每個孩子／父母都是第一名？

最近看完了陳之華的兩本書：《沒有資優班：珍視每個孩子的芬蘭教育》（台北：木馬文化，2008）和《每個孩子都是第一名：芬蘭教育給臺灣父母的45堂必修課》（台北：天下遠見，2009）。來回翻閱網誌，發現幾個月前看完前書，居然沒有留下半點痕跡；連至少摘錄原文，以存記錄和參考，也沒有，只剩下圖書館的館際借還記錄。可惜，今日幾乎記不起內容，只留下對書名的推想。後者還在手上，讀完擱下多時，摘錄要文如下：

有時我不禁懷疑，如果觀摩他國經驗到了最後，無法從根本的價值與事物的本質上，去探索自己的生活與體制到底哪裡走岔了路，只是一味嫌棄他國的模式不適合解決我們現在的問題，那再派多少學者訪團，再怎麼高談借鏡、學習，與「他山之石，可以攻錯」［《詩經》原文為「他山之石，可以為錯......他山之石，可以攻玉」］，也只是在自我設定的框架裡打轉；頂多在原有框架的外圍繞了又繞，連跨出去一步的基本方向都找不著，遑論檢視自我的勇氣。最後的結語就是一句話：國情不同，無法套用。（自序，頁29）

你們亞洲孩子的數學就很厲害！（一位芬蘭大學教授，頁116）

國家與為政者的首要責任，是給大家希望，而教育不是只有給菁英和所謂「優秀的人」希望吧？（頁126）

才七歲的孩子，就被大人驅策去做一些超齡的較勁，不僅似乎是早了點，而這其中的大人與師長心態，總不免讓人思索。（頁135）

資優，不是犧牲基本公平的藉口；而菁英，也不應建築在廣大社會的匱乏上。（後記，頁282）

這個世界上太多人習慣以大國，或莊至就以美國的習慣性思維與「標準」來看世界。（後記，頁286）

孩子第一名，父母都是嗎？

Armenians in China

Sebouh Aslanian, “Trade Diaspora versus Colonial State: Armenian Merchants, the English East India Company, and the High Court of Admiralty in London, 1748-1752,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, Spring2004, Vol. 13 Issue 1, pp. 37-100.

"In the first half of the eighteenth century, Julfans had settled in what are now Malaysia; Indonesia (Hordananian; Coless; CoUectie 606 Armen Joseph; Sarkissian); Canton (Guangdong), China (Poladian, "Chinastani hay"; Morse 2:84-5); and, starting in the 1660s, in Manila in the Philippines (Quiason 37-41, 88-90, 93, 98, 171-2; Clarence-Smith, 118-119; Aslanian, From the Indian chap. 4)." (p. 48)

In PRO, the trial proceedings of the capture of the Santa Catharina, along with numerous bundles of "Armenian papers", "1,700 mercantile letters and contracts...five or six letters in Italian and Latin from the Carmelite mission in Rome addressed to recipients as far away as Beijing..." (p. 54)

"the presence of New Julfa's intelligence networks allowed its merchants to exercise influence in regions where they did not have immediate representatives. As an example of how this was done, consider the case of a merchant ship called the Santa Reta, owned by two merchants, an Armenian and a Greek, both trading out of Madras. The ship was confiscated as a 'prize' by the British navy near Canton (Guangdong), China, in 1780 after its owners were forced out of Manila, where they were trading at the outbreak of war between Britain and Spain...its Armenian owner, Muchertich Vasseli...wrote a petition/letter to the only fellow New Julfan known to him, who resided in London at the time...What is noteworthy about this document is the rhetoric of kinship and 'nationality' invoked by the Armenian in China to establish long-distance trust and solidarity with another New Julfan residing in London" (p. 67)

Sebouh Aslanian, "From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: Circulation and the Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa, 1605-1747," unpublished doctoral diss., Columbia University, 2006.

L. Ter-Mkrtchyan, "Armenians in China (from ancient times to recent history," The International Association for the Study of the Cultures of Central Asia: Information Bulletin, Vol. 4, 1983, pp. 24-31.

Mesrovb Jacob Seth, Armenians in India: from the earliest times to the present day (Calcutta, 1937; New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1992). "Sir Catchick Paul Chater, C.M.G., LL.D., the 'Grand Old Man' of Hong Kong," pp. 550-560.

Michael Greenberg, British trade and the opening of China, 1800-42 (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1951), pp. 114-115. "the Senate [of Macao] has positively forbidden the Portuguese ships to bring any Armenians as passengers next year [1802]."

Hosea B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China 1635–1834 (Oxford, 1926–1929), vol. 2, pp. 84–85; vol. 3, p. 103, 106, 225.

Sir John Barrow, Travels in China : containing descriptions, observations, and comparisons, made and collected in the course of a short residence at the imperial palace of Yuen-min-yuen, and on a subsequent journey through the country from Pekin to Canton... (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1804), pp. 611-612. The Armenian and his Pearl. "I have been told a curious history, by a gentleman who was on the spot [Canton] at the time it happened."

H. E. Richardson, "Armenians in India and Tibet," Journal of the Tibet Society, Vol. 1 (1980), pp. 63-67.

Keram Kevonian, “Un Itinéraire Arménienne de la Mer de Chine [An Armenian Itinerary of the Sea of China],” Histoire de Barus Sumatra: le site de Lobu Tua: etudes et documents [A History of Barus, Sumatra: The Site of Lobu TUa: Studies and Documents], ed. by Claude Guillot. Paris: Cahiers d’archipel, 1998, pp. 35-118.

Keram Kevonian and Michel Aghassian, "The Armenian Merchant Network: Overall Autonomy and Local Integration," Merchants, Companies and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era, ed. by Sushil Chaudhury and Michel Morineau. Cambridge: CUP, 199, pp. 74-94.

Keram Kevonian and Michel Aghassian, "Armenian Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Asian Merchants and Businessmen in the Indian Ocean and the China Sea, ed. Denys Lombard and Jean Aubin. Oxford: OUP, pp. 154-177.

Ronald Ferrier, "The Agreement of the East India Company with the Armenian Nation, 22nd June 1688," Revue des Études Arméniennes n.s. Vol. 7 (1970), pp. 427-443.

Ronald Ferrier, "The Armenians and the East India Company in Persia in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century," Economic History Review, 2nd. ser. Vol. 26 (1973), pp. 38-62.

Joan George, Merchants in Exile: The Armenians of Manchester, England, 1835-1935. London: Gomidas Institute Press, 2002.

Sushil Chaudhury, "Trading Networks in a Traditional Diaspora: Armenians in India, c. 1600-1800," Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks: Four Centuries of History, ed. Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, Gelina Harlaftis, and Ioanna Pepelasis Minoglou. Oxford: Berg, 2005, pp. 51-72.

Vahan Baibourtian, International Trade and Armenian Merchants in the Seventeenth Century. New Delhi: Sterling, 2004.

Vahé Baladouni and Margaret Makepeace, eds., Armenian Merchants of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: English East India Company Sources. Philadelphia: Am. Phil. Soc., 1998.

Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, "Merchant Capital and Knowledge: The Financing of Early Printing Press by the Eurasian Silk Trade of New Julfa," Treasures in Heaven: Armenian Art, Religion, and Society, ed. T. F. Mathews and R. S. Wieck. New York: Pierpont Morgan, 1998, pp. 58-73.

Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, The Shah's Silk for Europe's Silver: The Eurasian Trade of the Julfa Armenians in Safavid Iran and India, 1530-1750. Atlanta: Scholars P, 1999.

Mesrovb Seth, History of the Armenians in India from the Earliest Times to the Present. 1937. New Delhi: Asian Ed. Service, 1992.

Nadia H. Wright, Respected Citizens: the History of Armenians in Singapore and Malaysia. Victoria, Australia: Amasia Publishing, 2003.

Romanise/Modernise or not?

Growing from a workshop entitled "Romanisation in Comparative Perspective: Explaining Success and Failure," held at Bilkent University, Andara in September 2007, the latest special issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Series 3, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2010) contributes to the current literature in the field from a comparative perspective. Six papers with an editorial introduction were published drawing prime romanisation campaigns, whether success or failure, in Turkey, Azebaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, India, Pakistan, and Japan (disappointed by the absence of China).

Who advocated romanisation? Who were the romanisers? Unsurprisingly, they belong to the political/intellectual elite. In his editorial introduction, İlker Aytürk identifies three distinct groups of romanisers. First and foremost were the colonial rulers "who wanted to bring order to local administration and believed that Roman alphabet could serve that purpose best in being the writing system of the supposedly superior overlords." Romanisation was considered as a beneficent policy "to improve the condition of the native people". Second were local advocates "who regarded their native writing system as problematic from a practical point of view only and aspired to join what they saw as a global trend of romanisation." It should be noted that "it did not in any way imply the inferiority of the adoptive culture". Last but not least, the third group were local actors "from underdeveloped or developing countries as a rule, who adopted an extremely negative attitude toward their own culture, religion, or civilisation, to the point of blaming them for the backwardness of their societies." (p. 5-8)

Recent readings XIII

Giorgio Riello, "Asian Knowledge and the Development of Calico Printing in Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Journal of Global History, Vol. 5, 2010, pp. 1-28. concepts involved: import substitution, useful and reliable knowledge, European epistemic base, knowledge transmission, knowledge reinterpretation, and global colours

Marina Carter and Crispin Bates, "Empire and Locality: A Global Dimension to the 1857 Indian Uprising," Journal of Global History, Vol. 5, 2010, pp. 51-73. The Indian Uprising [rather than Mutiny] in 1857 coincided with dramatic increase in global sugar price and aftermath the surge in numbers migrating to the sugar colonies.

Pierre-Yves Donzé, "Studies Abroad by Japanese Doctors: A Prosopographic Analysis of the Nameless Practitioners, 1862-1912," Social History of Medicine, Advance Access, 2010, 17 pps. 手塚晃：《幕末明治海外渡航者總覽》

Constance J. S. Chen, "Merchants of Asianness: Japanese Art Dealers in the United States in the Early Twentieth Century," Journal of American Studies, Advance Access, 28 pps. Bunkio Matsuki and Sadajiro Yamanaka. Their stories "illuminate the ways in which certain notions of Asianness and the reconceptualization of aesthetic categories were linked in complex ways...fabricated and sold definitions of race and art to peddle Oriental goods; their Japaneseness became cultural capital and a marketing strategy."

Ray Forrest, Adrienne La Grange and Yip Ngai-Ming, "Neighbourhood in a high rise, high density city: some observations on contemporary Hong Kong," The Sociological Review, Vol. 50, Iss. 2, May 2002, pp. 215-240. English literature on neighbourhood in low rise, low density environments in contrast to HK's high density, high rise living space. strong attachment to the neighbourhood but rare interaction with immediate neighbours (even on the same floor).

Leigh K. Jenco, "'Rule by Man' and 'Rule by Law' in Early Republican China: Contributions to a Theoretical Debate," Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 69, No. 1, February 2010, pp. 181-203. Liang Qichao, Zhang Shizhao, The Tiger 甲寅雜誌

David Rooney and James Nye, "'Greenwich Observatory Time for the Public Benefit': Standard Time and Victorian Networks of Regulation," British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 42, No. 1, March 2009, pp. 5-30. The widespread adoption of standard time in Britain took more than fifty years and simple public access to a representation of it took longer still. power, intelligence, state, and individual. Quotes "Victorian were obsessed with alcohol. Among the literate and the articulate, the proper place of drink in society was debated with an intensity and an exhaustiveness which is now difficult for us to comprehend." ( A. E. Dingle, The Campaign for Prohibition in Victorian England, London, 1980, p. 8)

Clare Midgley, "Can Women Be Missionaries? Envisioning Female Agency in the Early Nineteenth-Century British Empire," Journal of British Studies, Vol. 45, April 2006, pp. 335-358. female missionary memoirs in the Cape of Good Hope and India

Federica Ferlanti, "The New Life Movement in Jiangxi Province, 1934-1938," Modern Asian Studies, Advance Access, 40pps. state building, hygienic modernity, mass mobilisation

No Film Studies in Japan?

Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto's "The University Disciplines, National Identity: Why Is There No Film Studies in Japan?" South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 99, No. 4, Fall 2000, pp. 697-713.

"Literature departments in Japan," Yoshimoto claims, "never embraced film or study of film as part of their intellectual endeavours." What is particularly puzzling and strange is "the absence of any institutionally sustained engagement with film in American studies in Japan." (p. 699-700) "English," in the Japanese historical and political contexts Yoshimoto suggests, "is an accomplice ofkokubungaku [national literature] in the construction of national subjects." The discipline of English, he argued, "divides the world into self-enclosed nation-states, and communicative model of translation that underlies the discipline constructs the relationship of equivalency and compatibility between Japan and the West." (p. 702)

Despite all these, I can't help asking: no Japanese film studies or simply English/American film studies?

Nostalgia

Once a week, I stroll into the university bookstore after work to check out new arrivals and more importantly recharge exhausted energy and soul. Last week, I rambled the bookstore as usual. The new anthology (《新賣柑者言》) of Steven N.S. Cheung (張五常) caught my eyes. I picked it up and flipped to the content page. Nostalgia. It remind me of the good old days in high school and HKAL Economics more than a decade ago. Quite coincidentally a couple of weeks ago when I was browsing an interesting journal Journal of the History of Economic Thought two articles glittered in my eyes, one on George J. Stigler the other on Milton Friedman (both are Cheung's mentors) by David R. Kamerschen and Deepa J. Sridhar, and David Teira respectively. Again, it led me to recall some of the long forgotten economics concepts in HKAL most of which originate from the Chicago school.

David R. Kamerschen and Deepa J. Sridhar, "The Theory of [Competitive] Price According to George J. Stigler," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 31, No. 2, June 2009, pp. 181-200.

David Teira, "Why Friedman's Methodology Did Not Generate Consensus among Economists,"Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 31, No. 2, June 2009, pp. 201-214.

John F. McDonald, "Graduate Education in Economics: Microeconomics at Chicago and Yale in the 1960s," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 31, No. 2, June 2009, pp. 161-180.

Recent readings XIV

Lancelot Forster, Professor of Education at HKU, observed that "Hong Kong is merely a pied-à-terre both for British and Chinese residents. The former looks forward to his next home leave and final retirement in England, the latter regards himself, like the former, as a temporary exile from his beloved Canton." from the private papers of Forster, "General Strike in Hong Kong," 1925?. File 3, Forster Papers, Mss. Ind. Ocn. S177. Rhodes House, Oxford University. Cited from Steven Evans' "The Evolution of the English-language Speech Community in Hong Kong,"English World-Wide, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2009), pp. 278-301, 286.

Edward R. Beauchamp, "'Scratches on Our Minds': William Elliot Griffis as Interpreter of Japan,"Asian Profile, Vol. 1, No. 3, December 1973.

Benjamin Wai-ming Ng, "Consuming and Localizing Japanese Combat Games in Hong Kong," in Larissa Hjorth and Dean Chan (eds.), Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacific (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 83-101.

Anna Winterbottom, "Producing and Using the Historical Relation of Ceylon: Robert Know, the East India Company and the Royal Society," British Journal of Historical Studies, Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 515-538.

Jayanta Sengupta, "Nation on a Platter: the Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in Colonial Bengal," Modern Asian Studies, 18pps.

Nile Green, "The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya: Persianate Knowledge between Person and Paper," Modern Asian Studies, 25pps.

Edward McDonald, "Getting over the Walls of Discourse: 'Character Fetishization' in Chinese Studies," The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Nov. 2009), pp. 1189-1213.

Simone Lässig and Karl Heinrich Pohl, "History Textbooks and Historical Scholarship in Germany," History Workshop Journal, Issue 67, 2009, pp. 125-139. "school textbooks...as instruments of socialization...the social and cultural knowledge found in textbooks not only reflects scholarly requirements and contemporary didactic codes: it is always of political relevance too." (p. 125)

Neeladri Bhattacharya, "Teaching History in Schools: the Politics of Textbooks in India," History Workshop Journal, Issue 67, 2009, pp. 99-110.

Romila Thapar, "The History Debate and School Textbooks in India: a Personal Memoir,"History Workshop Journal, Issue 67, 2009, pp. 88-98.

Mark Levene, "Historians for the Right to Work: We Demand a Continuing Supply of History,"History Workshop Journal, Issue 67, 2009, pp. 69-81.

Mieke de Vos, "The Return of the Canon: Transforming Dutch History Teaching," History Workshop Journal, Issue 67, 2009, pp. 111-124. The Dutch Canon and the Ten-Periods framework. nationalist and Eurocentric bias, absence of guiding principles, and the arbitrary and exchangeable character of the items

Postmodern historiography

Samuel James's "Louis Mink, 'Postmodernism', and the Vocation of Historiography" (Modern Intellectual History, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2010), pp. 151-184) draws me to return to postmodern historiography to read Michael Bentley's Modernizing England's Past: English Historiography in the Age of Modernism, 1870-1970 (2005), William H. Sewell Jr.'s Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (2005), Jonathan Gorman's Historical Judgement: The Limits of Historiographical Choice (2008), and François Cusset's French theory : how Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. transformed the intellectual life of the United States (2008).

Chinese Cannons and their Modern Applications

Jeremy Paltiel's "Mencius and World Order Theories," The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 3, 2010, pp. 37-54.

Paltiel argues that "Pre-Qin China is both a rich source of data for international relations specialists and a rich source of analytical insight" because of "an independently authored set of historical texts [the work of Han Fei, Mo Di, Mencius etc.] that lay out the narrative of inter-state relations in ways that allow us to independently evaluate the relationship of data to interpretation and analysis" which allow researchers "to place modern scientific analytic frames around the interpretive propositions of pre-Qin thinkers, and independently evaluate the data in that light." Researchers, he suggests, "should look at the reframed ancient wisdom and ask whether or how this wisdom allows us to fill out or expand the frame of our scientific knowledge and how this new synthesis allow us better to interpret data." (p. 37-8) Drawing on this theoretical framework, Paltiel examines Mencius's theory of hegemony (Badao 霸道) and the kingly way (Wangdao 王道), and its implications in modern international relations theory and its relevance to contemporary international conflict such as the American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and contemporary Chinese foreign policy (very briefly and superficially though). For those who are taking the GE course: Chinese Cultural Cannons and their Modern Applications, have a look of this article. It won't disappoint you.

You Asians

Naoki Sakai's "'You Asians': On the Historical Role of the West and Asia Binary," South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 99, No. 4, Fall 2000, pp. 789-817. Japanese historical contexts

"the unity of the West is far from being unitarily determinable. The West is a mythical construct." (p. 789) In North American academia, "[t]hings Asiatic were brought to scholarly attention by being recognized as 'different and therefore Asian...'being Asian' were taken to be synonymous in its anthropologizing gesture." (p. 790) "Asia was a postcolonial entity from the outset." (p. 791)