In the West, one of the major principles informing the character of a ‘modern’ education is the (potentially contradictory) notion of guided educational self-regulation. The individual is responsible for cultivating his/ her own skills and abilities, whilst the role of the State is to equip citizens to the point where they can autonomously pursue their full intellectual potential. The State must therefore ensure that basic schooling is equally available to all; that an egalitarian system of education is a civil right - efficiently implemented. Education is emphasised as the means by which an individual can acheive their own ends whilst adequately contributing to the economy.

Any mass civil project requires standardisation, however.

The collective benefit of this system for the State is the variety in human capital that is produced. In classical Chinese education, too, there was an emphasis on self-cultivation. But the role of the self is significant more in terms of developing a personal harmony that fits into the socio-political hierarchy. The principle that the ‘needs of themany outweight the needs of the one’ was already a prevalent aspect of Chinese educational policy long before the rise of Communism.

The conversion of such a pervasive social ideology into one that purports the necessity for mass education and prioritizes the good of the Collective was not a difficult one. Chinese Communism borrows both heavily and selectively from Confucian educational principles, often using them as historical qualifiers for contemporary policy decisions.

Since the 1978 (and on-going) reforms there has been a facsinating shift away from the cultivation of a congenial edaucational equality between citizens and a move towards the encouragement of competitive meritocracy in the classroom. It is a social and political attitude that helps propogate (and is derived from) the growing Capitalist mentality in China. I stress the word mentality, here, as Capitalism is of course more than a set of policy reforms and economic and production processes: it is a way of thinking that, like any regime (no matter how economically liberating or ‘free-market’ orientated it claims to be), pervades and determines the media that people consume, what they aspire towards and how they interact.

In the wake of growing disposable income per capita, and an increasingly competitive climate in the race to secure top corporate jobs, China’s collectivist ideology has been transposed to come in line with this new strain of meritocratic competition. Meritocracy is not a new concept in China, of course: the idea that whosoever does a thing best ought to derive the most recognition and benefit from doing it is pretty universally intuitive (I do, of course, concede that I really need to qualify this claim, but simply dont have the space in which to do it!). Rather, in the case of China, it is perhaps better to view the present meritocracy in the light of its present manifestation: the establishment of a consumer-driven social hierarchy. As Vanessa Fong articulates the issue, China currently exhibits a ‘…cultural model of upward mobility through Academic Acheivement’ which she sees as continuous with a tradition of bureaucratic social distinction starting with the Han Dynasty.

 The significance this bears in relation to the possible emergence of ‘sceptical questioners’ from the Chinese schooling is in terms of Chinese educational aims consisting in a legacy of inherent utilitarianism. The notion of education for education’s sake is somewhat ecplipsed by the drive to ‘… get the kind of education that could qualify one for a “good job”’.

Fong demonstrates that this manner of competition, even when investigated under conditions ‘…designed to to sever the link between education and elite status’, still resulted in education correlating ‘…directly with occupations and consumption patterns’. This is interpretable as an inevitable reaction to old Communist destratification policies, the motivations of which appear thouroughly modern yet in fact bear much relevance to the old imperial civil service examination system. Further exacerbated by the one-child policy brought to bear in 1979, one of the major upshots of the way acheivement is regulated in China is an educational climate of institutionalized anxiety over occupational prospects – reinforced by a school system with heavy emphasis on the virtues of vicious academic competition.

Students are predominantly concerned with acheiving top grades for the purposes of winning a top job. Little time, apparently, is given over to the more philosophical purposes of gaining an education. The immediate usefulness of a skill such as analytical scepticism towards the content of what is taught in class is not evident in the primary pursuit of high exam grades. Being taught how to engage with such issues as identity politcs is not a top priority in Chinese schools, where the majority of what is learned (particularly below the age of 12 and in rural/ less affluent regions) is system that tranfers knowledge ‘by rote’. This format of schooling by its very nature places emphasis upon the homogenous assimilation of information by the group, as opposed to the individual appropriation of knowledge by each student.

The role of an education in China, aside from the primary goal of competing for the top jobs, has also been to instill a sense of Chinese national identity. Particularly in the aftermath of the Cold War, difficult bilateral relations with the USA helped to propogate the drive to ‘…reinforce internal social cohesion’ through ‘old-fashioned appeals to ethno-nationalist sentiments…. without having to confront the nuanced moral ambiguities of historical events’.  I can heartily reccommend Charles Stafford’s insightful work in this area.

(to be continued…)

Part 1 of 3

This question relates closely to the broader issue of the process of human existential growth: how our understanding of the world is shaped and continuously altered by physical, emotional and cognitive experiences. In order to answer the question of whether ‘sceptical questioners’ can emerge from contemporary Chinese schools, one must first address the problem of adequately defining what a sceptical questioner actually is. Similarly, before  claiming whether or not historical facts are the subject of sceptical questioning, one must first ask: what is the definition of ‘Historical Fact’? These two steps are crucial to any coherent, qualified understanding of education in terms of how intellectual autonomy may be cultivated, and whether the cultivation of such a quality automatically renders an individual a sceptical questioner – moreover, a questioner of Historical Facts as represented in educational institutions.

How one ends up discussing a topic such as this depends greatly upon the ideological positioning of the writer in relation to the notion of ‘Knowable Truth’. At its core this question consists in epistemic debates and the tensions that surround them. Some would argue that reasoning about the past is always caught up with the prevailing problem of retrospective subjectivity, and that objectivity in such cirumstances is frankly unattainable. By this logic, one perspective on a so-called ‘historical fact’ is as valid as any other.  But this brand of pessimistic – and quite unhelpful – epistemology will get us nowhere fast. Is it better perhaps to set the perameters of a working definition and move on from there…

In light of this, I propose that a working definition of ‘scepticism’ should incorporate the trait of refraining from making truth-claims; an intellectual outlook that strives for objectivity in value-judgements, and whereby absolute concepts of truth and falsity are held to be unreliable foundations from which to draw conclusions. In practice, the process of sceptical questioning ought to include the ability to employ a good degree of critical detachment from issues under consideration – to work only with the ‘given’ first principles of any ‘given’ problem, and to not resort to the illogic of a biased perspective. It is an (Enlightenment) intellectual ideal that is in itself an impossibility to fully realise; the most any aspiring sceptical questioner can hope for is a stoical awareness of his/ her own discursive positioning and the social, cultural and personal narratives that inform this position. ‘Historical Fact’ is a similarly problematical term to define as it has strong connotations – not only with the static nature of empirical events, but also with the solidity of a given interpretation/ representation of those events, which is not conducive to sceptical thinking.

Moving to the case of Chinese institutional education: does indoctrination into this system cultivate or curtail the capacity to question sceptically the historical ‘facts’ schools teach, and how they are taught?

Clouds neither shrinking nor growing,

Purging all their drops on woodlands glowing.

Wild and deep and filled with shade,

wind-worn and unmade.

    Inside;

Quiet moss of dripping-rooms

Where crownless branches brood.

And now, leafing through your papers,

Thoughts and self-reproaches;

Playing coy looks with clasping arms,

Fixing fast your smile, that smile that they adore;

That cheer that fails upon the finish line,

Upon the shutting of a door.

And when your back is turning

(As it has so many times before)

You quell the height and breadth and depth of things,

Yes, all these things and more.

Momentary joys subside,

Sprout in passing darkness; pass and glide.

No fleeting exaltations.

No ruptured spread of doubt.

Forget the hillsides after rain,

The starling-littered skies;

The breathless backward glances gleaned

Against the Other’s eyes.

The day has come and it

Slides upon the scene unspectacularly.

Veiling stars, the flight of the moon,

Gathering the distance to the eye.

We are far from home, you and I,

And far from those who form and

Feed upon our loves.

If I smoked, I’d light one up to add something to the ambience. Nothing like a framed scene imbued with cliches.

It is not uncommon for a very simple, crude rhyme to enter my head in such moments; When the air is almost cold, almost warm, and the melody of a sax busker carries on the breeze to lend meaning to a couple kissing in the distance…

Still set your sights on mountain-tops,
On distant, star-washed lands?
It is not, ’tis not for you -
Without, the night has hurried in,
And huddles by your hand.

Stir once more upon your seat;
Sigh again and stand;
Unmake your woes as like to when
The tide unmakes the journey
Of  surging, shore-bound sands.

Live them out, these twilight hours
Of closing words,
Of thoughts and failing light:
Unmake the bringing-down of day
To a starry, long-sought night.

I make more tea and waste a little time. 

It had felt as though there was no reason to go. But, just as it was yesterday and will be again tomorrow, dusk heralds the orange tones of timely street-lamps, and my mind turns involuntarily to indulgent, nostalgic retrospection.

 But I know such remembrances are phony; only the remembrances of remembrances, of feelings gleaned from books and music and galleries before closing time; from over-thinking the potential in distant horizons brought on by golden twilights. Days end; dawns break; mornings slide upon us imperceptibly and the potency of delicate feelings diffuse like smoke in the clear-headed immediacy of mundane doings. 

I remembered these cynicisms along with the other, old-friend feelings of tall open windows that frame the fragrant air. But I go anyway. And by the time I am out of the building and amongst the breathing throng I crave to be in a streetside Parisian cafe. I see Starbucks and buy coffee to go, laced with sweeteners and vanilla dust. Walk through Embankment station, over the chequered black and white floor, up some steps to the bridge that takes me over the water.

On days when the air is clear, and through unmarked hours the sun lies long upon the grass, you may venture beyond the borders of the valley to reach and return from the ruins before nightfall. Many years have passed since the old city fell, and living memory cannot recall its height nor the whiteness of its towers, nor the greatness of its trade, art and song. It has been too long since flags flew and trumpets sounded above the battlements, and long, too, has it been since words have told its tale.
The people of the town that resides in the valley are a remote and insular community on the outskirts of the New Kingdom. They have for centuries maintained a silent sort of deference to the hollow ruins; their communal feeling is stronger, perhaps, than any understanding that knowledge could impart. It is a feeling that runs through their veins like some light substance of reminiscence. The ground they work and the crops they harvest seem rich with the suggestion of a strange and awful past. Such is the power of a half-known heritage for a people whose worlds never change horizons, and whose minds feed but rarely on the thoughts of different lands.
Today, many still hold that the valley people are descended from the last few who dwelt within the old city; those who fled after the final and bloody dissolution of the government over 500 years before. The city now slumps, disorderly, upon the white cusp of the land, the sea undoing its stonework, the wind unveiling its gilded rooms to the sky. Old alliances have perished; highways have overgrown; silver trading ships pass silently in the thick of the night.
Many waited for a time for the ripples of instability to subside, waiting for the city to  rebound as cities commonly do. They waited for word of Lindarin’s restoration for decades, never hearing more than whispered rumours of its fall. Eventually, impatient  and weary of the growing absurdities told by wandering story-weavers, the traders came back. They came to renew the old alliances, their ships laden with silks and spice and wine.
They found but a mound of luminous stone upon the shore, mirrored by a troubled sea. None had remained to revive the ancient way of life; none had stayed to watch over the noble resurrection. It had fallen hollowly – abandoned and unremembered. The traders who returned left sooner than expected. They spoke of a sorrow in the city, and of a nameless darkling presence. In haste they turned away and ventured on.