Making of a Modern Asian Citizen: Curriculum Reform in Two Confucius Countries

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: From Grassroots to Global: Curriculum Reform Across Contexts

Abstract

This paper explores the modern formation of citizen in Taiwan and Korea that embodies
effects of globalization. The paper uses the modern form of Confucian technology of self
as an example to illustrate how Confucian cultivation of a self-less person has been
assembled with ideas of democracy and science associated with western modernities to
cultivate one of the common core abilities—self-reflexive learning. The paper examines
historical contingencies as to how Confucian morality is transformed into a particular
technology of self that forms the future citizens in different sociopolitical contexts. It
serves as a critique of rethinking the style of reasoning embedded in the social-scientific
studies in Taiwan and Korea that view adoptions of western thoughts as embodiment of
futurity.

Authors

• KAI JUNG HSIAO, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Ji-Hye Kim, Korean Educational Development Institute