==+==+==+== C h i n e s e C o m m u n i t y F o r u m ==+==+==+=== Wednesday, April 13, 1994 (Issue No. 9417) +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Chinese Community Forum (CCF) is an e-journal published on China-Net. CCF is dedicated to the discussion on the issues related to the Chinese community. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the Editorial Board of CCF. Contributions to the discussions and suggestions of new topics are very much appreciated. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= # of Table of Contents Author | Lines ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 1. A Case Study on Political Education in US School System......Ning Luo 89 2. Culture Is Destiny -- A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew (Part II)............................Fareed Zakaria 122 3. Americans Have Far Less Understanding of the Outside.......Daniel Qiu 78 4. Multiculturism or Not........................................Joe Want 52 ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== -- From The Editor -- In this issue, we continue the series of the conversation between Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's former Prime Minister, and Fareed Zakaria, the Managing Editor of Foreign Affair magazine (cf: Part I, CCF #9416). As most of us are still allergic to "political education", we carry here Mr. Ning Luo's interesting article on political education here in the States. After reading it, you might think differently that political education is not unique to China, to say the least. Finally we carry in this issue two readers' comments prompted by Ms Amanda Wo's letter to the editor (cf. CCF #9415). These two letters discuss the different issues on culture, each viewing this nation from different angles, one from a Chinese student and the other from an American. Cultural adoption is a problem facing all of us living in this country. There are many questions to be answered regarding the cultural interaction. Should we be assimilated or keep our own cultural distinction? How do we understand other cultures? What does this "understand" imply in practical sense? More generally, how does multiculturism or uniculturalism affect a nation with multiethnic background? To go even further, is global village a feasible possibility or a mere dream? We hope you share with us your opinions on these or similar issues. ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 1. A Case Study on Political Education in US School System......Ning Luo 89 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Most people from China would probably despise at the mention of the word "political education". Indeed, those monotonic hours spent during the golden years of youth are viewed as worse than waste of time, even by many "political educators" now. When I was a student back in China, I thought the schools in the West would have no need for such things. This kind of thoughts were shared by many of my schoolmates. Well, if you have a child going through the grade school here in the United States, and you have paid enough attention to his/her "social studies" classes, you might think twice about that impression now. I still remember vividly the puzzle on my son's face when he brought me some of his homework on "Bill of Rights" when he was in his fourth grade. I thought I had read a lot on American Constitution and the Western thoughts on human rights. However, it was such a difficult task to make some sense to my son, since for me these ideas were cultivated along a long search in my intellectual growth, it's impossible for me to tell a 10 year old all these painstaking paths and complicated theories. I did use the Chinese translation of the words such as "rights" (Quan Li), "freedom" (Zi You), but I found they were so dry, even though my son's Chinese was good enough to enjoy reading Jin Yong's "Tian2 Long2 Ba1 Bu4". I realized that these concepts were still so alien to our culture. My son is in the sixth grade now. He has just completed a project in his TAG (Talent and Gifted) class titled "Constitution Works". The climax of this project was a field trip about two weeks ago to the Federal Hall on Wall Street in lower Manhattan, where George Washington swore into his office as the first President of the United States. It is a museum now. The museum guide (her name is Denise) told the kids that this was the place where the federal government was, including the Congress and the Supreme Court, before the national capital was moved to Philadelphia and then to Washington, DC. The children were then led to a "court room" on the second floor of the building. It was set up like the Supreme Court. There was a long table under a huge seal of the federal government, with nine seats behind the table. The seats facing the table were divided in the middle. The lawyers for both sides would sit on the two sides. The students came into the court room, each with a proper costume: Nine "Supreme Justices" wore black robes; the "lawyers" wore black or light gray suits, depending on which sides of the case they were on. After a brief introduction by Denise on the court orders and things like "speak aloud and clear", the proceeding began. The TAG class had been practicing for several weeks prior to the field trip on a fictitious case "Denver Dispatch vs. Federal Government". From what I learned from their workbook, Denver Dispatch was a newspaper published in Denver, it had published the first of a series of articles reporting on a biological weapon laboratory somewhere in Colorado. The Federal Government banned the publication after the first article on the ground of protecting national security. The newspaper had appealed to lower courts without avail before the case was appealed to the Supreme Court. Nine kids chose to become the Supreme Justices, while the rest pick either the Denver Dispatch or the Government side, about five to six each. There were explanations of the court jargons such as "jury", "witness", "overrule", "sustain", as I had seen frequently on American movies, though there would be no witness or jury in the Supreme Court proceedings. There were also quotations of the Supreme Justices on previous cases related to the First Amendment (those quotations were not fictitious) on their workbook. Each side would have to use these rulings on previous cases to support their stance, and the "Supreme Justices" had also to rule on the case based on that. The "lawyers" on each side tried their best, taking turns to defend their positions. The "Supreme Justices" asked them questions from time to time to clarify their points further. The main point of the "lawyers" for the Denver Dispatch was that since the Government could not show that there had not been any damages to national security, the ban of the Government was in violation of the First Amendment which protected the freedom of speech; the main point of the "lawyers" for the Government was that the publication could damage national security, and if there was no national security, there could be no freedom of speech. It looked in the end that the "Government" side was loosing due to the better presentation of their opponent. However, the "ruling" did not come out on that field trip day. My son told me later that his side ("the Federal Government") lost this case by a 7 to 2 vote of the "Supreme Justices". I am quite convinced that this kind of role-playing, especially on the spot where history took place, teaches my son more about the workings of this system than any "lectures" I could have given him. Of course, he still knows much less about theories and history behind the Constitution than I do, but the grade school education as such is not really much intended to plant the ideas of constitutionalism into children's head as to imprint the marks on to their "bones". They may not be able to "explain" the Constitution with other words of their current experiences, but they will explain their other later social and political experiences in terms of what they have learned at this early stage. It is part of their basic language now. It is more deeply rooted in their minds than any theoretical cultivation could be achieved. Isn't it the way that ideology is firmly passed on to the new generations of the society? Isn't it that a society needs some kind of basic ideology to maintain its fundamental coherence? NLUO@msvax.mssm.edu (received: 11-April-1994) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Culture Is Destiny -- A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew (Part II)...........................Fareed Zakaria 122 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE ASIAN MODEL FZ: You say that your real concern is that this system not be foisted on other societies because it will not work there. Is there another viable model for political and economic development? Is there an "Asian model"? LKY: I don't think there is an Asian model as such. But Asian societies are unlike Western ones. The fundamental difference between Western concepts of society and government and East Asian concepts--when I say East Asians, I mean Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam, as distinct from Southeast Asia, which is a mix between the Sinic and the Indian, though Indian culture also emphasizes similar values---is that Eastern societies believe that the individual exists in the context of his family. He is not pristine and separate. The family is part of the extended family, and then friends and the wider society. The ruler or the government does not try to provide for a person what the family best provides. In the West, especially after World War II, the government came to be seen as so successful that it could fulfill all the obligations that in less modern societies are fulfilled by the family. This approach encouraged alternative families, single mothers for instance, believing that government could provide the support to make up for the absent father. This is a bold, Huxleyan view of life, but one from which I as an East Asian shy away. I would be afraid to experiment with it. I'm not sure what the consequences are, and I don't like the consequences that I see in the West. You will find this view widely shared in East Asia. It's not that we don't have single mothers here. We are also caught in the same social problems of change when we educate our women and they become independent financially and no longer need to put up with unhappy marriages. But there is grave disquiet when we break away from tested norms, and the tested norm is the family unit. It is the building brick of society. There is a little Chinese aphorism which encapsulates this idea: Xiushen qijia zhiguo pingtianxia. Xiushen means look after yourself, cultivate yourself, do everything to make yourself useful; Qijia, look after the family; Zhiguo, look after your country; Pingtianxia, all is peaceful under heaven. We have a whole people immersed in these beliefs. My granddaughter has the name Xiu-qi. My son picked out the first two words, instructing his daughter to cultivate herself and look after her family. It is the basic concept of our civilization. Governments will come, governments will go, but this endures. We start with self reliance. In the West today it is the opposite. The government says give me a popular mandate and I will solve all society's problems. FZ: What would you do instead to address America's problems? LKY: What would I do if I were an American? First, you must have order in society. Guns, drugs and violent crime all go together, threatening social order. Then the schools; when you have violence in schools, you are not going to have education, so you've got to put that right. Then you have to educate rigorously and train a whole generation of skilled, intelligent, knowledgeable people who can be productive. I would start off with basics, working on the individual, looking at him within the context of his family, his friends, his society. But the Westerner says I'll fix things at the top. One magic formula, one grand plan. I will wave a wand and everything will work out. It's an interesting theory but not a proven method. BACK TO BASICS FZ: You are very skeptical of government's ability to solve deeper social issues. But you're more confident, certainly than many Americans are, in the government's ability to promote economic growth and technological advancement. Isn't this a contradiction? LKY: No. We have focused on basics in Singapore. We used the family to push economic growth, factoring the ambitions of a person and his family into our planning. We have tried, for example, to improve the lot of children through education. The government can create a setting in which people can live happily and succeed and express themselves, but finally it is what people do with their lives that determines economic success or failure. Again, we were fortunate we had this cultural backdrop, the belief in thrift, hard work, filial piety and loyalty in the extended family, and, most of all, the respect for scholarship and learning. There is, of course, another reason for our success. We have been able to create economic growth because we facilitated certain changes while we moved from an agricultural society to an industrial society. We had the advantage of knowing what the end result should be by looking at the West and later Japan. We knew where we were, and we knew where we had to go. We said to ourselves, "Let's hasten, let's see if we can get there faster." But soon we will face a different situation. In the near future, all of us will get to the stage of Japan. Where do we go next? How do we hasten getting there when we don't know where we're going? That will be a new situation. FZ: Some people say that the Asian model is too rigid to adapt well to change. The sociologist Mancur Olson argues that national decline is caused most fundamentally by sclerosis---the rigidity of interest groups, firms, labor, capital and the state. An American-type system that is very flexible, laissez-faire and constantly adapting is better suited to the emerging era of rapid change than a government-directed economic policy and a Confucian value system. LKY: That is an optimistic and attractive philosophy of life, and I hope it will come true. But if you look at societies over the millennia you find certain basic patterns. American civilization from the Pilgrim fathers on is one of optimism and the growth of orderly government. History in China is of dynasties which have risen and fallen, of the waxing and waning of societies. And through all that turbulence, the family, the extended family, the clan, has provided a kind of survival raft for the individual. Civilizations have collapsed, dynasties have been swept away by conquering hordes, but this life raft enables the civilization to carry on and get to its next phase. Nobody here really believes that the government can provide in all circum- stances. The government itself does not believe it. In the ultimate crisis, even in earthquakes and typhoons, it is your human relationships that will see you through. So the thesis you quote, that the government is always capable of reinventing itself in new shapes and forms, has not been proven in history. But the family and the way human relationships are structured, do increase the survival chances of its members. That has been tested over thousands of years in many different situations. (To be continued) [Fareed Zakaria is Managing Editor of Foreign Affair] ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 3. Americans Have Far Less Understanding of the Outside.......Daniel Qiu 78 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Editor, I have to say that I felt quite uneasy on the letter from Ms. Amanda Wo (CCF #9415). I believe that it was Ms. Wo who "loves Americans" and yet hardly understands American and American culture. In Ms. Wo's letter, she wrote: "It was said (that) four out of five Americans know about China but how many Chinese know about a country which is less developed than our motherland?" I do not know where Ms. Wo got this number and I do not know what "know about" means here. Does it mean that they know there is a country called China or what? Let me share with you and Ms. Wo a personal experience, which may shed some lights on Americans' understanding of foreign countries. In the spring of 1992, my adviser went to Mainz, Germany. One day I was about to send him a fax. I had the fax number but no country code of Germany. I called the operator of MCI and asked for the country code of Germany. You know what she said? "I believe it was listed under the United Kingdom." Even after I pointed out that the United Kingdom is Great Britain and Germany is by no means related to the United Kingdom, she still gave me the code of 44, the country code for UK, not 49, the one for Germany. So much so for knowing about Germany and the United Kingdom, one is the third economic power in today's world and the other is where a lot of the ancestors of the people in this country came from. Not to mention it is the responsibility for an MCI operator to know her work better than this. Want some more examples? My wife bought me a sweatshirt from Australia when she came to the US from Canberra. The sweatshirt has a picture of the New Parliament Building and has "Canberra" written on it. I can not remember how many of my American friends asked me what Canberra was, not knowing it is the capital of a country as big as the United States. I had an American friend when I was in Southern Illinois University. He was such a fan of classical music that he knew a lot about the orchestras and artists in the US, yet he had never heard the name of Herbert von Karajan. Several years ago, one famous sport commentator wrote an article on one of the prestigious newspapers, claiming he "hates soccer", and he wrote: the only reason soccer was an international sport was because it was cheap and those countries in South America could not afford to buy helmets for football. Only a couple of weeks ago, Jim Hoagland, columnist for Washington Post wrote that the reason an American boy got stiff punishment in Singapore for vandalism was because of what he called "Chinese racism", and he went even further saying that the poor guy could be sentenced to death if it happened in Beijing. I do not think that I need to give you more examples for SOME Americans' ignorance and self-centerism. In my point of view, people outside the US have paid more attention in understanding the American people than Americans do to the outside world. When I was in Germany, I found that the American movies shown there were translated into German so that more people there could understand the American movies. It is also true in Japan. Yet, you can hardly see any foreign movies being dubbed into English in this country. True, "not every American regards other culture as funny, peculiar and amazing". That is precisely why they do not care. Those Americans have been amazed only by what their ancestors have achieved in the past. This also is reflected in the political rows on human rights, in the way that the other developed countries, including Japan, Germany, Italy, Britain, etc, have been more willing to realize the cultural differences surrounding these issues. Yet, it is the American who has been insisting that their values should be universally accepted. Ms. Wo asked: Why they (American) have to learn our culture by our way? I guess the problem is not what way one should take but what attitude one should have. Having some Chinese food in a couple of Chinese restaurants, attending several local international fests, or even collecting some antiques will by no means make one understand an ancient culture. Yet, unfortunately, some Americans do not think this way, like the one described in Y.Y. Xu's article. If one really wants to learn any other culture and to absorb anything good from other culture, the only way to achieve that is to thoroughly study and understand the culture. I do not want to repeat what Y.Y. Xu has expressed in her article and what Gavalda has said in her letter. Those were all well written and thanks to CCF for bringing those thoughtful articles to us. Ms. Wo has great appreciation to the melting-pot culture. In fact, as I see it, this society is far from an ideal melting-pot, rather it is just a mixture. Different components of the society co-exists, yet hardly interact with each other in the sense that the cultures do not mix. Even in a great city like New York, various ethnic groups live in the same city, commune in the same subway, yet you can hardly see the cultural interaction and you have not seen a new culture derived from such an interaction. It is a mis-statement to say that this is a melting-pot. Mixing together is far from melting together. Above all, one thing I agree with Ms. Wo: It is us, the CSS in this country, to help our American friends to understand our culture. But only if we stand strong and firm on the essence of our culture can we help the others to understand our culture. This is beyond the scope of this short letter. xxxx@xxx.xxxx.umass.edu (Received: 8-APR-1994) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Multiculturism or Not........................................Joe Want 52 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am writing in response to the letter to the editor written by Amanda Wo which appeared in Issue No. 9415 of the Chinese Community Forum. I too read Gavalda's letter, and frankly, despite having been born in the United States, though I am not an Anglicized American (I am not completely assimilated and have retained much of my ancestral culture), I agree with Gavalda, at least with regards to those Americans who are Anglicized. There is a great amount of xenophobia here on the part of Anglicized Americans, particularly those of northern and central European extraction. Unless a person has white skin, they tend to not consider them "truly American" even if that person was born here and this includes the indigenous people, such as the various Athabascan tribes found in Alaska (my home state). This nation is not pushing toward multi-culturalism, but rather multi-ethnic with a single culture and that is from what I observe daily. I see Americans of German, Mexican, or Athabascan descent who do not know their ancestral culture, for example. My own mother thinks everyone who is Catholic should go to Masses celebrated in English rather than having the option of going to a Mass in Castillian (the language that I prefer). I realize that most Americans descended from two or more distinct ethnic groups (e.g. Germans and Swedes are not the same, nor are Bini and Hausa), but they should retain SOMETHING of their homelands. In my case, I still follow Italian customs, though my father is of German, English, and French descent, that is because I was raised around the maternal side of the family, though I never forget that there is another side to my lineage. I think the U.S.A. SHOULD become truly multi-cultural instead of nearly everyone trying to emulate the white Anglicized Americans in every way, from the manner in which they speak to what they put on the table. If cultural retention was practiced a bit more and not in isolated pockets, such as Little Italy in New York or Little Tokyo in California, the U.S.A. would be multi-cultural. My personal experience here must be different than those of Wo, who evidently never had, or at least seems to have forgotten, any racial incidence in which she has been personally involved, such as hearing names yelled at her as a result of her ethnicity or been watched in a shop owned and operated by a white American because the clerk thinks she will steal from the store because she is not white. I feel quite uneasy here, despite having been born and raised in the United States. White people expect everyone who does not have white skin to step aside so that they may pass as if they have the only right to use the sidewalk. I have yet to have a white American step aside instead of myself. I feel less at ease among the white and black Americans and more at ease with all others, particularly the indigenous people (they consider me to be the same as themselves) and those of Latin American or Iberian [i.e. Spanish or Portuguese] origin (once again, I am considered to be part of the community) and the Ceylonese and East Indians (Indians from India), including those born in the U.S.A. fsjaw2@aurora.alaska.edu (Received: 5-APR-1994) +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++ + Executive Editor: Huang Tang Executive Moderator: Will Yang + +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + For subscription: mail "SUB CHINA-NT Your-First-Name Your-Last-Name" + + to LISTSERV@UGA (bitnet) or listserv@uga.cc.uga.edu (internet) + + For unsubscription: mail "UNSUB CHINA-NT" to the above e-address + + For back issues of CCF: + + anonymous ftp to: cnd.org[132.249.229.100]:pub/community/CCF + + gopher to cnd.org: 2. 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