On October 25, 2009, this Blog was moved to:  
http://learningchina.wordpress.com/

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Words are cheap. Actions speak loud. The best way to learn about another culture is by comparing and contrasting that culture with yours to see any similarities and differences.

Emperor Constantine lived 280-337 AD. He ruled the Roman Empire and accepted Christianity as the state religion. From that time, Christianity, more than any other influence, set the tone for morality and ethics in the West.

One of my primary Biblical sources is a Concordance of the Holy Bible given to me by a student teacher in 1982. When I checked to see what that Concordance had to say about the importance of an ‘education’, I found nothing in the index under that word (education). I then looked up the word ‘learning’. Six passages mention something about ‘learning’. I also looked up ‘teacher’ and there were a few references but nothing significant.

Here’s what the Bible says about learning:
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Proverbs (Old Testament)
1:5 A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:
9:9 Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser; teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.
16:21 The wise in heart shall be called prudent: and the sweetness of the lips increaseth learning.

Daniel
1:4 children in whom was no blemish, but well-favored, and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king’s palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chalde’ans.

Acts (New Testament)
26:24 And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.

Romans
15:4 For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.
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After the Roman Empire collapsed, most of the people that could read were priests in the Catholic Church. This situation did not change for a thousand years. The Church did not attempt to educate the masses. It was much easier to tell ignorant, uneducated people what to do. The illiterate, kings and peasants, looked to these educated priests for guidance. It was sort of like those with sight leading the blind. The situation that lasted for a thousand years created an environment that did not instill in the people the importance of an education.

As I started to write this post, I looked for passages in the Bible that would focus on the importance of gaining an education similar to what Confucius taught. I didn’t find any. If you find one, let me know. Instead, the strongest message I read from the Bible was, “Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.”

After thirty years of teaching in the public schools, it seems the majority of the six-thousand students I taught felt the same way—that learning would make them mad.
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In China, during the early Han Dynasty, a different moral standard was set where earning an education was valued. Emperor Wudi from 141-187 BCE (two hundred years before Jesus Christ and five hundred years before Constantine would make Christianity the moral and ethical compass for the West), solidified the ideological framework of official Confucianism with a blending of Confucian, Taoist, and Legalist elements.

Confucius taught that a ‘gentleman’ is the ideal figure. Among the traits of this ideal man is continued learning to develop moral character and to gain knowledge that is useful in serving others.

In China, teachers are treated with respect. Not so in the United States. Although a few students were respectful when I was a teacher in the United States, most did not. To understand what I mean, read the prologue from my memoir, Crazy Normal.

In China, students spend most of their school years intensely studying to take an exam that will allow some to get into college. The competition is fierce. The universities in China  have room for only some of the eligible students, not all.

On the other hand, in America, liberal minded professors, are talking about ways to limit entrance to the qualified and allow the unqualified in. I witnessed this dumbing down of America many times during those thirty years.

My wife told me a story about a boy she knew when she was growing up in Shanghai. This boy didn’t do well in school. His grades were horrible. When the boy’s parents found out, they took off their shoes and started to beat their son. The boy’s teacher had to step in and stop the parents from beating the boy to death. The parents did not blame the teacher for the boy’s lack of success in the classroom. They blamed themselves and the boy.

Compare this behavior to America where many children are bored with school and use excuses to not study. Here are the most common heard over the years from too many students,

“I don’t like to read.”
“Why do you give us so much work?”
“This class is no fun.”
The reason I don’t do the work is because this class is boring.”
“You failed me.”

It was bad enough to hear this from students. The parents of some of the failing students in classes I taught made these accusations too. Not once in thirty years did I hear one parent take the blame. It was always the teacher’s fault when their kid didn’t pass a class.

A lot of the blame for this attitude is because of the self-esteem movement that was based on flawed logic proven with research to be wrong. It seems, that once the Titanic was on course, there was no stopping it from hitting the iceberg and sinking.

Guess who taught me to read—my mother. When I was seven, education experts said I would never learn to read. My mother didn’t blame them. She blamed herself and went to work to fix the problem. I learned to read at home.

In America, many kids don’t like to read. To get the students I taught to read for half-an-hour a day was like pulling teeth with oily fingers. Instead, they watch television or spend hours on the Internet or went to hang out somewhere after school.

The largest bookstore in Shanghai, China, is several stories tall with elevators and escalators. You have to wait in line to reach another floor. The bookstores I visit in Shanghai when I’m there are always crowded. On the other hand, in the United States bookstores are going out of business as if a book plague struck. In China, new ones are opening all the time.

One of the Five Great Relationships that Confucius taught was the one between father and son. Nothing has changed. In addition, because of the relationship between husband and wife, the wife is expected to support the husband. It is the husband and wife’s responsibility to see that a son or daughter grows up to be like the gentleman that Confucius described. To do anything less would be a ‘loss of face’, because the child’s failure or success is a walking advertisement to everyone.

Because of Confucius, most in China have mutual obligations and responsibilities to each other. If you watched the opening Olympic ceremony in Beijing on TV, you may remember the little boy that risked his life after the big earthquake in Sichuan province. He said it was his duty. According to Confucius, he was right.

These expectations go back more than two thousand years well before Constantine made Christianity the moral and ethical foundation for the Roman Empire and Western civilization.

In China, every action, every behavior, every belief is connected to this Confucian moral and ethical foundation. On the other hand, the way we behave and act in the West is tied one way or another to Christian morals and ethics and what church or religious experts teach us. 

Of course, there are exceptions. There are Chinese that do not fit the Confucian ideal and there are Christians that do not live as Christians are taught. Both cultures suffer from these types of individuals, but those are exceptions and do not alter the different foundations the East and West were built on. The truth is that one culture values an education more than the other and actions speak louder than words.