This
Confucius Institute Debate Pushes us Further Away from Confucius and his Thought
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By You-Sheng
Li (May 2014)
When I was reading the article ¡°Toronto Confucius Institute spurs moral debate¡± by Karen Howlett and Colin Freeze in The Globe and Mail, May. 22
2014, I felt that we are further away from Confucius and his thought but it
reminds the impassable cultural gap between the Chinese and the West. When all
human societies are divided into the genetically coded primary society and the
man-made secondary society, Chinese civilization started as a super state of
primary societies while the West started with city states of typical secondary
societies. There is an impassable gap between the two types of society, since
they are at different levels like cells, tissues, and organs in our body. In
fact, the social order is aesthetic in the primary society, on which Confucius¡¯
thought was based on. Confucius was neither political nor yielding to any
economic need.
¡°Canada China China Canada China
In the 1920s when the Chinese
Nationalist leader, Sun Yat-sen, waged his a revolution against the Chinese warlords, the poor Soviet Union lent him military
help but not the rich West.
When
in 1998, I first started to study Chinese Taoist philosophy, and realized, for
the first time, the impassable cultural gap between the Chinese and the West, I
faced a similar dilemma. I was on sick leave at that time, but I faced two
groups of medical professionals: the Chinese professionals said I was mentally
sick to deserve a sick leave while Caucasians said that I had no disorder
whatsoever to deserve the sick leave. You guess what, my employer,
the powerful one was on the Chinese side while I, the patient, was on the
Caucasian side.
The
impression I received from reading Howlett's and
Freeze's article is that the authors are on the opposing side, though they
quoted views from both sides. This impression is further supported after
reading the 26 comments on Globe and Mail website. To me, all those comments
oppose the TDSB's decision. Compared to those writers
and commenters, the TDSB is the powerful one that is
on the China
I
guess the TDSB is under financial pressure to accept the Chinese subsidise.
Earle divides power in the modern secondary society into social, economic,
military, and ideological powers but believes that only economic power is
ultimately reliable and decisive. (Earle, Timothy,
2002, "Political Domination and Social evolution". p940-961.In Tim
Ingold eds,
Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology)If
how powerful one is, is proportional to one's financial freedom in using money,
it is only natural that money flows from the more powerful ones to the less
powerful ones while the public opinion is in favor of equality and opposes such
a flow. All government power comes from public that has elected it, and
therefore the TDSB should carry out the public opinion. It is a paradox that
this publicly elected government operates in the background of the modern
secondary society where all powers comes from the economic base, either in
money or in resource control.
Those who oppose the TDSB,s decision do not oppose this
flow of money from the more powerful Chinese government to the less powerful
TDSB to open a Confucius institute in Toronto
Spokesman Kevin Cavanagh
for Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., said,
¡°It is difficult for any politically neutral person to claim that Brock¡¯s CI is
compromising its academic integrity,¡± Theoretically, it is possible to accept
the money but not the opinion of whoever where the money comes from.
It is a matter for debate whether
those Confucius Institutes spread the pure Chinese culture or totally
Westernized Chinese culture. One thing is certain that their culture and
ideology is far away from the real historical Confucius and his thought.
Confucius promoted a society of aesthetic order, the primary society. He wanted
to get rid of all law-suits and any form of cruelty such as imprisonment. As a
society made by man, a secondary society can also be created according to
Confucius' ideas. Why an aesthetic secondary society is not available in the
modern world as Confucius wanted is mainly because the Westernization of the
Chinese world since the Opium War in 1840 interrupted the process of the
historical process of Confucianization of Chinese
politics and society. Tragically there was not another way out except for
entering the modern world started and dominated by the Western world.
Since the secondary society has
different types and different directions, conflicts and war are inevitable.
William Eckhardt (1995) found a close correlation between war measured in the
frequency of battles, empire measured in the total area of empires, and
civilization measured in numbers of geniuses whose superiority was established
by the consensus of encyclopedia and textbook authors. The whole world tended
to spiral upward, as a general rule during the last 5,000 years of human
civilization. In all cases, the way up not only increased the quantity of
civilization, empire, and war, but also changed the social structure to one of
greater inequality, indicated by slavery, caste, class, social stratification,
and so forth. The ancient Chinese super state led to an
unusual stability among a world of prevailing instability. (Cioffi-Revilla
and Lai, 1995) It is obvious that our history was a deviation from our ancient
democracy. The ancient Greek democracy was eventually defeated by a more
totalitarian regime but only modern democracy managed to win the Second World
War over totalitarian regimes.
Throughout human history, war was a
major factor that shaped our culture, our society, and our minds. Only the
recent relatively peaceful world after the Cold War Era allows broader views of
life, and allows us to move one step closer to the primary society. If
democracy essentially means free from feeling being controlled by others, such
a democracy can in a way be measured by subjective expressivity, which is the
unsuppressed expression of our subjective consciousness. The author cited the
frequency of the word ¡°I¡± in poetry as a subjective expressivity in history,
and found a remarkable decreasing trend of such expressivity in Chinese history
while an increased subjective expressivity was shown in Ancient Greek, Roman,
and modern English poetry. (Li, 2010) The Western started with secondary
societies but trying to improve its social conditions for humans while the
Chinese started with primary societies but transforming its society to a
secondary society. The Middle Age Europe was no doubt more humane than the
ancient Greek and Roman era characterized by slavery on a large scale.
Let us not to drive each other to
madness before enjoy our life.
* * *
The following is the article
from:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/toronto-confucius-institute-spurs-moral-debate/article18817975/
Toronto Confucius
Institute spurs moral debate
Published Thursday, May. 22 2014,
Last updated Friday, May. 23 2014,
The TDSB is embracing the institute just as
several universities are severing their ties with it because of restrictions
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Raw
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Many colleges and universities have been keen
to forge partnerships with the economic superpower to enhance their
international language and culture programs with financial support and learning
materials from Hanban. The TDSB is the second school
board in
The Confucius Institute of Toronto officially
opened this week in an office at Central Commerce Collegiate, a high school in
The
Ms. Schwartz-Maltz
said the Toronto District School Board is planning a ¡°light rollout¡± of
programs through the Confucius Institute next September. Rodrigo Fuentes,
co-director of the institute, said on Thursday evening that he is not planning
anything "that would contravene any of our board policies."
The TDSB held a banquet on Thursday evening at
a Chinese restaurant, where guests dined on crispy chicken delight and braised yifu noodle to celebrate the opening ¨C one of 440 similar
outposts worldwide, including 12 others in
TDSB chair Chris Bolton, the driving force
behind the partnership, said in 2012 that the institute is a ¡°positive
opportunity¡± because the TDSB has many Asian students and a thriving
international languages program.
¡°We¡¯re interested in supporting the first
language and culture of our students to make sure that they understand their
history in order to understand their place in
But James Turk, executive director of the
Canadian Association of University Teachers, said Canadian universities and
colleges are compromising their integrity by allowing a government known for
political censorship to have a voice in academic matters. ¡°We feel there¡¯s no
place on a campus or in a proper educational setting where political direction
should shape what teachers and students can discuss,¡± Dr. Turk said in an
interview.
Dr. Turk¡¯s association called on other
universities and colleges last December to sever their ties as well.
Unlike some of the other schools,
As for the TDSB, trustees last week voted
against asking staff to try to investigate the validity of allegations that the
Confucius Institute limits free discussion about
¡°This is one of those fishing expeditions that
really makes me nervous,¡± trustee Sheila Ward said.
Trustees adopted a motion to create a
Confucius Institute in 2010. But the initiative dates back to 2007, when Mr.
Bolton recommended setting one up at Central Commerce. Students in international
language classes from junior kindergarten to Grade 12 ¡°would benefit from
resources that would be part of the Confucius Institute,¡± the motion says.
Dr. Turk said it is ¡°irresponsible¡± for
trustees not to investigate concerns raised by his group. ¡°The fact that they
would subject their students to a program and to teaching that is partially
dictated by the political interests of the government of
Mr. Bolton did not return e-mail and phone
messages from The Globe.
