Neo-Confucian Education and Post-Confucian East Asia

For the past several years Academy members have been discussing possible ways of increasing understanding of the changes that are occurring in the major East Asian countries today and the implications of these changes for relations between the Atlantic Community and East Asia. Prompted in part by these discussions, Wm. Theodore de Bary, John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University, Columbia University, is organizing a series of conferences on Neo-Confucian education as a factor in the development and modernization of East Asia. The following are some of Mr. de Bary's thoughts on this subject, focussing on the formative role played by the twelfth-century scholar, Chu Hsi.