My Pedagogical Philosophy

Though I have never formally studied pedagogical theory or philosophy, several years' experience in academe has exposed me to an array of pedagogical approaches: one emphasizes raising students' self-esteem, another focuses on maximizing students' competitiveness in the job market, a third stresses indoctrination in certain "invincible truths" propagated by some higher authority (political, legal, ecclesiastical). I hold to a more old-fashioned view: namely, that the primary duty of a teacher is TO TEACH -- and through his or her teaching help foster those qualities of mind which will enable students to continue their intellectual development long after they have left the university campus. Far be it from me to denigrate facts, statistics, examples, and all other concrete data essential to the study of virtually any academic discipline; but one need hardly go to a university -- or, in this era of the Internet, even a library -- to gather such information. A university classroom, however, can offer participants an almost unique opportunity to develop and exercise that capacity for critical thinking without which no individual or communal advancement worthy of the name is possible.

I say "participants" because, to my mind, learning (in an institutional setting like the university) should be a cooperative endeavor, an ongoing process of constructive dialogue between students and teachers as well as among students themselves. Over two millennia after his death, Socrates remains an unsurpassed exemplar of this process. Though perhaps not quite as infallible, philosophically, as his Platonic interlocutors were wont to profess, Socrates as a teacher exemplifies an ideal that has lost its resonance in this "age of the expert": that of encouraging individuals to seek "the truth" for themselves rather than just blindly accept whatever emanates from their supposed intellectual superiors. Yes, expertise has its place in the classroom, and I myself at the lectern will make frequent reference to the fruits of my own reading and reflection. But teachers should always be wary of measuring their ultimate success by the number of disciples they leave behind.

If Socrates epitomizes my preferred "method" of teaching, it is a much later educational thinker, John Henry Newman, who most eloquently expresses my ideal of a university. For Newman conceived of the university as above all the institutional setting most conducive to fulfillment of the Socratic injunction to know oneself. Granted that Newman shared the gender and class biases of his age with respect to who "merited" higher education -- granted, too, Newman's wholly subjective conviction that a "proper" education would inevitably lead its recipients to embrace his own particular religious creed -- he recognized, and celebrated, the value of knowledge for its own sake -- or, to be more precise, for the intellectual, social, and moral welfare of the individual who "knows" and thus, ultimately, for the good of the larger community to which all individuals belong. The contrast with today's university, where teachers and students alike place primary, often exclusive emphasis on the tangible or vocational benefits of whatever they study, could not be more striking. That, however, is no reason to treat yesterday's ideal as merely so much extra fodder for tomorrow's dissertations.

The above allusions to ancient Greece and Victorian Britain notwithstanding, my thoughts on education derive chiefly from personal experience and education. As such, I lay no claim to "absolute impartiality" or "scientific detachment." But I do believe that, in education as in so much else, some personal viewpoints have more to recommend them than others. For all the undoubted technological and economic and political advances that have been made over the past century, nobody has bettered Socrates as a practitioner or Newman as a theorist of what educators should strive to accomplish. That two such renowned pedagogues, lacking a PhD and other "professional credentials," would be spurned by most contemporary academics as unworthy of joining their ranks, offers an all too ironic commentary on just how far educational standards have fallen.

Oscars 2009

Watching the Academy Awards live yesterday (for the first time in fifteen years) inspires me to the following note:

Like millions of moviegoers worldwide, I am delighted by the decision of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences to honor "Slumdog Millionaire" as the best picture of 2008. While the Academy has from time to time demonstrated comparable ability to place "art" above "commercial appeal," too often its members confuse transient popularity with enduring cinematic greatness. Let's just hope that Hollywood restrains itself from churning out "Slumdog Millionaire II"!

Exceptions to the Rule

Among the most pervasive of human characteristics is the tendency to define oneself by whom one is NOT. To the extent such self-proclaimed distinctiveness rests on measurable differences in accomplishment or ability, it is as natural as it is, perhaps, desirable. In a race as competitive as ours, the urge to run faster, jump higher, sing or write or rule "better" than anyone else may be as much a spur to activity as the more elemental needs for food and shelter. But when people extend their (more or less) innate differences in deed to perceived differences in kind, when they equate "difference" with "otherness" and thereby set themselves apart from those deemed irretrievably outside their circle, trouble results.

History is replete with examples of the barbarities to which sentiments of "otherness" may give rise. From the denial of citizenship to Native Americans and African-Americans and Asian-Americans in the United States to the near-extermination of European Jewry (whom the Nazis explicitly regarded as just so many vermin) to contemporary terrorist attacks against "the infidel," the human race has repeatedly demonstrated its own moral unfitness for survival. Infinitely more prosaic, yet in its way equally indicative of humankind's intellectual primitivism and psychological immaturity, is the widespread tendency among people of one nationality or country to boost their own sense of superiority by denigrating those born elsewhere. Such a tendency has been sadly evident in most of the countries I've visited over the past fourteen years. The Slovaks hate the Hungarians; the Hungarians belittle the Jews and the Gypsies; the Latvians despise the Russians; the Russians look down upon virtually all non-Russians; the Chinese disparage the Russians -- and everyone else; the Azeris loathe the Armenians to literally genocidal extremes. While I myself experienced little of this "other"-directed hostility --as an American, as a Jew, or even as the generic foreigner -- such bigotry in and of itself belied any and all claims to superiority over any creature except a severely brain-damaged cockroach.

That the penchant for derogating others who are not "like us" is no more intrinsic to the human species than, say, love of music or addiction to cocaine was brought home to me by my sojourn in Mongolia. Though imbued with a perhaps excessive pride in Genghis Khan and a historically understandable distrust of the Chinese, the Mongolians do not appear to define themselves at the expense of other cultures, other peoples, other countries. On the contrary, the Mongolians -- at least the ones I met -- were quite open to (if, to be sure, often not very interested in) ideas and practices, beliefs and traditions alien to their own background and experience. This openness, far from reflecting any lack of respect for their own heritage and achievements, demonstrated a cultural and ethnic self-confidence that did not depend on denigration of "the other" for its survival. Such non-chauvinistic partiality was all the more welcome after my stay in three countries -- China, Russia, Azerbaijan -- where prejudice toward "the other" is almost a prerequisite for acceptance into the national community.

Like Mongolia, Korea displays a level of cultural and ethnic tolerance seemingly at odds with its longstanding reputation in the West as the Hermit Kingdom. While yielding to none in the intensity of their identity as a separate nation, the Koreans -- again, to judge from my admittedly limited experience -- refrain from making "anti-otherness" a necessary component of that identity. Even the occasionally mooted proposal to make English the country's second official language, though widely resisted, is not accompanied (as it would be in China or Russia) by hyperbolic (and hypocritical) denunciations of "linguistic imperialism"; Korean represents a vibrant and indispensable part of the country's uniqueness, not a sign of its superiority over everyone else.

None of which is meant to suggest that xenophobia is entirely unknown in Mongolia or Korea -- or, conversely, that every Chinese, every Russian, every Azeri views their own kind as the ne plus ultra of human civilization. Nor am I blind to the intolerance and discrimination that continue to greet many groups worldwide, wherever their members reside. Ongoing disrespect for and maltreatment of women, homosexuals, the poor represent a global scourge absent the removal of which any claim to be "civilized" is a half-truth at best. But when it comes to perceiving coexistence as something more than a geopolitical convenience, as an ideal capable of enriching all humanity without impoverishing anyone, some people (and peoples) are certainly far ahead of others. Whatever those "others" might insist to the contrary.

"Dialogue" with Andre

Of the nine countries where I have taught since 1995, the one which (besides the U.S.) has left me the most ambivalent is China. On the one hand, the people were quite friendly and the students refreshingly diligent. As a teacher, moreover, I (like other foreigners) seemed to be generally respected for my contributions to Chinese development. And in a material sense life passed comfortably enough for an archetypal bourgeois like myself: lodgings were spacious and replete with every modern convenience, the food was delicious, and DVDs were dirt cheap. On the other hand, the authoritarian nature of the political regime deeply offended some of my own innermost principles. Disturbing in a more practical sense was the repeatedly demonstrated untrustworthiness of my university employers (with respect to scheduling, meeting contractual terms, etc.). And behind the undeniable friendliness of the people lay a subtle but distinct standoffishness, a clear tendency to perceive their own "kind" as somehow apart from everyone else.

For approximately one year following my departure from China at the start of 2006, my positive impressions of the country and its people remained dominant, helped in no small measure by my infinitely worse experiences in the next two places I worked, Russia and Azerbaijan (especially the latter). My subsequent year in Mongolia, however, provided a much pleasanter contrast against which to view my Chinese sojourn, a contrast further accentuated by my current country of residence, Korea. But what has really solidified my unfavorable assessment of China and the Chinese -- what has sealed my determination never to return to China, even as a tourist -- is a lengthy e-mail I received from a former student of mine in the spring of 2007. The English name of this student was (and, as far as I know, remains) Andre.

Andre was my best student at the best university where I taught in China, China Foreign Affairs University. Indeed, Andre is one of the best students I have ever had anywhere. Not only were his speaking, writing, and other academic abilities commendably above average, he showed an intellectual curiosity and adventurousness rare even (or, rather, especially!) among tenured professors, let alone among job-obsessed students. More than once we spoke about history, about movies, about literature, about subjects far removed from the daily fare of our respective classes. (He's the only person I've ever met who shared my fondness for Thomas Mann!) Andre's stated intention to pursue his studies in Europe, getting degrees in international relations and law, then perhaps in art history, before returning to his home country to teach, was thus no more than I believed him to be capable of. That he subsequently applied for -- and won -- a scholarship to a prestigious German university shows he is well on his way to achieving the goals he has set for himself.

For some time after my departure from CFAU, Andre and I remained in intermittent e-mail contact, writing chiefly about matters related to our respective careers. Then Andre fell silent for about a year -- until one day in April 2008. After explaining that he'd lost my e-mail address and just refound it, Andre proceeded to spew forth a polemic that, on balance, would not have been out of place in the state-controlled China Daily (or in any one of the myriad Chinese-language equivalents thereof). Among the writer's main contentions:

• there was absolutely no basis for comparison between the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and those in Berlin 1936
• the Chinese authorities were absolutely right in insisting that politics and sports be kept totally separate
• Chinese actions in Tibet, though perhaps unduly harsh, were justified, and in any case "Tibet" was a strictly domestic issue in which no outsiders had any right to interfere
• Western reportage on China was hopelessly biased and unfair
• given its own record of imperialism exploitation, racism, poverty, etc., etc., etc., the West had no right to criticize China for anything -- unless and until the West first acknowledged all its own sins
• over the past sixty years Mao and his successors had done more on behalf of their people than any other government in history
• people outside China have no legitimate reason to distrust China or the Chinese

And so it went. To be fair, though, Andre did profess an eagerness at the end of his diatribe to get my feedback.

Which profession I accepted at its face value. Stung less by the actual content of Andre's philippic -- as noted, it was no different from standard Chinese propaganda -- than by its emanating from someone who had seemed above such crude nationalistic fervor, I responded in a correspondingly implacable tone: that in my view China should never have been awarded the Olympics in the first place; that, unlike the average Chinese (or, for that matter, American), I subscribed to the Martin Luther King dogma that an injustice against one man anywhere was an injustice against all men everywhere; that the legacy of the West, though admittedly reprehensible in many ways, was more than simply racism, poverty, and imperialism (as his own decision to study at a German university attested); that Mao had killed more Chinese than all the "foreign devils" put together; that China's undeniable economic growth had not come without severe cost to people within as well as (environmentally speaking) outside China; that the West's past imperialism did not in itself justify China's present actions in places like Darfur or Zimbabwe (or, I might've added, gainsay China's own centuries-old record of imperialist conquest -- as attested by the 50+ "official" minorities residing in contemporary China); that neither Chinese history nor China's current authoritarian regime gave other Asian countries any reason to accept China's growing power without trepidation. In short, I concluded, his largely uncritical appraisal of China's actions past and present, his wholesale (and hypocritical) denunciation of the West, his implicit but obvious conviction that China and the Chinese were somehow "better" than any other nation and any other people on earth -- bespoke a spirit, a mindset, a Weltanschauung totally at odds with the humanism, the internationalism, the moral breadth of someone like (the later) Thomas Mann.

Less than 24 hours later Andre responded -- but to no avail. Never one to waste time trying to combat views rooted in willful ignorance and irrational prejudice, still less to engage in serious discussion with someone whose moral sensibilities are subordinate to considerations of country or class or religion, I tossed Andre's response into the "trash," unread. Apart from a brief letter Andre sent some four months later, in which he admitted that I was not the only person to look askance at the Beijing Olympics but did not otherwise make reference to our earlier exchange, there has been no further contact between us.

Nor can there be. For all his reading, all his ostensible openness to other cultures and other civilizations, all his apparent interest in expanding his mental horizons, Andre is at heart unwilling and, I suspect, unable to accept any idea, any creed, any point of view which runs counter to -- or at any rate does not support -- the belief in Chinese superiority that lies at the core of his intellectual being. Hence my placement of the word "dialogue" in quotation marks at the head of this entry.

To be sure, such racist/nationalist sentiment is hardly unique to China. Nor would I claim that all Chinese think this way; on the contrary, one frequently reads (in the "biased" western press) of Chinese who are genuinely desirous of making their homeland a respected and admired (rather than merely feared) contributor to humanity's welfare, and whose willingness to engage in dialogue with others is not circumscribed by reverence for Confucianism, Maoism, Sinocentrism, or other staples of China's past. But these, I'm afraid, are the exceptions rather than the rule; rarely have I encountered a people so singularly averse to criticism either of self or of country. The concrete policy implications of such unfettered arrogance on global warming, economic growth, arms proliferation, respect for human rights, and other issues affecting an entity which to this day China refuses to acknowledge -- the world community -- I leave for relevant experts to forecast. For myself, I shall simply refrain from returning to a land where ignorance and bigotry are cherished even among the elite.

UPDATE

...or where bloggers non grati are stabbed

A lifelong love affair

I fell in love with history on the same day as, though for reasons unconnected to, Richard Nixon's resignation from the White House. (Or, rather, it was reading about history that I fell in love with; the actual content of history, goodness knows, often has little "lovable" about it.) On August 9, 1974, finished (or bored) with my schoolwork and having nothing else to do, I picked up volume "C" of the World Book Encyclopedia and started browsing through it; within minutes, I was absorbed in the entry about the American Civil War. For the next two or three years I read every book I could find on the war, culminating in Shelby Foote's magnificent trilogy. Gradually, my historical interests expanded -- chronologically, geographically, thematically. While I cannot claim to be equally fascinated by every country, every era, every facet of the human experience (business and economics leave me especially uncaptivated), my interests are broad enough to preclude me from joining the ranks of the dryasdust pedants (in many disciplines besides history, of course) who have made a career (if little else) out of penning monographs that compete with each other to see which can gather the most dust on the most library shelves in the least amount of time. For better or worse, that is one competition I have neither the temperament nor the credentials to enter. More a generalist than a specialist, and more an autodidact than a creature of academe, I read whatever I think will add to my overall knowledge of the human race -- hopefully in at least a mildly felicitous fashion.

And what do I find so absorbing about history? Well, in the first place, it tells a story, a story complete with plot, setting, atmosphere, characters (even if those characters be inanimate objects like "love" or "violence" or "progress"). Focusing on people "in action," as it were, history also allows us to assess human nature on the basis of concrete observations and (David Hume notwithstanding) more or less "objective" realities. That the average human being (i.e., 99.9% of the race) has little inclination and less ability to make such assessments is itself a conclusion to be drawn from study of human history -- as is humanity's almost habitual incapacity to derive the proper lessons from the past. (And yes, these generalizations on my part are themselves open to dispute -- but only by those whose historical knowledge is limited to what they've read in the encyclopedia, or Sunday newspaper supplements, or recent monographs devoted to their particular field of expertise).

Last but not least, history offers a never-ending source of antidotes to counter the belief that we live live in either the best or the worst of all possible worlds. However great or awful today may seem, rest assured that there's always been a yesterday even more so.