University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2007 A Conversation between Confucius and Dewey on Individual and Community — A Hope for Human Unity Hongmei Peng University of Tennessee - Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Other Education Commons Recommended Citation Peng, Hongmei, "A Conversation between Confucius and Dewey on Individual and Community — A Hope for Human Unity. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2007. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/263 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Hongmei Peng entitled "A Conversation between Confucius and Dewey on Individual and Community — A Hope for Human Unity." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Education. Barbara J. Thayer-Bacon, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Jim Garrison, Joy T. DeSensi, Miriam Levering, Diana Moyer Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Hongmei Peng entitled “A Conversation between Confucius and Dewey on Individual and Community — A Hope for Human Unity.” I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Education. Barbara J. Thayer-Bacon Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Jim Garrison Joy T. DeSensi Miriam Levering Diana Moyer Accepted for the Council: Carolyn Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official student records.) A CONVERSATION BETWEEN CONFUCIUS AND DEWEY ON INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNITY — A HOPE FOR HUMAN UNITY A Dissertation Presented For the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Hongmei Peng May 2007 Copyright © 2007 by Hongmei Peng All rights reserved. ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Juqing Peng and Xiulan Song, my sister Yongmei Peng, and my husband Songnan Yang, for their generous love and tremendous support. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank all those who helped me complete my Doctor of Philosophy degree in Education. I am indebted to all the professors and colleagues I have learned so much from at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I would like to express my deepest appreciation to Dr. Barbara Thayer-Bacon who introduced me to the field of philosophy of education, and without whom this dissertation could not possibly have been written. She has been a thoughtful mentor, and a great role model and friend in life. I would like to thank Dr. Jim Garrison for directing me to readings of particular importance to this project, and for helpful comments on each chapter and invaluable criticism that have broadened my knowledge and helped enrich my work. I would also like to thank Dr. Joy DeSensi, Dr. Miriam Levering, and Dr. Diana Moyer for their insights and continued encouragement throughout the research process. I owe my sincere gratitude to my colleagues in the program of Cultural Studies: Scott, Yan, Joe, and Delanna for many conversations that have provoked my thinking as well as for developing a harmonious and supportive community in this program. I must thank my professor in Classical Chinese Literature at Guangzhou Teachers College — Jiahui Luo — for introducing me to Confucianism, discussing iv my research topic, helping me summarize the educational thoughts in the Analects, and mailing her most recent lectures on Confucianism to me. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family and friends, whose unfailing moral support made this work possible. A special thank-yous must go to my loving partner and best friend, Songnan Yang, for listening to my ideas and being there. v ABSTRACT The relationship between 'individual' and 'community', or others, is a focal concern in philosophy both in China and in the Euro-western world. Individualism and collectivism, the two entirely different traditions of philosophy that describe a different relationship between 'individual' and 'community', have a long polemic history and are still practiced in our everyday lives. They play an essential role in schools in terms of the way teachers teach our children and relationships children develop with their classmates. This dissertation is a philosophical comparative effort to explore the conceptions of individual and community, and the relationship between the two in Confucian Grand Union and Deweyan democracy. Confucius's and Dewey's shared dedications to a philosophy of social engagement, philosophy of education, and social organism provide a theoretical ground for them to engage in a philosophical conversation. The researcher's perspective as a philosopher and cultural studies scholar is analytical, pragmatist, and social feminist. The rejection of private/public and individual/social dichotomies in both Confucius's and Dewey's work is a hope for human unity that involves taking the human society as an organism and helps actualize the best possibilities of individuals as well as the human community. This theory of human unity with an emphasis on a pluralistic relational view of human community has much to offer for schools and will contribute significantly to the improvement of vi educational opportunities for all people. The implications for schools are developed in this work. vii PREFACE I taught middle school children in China for almost five years. I loved to work with the teenagers that were energetic and full of creativity, which always refreshed my field of vision and inspired me to be an innovative educator. But, life is not all the way smooth sailing. The more I spent time with the children, the more I struggled. I come from a culture with a collective focus that traditionally emphasizes the spirit of unselfishness and communal interests, by which I mean teachers may be pleased to see the individual improvement of their students, but more importantly, they care more about the collective progress of all students. Personally, I think there are two essential factors that give rise to this collective mindset. First, from the angle of the popular criteria of evaluation, the more the students keep higher test scores and behave themselves, the higher the quality of the class collective indicates. Second, it is customary with us — the teachers — to inoculate our students with the idea that the strength of both the intellectual and physical of the collective is more powerful than that of individuals. That is why in China students stay in the same class for six years in the elementary level, three years in middle school, at least one year in high school, and four years in college. In this context, students are expected to form a sense of collective where they belong, grow, and make contributions. Based on the collective performance, most of the schools viii evaluate each class every week or every other week and award the winner with a red flag and with the tile of “civilized class.” At the end of each semester, the class awarded the most is entitled “most civilized/excellent class.” This achievement is hard to attain for it requires that all or, at least, most of the students behave appropriately and maintain good academic performance during the 5-month semester period. On the first day of school, every child is taught to cherish and maintain the good name of their shared community, such as the class collective, the grade collective, and the school collective. An organized, disciplined, and academically successful class collective is the aim for which every teacher strives. I was delighted to see the students work together to make collective improvement hand-in-hand, as I believe through cooperation, the young know each other, learn from each other, help each other, and then build friendships with each other. A truthful friendship, such as the one between Engels and Marx, can be a long-term supportive force throughout people’s lives. What I did was to arrange for the students at different academic levels to form afterschool study groups. But from time to time, some students, particularly those who held high test scores, complained that the slower students were hard to work with, which also made the group work inefficient. I understood that this uncomfortableness in working with others was due to their different learning styles and the pressure of text-based exams and graduation and hence team work was deemed as a drag ix on their own progress. But still, I could not have the child work always alone and isolate himself/herself from others, since I knew it would be a loss to the child and his/her peers. By loss, I do not mean that the child is lacking the ability to work well with others which might be the case but not necessarily, but loss in the sense of missing an opportunity to learn and to learn well since the very best way to learn the material is to try to teach it to somebody else. Cooperation demanded in group work in current society is a life experience as well as a learning experience and contributes to the development of individuals and that of the society by and large.