NONVIOLENCE AND EDUCATION Cross-Cultural Pathways - Original PDF
نویسندگان: Hongyu Wang
خلاصه: This book is based on a life history, qualitative study of four university professors’ cross-cultural pathways. When I started this research during my sabbatical leave in China in September, 2009, I had no idea what it would lead me to. To my aston- ishment, it turned out to be one of the most spiritual experiences in my life. As a result, I became fully committed to nonviolence education, inspired by the life stories of the four professors in their cross-cultural engagements situated in history, culture, and educational contexts. Two Chinese professors, one male and one female, and two American pro- fessors, one male and one female, from different generations participated in this study. This book tells these professors’ extraordinary stories of encountering a culture different from their own and how such engagements influenced their edu- cational work. Specifically, the Chinese professors’ engagement with American/ Western thought and culture and the American professors’ engagement with Chi- nese thought and culture are narrated. Their stories are also situated in the context of the intellectual and cultural history of China–US engagement, with my auto- biographical voice woven in when applicable. While Chinese immigrants’ stories are more often heard in the North American educational field, Americans’ lived experiences in China must also be heard to achieve the mutuality that is necessary for forming constructive relationships between the self and the other globally (Aoki, 2005). It is at the site of mutuality that non-dualistic engagement with dif- ference becomes possible in cross-cultural and intercultural education. Nonviolence has emerged as a central thread of cross-cultural pathways and pedagogy. Here nonviolence is defined as unity between the body and the mind within the self and compassionate relationships between the self and the other that can be extended to the group, the nation, and the global (and further to the ecological relationship between humanity and nonhuman being