LEARNING TO BE HUMAN: THE IMPLICATIONS OF CONFUCIAN PERCEPTIONS ON ENDS AND MEANS FOR THE PRACTICE OF MODERN ADULT EDUCATION

Abstract

Modern adult education philosophies during the 20th century have many perceptions on ends and means. Efforts to create means to reach personal, business, and social needs, resolving various kinds of problems have become the ends of most formal schooling, including adult education. Consequently, we are losing our mind in understanding what the ultimate end is. Moreover, the traditional wisdom emphasized on quality of true human beings is often overlooked. Confucian perceptions on end and means, from a perennial perspective, invite us to reconsider the ends and means issue of modern adult education. They help us consciously understand how a global society is now ruled by predatory corporations and dominated by a "technocratic" or "instrumental" rationality (Welton, 1995). They assist us to reunify and reconstruct the broken selves and worlds. As such, regression to Confucius' learning to be human is a way to progress toward an effective result for a global civilization and the adult education movement of the third millenium.