Chinese learning is an internal learning, but Western learning is an external one; Chinese learning is for the cultivation of oneself, just as Western learning is for the handling of worldly affairs.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If a Chinese student does not know Chinese learning, it's like a person without a surname, a horse without a bridle, a boat without a helm. The more Western learning he possesses, the more hateful of China he will become. Even if he becomes a capable man of vast learning, how can he be of any use to the state?
We still insist, by and large, in thinking that we can understand China by simply drawing on Western experience, looking at it through Western eyes, using Western concepts. If you want to know why we unerringly seem to get China wrong... this is the reason.
I think the reason Buddhism and Western psychology are so compatible is that Western psychology helps to identify the stories and the patterns in our personal lives, but what Buddhist awareness training does is it actually allows the person to develop skills to stay in what's going on.
My tendency to idealize Western civilization arises from my nationalistic desire to use the West in order to reform China. But this has led me to overlook the flaws of Western culture.
Now, I know it's a widespread assumption in the West that as countries modernize, they also westernize. This is an illusion. It's an assumption that modernity is a product simply of competition, markets and technology. It is not. It is also shaped equally by history and culture. China is not like the West, and it will not become like the West.
Education is neither eastern nor western.
China is, indeed, in so many ways, not like the West. It is not even primarily a nation state but a civilisation state. Whereas the West has primarily been shaped by its experience of nation, China has been moulded by its sense of civilisation.
I don't know why people have divided the whole world into two groups, west and east. Education is neither eastern nor western. Education is education and it's the right of every human being.
I came, I studied architecture in America, so my technical background's completely western. But my seventeen years, the formative years of one's life, and I can't say that the Chineseness in me is not there.
My father was a schoolteacher, and so I had the advantage of both western educational instruction in the school, as well as what you might call the process of imbibing the traditional processes of education instruction around me.