John Dewey, Liang Shuming, and China's Education Reform: Cultivating Individuality

This book combines a succinct philosophical stance with practical implications to address China’s modern transition and education reform. The author is driven by a quest for inclusive individuality amidst far-reaching social changes. Readers are invited to engage in the dialogue with Dewey, Liang and the author to consider the tensions between Confucian tradition and westernization, and between individualism and community living. As I read the book I was captivated by the author’s passionate quest, beginning with the discovery of an absence of the self in her own schooling despite her having met all the demands for high achievement. Despite the speed of social, economic, and cultural changes being widely felt, this book has made a valuable contribution to understanding ongoing continuities. . . .[T]he author presents a salient thesis to highlight the critical difference between a self conducted process of being transformed and a self-transformation process. . . .While the book has opened up many avenues for meaningful intellectual and practical journeying, the conclusion has come back to the vision for China’s education reform with a clear critique of the dominant social culture of exclusive success, which undoubtedly carries global significance for the moral development of all educators in our global village.

This is a unique and timely book about Chinese education, and about education overall. In the drive for competitive edge and “success” in the material world, the true purpose of education, and the true purpose of our living a life, is lost. Education should help us realize who we are, in terms of our authentic unique self, and also in terms of our larger inclusive social self. This process involves intelligence, inner struggles, self-enlightenment, and new pedagogical strategies. This book helps us to ponder educational reforms in China, but also other challenges in education throughout the world. The dialogue between John Dewey and Liang Shuming shows that cultivating our individuality involves many layers: the inner and outer, self and selfless, and self-transformation and social transformation are intricately intertwined.

This vivid narrative draws on core ideas from John Dewey and Liang Shuming, China’s last Confucian, to develop the concept of an inclusive individuality that can root the self at a time of rapid social change across our globe. Zhang provides a bridge between the educational worlds of China and North America, highlighting profound lessons that can be learned from each side in a dialogue across civilizations. It is an essential read for all those who wish to understand an emerging China.