of Western style "questioning" and "free will" are just too high for society and for the human psyche. They don't want that kind of change, so they have resisted it in ways that the West never did.
That said, there is no doubt that rapid industrialization will have an impact on society and education, but I think the effect will be much, much slower than it was or is in the West, and it may not be exactly the same as it was in the West. The East may find different ways of adapting to industrialization than the West did. Japan, for example, has been industrialized for a while now, yet it has not changed its attitude towards child-rearing or education significantly, and it certainly has not become "westernized"; it has, instead, adapted to industrialization in very different ways from Western society.
The East has always valued family traditions above all else (filial piety and family relationships are the central focus of both the Indian epics and the Confucian Analects). Given that the East has changed very, very slowly, and most of its religious and philosophical traditions have continued unbroken over millenia, I think that when Jin Li draws on ancient philosophy to explain how Easterners understand learning, she has a point. These philosophies really do shape and influence contemporary modern lives in very, very real, deep ways.
Another great book to read on the subject is The Geography of Thought, which explores how Easterners and Westerners think differently. It's fascinating (based on lots of really interesting studies.) I think that these differences will not be explained away by industrialization and economic development, though of course industrialization will have an effect on society.