No Child Left Behind? - A - Daoist Critique of Some Humanist Ideals of Education

TitleNo Child Left Behind? - A - Daoist Critique of Some Humanist Ideals of Education
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2006
AuthorsMoeller, Hans-Georg
JournalJournal of Chinese Philosophy
Volume33
Pagination517
Date Published2006
ISBN Number0301-8121
KeywordsBildung, Education, Exclusion, Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Humanism, Inclusion, Taoism
Abstract

In ancient China, Confucianism portrayed education as a process towards achieving human excellence. Daoism developed a nonhumanist perspective. Western enlightenment conceptions looked at education in terms of humanist Bildung. Thinkers like Hegel understood education as a quest for both uniqueness and social inclusion. The paper argues that the humanist semantics of Bildung has a mainly rhetorical function. Education has become a social system that can no longer be adequately described in humanist terms and is unable to fulfill its promises of shaping subjectivity and all-inclusion ("No Child Left Behind"). A - Daoist criticism of the humanist semantics is attempted.