Confucianism

Issues in Educational Research, 15(1), 2005

17

Chinese cultural schema of Education:
Implications for communication between
Chinese students and Australian educators
Leng Hui
Edith Cowan University
Education in China, in its various forms and levels, is widely conceptualised as integrating the cultivation of ‘human souls’ with the provision of students with knowledge. The English word ‘education’ is jiao
) in Chinese, which means ‘teaching [and] cultivating’. The analogy yu (
,
- it takes ten years to shi nian shu mu, bai nian shu ren ( grow trees, but a hundred years to cultivate a person) may illustrate the cultivating responsibilities laid on Chinese schools or other institutions engaged in educating people. A Chinese metaphor equating teachers with
- the engineers of ‘human ren lei ling hun gong cheng shi ( souls’) also reveals the cultural knowledge that teachers play a crucial role in cultivating the soul of Chinese people. The cultural knowledge embodied in the Chinese cultural schema of Education exerts profound influence on teachers, students (regardless of their ages) and their parents.
Making use of common idioms, proverbs and popular quotes from Chinese classics on education, this paper provides an introduction to the Chinese
- teaching books and
Education schema of jiao shu yu ren ( cultivating people) and explores the influence of the schema on Chinese education in terms of issues such as moral education, teacher roles and status, student beliefs about books and learning and the significance of examinations in Chinese education. Discussion of the influence of the
Chinese Education schema on intercultural communication between mainland Chinese students and their Australian educators is also provided.
It is concluded that, despite some experience of living in Australia, mainland Chinese students overseas are likely to draw on their embedded cultural schema of Education when studying in the context of Australian

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