Abstract
For over two thousand years, Chinese pedagogy had been molded by Confucian historical texts. Histories occupied a central place in education and social reform. In the early twentieth century, when China encountered Western modernity, a historiographical revolution was launched to challenge the traditional outlook on the past, especially the attitude toward the source of historical meanings—the Confucian classics. The chapter explores a Confucian/Chinese mode of historical thinking for the purpose of pushing the limits of modern rationalities into the unthinkable of otherness to inform curriculum innovation in China. By looking at the nature of Classics Reading in Confucian pedagogy, the chapter analyzes how histories in the form of subtle texturing and layers of interpretive fragments serve to open an unlimited space for morally oriented meaning making. Histories as heterogamous authentic texts from the past could be constantly reinterpreted to activate social dynamics for the present. The examination of historical contingencies and discontinuities in modern China shows how the Chinese mode of historical thinking was altered, leading to an unintelligibility of the past.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bottéro, Francoise. 2000. Revisiting the wen 文 and the zi 字: The great Chinese characters hoax. Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 74: 14–33.
Cai, Zong-qi. 2000. Wen and the construction of a critical system in “Wenxin Diaolong.” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 22: 1–29.
Chow, Kai-wing. 1999. Between canonicity and heterodoxy: Hermeneutical moments of the Great Learning (Ta-hsueh). In Imagining Boundaries: Changing Confucian Doctrines, Texts, and Hermeneutics, edited by K. Chow, On-cho Ng., and J. B. Henderson. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Court of Qing Dynasty. 1904. School Regulation on Imperial Permission. China: Qing Government.
Derrida, Jacques. 1997. Of Grammatology. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock Publications.
—. 1996. Nietzsche, genealogy, history. In From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology, edited by L. E. Cahoone. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 360–379.
Gu, M. D. 2005. Chinese Theories of Reading and Writing. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Heidegger, M. 1962. Being and Time, translated by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. San Francisco, CA: Harper.
Hu Shi. 2005. Hu Shi’s Oral Autobiography, edited by Degang Tang. Hefei: Anhui Educational Press.
Huang, Chun-Chieh. 2007. The defining character of Chinese historical thinking. History and Theory 46(2): 180–188.
Kaske, E. 2007. The Politics of Language in Chinese Education, 1895–1919. Leiden: Brill.
Kern, M. 2001. Ritual, text, and the formation of the Canon: Historical transitions of “Wen” in early China. T’oung Pao 87: 43–91.
Labaree, F. David. 2005. Progressivism, schools and schools of education: An American romance. Paedagogica Historica 41(1–2): 275–288.
Lackner, M., I. Amelung, and J. Kurtz. 2001. New Terms for New Ideas: Western Knowledge and Lexical Change in Late Imperial China. Leiden: Brill.
Lafont, C. 2000. Heidegger, Language and World-Disclosure, translated by G. Harman. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Lee, T. H. C. 2002. Must history follow rational patterns of interpretation? Critical questions from a Chinese perspective. In Western Historical Thinking: An Intercultural Debate, edited by J. Rüsen. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 173–177.
Legge, James, trans. 1961. The Chinese Classics. 5 vols. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, reprint of Oxford, 1865–1895 ed.
Liu, L. H. 1995. Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1900–1937. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Liang, Q. C. 1999. Xinshixue (New historiography). Yingbingshi heqi 9. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju.
Ma, J. Z. 1898/1983. Mashi wentong (The Ma Grammar), reprint. Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan.
Needham, J., ed. 1954. Science and Civilisation in China. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Sima, Q. 1959. Records of the Grand Historian. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company.
Slingerland, Edward G. 2003. Trans. Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.
Popkewitz, Thomas S., ed. 2005. Inventing the Modern Self and John Dewey: Modernities and the Traveling of Pragmatism in Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press.
Popkewitz, Thomas S. 2008. Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform: Science, Education, and Making Society by Making the Child. New York: Routledge.
Popkewitz, Thomas S., Ayesha Khurshid, and Weili Zhao. 2011. Comparative Studies and the Reasons of Reason: Historicizing the Cultural Travels of Reforms and Multiple Modernities. Paper presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of American Educational Research Association (AERA), New Orleans, LA.
Xu Shen. 1981. Shuowen Jiezi Zhu, Duan Yucai (1735–1815) Comm. Shanghai: Shanghai guji.
Tochon, Francois. 2010. Deep education. Journal for Educators, Teachers, and Trainers 1: 1–12.
Qu, X., and L. Tang, eds. 2007. The Transformation of the Schooling System. (The Compilation of Historical Documents of Contemporary Chinese Education). Shanghai: Shanghai Education Publication House.
Wang, Q. E. 2004. Inventing China through History: The May Fourth Approach to Historiography. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Wu, Z. J. 2005. Being, understanding and naming: Teachers’ life and work in harmony. International Journal of Educational Research 41: 307–323.
—. 2009. A genealogy of foreign language as disciplinary knowledge. Journal of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies 20(4): 64–68.
—. 2011. Interpretation, autonomy, and transformation: Chinese pedagogical discourse in a cross-cultural perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies 43 ( 5 ): 569–590.
Wu, Z., and C. Han. 2010. Cultural transformation of educational discourse in China: Perspectives of multiculturalism/interculturalism. In Intercultural and Multicultural Education: Enhancing Global Interconnectedness, edited by C. Grant and A. Portera. New York: Routledge, pp. 225–244.
Yu, Y. S. 2002. Reflections on Chinese historical thinking. In Western Historical Thinking: An Intercultural Debate, edited by J. Rüsen. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 152–172.
Zhang, H., and Q. Zhong. 2003. Curriculum studies in China. In International Handbook of Curriculum Research, edited by William Pinar. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 253–270.
Zhang, X. C. 2004. Wenshi tongyi (General Meaning of Historiography). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju.
Zhang, Z. D. 1900. China’s Only Hope: An Appeal for Her Greatest Viceroy, translated by S. I. Woodbridge. Westport, CT: Hyperion Press.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2013 Thomas S. Popkewitz
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wu, Z. (2013). Chinese Mode of Historical Thinking and Its Transformation in Pedagogical Discourse. In: Popkewitz, T.S. (eds) Rethinking the History of Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137000705_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137000705_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-43338-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-00070-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Education CollectionEducation (R0)