The next five postings ends my writing of a daily column for the Saipan Tribune. So you get the five. The usual caveat: curious, you're welcome; not, see you at the bend! Jaime -----Original Message----- From: Jaime R Vergara <pinoypanda2031@aol.com> To: editor <editor@saipantribune.com> Sent: Fri, Aug 22, 2014 2:53 pm Subject: August 25 Hang Gong Hang TianDa Xue My Lei Feng (anordinary male volunteer who died young is China's exemplar in volunteer work)while teaching at the Hang Gong Hang Tian Da Xue was spent on weekends with ShouWang school for children. Tian is "sky"that gives us "Aerospace", and DaXue is "big school", i.e., a university, thus, Shenyang AerospaceU. Other than the fact that the schoolname is lent to the subway stop a block away from the main gate, to delve into theschool's character is probably best read from calligraphy emblazoned near thefront gate. The phrase is De Neng Bin Jin Yong Yi Xiang Yuan. Individually, they denote for de = virtue, neng =competence, bin = together, jin = advance, yong = courage, yi =resolute, xiang = soar, and yuan = forever. My take is prosaic: "Resolutely advancetogether with competence and virtue soaring forever." I suspect that the aestheticprecedes consideration of the authentic; beauty trumps reality in the understandingof the phrase. The calligraphy rather thanthe spoken Putunghua is more helpfulto the Chinese reader. Big words to describe processes around educational aims inthe East include the influence attributed to Kong Fu Tzu, aka, Confucius, and the Mao-think that redefined it. In the West, the renaissance and enlightenmenteras girds the great walls of its learning. Since the Han of 206 BCE transcended the preceding Qin'sadherence to strict rules (often referred to as legalism), the thoughts of KungFu Tzu dominated the rhetoric of governance, simply because the activity ofrationalization followed the path of stability rather than the unsettling of thepugua paradigm, a pillar ingovernance "with Chinese characteristics." Two thousand years of dynastic turmoil is often analyzedthrough a ruling dynasty's adherence to the "mandate of heaven" that legitimizeda reigning family's status to rule justly and earned the fealty of the learnedand privileged class that in turn guided the affairs of the hoi polloi. The lower class correspondingly stayed faithful butsubservient to the upper class that supported ruling families until a change isdeemed necessary, not of the system itself but on the ruling family. In all these, the model of relationships fromtop to bottom, and bottom to top, is that of the "family", heavily virtue-ladenas a clan. The merit system in China judged one's familiarity withcalligraphic representations of Confucian thoughts and history; the civilservice exam that choose government roles had for a long time been the gaugedon one's acquaintance with the corpus of Confucian thoughts until Mao camealong and noticed that academia held the gates to the Communist Party andproceeded to chasten the halls of academy through exposure to agrarian postingand learning. Self-taught, the CulturalRevolution spawned the informal Dong NongBing Da Xue (Worker-Farmer-Soldier University) that upended the stability,equanimity, and tranquility of many urban dwellers and the illuminati. The renaissance in Europe 1400 CE was a return to classicalforms in literature and art, harking back to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle,influencing the secular thought patterns of the west, and adhered to byJudeo-Christian-Muslim theologies. Ithankered back to Greco-Roman civilization. The constant was a transcendent Will of Deity emanating from themysterious YHWH of Jerusalem, Olympus' Zeus and the Forum's Deus. Thrones and miter were determined by articulatedcoherence of theologies invoking sacred writ. The enlightenment of the 1700 CE came as shock to the systemas evolution suggested that discernable cosmic intelligence referred to as deityis but personified human rationality that one aligned to or stand-up against inproud but resolute defiance. Chaos was theorder of creation, manifested notably in the changes brought about by the Americanand French revolutions. China's 1912 revolution challenged Confucian order, awakenednational sentiments against colonizing Europe and Imperial Japan, but retained thestranglehold of its decrepit civil service. The revolution in Russia erupted in 1917 that birthed a revolutionary whothought of contradictions; Mao-think got quoted in red books later. In 1949, change took the front seat whileConfucian stability sat at the back. Deng Xiaoping found a way of keeping stability in the yin-yang of chaosand order, and in pushing industrialization, introduced "nuclear"family as a live option and the individual as democracy's necessary component. Continuity is big in Chinese thought; chastened Confucius isback. Much of China's educational thrustremains on getting "certificated" in society though no longer on themandate of heaven as it is on the skill to assemble gadgets in the factoryline. When "certificated" U grads prefer to hawk shoeson the sidewalk's night market rather than wear office attire, it is time torevisit formal pedagogy. I have sevenyears to inject my contribution from inside the ramparts of its great wall. j'aime la vie pinoypanda2031@aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!