Education
-
More on Teaching Confucianism in China
Another busy week in the classroom here. I want to respond to a couple of comments from my last post (I close comments after one week because of spam attacks) about my experience teaching Confucianism here now. First up, J… Continue reading
-
Teaching Confucius in Beijing
I've been here over a week and have hardly had time to even think about blogging. It turns out that getting my class, "Confucianism in America," up and running has been a lot more time-consuming than I realized. The central… Continue reading
-
Confucian Learning, or not
David Brooks has a piece in the NYT today, discussing a new book by Jin Li, Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West. Let me say right up front that I have not read the book (though I look forward… Continue reading
-
Education is a Dialogue
Just want to give a quick shout out to Mark Edmunson for his op-ed in yesterday's NYT: "The Trouble with Online Education." With all the recent foofaraw recently about on-line courses and MOOCs, various people at various places (most notably… Continue reading
-
A Shout Out to the Dazhai Boyz
One pleasant result of my trip to Dazhai, Yunnan, last week was meeting the Teach for China fellows there. River and Richard and Tom and Gareth, a nice crew: It seems that Tom and Gareth blog about their experiences, and… Continue reading
-
Answering the Gaokao with the Daodejing and Zhuangzi
The big national college entrance exam – the dreaded gaokao – has just finished in China. Danwei has a collection of some of the various essay questions posed in different provinces. As I read through them I thought that one,… Continue reading
-
Embracing the Useless
It's that time of year again. College and high school graduations come around and people start to wonder: "what use is all of this education?" The question is especially piquant for the newly unemployed college graduates, the English majors who… Continue reading
-
The Limits of Confucian Revival in China
On Saturday the WaPo (hat tip CDT) ran a conventional restatement of the Confucian revival in China story. Not much new reported beyond the usual observations that people, including businessmen, are embracing revised Confucian rituals. Yet when this story is… Continue reading
-
Confucius and Education Reform in Korea
I had a very pleasant dinner Saturday night: tasty Korean food with friends. The main chef of the evening was a young woman who is interested in reforming higher education in South Korea. We talked a bit and that conversation… Continue reading
-
Learning Nationalism
In my class on East Asian nationalism were are reading the introduction and afterword of Liah Greenfeld's book, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. It is quite different from the Gellner book I mentioned in posts below. She is much more… Continue reading
The Useless Tree 