"And Never the Twain Shall Meet?" Review of the book: Jin Li (2015) Kulturnye osnovy obucheniya. Vostok i Zapad [Cultural Foundations of Learning. East and West]

Abstract

We fully support the researcher’s conclusion that specific features of Eastern Asian mindset and learning attitudes should be taken into account when organizing schooling in a multinational community. Meanwhile, we believe the study actually answers a more specific question than stated in the title: namely, it compares the cultural foundations of learning not between the East and the West but between the traditional Confucian school and modern American school, being distracted from the content and course structure of education. In the decades to come, we will have a chance to see the results of the competition between these two schooling models and find out whether Jin Li was right with her underlying idea of advantages of the Confucian approach and her forecast that the creative potential of Europeans and Americans would reduce and their research capabilities shrink due to schools attempting to develop both.