Education, East and West, is today mostly Western in orientation. Asian perspectives remain relatively unrepresented in curricula, pedagogy and administrative structures. This volume has brought together authors researching in Asia who redress this imbalance and describe what the West can learn from the East. Topics covered include conceptions of and approaches to effective learning and teaching, self-regulated learning, perceived causes of success and failure, valuing of education, peer influences and classroom behavior, creativity, teacher commitment, class size, motivation, future goals, and other influences on effective learning. Shared insights from the research and theorizing presented should provide a fascinating perspectives for educators and administrators charged with providing cutting-edge, research-based educational best practices in diverse cultural and social environments internationally.
When Richard Nisbett showed an animated underwater scene to his American students, they zeroed in on a big fish swimming among smaller fish. Japanese subjects, on the other hand, made observations about the background environment...and the different "seeings" are a clue to profound underlying cognitive differences between Westerners and East Asians. As Professor Nisbett shows in The Geography of Thought people actually think - and even see - the world differently, because of differing ecologies, social structures, philosophies, and educational systems that date back to ancient Greece and China, and that have survived into the modern world. As a result, East Asian thought is "holistic" - drawn to the perceptual field as a whole, and to relations among objects and events within that field. By comparison to Western modes of reasoning, East Asian thought relies far less on categories, or on formal logic; it is fundamentally dialectic, seeking a "middle way" between opposing thoughts. By contrast, Westerners focus on salient objects or people, use attributes to assign them to categories, and apply rules of formal logic to understand their behaviour.
Those who've heard T. R. Reid's weekly commentary on National Public Radio or read his far-flung reporting in National Geographic or The Washington Post know him to be trenchant, funny, and cutting-edge, but also erudite and deeply grounded in whatever subject he's discussing. In Confucius Lives Next Door he brings all these attributes to the fore as he examines why Japan, China, Taiwan, and other East Asian countries enjoy the low crime rates, stable families, excellent education, and civil harmony that remain so elusive in the West. Reid, who has spent twenty-five years studying Asia and was for five years The Washington Post's Tokyo bureau chief, uses his family's experience overseas--including mishaps and misapprehensions--to look at Asia's "social miracle" and its origin in the ethical values outlined by the Chinese sage Confucius 2,500 years ago. When Reid, his wife, and their three children moved from America to Japan, the family quickly became accustomed to the surface differences between the two countries. In Japan, streets don't have names, pizza comes with seaweed sprinkled on top, and businesswomen in designer suits and Ferragamo shoes go home to small concrete houses whose washing machines are outdoors because there's no room inside. But over time Reid came to appreciate the deep cultural differences, helped largely by his courtly white-haired neighbor Mr. Matsuda, who personified ancient Confucian values that are still dominant in Japan. Respect, responsibility, hard work--these and other principles are evident in Reid's witty, perfectly captured portraits, from that of the school his young daughters attend, in which the students maintain order and scrub the floors, to his depiction of the corporate ceremony that welcomes new employees and reinforces group unity. And Reid also examines the drawbacks of living in such a society, such as the ostracism of those who don't fit in and the acceptance of routine political bribery. Much Western ink has been spilled trying to figure out the East, but few journalists approach the subject with T. R. Reid's familiarity and insight. Not until we understand the differences between Eastern and Western perceptions of what constitutes success and personal happiness will we be able to engage successfully, politically and economically, with those whose moral center is governed by Confucian doctrine. Fascinating and immensely readable, Confucius Lives Next Door prods us to think about what lessons we might profitably take from the "Asian Way"--and what parts of it we want to avoid.
In Asia, we are witnessing an era where the pendulum of power seems to be swaying towards the East with the rising strength of China and India and Singapore is at the 'crossroads' between these populous nations. Although Singapore may appear to be the most westernized country in Asia, she is nevertheless a multi-cultural Asian society. Having the most open economy in the world, Singapore is plugged into the global marketplace of education and learning. The development of human capital is used as a strategic economic driver to internationalize and transform education for sustainable competitive advantage. Singapore's education system, regarded as one of the consistently best performing in the world, offers a unique opportunity to explore issues where eastern and western culture, values, beliefs, learning and knowledge systems converge, clash, and at times diverge.This book is meant to extend our knowledge on the role of ‘learning’, often overlooked and taken for granted as the air that we breathe but which constantly transforms our lives and reshapes societies. It is the first book that deals with the dichotomy of ‘east’ and ‘west’ going beyond the traditional learning and education framework to other areas such as economic, socio-cultural, political, and technological dimensions that impact Singapore. It puts together key topical issues and explores the underbelly of how a small 'resourceless' independent city-state like Singapore stays ahead of the learning curve, even while facing increasingly intense global competition where the discovery and emergence of new systems for empowerment and independence and the resulting creation of new knowledge and modes of communication are challenging traditional boundaries between the virtual and real world.
This book traces a most obscure and yet most intriguing theme concealed in Heidegger’s thinking and work, which has hitherto not yet been made the focus of a thorough and sustained investigation: that is, the emergence and course of Heidegger’s interest in East Asian thought and of his reflection on East-West dialogue. Lin Ma covers such complex issues as Heidegger’s thoughts on language, Being, technology, the other beginning, and the journey abroad, with a view to their implications for East-West dialogue. It reveals the significance of his remarks on the early Greek’s confrontation with the Asiatic, and presents contextualized interpretations of his fleeting references to the topic of East-West dialogue and of his encounter with the Daodejing. Finally, it delves into "A dialogue on language" and exposes the strains and tensions that accompany Heidegger’s extension of dialogue and the Same, the two notions central to his thought, to the question of East-West dialogue. In the end, Lin Ma concludes that Heidegger’s fundamental concerns and philosophical orientations as articulated in terms of the history of Being and the other beginning have restricted him from engaging more seriously with the irresolvable and yet enduring issue of East-West dialogue.
