Assemblages of Western Modernity and Chinese Classic Learning: Styles of Reason in Taiwan's Educational History

• In Event: 75.016 - Historicizing the Present: Logics of Knowledge and Constructions of School Subjects in the Modern Era

Abstract

Among the studies of Taiwan’s educational history, Chinese classic learning is predominantly considered distinct from the Western modernity and its sciences. That is to say, while both have influenced Taiwan’s curriculum and pedagogies from the turn of twentieth century, it is commonly assumed that the ways of thinking embedded in the discourses and practices of these two cultural recognitions are fundamentally different. By exposing the parallel logics of change and limits of their “styles of reason” (Hacking, 1995), the paper focuses on the essential medium which in the first place gives intelligibility to the intercultural communications and comparisons, i.e. the history, and suggests an alternative way of thinking with regard to Taiwan’s educational present.

To do so, the first section adopts a Deleuzean perspective (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) to deconstruct particular aspects of Western modernity, which relate to a dominant style of reason in the field of history of education. I focus on the role of United States Progressive movements here since they have been regarded as a major influence on Taiwan’s educational “modernization”. By examining the epistemological principles that governed the national education reforms before and after the lifting of the martial law, I recognize the consistent center of change, namely the human subject who committed oneself to social betterment, despite the different political conditions. Texts analyzed here are the national guidelines for the regular high schools from 1952 to 2006 (including the General consultation report on education reform in 1996). Then, in the second section, I turn to the style of reason by which the studies of Chinese classic learning got categorized and ordered from their ancient texts in contemporary scholarly works and the curriculum guidelines mentioned earlier which have sought to carry on the cultural continuity and promoted a unique historical thinking in accordance with Taiwan’s educational modernization. By juxtaposing these two presumedly different styles of reason on the same thematic that appears roughly simultaneous in Taiwan, I argue that the sole use of either style of reason has failed to explain the educational present because they hold the similar premises that have both emphasized on the advancement of an universal human subject and neglected the historical temporality and the multiculturalist condition in Taiwan ( “whose justice? which rationality?).

To address these questions, the third section of the paper focuses on an alternative approach (cf. Popkewitz, 2008) to the study of Taiwanese educational history by understanding it as an “assemblage” that connects heterogeneous elements of historical traditions into relations with each other. Given the complex political status of Taiwan, it is crucial to rethink how historical narratives and judgments become visible and naturalized through schooling and its intimate associations with the making of citizenship.

Author

• Chen-Ju Liu, University of Wisconsin - Madison