Rediscovering Liberal Education in China: The Benefits of Dialogue and Inquiry

I engage the comparative/dialogical approach to assess the prevalent process/virtue orientation to education in the United States, both its perils and the sense in which it is reflective of a deeper embodiment of liberal education. From encounter with Chinese colleagues, with their urge to adopt liberal education practices, I report a commonly shared awareness of the failure of modernity to cultivate mature humanity, and consequent recognition of the need to draw on the riches of the respective traditions. I discover that traditional resources—both Western and Chinese—become more vividly and effectively available when they are reappropriated in dialogue with those from different traditions who are undertaking the same task—something quite distinct from fundamentalism. The task/problem/inquiry orientation to education could lead to a worldwide revival of liberal education and even enable the university, as a now global institution, to contribute to addressing the other urgent problems and issues of our era.