Return to the Cave

Return to the Cave:
Education in a Transitional Society
1. Introduction

As John Dewey said, different societies have different types of education, so does the spirit, material and method of education. He said, “to make the general ideas set forth applicable to our own educational practice, it is, therefore, necessary to closer quarter with the nature of present social life” (Dewey, 1916). In this paper, I present my philosophy of education, as shaped by my life experiences as a member of Chinese society but influenced by my exposure to American society in the last two years.
More specifically, I have come to realize that education has two levels. At one level, education offers knowledge and information, providing people with a range of skills, from literacy to science and mathematics. At a second level, education teaches people to discover themselves, to fulfill their natural gifts and to pursue the truths of life. At both levels, there is a central figure involved: the teacher. In schools, instructors are central and in life’s education processes we also encounter influential persons who are also our teachers. In this paper, I trace both my philosophy of the role of teaching in education and my own narrative in my voyage to become a teacher as well.

2. The Cave

My homeland, China, was essentially a feudal society for over two thousand years (221B.C. to 1912A.D.), a mixture of feudal, colonial and democratic societies for 37 years (1912-1949), and a typical communist society for 29 years (1949-1978). After 1978, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began to implement economic reforms that transformed China’s formerly planned economy into a Chinese-style market economy with somewhat similar characters to western-style market economies. The CCP has also made some political reforms, but compared with its economic reform, the political changes have been very small.
According to Plato’s Republic, there are five forms of government: the ideal states ruled by philosopher kings, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. I would catalog the present Chinese government as a tyranny, although I believe this is a transitional system and that the country will move toward democratic reforms as its economic development process accelerates and as the historical wave of countries that have moved to democracy continues.
Under this transitional society, there is a philosophical void to guide people’s hearts. About 100 years ago, many Chinese were looking for the reasons why China was a weak nation, and they attributed it to Chinese old philosophy---as expressed by Confucius Idea. So many criticized this philosophical worldview and converted instead to Marxist ideas, which were adapted by Mao and other communist followers to a society that was mostly feudal, and peasant-based (see Schurmann, 1968). This process reached its peak during the Cultural Revolution, which started in the mid-1960s, when the communist movement decided to get rid of any remaining pockets of Confucius ideas. Formal, academic education was essentially stopped and Chinese people were told to be educated in practice, with communist principles as the only guiding philosophy.
After 1978, the CCP changed its economic policies and Marxist economic ideas were heavily criticized, but still, in the political field, the CCP maintained its communist ideology and its control over the political system. This has generated a big conflict in the whole society. People are taught Marxism in school, but the whole society has changed and no one really believes those ideas any more. Recognizing this divide, the CCP has directed people to pursue material wealth, hoping that this focus will allow them to control people’s minds, but people cannot live without a spiritual foundation, without principles and philosophy. This has led to CCP to strengthen their grip on ideology and power. In schools, in the media, and elsewhere, discussion of freedom, democracy and alternative philosophies are strictly controlled. People cannot have any freedom of independent thinking, freedom of belief, and they are afraid to criticize the government.
The image I have of Chinese society at the present time is that of a dark cave. The schools, the media, etc. function in the shadow; and people can only see the shadows and are happy with the shadows, believing that the shadows are the truth. The CCP ideology taught in the schools and in the media feeds this illusion.
But there are some people who question the state’s monopoly on ideology, they think on their own, and can escape from the cave. Some are illuminated by their own self-consciousness and the need for freedom and self-determination. Western philosophers such as Rousseau, religious beliefs and their faith in God motivate others. They began to wake up, to break their chains, and escape to the outside. I am one of them.
As a former member of the Cave, I lived a very comfortable life there. But my exit is not connected to wealth. I am exiled by my own soul, a soul seeking freedom. I would rather live in light than stay in darkness. I believe the philosophy postulated by Rousseau and others that a basic human characteristic is self-determination. The pursuit of freedom is in our human nature, the calling from our soul. If you have never been in the Cave, you will never understand the empty feeling of living in shadows and the satisfaction of receiving light, of thinking and speaking freely, even while suffering some material shortage and a harder life.
I have told my own stories in my first paper---a way to enlightenment. Now, it is my time for me to prepare to return to the cave, to awake the other sleepy souls.
That is the reason I want to be a teacher. …

3. To be enlightened, to be a teacher, to return to the cave

What is the function of a teacher? An ancient Chinese scholar Hanyu said, “A teacher is someone who could propagate the Tao (the truth), impart professional knowledge, and resolve doubts.” This idea, that teachers seek to develop the ability of their students to think, to find the truth, to answer questions, resonates all the way to the present, as in the poem by John Schlatter: “I am a Teacher. I was born the first moment that a question leaped from the mouth of a child. I have been many people in many places. I am Socrates exciting the youth of Athens to discover new ideas through the use of questions. I am Anne Sullivan tapping out the secrets of the universe into the outstretched hand of Helen Keller. I am Aesop and Hans Christian Andersen revealing truth through countless stories.”
To fulfill these functions requires a teaching profession of the highest excellence. This is an issue that has resonated with educational researchers everywhere. I agree that only “the best and brightest should be entitled to teach” (Tomorrow’s Teachers, 1986).
And along this view, it means that the society should treat teachers with the highest respect. Historically, societies that gave the highest prestige to philosophers, scholars, and intellectuals also had some of the longest-lasting influences on the world. At the present time, it is, in fact, those school systems that see teaching as a high-prestige occupation in their country that have been the most successful, whether in Finland or in Singapore.
In Chinese history, teachers were highly respected; they have been called fathers of the children, or the holy persons. But since the Cultural Revolution, this tradition has been destroyed completely. At that time, teachers and professors became the symbol of “capitalist bourgeois intellectualism,” and the profession moved to the bottom of the ladder in prestige. Despite changes since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, teachers remain today with much lower prestige within the society. That is the tragedy of China as a society.
Now I am myself here at Teachers College, studying philosophy, economics, education, politics and so on, to become a teacher and –with others—change Chinese society so it recognizes the value of teachers. I love the knowledge I am acquiring at TC, because I believe knowledge can answer the questions in my life and enlighten me, just as I also believe that it can and should enlighten those back home in the Cave. I believe many of my country-people have the same questions as I have and they need to be enlightened as I needed before when I was there. So, it is our duty, us, who have escaped to return to the cave to educate our people with the truth we have learned. This is our duty, because the land there is our home. Although we have escaped, we still belong. The blood in our body, the food we have been feed, the culture we have been instilled etc., those are connections between us and the homeland that can never be broken. So, it is our duty now to be freely educated and to return to the cave, to be teachers, to wake up others, to save them. As teachers, we must become the best, wisest, and the noblest to do that.
My thinking on these issues follows John Dewey’s. He himself saw democratic institutions as the basis for strong, progressive societies. As he says: “Such societies were found to be democratic in quality, because of the greater freedom allowed the constituent members, and the conscious need of securing in individuals a consciously socialized interest, instead of trusting mainly to the force of customs operating under the control of a superior class.” And he saw education, and teachers specifically, as being crucial to sustaining and developing democratic institutions. He believed that the teacher needed to be gifted, stating that the teacher was “the prophet of God” and the “usherer of the true kingdom of God.”
Education is a timeless, lifelong process for human beings. The development of new knowledge and the transmission to society is a timeless activity. For those countries that are in Caves, our escape from those Caves is also a timeless mission, for the cave in China is one of many that mankind needs to dispel. In a world of great poverty, inequality, environmental degradation, etc., the presence of democracy and freedom of thought is one of many tasks that need to be accomplished. There are still many other caves in human life. The truth is far away, happiness is far away.
Will there always be caves that we can never escape from? The answer is yes, of course. Then it is the teacher’s duty to provide mankind with the light of hope. To tell us that despite the darkness, there is truth out there that we need to continue seeking. And to tell us that we should never give up to pursuit of truth.

4. Characters of present Chinese Education and the Purposes of Education

In understanding the Cave, I want to sketch in more detail some of the main problems facing Chinese education. A serious challenge in present Chinese education system is that the teachers do not know the purpose of their teaching and students do not know what the purpose of study is. According to both teachers and students, the goal of schooling is to obtain higher scores on exams. So, areas of study that are not tested are ignored and those that are tested are studied only insofar as they can improve test scores.
As a product of this system, I also thought that the goal of studying was to get higher test scores. Paradoxically, I first questioned this view until when I became thirty years old and decided to go to graduate school in US, which required me to prepare for the GRE. I was reading a GRE test review book that asked the question of why we should study. The answer given by the book was that we should study to: “make our mind a pleasant place in which to spend our time; to replace an empty mind with an open one; to help us to become autonomous, creative, inquiring people who have the will and intelligence to create our own destiny; to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of one’s life to oneself and to others. This is a basic architecture of a life; the rest is ornamentation and decoration of the structure; to let each child have a chance of equal opportunity, not to become equal, but to become different to realize whatever unique potential of body, mind, and spirit he or she possesses”. Tears came down my cheek at that time for I was awakened abruptly by these words and I began to feel that I have been cleverer from then on.
Another problem in Chinese education is at a second level; the Chinese teach students a view of their society that is far away from the reality. So, not only does the educational system has as a goal to train students to become tests machines, but also to train citizens who will not think by themselves and will not question government. So they force students to receive communist ideology and nationalist ideas when they are very young, from kindergarten to university.
Another issue in Chinese education relates to the huge inequality in schooling between poor rural and richer urban schools, so the kids in rural areas can hardly change their fate from the lower class, and hardly realize that others have taken rights and benefits that they do not have. Without a great amount of schooling, rural populations just migrate and become part of the huge, cheap urban labor market that helps make profits for very few in the country. So as Dewey said, what he considered to be a poor educational system will educate some people to become masters, and others to become slaves. This is the case of China.
How would the educational system differ, if the cave were to be removed? In China, children and youth are educated to become citizens of a society that is based on control by the CCP and where dissent and freedom of expression is limited on this regard. A democratic society also educates people to be good citizens in their society. The difference is that, as Dewey emphasizes, the democratic society is set up for the mutual benefit of the people. By definition, democracy is based on the choices of most of the people in a country, so it will be to the benefit of most people in that society.
In a democracy, people have freedom of the press and many choices to acquire information, and they have the freedom also to not to listen to some ideas they do not like. But in a tyranny, most people are excluded from obtaining full information about the society and there is no freedom of choice. Only successes are advertised and mistakes are hidden. The Chinese system is constantly advertised as a success, with a focus on some economic results while ignoring others, such as the rising inequality, the growing environmental deterioration and congestion, etc.
Of course, the tension between educating a free-thinking individual and one that can function within society’s rules and conventions still exists within any regime, whether democratic or tyrannical. Rousseau in Emile declared that “Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.” He wished to educate children with the natural goodness of human nature. But Rousseau also acknowledged that every society “must choose between making a man or a citizen” and that the best “social institutions are those that best know how to denature man, to take his absolute existence from him in order to give him a relative one and transport the I into the common unity.” To “denature man” for Rousseau is to suppress some of the “natural” instincts that he extols in The Social Contract. It is an effort to explain how natural man can live within society. John Dewey also points out other purpose as Social Efficiency, which is similar to Rousseau’s second idea---is to supply precisely what nature fails to secure; namely, habituation of an individual to social control; subordination of natural powers to social rules. It can be translated into specific aims, such as to equip people with abilities or skills to have a better life; to be a good citizen.
` As for me, what are the goals of education? I think there are four basic levels of education.
The most important and urgent education, especially in a transitional society such as China, is awaking people’s soul, enlighten them to realize their freedom and self-determination as individuals, to discover their rights and to guide them to the light of truth. This is the first phase of education. I do not believe it can be implemented in a tyranny society officially. When souls wake up, they will not follow the tyranny’s rules, and they will begin to discover themselves the inhumanity of tyranny.
The second phase is making people discover their own natural gifts and make good use of those gifts to achieve everyone’s mission in society and their right to
pursue a meaningful and happy life. I assume that this phase could be implemented in both democracies and tyrannies.
The third phase is John Dewey’s aim: to educate individuals to become good citizens. For China, this can only be implemented when it can be transmitted in a democratic society. I think the social efficiency also means that all members in the society seek to democratically bargain for and negotiate a social contract which provides a mutually beneficial outcome. Ideally, this way society can get to a Pareto efficient outcome, where no one individual can be better off without making another individual worse off. No further improvements can be made and the whole society gets to a balance where everybody is the happiest they can be. This is my ideal society.
The highest level of education is Rousseau’s return to a true man. As Dewey said, Rousseau had identified “God with Nature, to him, the original powers are wholly good, coming directly from a wise and good creator”. I think the message he brought about us---maybe the only way for the future of human beings-- is to return to the Garden of Eden, and human return to true man, where there is no sin, no suffering, no inequality and everything is good…we can finally live poetically on the earth….so to make human return to nature, the eternal teacher is God himself, or truth , or life. I think that is why Dewey thinks teachers are “the prophet of God” and the “usherer of the true kingdom of God.” This level is idyllic in nature and is likely no society can achieve it.

5. Some Methods of Education

In terms of teaching, I start by noting that as human beings of teachers, or even Prophets of God, have many limitations compared with God himself and should be modest. Dewey himself said that teachers can learn from children: ‘With respect to sympathetic curiosity, unbiased responsiveness, and openness of mind, we many that the adult should be growing in childlikeness”.
The same point was made by Hanyu in a different way: “Anyone who was born before me and learned the Tao before me is my teacher. Anyone who was born after me and learned the Tao after me is also my teacher. Where there is the Tao, there is my teacher. The ancient sages did not limit themselves to particular teachers. Confucius had learned from who were not as virtuous and talented as him. He said ‘If three men are walking together, one of them is bound to be good enough to be my teacher’. A student is not necessarily inferior to his teacher, nor does a teacher necessarily be more virtuous and talented than his student. The real fact is that one might have learned the doctrine earlier than the other, or might be a master in his own special field”.
Some things we need to leave to Nature to teach, as Rousseau did for Emile. Since the highest level purpose of education is to return to true man, and since children are purest and the most beautiful creatures, some part of education must just let children grow up by themselves, with nature as their teachers. As a tree in the wilderness, they will naturally grow as well in this regard. Education is a process of living, as Dewey said. So we should give back some time to children for themselves, to let them play with their peers, with their own games rules, to set up their own worlds, and do not disturb them with our false ideas.
But since children will need to enter into society, we still need to educate them with the knowledge of that society. The teaching of Socrates---questions and dialogs-- is a good way of teaching and learning. The teacher is just directing students to realize the truth in their inner heart. In fact, the hardest knowledge to acquire, for which there are no standard answers, this way may be the best approach.
Show students what we have learned in any specific field. This kind of knowledge is accumulated in human civilization, and needs to be transferred to the next generations. For applied knowledge one must also learn from life, from experience, experiments.

6. The target of Education

The first and most important target of education is children. So in a transitional society, it is urgent to save our kids first from the cave, because they are the future. Since they have not been polluted by human concerns over ideology, power, etc., and they can therefore achieve more easily the educational levels and paths I discussed earlier.
There are a number of important challenges for children in Chinese society today. Educational researchers, for example, often note the lack of creativity and innovation displayed in Chinese classrooms (Tobin, Wu and Davidson, 1989). The emphasis on discipline which permeates the CCP-based system of education tends to have this consequence, which is disastrous for free-thinking, innovative individuals. In the U.S., American children tend to be more improvisational and creative because in their mind there is no forbidden area to restrict their thinking ---they can fly if they want. The ideology of limiting thinking has resulted in a rigid and disciplinary system of schooling that restricts individuality.
The one child policy adopted by China to reduce population growth has also had some other consequences. In seeking to obey the policy, families have fallen into actions that reflect no respect for children and life. In rural areas, the old life style and ideas still exist and people are eager to have a son. As a result of the One Child Policy, many girl babies have been aborted. In addition, one wonders about the consequences for Chinese children of not having brothers and sisters, and whether this may affect their feelings of sharing, caring, and courtesy. Furthermore, parents often put lots of pressures on the one child they have since their future hopes are often based on that one child. They have the heaviest school bags, the least hours of sleep and play compared with their peers in the world.
The second target of education is adult, especially in rural areas. This represents one of the areas of inequality in the country that I noted earlier. Adequate resources are not provided to educate the adult, rural populations of the country. The absence of voice among these populations on China’s CCP leadership has resulted in their marginalization. The only choice available is to change policies.
And indeed, one should not give up in terms of educating those in power. They are in the cave too. We should let them know that their way of ruling cannot make themselves better off in the long-run and that the problems that the current system has generated may eventually come back to haunt them.

7. Concluding Remarks

Return to the cave is part of a process of eliminating barriers and darkness, a process that is unlikely to end. Western democracies face their own challenges as well. The sunshine of truth is so far away from all of us. Maybe when we escape from this cave, we will fall into another cave, or maybe we will enter into a bigger cave. Enlightenment and education are ceaseless processes.
Can we in China get out of the cave? Following a now well-known political slogan: Yes, we can. We are getting there. China is getting there, because it is the calling from our hearts to break the ropes; the human basic need for participation, freedom of speech and religion, and basic human rights. These ideas will rise in Chinese people’s soul. Light will come and enlighten the darkness in our soul. This mission is calling us who have escaped, to return to the cave and bring about light there.
As Bertrand Russell said in his three passions of life: Three passions have governed my life: The longings for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. I share these passions and they guide my desire to become a teacher. Bearing the sense of duty, I will continue to grow myself, getting enlightened soon, equipping with love, knowledge I have learned from the great teachers present and in human history, and the truth I have found, return to the cave, to free our people.








8. References
Dewey, John. 1916. Democracy and Education. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company.
Dewey, John. Dewey on Education (Selections). Teachers College, Columbia University.
Plato. Republic. Hackett Publishing Co.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Emile. Introduction, Translation, and Notes by Allan Bloom. Basic Books.
Holmes Group. 1986. Tomorrow’s Teachers. East Lansing: The Holmes Group.
Schurmann, Franz. 1968. Ideology and Organization in Communist China. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Tobin, Joseph, David Yu and Dana Davidson. 1989. Preschool in Three Cultures: Japan, China and the United States. New Haven: Yale University Press.