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Taiwan is not only inhabited by ethnic Chinese, as many who are not so familiar with this island might think; it also has a substantial number of aboriginal peoples who have lived on the island for millennia, long before the Chinese, Europeans and finally the Japanese colonisers arrived. The aboriginal peoples of Taiwan are Austronesian, with linguistic and genetic ties to ethnic groups found in the Pacific nations of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, the islands of Oceania, and also on Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. This article looks at some of the challenges faced by this indigenous population, due in large part to the ethnic or racial prejudice of the Taiwanese which was reinforced by the national government. It also examines recent curriculum reforms and the educational discourses that reject racism and affirm the ideals of ethnic and cultural freedom and equality, thereby exemplifying moral education in the truest sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the transformation in the Zhou dynasty China (1046–256 BC) of the concept of education in relation to the process of social selection, which concerns the distribution both of knowledge and of social ranks. An approach in terms of historical semantics, mainly influenced by Luhmannian sociological theory with some reference to Koselleck, will place the focus on social change and the changing meaning of concepts. The analysed sources include archaeological evidence and passages from traditional classics. The paper will show how the semantics of education were closely tied to the changing principles of social selection and the changing Chinese cultural concept of Tian (Heaven). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the endZhuangzi7, Hundun (the Middle Sea) invites his two neighbours, the North Sea and South Sea, to visit him. They repay his kindness by drilling seven holes (for seeing, hearing, breathing and eating) in his face to make him more ‘human’ but Hundun dies. This essay pursues Daoist, Derridean and Levinasian readings of the parable which foreground issues of non-duality and the absolute priority yet impossibility of unconditional hospitality or infinite openness to others (or to the Other). Key concepts include selflessness, non-duality and/or the relativity of opposites in Laozi and Zhuangzi, conditional and unconditional hospitality and theaporiaof gift-giving in Derrida and in Levinas the ontological priority of infinity to totality, that of the face of the other or neighbour to the self or subject, and that of ‘saying’ to ‘the said’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Here the author takesren-humanity to be, as Confucius says, an underlying, ineffable, potentially universal human quality, and draws a distinction between three different types of moral capacity in theLunyu: the man ofren’s capacity forli-proper interactions, his capacity for total reciprocity with another, and his capacity to make moral discriminations. The nature of these moral judgments is then discussed in relation to the praxis of entering intoshu-reciprocity with another and that of recognizing others’ actions as beingli-proper. A key question is that of whether even an intuitive feeling of commonality, if not identity, with another man-of-reninvolves a subjective judgment. Confucius’ view that foreigners can respectreneven if they may not possess it is also discussed. The author suggests that any viable ethical model would need to maintain a universal standard of humaneness while also including a maximum degree of openness to the other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper first provides an overview of the topics featured in China's Educational Journal in the period 1909-1948, in order to sketch briefly the history of that country's pattern of selection from among various modes of foreign educational thought. It becomes clear that, in each case, China absorbed from outside only those ideas that could fit with its own traditional forms of educational thinking, and that for this reason it tended to oscillate between turning toward the outside world for new ideas and drawing back into itself to reflect on its own educational culture, policies and institutions. The paper then interprets this dynamic in terms of Niklas Luhmann's theory of self-reference. In Luhmann's social systems theory, any system defines, identifies or constitutes itself at each (in this case historical) moment in relation to another system by absorbing from that other system only what it perceives as being compatible with its own inner organisation, or (as Luhmann puts it) by always absorbing the difference between what already lies within it (e.g. traditional Chinese culture, values and ideas) and what lies outside it (e.g. the culture, values and ideas of the West, with which China found itself already inevitably interconnected). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]