Rediscovering Liberal Education In China: The Benefits Of Dialogue And Inquiry

I engage the comparative/dialogical approach to assess the prevalent process/virtue orientation to education in the United States, both its perils and the sense in which it is reflective of a deeper embodiment of liberal education. From encounter with Chinese colleagues, with their urge to adopt liberal education practices, I report a commonly shared awareness of the failure of modernity to cultivate mature humanity, and consequent recognition of the need to draw on the riches of the respective traditions. I discover that traditional resources-both Western and Chinese-become more vividly and effectively available when they are reappropriated in dialogue with those from different traditions who are undertaking the same task-something quite distinct from fundamentalism. The task/problem/inquiry orientation to education could lead to a worldwide revival of liberal education and even enable the university, as a now global institution, to contribute to addressing the other urgent problems and issues of our era. Copyright © 2013 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA