Abstract
This chapter first critically traces the didactic tradition of teaching-as-telling or aggressive teaching, which has remained dominant in the histories of China and Western education, and then explores the Taoist Pedagogy of Pathmarks as the Tao of inaction as “wait[ing] in silent readiness” (Heidegger in Letters to his wife. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1939/2008, p. 160). As it resonates with the connections among Heidegger, Lao Tzu , and Dewey, the Taoist Pedagogy of Pathmarks does not methodize teaching as an industrious process from input to output but celebrates it as being-in-relation in which the Tao of inaction “acts without dominating” (Tao Te Ching, Ch. 81).
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Notes
- 1.
Oracle characters were invented by the people of the Shang Dynasty to cut in the shoulder bones of oxen or plastrons of turtle shells. They attempted to tell fortunes by exposing the oracle bone to fire to see the change of bone. About 4500 oracle characters have now been extracted from oracle bones.
- 2.
“Annotations and Interpretations” (《说文解字》) is the first dictionary in ancient China explaining Chinese characters based on their structures and etymologies written by Shen Xu in Han Dynasty around 120. Until now, it is still one of the most influential dictionaries in use in China. The original Chinese texts of the entry “teaching” (教) in it are “上所施下所效也. 从攴从孝.”
- 3.
The advent of modern schooling in China, especially under the dominant influences of Comenius’s uniformed mode of classroom teaching and Herbart’s Five Step teaching method (Shi & Cui, 2009; C. Wang, 2005; B. Wang, 2009) perpetuated teaching-as-narrating . In 1913, the national Ministry of Education called on all middle schools across the country to encourage their teachers to employ narrating as the main teaching method—“Teacher narrates and students take notes” (C. Wang, p. 382). At that time, teaching-as-narrating was taken as the most efficient and easiest way of teaching, and even the only feasible or best way for large scale teaching in schools.
- 4.
The relation between Lao Tzu and Zhuang Tzu is, in some sense, that between Socrates and Plato . They can be taken as the two most important Taoist thinkers and this is why the Taoist philosophy is also often called Lao-Chuang philosophy. Zhuang Tzu’s Zhuang Tzu (about 300 B.C./2002) and Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (about 500 B.C./2004) are two fundamental classics in Taoism. Also note the difference in spelling between Chuang and Zhuang.
- 5.
Bernstein critiques that “Heidegger seduces us into thinking that the only possible response (the highest possibility) to the supreme danger of Gestell [enframing] is poetic revealing”—the Heideggerian bias to “displace praxis by thinking” (pp. 126–127). In contrast, Bernstein thinks the highest possibility might be “action which is exhibited in the public space of political debate, action that presupposes the human condition of plurality and natality” (p. 127). Bernstein agrees with Hans-Georg Gadamer’s argument that Heidegger is guilty of “‘a terrible intellectual hubris’ when he leads us to think that the only proper (authentic) response to the supreme danger is to prepare ourselves to watch over unconcealment” (in Bernstein, p. 128). For more on unconcealment, see Wrathall’s “Heidegger and Unconcealment” (2010).
As for Bernstein’s criticism of Heidegger’s ideas, I agree and disagree. I agree with Bernstein that we need the practical wisdom of praxis but disagree with his critique of Heidegger’s “thinking,” especially Heidegger’s seemingly passive merely watching not acting over unconcealment of being or truth. In the beginning of his “Letter on Humanism,” Heidegger (1947/1993b) writes, “Thinking does not become action only because some effect issues from it or because it is applied. Thinking acts insofar as it thinks” (p. 217). At first sight, this thinking seems to be passive inaction , but as it actively engages with “what remains reserved and in store” in beings for possibilities of “not yet” (Heidegger, 1966/1993e, p. 436), it is in essence prudent and reflexive action. I do not think Heidegger’s taking this thinking as the highest form of action is “a terrible intellectual hubris.”
In fact, Heidegger has answered Bernstein’s critique in the Spiegel interview (1966/1981) as he is asked several times by the interviewer how philosophy can influence our actuality. When he is asked again about the transmission of insights into actualization, Heidegger says, “I know nothing about how this thought has an ‘effect.’ It may be, too, that the way of thought today may lead one to remain silent in order to protect this thought from becoming cheapened within a year. It may also be that it needs 300 years in order to have an ‘effect’” (p. 60). All of his answers suggest that even if thinking has an “effect,” it is never in a causal way. What this thinking is against is not real action or the praxis as suggested by Bernstein, but is of unthoughtful thinking/actions. Bernstein, of course, is critical of what he believes were Heidegger’s nonactions regarding Jews when he was rector at Freiberg during the Nazi years. The literature on this period of Heidegger’s life is voluminous and contentious.
- 6.
For more of this lived call to students’ faces, see Aoki (2005).
- 7.
Instead, Heidegger (1955/1966b) encourages us to look forward to “meditative thinking ” which “contemplates the meaning which reigns in everything that is” (p. 46). He says, “Meditative thinking demands of us not to cling one-sidedly to a single idea, nor to run down a one-track course of ideas” (p. 53). Only this meditative thinking for Heidegger is real thinking.
- 8.
It is worth noting in this frame that the evaluation is always on how well the objectives were achieved, not on the quality of the objectives themselves. The question as to whether the objectives were worth doing was not asked. The American critique of this behaviorist frame can be found in Kliebard (1995).
- 9.
This does not mean the teacher’s role is reduced to the same level as that of the student—“The teacher loses the position of external boss or dictator but takes on that of leader of group activities” (Dewey, 1963, p. 59). Dewey thinks teachers should draw on their past experience and expertise to help students interact with subject materials from students’ present interests, needs, and capacities and thus to see in which direction an educative experience might be leading. What teachers use to guide students in teaching is not their external control from above, but, according to Dewey, “the very nature of the work done as a social enterprise in which all individuals have an opportunity to contribute and to which all feel a responsibility” (p. 56, emphasis added).
- 10.
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Yu, J. (2018). Waiting for the Sun, Superman, or God?: The Tao of Inaction as “Wait[ing] in Silent Readiness”. In: The Taoist Pedagogy of Pathmarks. Spirituality, Religion, and Education. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01605-0_4
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