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The Postsecular Turn in Education: Lessons from the Mindfulness Movement and the Revival of Confucian Academies

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Abstract

It is part of a global trend today that new relationships are being forged between religion and society, between spirituality and materiality, giving rise to announcements that we live in a ‘postsecular’ or ‘desecularized’ world. Taking up two educational movements, the mindfulness movement in the West and the revival of Confucian education in China, this paper examines what and how postsecular orientations and sensibilities penetrate educational discourses and practices in different cultural contexts. We compare the two movements to reveal a new quality of hybrid modernization in that they react, in different ways, to certain pathologies that are identified as consequences of secular modernity. Burnout syndrome, the sense of a spiritual void, but also the loss of a spiritual and cultural identity are being perceived as correlating to a one-sided push towards a modernity that emphasizes secular rationalization over mindfulness and Westernization over cultural particularity. The two case studies mark a critical insight on the present condition and limits of secularism and highlights the ongoing negotiations of values and modes of self-cultivation in schools. In an increasingly pluralistic world, the entanglement of the secular, spiritual, religious and wisdom traditions provides the opportunity to rethink education as a creative realm and an impossible possibility to re-engage the minds and lives of those in the hybrid pedagogical time.

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Notes

  1. Like the earlier concept of ‘postmodernism,’ ‘postsecularism’ is thus not intended to signify a rupture with the earlier epoch, but rather a widening of interpretations and possibilities than was entailed by the earlier grand narrative. Postsecularism is postmodernism applied to the world of spiritual and religious beliefs and forms of life. However, it is not unlikely that postsecularism, like the corollary postmodern and deconstructivist discourse (Sloterdijk 2009), will itself one day turn out to be characterized as the last grand narrative, namely that which stipulates a new level of diversity and constitutes a historical breakthrough beyond an earlier phase.

  2. Weber's thesis did not even apply to the West as a whole as the example of the US reveals. Religion was one of the primary motivations for the first Europeans who settled in New England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and further unfolded after independence during the late eighteenth and nineteenth century.

  3. The concept of tian (Heaven) indicates a transcendent anchorage in Confucian teaching, yet the transcendence is contextualized rather than rendered in abstraction. Tian ultimately concerns this-worldly virtues and conducts of human beings who are considered teachable and perfectible according to the law of Heaven (tian). Tianming, or Mandate of Heaven, describes the ancient belief that only moral and just rulers are bestowed the right to govern by the Heaven.

  4. See Stambach et al. (2011).

  5. Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Propaganda Department and Ministry of Education (2004).

  6. Retrieved from http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s271/201404/166526.html.

  7. Most notably, Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall have argued that Dewey’s emphasis on the social conditions for democracy are highly relevant in Confucian societies: “his promotion of habit, habituation, and education provide sources for a positive evaluation of the constitutive role of rituals in a healthy society.” See Hall and Ames (2003, p. 126).

  8. See http://philosophy.fudan.edu.cn/guoxue/.

  9. See http://www.szceo.com/bdyx/211.html.

  10. For instance, Peking University charges an annual tuition fee of 198,000 RMB (roughly 33000 USD) for an advanced course on ‘Traditional Culture and Modern Management.’ See http://www.szceo.com/bdyx/211.html.

  11. The existence of Confucian schools in the market place is not without debate. Some operate in an unclear legal environment or even completely underground. Often these schools are managed by individuals successful in business or other spheres of society.

  12. See 国学教育蔓延 孩子上私塾幼儿园是返璞归真? [The spread of Guoxue classes: Is sending children to private Confucian kindergartens equal to returning to tradition and original simplicity?] Retrieved from http://kids.163.com/12/0923/21/8C4A82U400294KTV.html.

  13. China’s growing brain drain among young students of wealthy parents speaks to the social anxiety of its educational system, especially its ineradicable exam meritocracy.

  14. Yidan Xuetang tongxun [Yidan Xuetang newsletter], No. 9, January 2006, p. 2.

  15. For instance, members of the Communist Party of PRC are considered ‘avant-guarde’ of the working class who have awakened to Marxism, Leninism, and the thought of Mao Zedong and may not believe in religion or take part in religious activities. See Zhongyang Dangxiao Minzu Zongjiao Lilunshi [Department of Ethnic Religion Theory, Central Party School], ed. 1998, p. 354. Xin shiqi minzu zongjiao gongzuo xuanchuan shouce [Handbook of the communication of ethnic and religious affairs in the new era]. Beijing: Zongjiao Wenhua Chubanshe.

  16. In China, underground Christian churches are quickly growing in popularity. Some scholars (e.g. Bai Tongdong at Fudan) have argued that the Confucian revival is best understood as the attempt to position a genuine Chinese religion to preempt the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the country. The argument emphasizes that Confucianism is being perverted as a consequence of being positioned as a genuinely ‘Chinese’ religion rather than as a teaching of moral human comportment.

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  1. Faculty of Education, University of Macau, Room 3004, Building E33, Avenida da Universidade, Taipa, Macau, China

    Jinting Wu

  2. Philosophy and Religious Studies Program, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Macau, Room 4092, Building E21, Avenida da Universidade, Taipa, Macau, China

    Mario Wenning

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Wu, J., Wenning, M. The Postsecular Turn in Education: Lessons from the Mindfulness Movement and the Revival of Confucian Academies. Stud Philos Educ 35, 551–571 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-016-9513-8

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