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CONFUCIAN CONFUSION |
Not even a three-day brainstorming session among top psychologists at the Chinese University could unravel one of the world's greatest puzzles - how the Chinese mind ticks.
Michael Bond had reason to pace the pavement of the Chinese University campus last week. The psychologist who co-ordinated and moderated a three-day seminar in Chinese psychology and most of the participants came a long way to knock heads. ''If a bomb hits this building,'' muttered Bond, half-seriously, ''it would wipe out the whole discipline.''
But the only thing that went off in the Cho Yiu Conference Hall of Chinese University was the picking of brains, the pouring out of brains and a refrain from an on-going mantra : ''more work needs to be done'' or ''we don't know''.
Each of the 36 participants was allowed 30 minutes plus use of an over-head projector to condense years of research into data and theories. Their content spilled over from 20 areas of Chinese behaviour, including reading, learning styles, psychopathology, social interaction, personality and modernisation.
An over-riding question for observers, however, was why, in this group of 21 Chinese and 15 non-Chinese, weren't there more professionals from mainland China presenting research on the indigenous people?
Michael Philips, a psychiatrist who works in Hubei Province, explained: ''The Cultural Revolution silenced and froze the research,'' said the Canadian-born doctor who has lived and worked in China for more than 10 years. ''And 12 years later, research is under way but it is too early to have anything yet. Besides, most of the models being used are from the West anyway.''
In such a specialised field, how can non-Chinese academics do research without possessing fluency in Chinese? Those who cannot read, write or speak the language usually team up with Chinese colleagues. ''In 10 years, we won't be able to do this. It's a money thing,'' said William Gabrenya, of Florida Institute of Technology, who described himself as an illiterate gweilo who lacks fluency in Chinese. He said that 93 per cent of the non-Chinese authors in his field cannot read Chinese.
Dr. Gabrenya raised questions such as why is research dependent on university students, why is research done on Chinese people in coastal cities (Singapore, Taiwan, Shanghai and Hong Kong) but not inland? ''Chinese psychology is too Confucian, too neat. He's been dead a long time. How about the guy on a motorcycle in Taipei?'' Dr. Gabrenya said, urging that research have a more contemporary outlook.
The academics came from Israel, Sweden, Taiwan, Singapore, United States, British Columbia and, of course, Hong Kong. Many of the visual aids they used by way of illustration contained eye-squinting type and cobweb-like graphs. One speaker, a sociologist from Illinois, even warned her colleagues that she would not give anyone enough time to digest the long, skinny columns of numbers.
Is Chinese intelligence different than Western? For half of the audience who are illiterate in Chinese, Professor Jimmy Chan of HKU examined each of the Chinese characters for ''intelligence''. Phrases such as ''a mind as fast as an arrow'' and connections between strokes for sun and the moon were made. After his 25-minute speech, Chan and the group lamented that using Western tests are the only measure available to psychologists, who are starving for indigenous studies of Chinese by Chinese.
How do Chinese children learn? David Kember of Hong Kong Polytechnic University zeroed in on deep learning versus surface. Deep is when the student is sincerely interested for his own reasons. Surface is memorising and spitting out facts. It doesn't nurture any deep understanding. If the language of instruction happens to be the children's second language, students in Hong Kong have all sorts of challenges with English-speaking teachers from Australia, Britain and America with accents and colloquialisms.
Do Westerners have more self-esteem than Chinese? Dr. Leung Kwok, chairman of the psychology department of Chinese University, points his finger at belief systems: the collectivist mind-set often stereotypes Chinese unfairly. The philosophy of ''yuen'' (a concept used to explain good and bad events which are pre-determined and out of the individual's control) does not foster a positive self-concept. Neither do collectivist beliefs, such as sacrifice for the group, compromise and importance of using connections. ''If a Chinese loses or fails, he has a stronger sense of responsibility. He tends to blame it on himself. A non-Chinese from the West may blame it on forces outside himself,'' Dr. Leung said.
By the end of the three-day session, there were as many questions raised as answered. It was agreed there was room for further research. To the layman, so much of the discussion was foreign and riddled with jargon and on-going references to studies and researchers. The work of the participants will resurface in a forthcoming Handbook of Chinese Psychology, which will be edited by Dr. Bond and published by Oxford University Press.
Source : Adapted from the South China Morning Post, 11.06.94
Vocabulary
// self-esteem
the value that you put on yourself. E.g. His father taught him to hold himself in high self esteem and to ignore criticism. Also possible negatively: E.g. After failing his driving test, he held himself in low self-esteem. Return
// unravel
If you unravel something, you find out how it works. A complicated problem might be made easy to understand. E.g. A child might unravel a ball of string. Modern science might unravel the secrets of the origin of the universe. Return
How the Chinese mind works. What motivates people; what explains how they think and behave. Return
A mantra is any word or syllable that is used as a way of concentrating or meditating, especially in the Hindu religion. Here it is suggested ironically that the academics are constantly repeating "we don't know", etc. Return