Educating the autonomous learner in a Confucian school: subjectivity, memorisation and dilemma
Issue Date
2023-12-01Subjects
Confucian education revivalautonomous learner
Subject Categories::X300 Academic studies in Education
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The current literature on Chinese governmentality and subjectivity lacks rigorous discussion of the involvement of Confucian education. This article applies Foucauldian conceptual tools to explore this scholarship gap empirically. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at a Confucian school, we explore how Confucian pedagogical techniques are used to create a type of subject. This article first presents pedagogical reform in a Confucian school. The resultant pedagogy of individualised memorisation combines two paradoxical knowledge sources: the individualised teaching principle and the method of repetitive memorisation. We then demonstrate how the Confucian teaching techniques used in the classroom result in contradictory processes of subject-making. Students are governed by the technologies of power in the disciplined classroom but are also encouraged to be the "master" of their own study according to the technologies of the self, so as to become autonomous learners. The revived Confucian education is encounteringCitation
Wang C, Wang S (2023) 'Educating the autonomous learner in a Confucian school: subjectivity, memorisation and dilemma', China perspectives, (135), pp.61-70.Journal
China perspectivesAdditional Links
https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.489104141773933Type
ArticleLanguage
enISSN
2070-3449ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.3316/informit.489104141773933