The (Un)teach-ability of Onto-Ethical Co-Being With: Translating Daoist Ecology Into Classrooms and Its Challenges

• In Event: 42.065 - Translating Eastern Ontologies Into the Classroom: Challenges and Openings for Equity Pedagogy

Abstract

In the past few decades, China’s moral education curriculum has shifted from an empty sermonic pedagogy toward a relating-back to children’s lifeworld. In 2016, a new set of textbooks will be put to use in most primary schools, which, albeit still an expression of China’s state ideology, embodies a Daoist ecological vision. This vision hopes to cultivate an onto-ethical sense of co-being with among children and between children and the environmental world. This paper explores the theoretical (un)teach-ability of such onto-ethical co-being with as well as practical challenges in translating it into classrooms.

This paper draws upon Heidegger’s thinking to delineate the Daoist onto-ecological co-being with in three dimensions. First, the Chinese term for nature, ziran (自然), literally says the way as it is, echoing Heidegger’s understanding of physis as ‘the arising of something from out of self, a bringing-forth’ (1977, p. 10). Besides, it gestures the entire whole world wherein myriad things co-dwell along with human beings. Second, man and the natural environment co-dwell in a Heideggerian sense of belonging-together, not belonging-together (1969), wherein humans are supposed to attune to, co-respond to, and follow the dao-movement of the physical-natural world. Such a mode of co-belonging and co-dwelling explodes a modern subject vs. object reasoning. Third, the Daoist ecology relates humans with the natural environment through a theme of ‘observe’ (觀 guan), to be understood in an onto-hermeneutic, not cognitive, sense of bodily experiencing and feeling.

With a discourse analysis method, this paper examines how such Daoist onto-ethical co-being with is embodied in the 2016 textbook design and more important, how they get translated, or not, into classrooms. The specific humans-nature unit design along with 5-7 videotaped classroom teaching are selected for doing a detailed analysis. Specifically, it looks at the ways the Daoist ethical co-being with is taught and performed through the contingent teacher-student engagement in classrooms. A preliminary analysis finds that translating Daoist onto-ethical sensibilities into classrooms faces a pedagogical dilemma, calling into questions the very teach-ability of and the nuanced differences between the varied modes of knowing, being, and doing. Since most teachers are confined to an instrumental Tyler model, the Daoist sensibilities are mostly treated as teach-able and measurable knowledge points. Yet, are onto-ethical sensibilities merely knowledge points? Would knowing about a sense of co-being with naturally lead to an ontological being/doing of co-being with? And how can we evaluate students’ ontological learning?

This paper disrupts the taken-for-granted epistemology-ontology divide in the Western academia and calls for a re-thinking of the fundamental notions of teaching, learning, knowing, and being in curriculum studies toward equity.

Heidegger, M. (1969) Identity and Difference. (J. Stambaugh, Trans. with an Introduction.). New York, Evanston, and London: Harper & Row Publishers.
Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology and other essays. (W. Lovitt,
Trans. with an introduction.). Harper Torchbooks.

Author

• Weili Zhao, The Chinese University of Hong Kong