October 17 , 2005

Dear Colleague,

         A Chinese social psychologist at Brown University has compared Western and Chinese beliefs about learning. It appears that there is a real difference, and the difference is between the Western emphasis on mind and the Chinese emphasis on virtue (Jin Li, "Mind or Virtue," Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 14, no. 4, 2005). Contrast, for example, Socrates with Mencius. Socrates led the slave boy Meno to believe that he possessed a mind capable of discovering knowledge. Mencius led kings and dukes to believe that they were powerless unless they sought to perfect themselves morally. Becoming a better person, Jin Li writes, is still believed, in Chinese culture, to be the most essential quality for any learner. Western children are encouraged to be curious and to challenge or question given knowledge. In the classroom, they are supposed to raise their hands and speak up. The purpose of learning in the West is to acquire information, skills, and knowledge about the world. By contrast, Chinese children are encouraged to respect knowledge and those who possess it, namely, the teachers, not, however, in a spirit of blind acceptance, but rather in a spirit of humility. And the purpose of learning is mainly to perfect themselves morally, to achieve mastery of the material, and to contribute to society. Respect for knowledge and teachers means that, in the classroom, Chinese children are not great hand wavers. When Western children succeed, they are happy and proud; when they fail, they suffer from low self-esteem because so much learning is supposed to depend on their own smarts and motivation. When Chinese children succeed, they are happy and humble; they see the need to remain humble in order to continue the process of self-perfecting. When they fail, they feel shame, but shame is not just self-denigration; it is also a moral affect that motives them to try harder and improve themselves.

         Len Berkowitz sent me the article and asked how it jibed with my experience. Well, I have always thought of myself as thoroughly Western. On the other hand, the first ten years of my life were spent in China. By then, psychologists say, I have already been cast into the Chinese mold. On reflection, there is much truth in that. When it comes to learning and knowledge, I am surprisingly Chinese. For instance, I have always had respect for books and teachers as repositories of knowledge. I read and listen receptively rather than critically. I want to know what is "out there" first, before I challenge or question it. In the classroom, I almost never raise my hand and interrupt the teacher, and when other students repeatedly do so, I often feel they speak out of ignorance and are wasting my time. Like most Chinese, I consider listening a greater act of intelligence than speaking. But most Chinese of all is my belief in the greater importance of virtue--that virtue is the true path to knowledge. As I have often said, genius itself--this ability to be truly creative--depends on moral sensitivity and largesse. Genius, in other words, is cousin to charity. If charity in social life is attentiveness to the poor and the sick, charity in intellectual life is attentiveness to facts and ideas that others (the smart set) ignore or consider marginal. And haven't I just defined one important meaning of humility?

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu