Teaching Critical Thinking in Chinese Schools
Conclusion
The data from the interviews and survey of Chinese IB teachers and students revealed the discrepancies and confusions that lie in Chinese teachers’ understanding of CT and actual actions in terms of CT teaching. Despite IBO’s requirements and instructions on CT teaching, Chinese IB teachers still lack proper understanding of CT and are still short of appropriate approaches to teach CT in classrooms. However, because of their positions in IB programme, Chinese IB teachers have to try their best to mimic CT teaching superficially in their day-to-day work. The achievement has not been satisfactory though, both to students and themselves. From my experience and the above empirical data, it is not excessive to conclude that Chinese IB teachers, including me, are “Aping the Beauty’s Frown” as to CT teaching.
There are some positive signs though because of the efforts from both IBO and Chinese IB teachers themselves. As time goes by and with the help of IB workshops, one senior Chinese IB teacher reported, “Gradually, I learned the approaches to cultivating students’ thinking ability”. However, for other Chinese teachers in other schools in China, who don’t have the opportunity to be exposed to western culture embedded curriculum, it can be inferred that CT probably is still a foreign notion and teaching CT is still far away from teachers’ practical arena. Next I will briefly discuss the cultural and cognitive obstacles that prevent Chinese people teaching and learning CT.
Discussion
There are two prominent reasons that could have trapped Chinese teachers’ thinking and teaching: (1) the culture which has been shaping Chinese people’s way of thinking and knowing is different from the western culture which embraces critical thinking for long time since the ancient time. (2) the Chinese translation of CT is misleading. They form huge cognitive and cultural obstacles for Chinese teachers to perceive and teach CT. With this backdrop provided, I would argue that it is more difficult to teach CT in Chinese schools than the schools in the west.
One of the important features of Chinese culture —“legitimization of authority” (Zhou, 1996) is obviously at odds with CT. Zhou (1996) explained
“the authority of the parent at home and that of the teacher at school accounted in one way for the high discipline of most Asian students.”
A child who is nurtured in this type of culture tends to accept ideas but not challenges the authority or dominant opinions using the criteria of judgment. He or she just does not have the habits of mind in favor of CT. As well, the classical Chinese tradition of reasoning which heavily relies on analogy and circular reasoning is strong contrast to CT (Lolyd, 1996; cited in Egege and Kutieleh, 2004, p.80). Therefore, the lack of CT disposition and attitudes and the lack of the way of knowing towards CT prevent Chinese people accepting CT concept in the first place and paralyze their learning CT skills whenever they are to learn it.
In addition, the relatively short time since CT’s inception into Chinese culture makes teaching CT in Chinese schools even harder. It was only in early 21st century that Chinese educational literature started to introduce CT into china (Wu, 2004), and then began discussing CT and CT education in the Chinese context (Yang and Yan, 2003). However, Gu (2007) recently pointed out that “it is still a blank in the field of CT cultivation in China” and she called for specific curriculum design and relevant teacher education. This phenomenon is on marked contrast to the long history of CT in the western culture and therefore implies that the adoption of CT into Chinese education might need long time and a lot of efforts, if that task would be achievable at all.
The prevailing Chinese translation of Critical Thinking could possibly originate from one official education document of Hongkong, China, in 1990s (YeLiu, S. Y., 2008). CT is translated as Pi Pan Si Wei in Chinese, with Pi Pan meaning critical and Si Wei meaning Thinking. There is no misinterpretation with Si Wei. However, the word Pi Pan has been misleading Chinese people’s understanding of CT in the first place. There are three dictionary meanings of Pi Pan: (1) Made comments and judge (for example a law case); (2) Comment on or judge (right or wrong); (3) Criticize (wrong thoughts or words or behaviors) (Han Dian, 2012). Obviously, all of the three are different from the literal meaning of “critical” in CT. Indeed, the English word “critical” does have the meaning of “inclined to criticize severely and unfavorably” (See Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, p.197), and it is noticed that this meaning item sometimes confuses western people too (Portelli, 1994). However, the word “critical” also contains the meaning of “exercising or involving judgment or judicious evaluation”, which basically informs the original definition of CT. Unfortunately, as illustrated above, Pi Pan, the Chinese version of “critical” literally does not contain this meaning at all. Rather, the Chinese translation obviously takes the “criticizing” meaning of “critical”, which erroneously maps to the third meaning of “Pi Pan”. As such, CT in its misleading Chinese version becomes “criticizing thinking”.
In summary, the cultural and cognitive obstacles in front of Chinese teachers made their task of teaching CT much more difficult and problematic than their Western counterparts. In this essay, I discovered the discrepancies and confusions of teaching CT in a Chinese run IB school in China, where I used to work. In spite of IBO’s high requirements and specific instructions with regard to CT, the Chinese IB teachers in the investigated school seemed not to be on the right track of understanding and teaching CT. This Chinese IB school is a counter example in the Chinese context for IB’s western ideal of CT. Both longstanding cultural differences and the prevalent misleading Chinese translation of CT make the adoption of CT concept and teaching CT in China more difficult than in the western countries. Although there is no unanimous CT standard to follow in the west too, the ongoing debates and discussions on CT can certainly illuminate people’s understanding of CT and increase the practical relevance of CT in the modern western society. In China, however, it seems that CT is still a foreign Beauty and teaching CT for Chinese teachers is at most “Aping the Beauty’s Frown”.
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