Cultivating the Confucian Individual:The Confucian Education Revival in China (Palgrave Studies on Chinese Education in a Global Perspective)

by: Canglong Wang (Author)

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 27 Jun. 2023

Language: English

Print Length: 272 pages

ISBN-10: 303127668X

ISBN-13: 9783031276682

Book Description

This book explores the complexities of cultivating ‘Confucian individuals’ through classics study in contemporary China by drawing on the individualization thesis and its implications for the Confucian education revival. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a Confucian classical school, three topics are investigated:parents’ narratives and actions related to ‘dis-embedding’ their children from mainstream state education and transferring them to Confucian education as an alteative; the specific discourses and practices of teaching and leaing the classics in everyday school life, guided by the aim of training students to become autonomous leaers; and the institutional and subjective dilemmas that arise when parents and students seek to ‘re-embed’ themselves in either the state education system or further Confucian studies at an advanced academy for the next stage of education. The research presented in this book contributes to understanding the hidden dynamics of individualization in the Confucian education revival and the intricacies of subject-making through Confucian teaching and leaing in the socialist state of China.