BBC Chinese School

[Dave2002]

Has anyone been watching the Chinese School "experiment" on BBC TV?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b065ylqd BBC Two

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/whats-on/ou-on-the-bbc-chinese-school-programme-1-the-year-the-golden-pig

I've been watching with grim fascination. I wonder how it's going to turn out.

I'm never quite sure why TV companies think that there'll be interest in programmes like this, and also almost all the participants are aware that the circumstances are unusual. In the case of the students in the school in question it's quite possible that their behaviour is better than normal (seems unlikely) or worse than normal (probable) because they're very much aware that there won't be any penalties, and "why not?".

I do feel sorry for the Chinese teachers - and also, as it happens, for the students. Let's hope they all get over it.

[Serial_Apologist]

Some of us were persuaded that the today much-derided progressive teaching methods of the 1960s and '70s were there to develop fully rounded, creatively unrepressed socially engaged adult human beings. Maybe it turns out that the Chinese (and Japanese) methods based on sit up, listen, take orders and shut up are in reality the ones necessary for inculcating obedient robots suitable for today's world of conformism and commerce; and this as part of the population softening up process is what the programmes set out to demonstrate?

[Richard Tarleton]

I didn't watch the programmes (the trailers were enough) but heard Simon Jenkins being quite bracing about it on Today (I think it was, could have been PM).

[Serial_Apologist]

I didn't watch the programmes (the trailers were enough) but heard Simon Jenkins being quite bracing about it on Today (I think it was, could have been PM).

One might be forgiven for being surprised to find me in enthusiastic agreement with Jenkins's article there, for which thanks, Richard. SJ is one of those people I'd always judged pretty Conservative on most issues, until I saw him on a programme travelling through the Camden district of London deploring the gulf between amenities serving the rich and the poor along the route, and calling iirc for a return to principles of public service and services.

Arguably it is on issues of this kind that those of us who still think of ourselves as on the left can today make common cause with those on the right who look beyond special interest, or at least use such opportunities to open the possibility of articulate dialogue on areas of continuing disagreement rather than resorting to the usual mutual slagging off.

[Dave2002]

One might be forgiven for being surprised to find me in enthusiastic agreement with Jenkins's article there, for which thanks, Richard. SJ is one of those people I'd always judged pretty Conservative on most issues, until I saw him on a programme travelling through the Camden district of London deploring the gulf between amenities serving the rich and the poor along the route, and calling iirc for a return to principles of public service and services.

Arguably it is on issues of this kind that those of us who still think of ourselves as on the left can today make common cause with those on the right who look beyond special interest, or at least use such opportunities to open the possibility of articulate dialogue on areas of continuing disagreement rather than resorting to the usual mutual slagging off.

SJ's article is not terrible, though he pulls out this view which shows limited understanding:

the most publicised scores related to one subject, maths, for the obvious reason that maths could most easily be rote-learned and recorded.

I doubt very much whether serious maths can be rote learned, though I have met students who to my amazement thought it made sense for them to learn the answers to specific questions, rather than treat each question as a new entity and apply appropriate methods.

In fairness to SJ though, if the questions in the tests used for comparison are formulaic and the marking is not very imaginative, then the outcomes could be as he describes.

[doversoul1]

I agree with Simon Jenkins that Britain shouldn’t rush into copying Chinese exam system but not for the reasons he sites. He says that this is ‘no path to creativity, challenge or happiness’. I wonder if he ever thought about what ‘happiness’ looks like in a culture that is based on a profoundly different value system from that of Britain or for that matter of the West. Can you imagine what happiness may look like in a culture that has no concept of individual? I can’t speak for China but the extent of difference must be similar.

In this ‘globalised’ age, we easily forget that the sameness is only the surface. Peel off a couple of layers and we’ll see something quite beyond our comprehension. To young people in China, this exam may be a good way to achieve the happiness they are aiming at. And who are we, in the West to say that that is not happiness?

[Serial_Apologist]

Can you imagine what happiness may look like in a culture that has no concept of individual? I can’t speak for China but the extent of difference must be similar.

In this ‘globalised’ age, we easily forget that the sameness is only the surface. Peel off a couple of layers and we’ll see something quite beyond our comprehension. To young people in China, this exam may be a good way to achieve the happiness they are aiming at. And who are we, in the West to say that that is not happiness?

One of the things one thought (or hoped) we in the West learned from some of the Far Eastern paths of spiritual realisation is that the idea we have of the Self is a disconnected one: by religion, by ideas of "the survival of the fittest", and by an economic system promising unsustainability in terms of equating perpetual consumption with happiness at the expense of creativity and just the mere connectivity of being together with each other and the natural order that produced our intelligence in the here and now, which our Western religions preserved in silence, but at the expense of a negative and contradictory model of what it is to be human.

Starting from now we can change the state of our minds but not the inculcated peer group pressures on the young at their most impressionable to conform with the values that sustain the engine of wasteful, substitutionist consumption we presently have - for which we have, as a precondition - but not in isolation! - to change the economics and the politics the grow thereon.

[doversoul1]

S-A
For connection to occur, there needs to be individuals in the first place; individuals who are aware of their own boundaries. This is not the case in Japanese culture or probably more accurate to say, in Japanese society. Western society is a sack of pebbles whereas Japanese society is a bucket of water. Being together is a very good thing when it is done on purpose and by will but when ‘we’ is the absolute unit, life, and indeed happiness, looks very different. Imagine yourself being a pebble in a bucket of water.

I think self in Zen philosophy is something different from individual in a cultural or social sense, and Zen in Japan is probably an equivalent to Greek philosophy here in that they are both intellectual exercise rather than the fiber of people’s daily lives.

But this thread is about China, so I’d better stop going on.

[ed.] I forgot to add the critical point: the sate of ‘we’ is not an imposed state by a few in the power. It is a perfectly natural state of the people’s mind.

[Serial_Apologist]

Hi dovers.

Apologies for being slow in coming back to try and answer the really interesting points you raise in your above message; I've been thinking hard about it and trying to find a reply. So here goes!

S-A
For connection to occur, there needs to be individuals in the first place; individuals who are aware of their own boundaries.

Wouldn't one say, though, that individuality in any culture arises gradually through the processes of enculturation in any society? What it seems to me happens is that the human being, of whatever culture, is born with certain abilities and temperamental characteristics which are peculiar to itself, but that these become amplified, suppressed and modified through its active and passive interactions with others - who give it its sense of "me"-ness - and with language, by means of which it comes to express that distinctive sense of itself that languages evoke.

To the extent that language, an artificial construct evolved by civilisations primarily as a means for the practical running of everyday affairs, defines the individual's sense of him or herself, we can see that description, consisting as it does of units of entities and actions, and subjects and objects - arranged as speech and writing according to the syntactical and grammatical peculiarities of any given language - can, through the weight of authority societies invest in word-power, have the power to override other more instinctual or intuitive modalities of (self)-perception, and even "read across" to the assessment of images which themselves, as linguistics reveal, take on a "natural" appearance that is in fact mainly bestowed on them by description. In simplest terms, as evolved individuals we "see" an oak tree even before we see it as just a tree, while at a more complex level we experience some socially-determined "blemish" in ourselves, say a speech impediment or red hair, before we have the critical reference point available to see it differently, whichis to say by recognising that the "self", as a part of language, is, like language, a social construct.

Leaving aside, for purposes of this aspect of self-knowledge, trauma and its modifying effects within this scenario of the developing "self", much of psychology is involved in attempting to counteract the negative effects of this kind of language or description-determined conditioning; and it mostly does this by persuading the victim to create an alternative self-definition - but still one which is language-based: I am not the person you claim me to be, I am this person, etc.

This is not the case in Japanese culture or probably more accurate to say, in Japanese society. Western society is a sack of pebbles whereas Japanese society is a bucket of water. Being together is a very good thing when it is done on purpose and by will but when ‘we’ is the absolute unit, life, and indeed happiness, looks very different. Imagine yourself being a pebble in a bucket of water.

Alan Watts, who studied with Suzuki and underwent Zen training in Japan long before "oriental mysticism" became misrepresented by many of its Western variants in the 1960s and 1970s, pointed out that some of the linguistic differences between Chinese and European languages which, in the former, place more emphasis on action - doing, "musicking" in Ferney's words, etc - than on agent and recipient, which is to say the doer and done to, have not prevented the "problem of the ego" arising in cultures sharing this linguistic trait any less than in the West, where language conventions do have this separative tendency into actor and action - and that this explains the importance of Zen and Taoism (from which Zen sprang in part) in those cultures.

I think self in Zen philosophy is something different from individual in a cultural or social sense, and Zen in Japan is probably an equivalent to Greek philosophy here in that they are both intellectual exercise rather than the fiber of people’s daily lives.

From what I understand Zen seeks to bring about an understanding that transcends any notion of there being a self that can be separated from its environment, whether human, animal, vegetable or mineral; but it sees the "problem of self" as peculiar to humans insofar as being tied up with the capacity of language to confuse the described with the actual, or the menu with the meal. Accessing the actual has to take a route that circumvents verbal description by favouring direct perception. I think this only becomes an "intellectual" pursuit when language can so to speak turn itself inside out to point beyond itself, or when by a similar means to the way description can come to override the inner reality of the described it infuses the fibres of music and musical discourse to such an extent that music can apparently only be understood by its being described.

But this thread is about China, so I’d better stop going on.

I think it's about more than cultural specifics, for the aforeto reasons.

[ed.] I forgot to add the critical point: the s[t]ate of ‘we’ is not an imposed state by a few in the power. It is a perfectly natural state of the people’s mind.

What is natural, though?

[doversoul1]

S-A
I borrow your opening paragraph for now. Please read it in future tense (i.e. I'll be back when my brain lets me)

Apologies for being slow in coming back to try and answer the really interesting points you raise in your above message; I've been thinking hard about it and trying to find a reply. So here goes!

[doversoul1]

Wouldn't one say, though, that individuality in any culture arises gradually through the processes of enculturation in any society? What it seems to me happens is [...] through its active and passive interactions with others - who give it its sense of "me"-ness - and with language, by means of which it comes to express that distinctive sense of itself that languages evoke.

One would, over here in the West where individuality matters but not in a culture that has no concept of it (individuality) and sees the sense of ‘me’-ness as something to be grown out of in the similar way as childish self-centredness. And Japanese language, especially in spoken form, rarely requires the use of ‘I’.

To the extent that language,…

I’m not quite sure if I have understood this paragraph. Would you mind explaining it further?

…to create an alternative self-definition - but still one which is language-based: I am not the person you claim me to be, I am this person

Again, in the culture (or society) in which all is about ‘we’, self-definition is not something people are too concerned, or even able to perceive what it is.

Alan Watts, who studied with Suzuki and underwent Zen training in Japan long before "oriental mysticism" became misrepresented by many of its Western variants in the 1960s and 1970s, pointed out that some of the linguistic differences between Chinese and European languages which, in the former, place more emphasis on action - doing, "musicking" in Ferney's words, etc - than on agent and recipient, which is to say the doer and done to, have not prevented the "problem of the ego" arising in cultures sharing this linguistic trait any less than in the West, where language conventions do have this separative tendency into actor and action

Suzuki has been criticised by some for Westernising Zen but I think that’s hardly fair. What else could he have done to write something that did not exist in the culture but to adapt to its language so that it could be comprehensible to the readers?

I am not quite sure about the point Watts makes about Chinese language. If Chinese language looks as if it emphasises action words, it is probably because doer and done to are understood by the sentence. This is similar in Japanese; pronouns, including personal pronouns, are not part of its linguistic structure but are used only when it needs to be clarified. For example, ‘the book I told you about yesterday’ can be ‘book told about yesterday’. In the case of Japanese, you could say that this is because it is a consensus based rather than grammar based language.

Sorry, S-A, I don’t quite understand the point about the problem of the ego. Is Watts saying that the difference in languages shows the difference in cultures or is he saying that despite the difference, all cultures are much the same when it comes to the problem of the ego?

- and that this explains the importance of Zen and Taoism (from which Zen sprang in part) in those cultures

I thought Zen derived from of one of the two sectors of Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism; the other being Theravada Buddhism, and Taoism was a separate religion/teaching.

it sees the "problem of self" as peculiar to humans insofar as being tied up with the capacity of language to confuse the described with the actual, or the menu with the meal. Accessing the actual has to take a route that circumvents verbal description by favouring direct perception. I think this only becomes an "intellectual" pursuit when language can so to speak turn itself inside out to point beyond itself, or when by a similar means to the way description can come to override the inner reality of the described

It’s been a long time since I read about Zen in any depth, well, more like in quantity, and in those days, books were serious business. That was why I said Zen was like philosophy (or theology, maybe) and not something you could refer to in everyday life. Anyway, from my now rather faded memory, I understand the term that is translated into ‘self’ as an element of human nature; something common in all of us that has a strong tendency to be attached to all the worldly things and desires, and not the awareness of unique self, the me-ness, in the Western sense.

As for language, I think Zen sees language as insufficient therefore one should not depend upon it.

What is natural, though?

Something that is in DNA, is my way of explaining many things people do there that cannot be explained in any other way over here.

[Serial_Apologist]

One would, over here in the West where individuality matters but not in a culture that has no concept of it (individuality) and sees the sense of ‘me’-ness as something to be grown out of in the similar way as childish self-centredness. And Japanese language, especially in spoken form, rarely requires the use of ‘I’.

This view of the self subordinated to the mass will have to change if Chinese society is to successfully adapt to capitalism, with its dependence on individualism.

I’m not quite sure if I have understood this paragraph. Would you mind explaining it further?

What I was trying to get at was that, given not only that our idea or ideas of ourselves are language-dependent, and therefore prone to the codes and definitions necessary for fitting in with what society expects, but also that alternative ways of seeing ourselves, not (as in your examples) as part of someone else's imposed standards of uniformity, but as part of the efficient self-regulatory system of nature (until we came along and started messing it all up), it is understandable that Western social mores, and especially its religions, being based (as they are) on the primacy of "The Word being God" etc., and largely mistrustful of the natural, should have become the effective social regulators they undoubtedly are.

[Again, in the culture (or society) in which all is about ‘we’, self-definition is not something people are too concerned, or even able to perceive what it is.

All would be very different, I think, if the collective "we" were to be based on a broader model than that of the human race as distinct from, and threatened by nature - which only serves those who benefit from ordering others about by acquiring enormous income, power and privilege, and state systems, whether capitalist or "communist", to back themselves up.

Suzuki has been criticised by some for Westernising Zen but I think that’s hardly fair. What else could he have done to write something that did not exist in the culture but to adapt to its language so that it could be comprehensible to the readers?

I agree.

I am not quite sure about the point Watts makes about Chinese language. If Chinese language looks as if it emphasises action words, it is probably because doer and done to are understood by the sentence. This is similar in Japanese; pronouns, including personal pronouns, are not part of its linguistic structure but are used only when it needs to be clarified. For example, ‘the book I told you about yesterday’ can be ‘book told about yesterday’. In the case of Japanese, you could say that this is because it is a consensus based rather than grammar based language.

What you have written there is most interesting, since it backs up what Watts wrote in The Way of Zen, which has been my main means of finding out about this subject.

Sorry, S-A, I don’t quite understand the point about the problem of the ego. Is Watts saying that the difference in languages shows the difference in cultures or is he saying that despite the difference, all cultures are much the same when it comes to the problem of the ego?

I understand Watts to mean the latter. It is less differences between the specific characteristics of ego manifestation in different societies that are important, than the ego itself, which he saw as a false means of adaptation, hypostasised as a separate entity within an organism itself cut off from its natural endowment and dependent on memory - which by virtue of the primacy of mental engagement lives in a future which forever postpones living in the present, (for which drugs, drink, gambling etc are substitutes), or a past which can't be changed; and reinforcement, which means unquestioning compliance with society's expectations implanted by family and maintained by peer group pressure.

I thought Zen derived from of one of the two sectors of Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism; the other being Theravada Buddhism, and Taoism was a separate religion/teaching.

According not only to Watts, the lineage of Zen lies in the meeting of Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism, which took place in Japan after the two traditions had coexisted reasonably peacefully in China. I'd need to re-look up the sources.

It’s been a long time since I read about Zen in any depth, well, more like in quantity, and in those days, books were serious business. That was why I said Zen was like philosophy (or theology, maybe) and not something you could refer to in everyday life. Anyway, from my now rather faded memory, I understand the term that is translated into ‘self’ as an element of human nature; something common in all of us that has a strong tendency to be attached to all the worldly things and desires, and not the awareness of unique self, the me-ness, in the Western sense.

Well, in common with the longer traditions that emanated out of the Indian sub-continent, Zen is very much about doing rather than thinking, and mainly (I think) involves itself in intellection to point out the shortcomings of language when dealing in "the spiritual". It continues to this day in observances such as the Tea ceremony, flower arranging, calligraphy, and the arts of swordsmanship and archery: if you haven't read Eugen Herrigel's "Zen and the Art of Archery" I strongly recommend it. Listening to as much as playing music (especially improvising music with others) is important - and the less music is permeated by inner analogies with language the better, which is maybe why you prefer the pre-Classical? - as well as Mindfulness finally starting to catch on as a means of gainsaying the stresses of modern life.

As for language, I think Zen sees language as insufficient therefore one should not depend upon it.

Yes, that's right.

Something that is in DNA, is my way of explaining many things people do there that cannot be explained in any other way over here.

I think I asked the question "what is natural" because you had written that the sense of "we" that is particular to Chinese and Japanese societies was natural, by which I presumed you meant inborn, and, as you say, not imposed by society; but I think that presupposes a lot of other considerations which I may have managed to articulate more clearly this time.

Unlike those that argue these issues to be of academic interest only, I think they are of enormous importance to the survival of humanity, tied up inextricably with decision-making on matters to do with the environment and sustainability, and the way we see and treat ourselves and others.

[doversoul1]

S-A
My brain is feeling like a piece of overstretched elastic band at the moment, so I shan’t tackle the whole of your post but just one point which I though might come up: Zen and Taoism.

According not only to Watts, the lineage of Zen lies in the meeting of Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism, which took place in Japan after the two traditions had coexisted reasonably peacefully in China. I'd need to re-look up the sources

The origin of Zen goes back to the 7th century (the date might be debatable) China. It came to Japan in the 13th century as an established teaching. A possible reason why it is thought to be established in Japan may be that, in Chinese Zen, the use of doctrine was disapproved, whereas once it arrived in Japan, the doctrine (or doctrines, since Zen has branched out into a number of schools) was developed with earnest. So you could say that Zen doctrine originates in Japan.

Taoism came to Japan alongside with Buddhism in the 6th century (I think) but never really rooted. This is absolutely nothing more than my guess but if Taoism 道教is thought to be part of Zen, it may because the way the word Tao (the way 道) is contained in many things that are considered to be expressions or influence of Zen: tea ceremony茶道, flower arranging花道, archery,弓道 or the code of samurai武士道. (does this make sense?)

However, this use of ‘’way’ 道 simply means art: art of tea (tea-ing ) etc, and Zen teaching clearly underlines these arts.

More (much) later.

[ed.] ah, you mention tea ceremony in your post, too. I’ll read it more carefully and think about it.

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks dovers - I've really enjoyed our exchange; more when you feel like it. Did you see the final episode of the programme tonight? It certainly highlighted cultural differences, but in many ways these were as much between education methods in Britain today and what they were when I was at school in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when a lot of our learning was by rote as well.

[doversoul1]

S-A
Just a thought. How much do you know about Shintoism, the indigenous belief system in (of?) Japan? It sees a god/spiri*t in everything in Nature (animals, plants, weather, and geological phenomenon and entities) and sees that human beings are at complete mercy of these gods. This definitely distinguishes the national mentality of Japan from that of China. Japan imported Chinese culture wholesale at the beginning of its civilisation but when I think about it, this was Culture: from the design of the capital city to laws and learnings, whereas its culture, daily lives of people, has largely kept the link with Shintoism. And this was what made me say that Zen was more a philosophy than a religion that influences people’s everyday lives.

As for the programme, no I didn’t see it, as I don’t watch television. However, I have seen news and documentaries about Chine while I stayed in Japan. I also remember how things were back in 1960s when thousands of school children intoned Mao’s teaching and waved the little red book. It was truly scary. It was not so different from what seems to be happening in North Korea today.

I have enjoyed the exchange very much, too. Now back to the programme (at least for now ). Sorry about all this Dave2002.

*Unlike Greek gods, these gods are not immortals who have power over mortals. Shinto gods seem to me just exist for humans to think about them (I'm not expressing myself too well here).