Cultures express their fundamental values in how they structure learning and in the traits and knowledge that they strive to inculcate in their children. Thus, comparing views about education cross-culturally provides an excellent vantage point for comparing cultures. It is this task that Li takes on in this wide-ranging, ambitious, and brave book, which argues that divergent philosophies and conceptions of learning characterize East Asian (particularly Chinese) and European American cultures and account for many cross-cultural differences in current teaching and learning practices as well as educational outcomes.

In Li's view, Chinese beliefs, based on Confucian ideas, see learning as a means to cultivate virtue and correct relationships, and see such factors as diligence, perseverance, and the endurance of hardship as key to both learning and personal development.

Western education is seen as focusing on epistemology and the mind, at the expense of virtue and morality. Overall, the discussion of European philosophy in the early part of the book is wide-ranging but somewhat superficial. Li makes much of the Faustian Bargain, which she argues belies a Western belief that learning can require the loss of one's soul. This seems an odd choice, given that (as she notes), Faust's fate varies in different versions of the story. In Goethe's version,Footnote ¹ angels carry his soul to heaven, proclaiming “Who ever strives with all his power, We are allowed to save.” The moral of this story seems quite consistent with Confucian philosophy.

The belief that Western education focuses on the mind at the expense of morality ignores the major influence of the Judeo-Christian tradition on education, as well as the centrality of ethics going back to Socrates, as in this advice in Plato's Apology:Footnote ²

The idea that Confucian and Greek traditions persist into the present has been discussed by others,Footnote ³ but Li provides a comprehensive review focusing on ideas of teaching and learning.

In support of her views, Li appends a diverse set of evidence, not all of equal quality; for example, a comparison of the mottoes of universities in China and the West does not seem to add much to her argument.

More relevant and more convincing is psychological research on the greater likelihood of American children and parents to ascribe success to ability rather than effort, or her own work on how students characterize learning and learners, as well as on how mothers talk about their young children's learning. She also provides a very thoughtful discussion of what has been termed the paradox of the Asian learner,Footnote ⁴ that East Asian students are quite successful despite being taught in large classes using methods that strike outsiders as involving rote practice, authoritarian practices, and a focus on external examinations and low-level cognitive skills. She is not the first to argue that these observations misstate reality in significant ways. We found that Chinese elementary math teachers are more likely to talk about student interest and teacher-student relationships than their U.S. counterparts, many of whom describe a very rote approach to learning mathematics.Footnote ⁵ Li provides a comprehensive discussion of how parents, peers, and educational practices combine to engage Chinese students in serious learning.

The book generally gives scant attention to alternate explanations for differences in teaching practices and how they might be changing over time. Flynn, among others, has argued that Western teaching and child-rearing practices have changed in ways that privilege intellectual flexibility over knowledge.Footnote ⁶ To the extent that a similar evolution occurs in China (or recent efforts to improve the intellectual rigor of American education are successful), one might see more of a convergence over time in practices and beliefs than might be expected based on the arguments in this book. Culture has enduring force, but it is not the only factor that determines behavior, and Li tends to present a fairly static picture of Chinese and Western beliefs and practices.

This is a rich book, and few will come away without picking up new ideas. The proposed alternative to the traditional Gricean conversational maxims in East Asian culture (postulating, among others, maxims of indirectness and ambiguity), is just one intriguing example. Not all the evidence is of equal quality, and not all the arguments equally well-founded, but this is a rich and rewarding book that will engage and perhaps occasionally enrage scholars from a variety of fields.