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EAST MEETS WEST,  AGAIN

3/1/2013

2 Comments

 
 David Brooks in today's  New York Times (March 1, 2013) (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/opinion/brooks-the-learning-virtues.html?hp&_r=0) revives some old East-West stereotypes but in a provocative way.

 Brooks follows  Jin Li’s book Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West, drawing a contrast between Western (actually US) ways of thinking about learning and Chinese ones: “The simplest way to summarize her findings is that Westerners tend to define learning cognitively while Asians tend to define it morally.”  He means, I think,  that Westerners tend to  value learning because it enables us to deal with  the external world – the economy, the environment, personal and political interactions etc.  Asians, if I understand Jin Li and Brooks correctly, value the discipline and hard work that goes into learning. It’s a process of cultivating virtue.

And guess who is standing behind the modern Western approach to learning? “It’s easy to see historically why this came about. Hellenic culture emphasized skeptical scientific inquiry.” But, of course, that’s a gross oversimplification (and perhaps so are other parts of this East-West contrast.)  It overstates the “scientific” side of Greek civilization, an on-and-off phenomenon, and underestimates the strand in ancient thought that valued discipline and learning  in the achievement of eudaimonia, “well-being.”  That  seems to me still a worthy approach to liberal education, not inconsistent perhaps with the "awesome motivation explosions" Brooks values so highly.  



2 Comments
Jean Alvares
3/1/2013 12:02:28 am

Two points: First, some of this 'skepticism' can be seen in the Platonic/ Stoic tradition as useful for purging illusion, so that we can see (and conform ourselves to a perfection outside ourselves. It seems the Platonic and Stoic educational traditions mix morality with education.
Second, I am friends with some visiting scholars from China, including one who has gone back to China and is now teaching in Beijing, and, when I showed her this article, she thought that current Chinese students are increasingly Western in their approach, showing, for example, a lot less respect for their teachers and thinking about how education can lead to jobs.

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Bill Berg
3/1/2013 02:56:51 am

"Hellenic culture emphasized skeptical scientific inquiry."

Oversimplification? Maybe even falsification, if we're talking about the early centuries of the Common Era, when Stoicism dominated philosophical and scientific perspectives throughout the Empire. The Stoa invariably subordinated all empirical inquiry peri physeōs / de rerum natura to moral/theological considerations. And the Epicureans weren't far behind in that regard. In fact, this strong moral tradition reaches back to Empedocles, even Xenophanes, Heraclitus and probably beyond. To the Greeks perennially, the ultimate goal of understanding the universe was understanding how we fit into it, and how human behavior can best reflect the natural order.

Even in the fourth century of the Common Era, Libanius, renowned lecturer at the great Hellenic universities, attests to what was still the ultimate goal of education, especially of higher education: it was the duty of the professor, the sophistēs, to train not only your tongue to eloquence, but your soul to prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude.
As to the validity of the rest of Mr. Brooks' remarks, I'll leave that to those with experience in the relevant fields. If they match in accuracy his remark on Hellenism, then I'd say his thoughts warrant thorough revision.

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