And never the twain shall meet? Book review: Jìng-Lì (2015) kulturnye osnovy obucheniya. vostok i zapad [cultural foundations of learning. east and west]

Abstract

We fully support the researcher's conclusion that specific features of the mindset and learning attitudes of East Asia should be taken into account when organizing schooling in a multinational community. Meanwhile, we believe the study actually answers a narrower question than stated in the title: Namely, it compares the cultural foundations of learning not between the East and the West, but between the traditionalConfucian school and modern American school without regard to education content or curriculum. In the decades to come, we will witness the result of the competition between these two schooling models and learn whether Jìng-Lì was right with her underlying idea about the advantages of the Confucian approach and her scenario about the decreasing creative potential of Westerners and the atrophy of their research skills due to the attempts of schools to cultivate both.