Liberal Arts and Distance Education: Can Socratic Virtue ( and Confucius'
Exemplary Person (junzi) Be Taught Online?
Keynote address
Charles Ess
Director, Interdisciplinary Studies Center
Drury University
Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA
"The diversity of cultures in this world is really important. It's the richness that we have which, in
fact, will save us from being caught up in one big idea."
-- Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web) addressing the 10th International World Wide Web
Conference, Hong Kong1
“Globalization must not be a new version of colonialism. It must respect the diversity of cultures
which, within the universal harmony of peoples, are life's interpretative keys." Pope John Paul II2
“If people use this system [of software that eliminates the need to enter Chinese characters], they
will forget how to write even faster. What we are chasing is speed. When culture and speed
come into conflict, speed wins.”
-- Ming Zhou, Microsoft researcher in Beijing
“The PC Is Mightier Than the Pen; Handwriting Erodes in China,” New York Times, 1 Feb. 2001,
D1, 8 (emphasis added, CE)
“The Internet is profoundly disrespectful of tradition, established order and hierarchy, and that is
very American.”
-- Fareed Zakaria, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, quoted in Dreyfus, 12.
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Introduction
I begin with Western characterizations and root goals of liberal arts education, as articulated by
the American Association of Colleges and Universities and found in classic statements from
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Taken collectively, these statements emphasize the educational
goal of "virtue first" - i.e., that whatever our professional aspirations, our first shared "business"
as human beings is to pursue virtue or excellence as human beings. This Western vision,
moreover, is not the exclusive property of but one set of cultural histories and traditions. Rather,
the aspiration and injunction towards human excellence has its counterparts in any number of
traditions and cultures beyond the Western spheres: for our purposes, however, I will focus
primarily on the classical Confucian tradition and its notion of the exemplary person or junzi.
Nicely enough, for all their important and irreducible differences - there is a strong coherency
between Eastern and Western traditions, suggesting precisely the possibility of a shared global
ethic of human excellence or virtue. In addition to these coherencies among diverse cultural
ideals, I also argue that there is a strong survival value in our discerning and pursuing a globallyoriented liberal arts education. At the close of this first part, I then sketch out what liberal
learning for global citizens - as rooted in both Western and Eastern understandings of virtue might look like.
With this outline of a global liberal arts education as background, in the second part I then
raise a number of critical questions about the possibility of fully accomplishing the goals of a
shared/global liberal arts education online. These include recent shifts from a 1990s’ optimism
regarding the profitability of distance education to a more informed understanding of the real
costs of distance education. Moreover, I take up a number of cultural issues that complicate
distance education, including the cultural values and communicative preferences embedded in
the contemporary technologies of distance education - thus raising the danger of a "computermediated colonization" that might inadvertently but powerfully impose Western values and
preferences on a global audience of learners. My goal in this section is not to argue against all
forms of distance education for liberal arts learning - but rather, following Hubert Dreyfus in his
recent book On the Internet, to recognize the strengths and limits of distance education. Briefly,
while the current technologies of computer mediated communication are demonstrably useful,
and perhaps even more successful, than face-to-face education in helping our students achieve
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the early stages of learning, I concur with Dreyfus' argument that distance education cannot
achieve the highest goals of liberal arts learning - specifically, Aristotle's phronesis or practical
wisdom. Where such wisdom is needed by any professional - e.g., the physician, the architect,
the lawyer, etc. - such wisdom is also the shared goal of human beings as human beings. That is,
such wisdom - as the expression of Socratic as well as Confucian virtue - is needed by all human
beings as we seek to live our lives with more than a little ethical sensibility and pursuit of the
common good.
In my final section, I return to the larger question: can the sort of liberal arts education an education squarely focused on human excellence as now understood in a shared, global sense
and as required for global citizens - be taught completely online? My response should be clear:
of course not. But I emphasize that this is not just my response - but rather one shared by a
number of early proponents of technology and distance learning. Even according to these early
proponents, the bloom is off the (1990's) revolution. For that, I argue that a limited form of
distance education - one that recognizes both what can and cannot be accomplished online - can
certainly contribute to a much-needed aspect of human virtue or excellence, i.e., the human
characteristics and skills crucial for cross-cultural dialogue and mutual understanding. I
conclude with what I then see as some imperatives for a genuinely global liberal arts education one that will certainly include, but not be limited to, what can be taught and communicated
through computer-mediated communication.
1. Liberal Arts Education: Socratic and the Exemplary Person – junzi
A. What is liberal arts education?
i. The American Association of Colleges and Universities' statement
We can usefully begin with "The Association of American Colleges and Universities Statement
on Liberal Learning" (approved by American Association of Colleges and Universities’ Board of
Directors, October 5, 1998). While the entire statement is worth close reading,1 I would
highlight the following elements.
1
Here is the statement in its entirety:
A truly liberal education is one that prepares us to live responsible, productive, and creative lives in a
dramatically changing world. It is an education that fosters a well grounded intellectual resilience, a
disposition toward lifelong learning, and an acceptance of responsibility for the ethical consequences of
our ideas and actions. Liberal education requires that we understand the foundations of knowledge and
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To begin with, liberal arts education teaches us to

Accept responsibility for the ethical consequences of our ideas and actions
"Liberal" in liberal arts derives from the Latin liber - "free." The liberal arts are thus the
arts of free persons. As Plato's allegory of the cave in the Republic makes clear, this freedom is
not solely a matter of freedom from constraints, e.g., the groundless, if not harmful constraints of
unquestioned traditions and customs. Rather, free persons are primarily those who are free to
develop more complete - indeed, more global - understandings of the realities of the human
condition and the best ethical and political responses to those realities. To say it another way:
liberal arts education should help students recognize that their beliefs, ideas, claims, etc., are not
a matter of indifferent tolerance (captured so nicely by the current student slang of "whatever").
Rather, our ideas have consequences - sometimes beneficent, sometimes disastrous ones. As
tempting as the retreat into silence and ethical relativism may be - liberal arts education will
make clear that these temptations usually serve only the interests of those who seek to make
critical but responsible freedom impossible.
This understanding of the importance of our taking responsibility for our views is then
facilitated by following emphases: liberal arts education is to help students acquire

The foundations of knowledge and inquiry about nature, culture, and society

Historical and cultural context
inquiry about nature, culture and society; that we master core skills of perception, analysis, and
expression; that we cultivate a respect for truth; that we recognize the importance of historical and
cultural context; and that we explore connections among formal learning, citizenship, and service to our
communities.
We experience the benefits of liberal learning by pursuing intellectual work that is honest, challenging,
and significant, and by preparing ourselves to use knowledge and power in responsible ways. Liberal
learning is not confined to particular fields of study. What matters in liberal education is substantial
content, rigorous methodology and an active engagement with the societal, ethical, and practical
implications of our learning. The spirit and value of liberal learning are equally relevant to all forms of
higher education and to all students.
Because liberal learning aims to free us from the constraints of ignorance, sectarianism, and
short-sightedness, it prizes curiosity and seeks to expand the boundaries of human knowledge. By its
nature, therefore, liberal learning is global and pluralistic. It embraces the diversity of ideas and
experiences that characterize the social, natural, and intellectual world. To acknowledge such diversity
in all its forms is both an intellectual commitment and a social responsibility, for nothing less will equip
us to understand our world and to pursue fruitful lives.
The ability to think, to learn, and to express oneself both rigorously and creatively, the capacity to
understand ideas and issues in context, the commitment to live in society, and the yearning for truth are
fundamental features of our humanity. In centering education upon these qualities, liberal learning is
society's best investment in our shared future.
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
Master core skills of perception, analysis, and expression
That is: the responsibility for developing one's own understanding of the world - what
philosophers call worldview - as a chief goal of liberal arts education further requires both a
wide-ranging knowledge of nature, cultures and societies, as the latter are illuminated by their
often complex contexts. At the same time, such knowledge is not simply passive content: in
order for it to become useful in our students' understanding of the world around them and in their
developing their own views - our students further require the active skills of "perception,
analysis, and expression." (As we will see in the second section, it is especially as liberal arts
education is about acquiring skills and not just content that begins to demarcate the limits of
online learning.)
This active understanding, responsive expression, and on-going development of
worldview further requires the ability to make

Connections among formal learning, citizenship, and service to our communities
That is, we make sense of our world and our actions in it in part as we develop a strong sense of
coherency between our learning and our doing, our theory and our practice. Without making
such connections, our thoughts, feelings, and actions are likely to become random, fragmented,
and incoherent. By contrast, as we develop an ever-greater sense of the mutual interaction
between our lives as members of communities and our on-going development of a thoughtful and
richly emotive worldview, we move towards a greater sense of meaning and wholeness - part of
what Greek virtue ethics calls eudaimonia or a sense of well-being (cf. Aristotle, Nichomachean
Ethics, Book VI).
Finally, as the allegory of the cave again makes clear - these tasks cannot take place in a
domain limited to just one culture and its traditions, however rich they may be. On the contrary,

By its nature…liberal learning is global and pluralistic. It embraces the diversity of
ideas and experiences that characterize the social, natural, and intellectual world.
That is: the liberating liber of the liberal arts seeks nothing less than a world-view - one that, in
contrast with the dogmatic and authoritarian insistence on the validity of just one culture and its
traditions, recognizes the legitimacy and integrity of multiple cultures and peoples. A global and
pluralistic worldview, as an outcome of liberal arts education, does not seek coherency by forcing
all views to fit a single model. Rather, it insists on a pluralism based precisely on the recognition
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that the fruitfulness and richness of our engagements with one another stem from our irreducible
differences from one another, not simply from what we already share in common.
ii. In the Western tradition, liberal learning is rooted in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
Given this as an initial sketch of liberal arts education, it will also serve our interest in a global
perspective to recall some of the primary sources of these views on liberal learning. For us
philosophers, these sources include first of all the figure of Socrates as portrayed in Plato's
dialogues - specifically, The Republic and The Apology.
In this context, I simply want to lift up a specific theme in Socrates' teaching as a
foundational element of liberal learning - namely, the recognition that the pursuit of human
excellence () or virtue must always come first. For the hard lesson of human experience
seems to be that if we allow other human interests - including the desires for wealth, honor,
power, and so forth - to override our pursuit of human excellence, that pursuit is likely to be
sacrificed entirely. (The current rash of scandal in American corporations - from Enron to
WorldCom - provide numerous cases in point.) Especially as Socrates argues at length in The
Republic, the sacrifice of human excellence is ultimately self-defeating: such a life, no matter
how much wealth, honor, or power might be gained, will lack the one thing all human beings
seek in life - namely, eudaimonia or well-being. By contrast, our pursuit of human excellence,
Socrates argues, will certainly allow for - if indeed, it does not actively facilitate - the acquisition
of at least a moderate and appropriate level of wealth, honor, and power. And in doing so, the
pursuit of human excellence leads to the highest of human goods - eudaimonia or well-being.
While the entire argument of The Republic is precisely about the question as to whether
the just person, as one who pursues human excellence, will enjoy greater eudaimonia than the
perfectly unjust person (the one who pursues self-interest, wealth, and power, no matter the cost)
- for our purposes it will suffice to note just one place where Socrates makes his teaching clear.
And in doing so, he provides a capsule description of liberal arts education as a life-long project,
one devoted to the pursuit of human excellence first. So Socrates says, towards the end of The
Republic, that
…each of us must, to the neglect of other studies, above all see to it that [s/]he is a seeker
and student of that study by which [s/]he might be able to learn and find out who will
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give him the capacity and the knowledge to distinguish the good and the bad life, and so
everywhere and always to choose the better from among those that are possible. [S/]He
will take into account all the things we have just mentioned and how in combination and
separately they affect the virtue [excellence] of a life….From all this [s/]he will be able to
draw a conclusion and choose - in looking off toward the nature of the soul [psyche] between the worse and the better life, calling worse the one that leads it toward become
more unjust, and better the one that leads it to becoming juster….For in this way a human
being becomes happiest [eudaimonia]. (618b-619a/301)3
As is suggested here and developed more fully elsewhere in The Republic, our sense of wellbeing depends on the nature of the psyche or "soul" - more specifically, on the well-attuned or
harmonic functioning of its elements (reason, spirit, and appetite) in the right proportion to one
another. In The Republic, in fact, this is what justice for the individual means, and is precisely
the result of the pursuit of human excellence or virtue.
It is this understanding of human nature and how we achieve eudaimonia or well-being,
moreover, that drives Socrates' habitual challenge to others in his city of Athens. So in The
Apology he explains
It is God’s bidding, you must understand that; and I myself believe no greater blessing has
ever come to you or to your city than this service of mine to God. I have gone about doing
one thing and one thing only, - exhorting all of you, young and old, not to care for your
bodies or for money above or beyond your souls and their welfare, telling you that virtue
does not come from wealth, but wealth from virtue, even as all other goods, public or
private, that man can need. (29e-30b, Jowett translation: emphasis added, CE)
Echoing the comment from The Republic, Socrates makes clear here the absolute priority of
human excellence over all other interests if we are to achieve eudaimonia or well-being - and
adds that the pursuit of such excellence will also lead to the other human goods that we need.
iii. Confucian counterparts: the exemplary person - junzi
At the same time, however, these classic roots of liberal arts education are by no means restricted
to what we might think of as "Western" traditions.4 On the contrary, it is easy enough to see
clear counterparts to a Socratic virtue ethics in classical Confucian thought.
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Again, for our purposes it will suffice only to note just three passages from The Analects
that make these coherencies clear.5 To begin with, Master Kong defines the exemplary person or
junzi as follows:
15.18 The Master said, “Having a sense of appropriate conduct (yi) as one’s basic
disposition (zhi), developing it in observing ritual propriety (li), expressing it with
modesty, and consummating it in making good on one’s word (xin): this then is an
exemplary person (junzi).”
The exemplary person, in short, is one who has shaped his or her basic character or disposition
through the practice of appropriate conduct and ritual propriety.
The primary markers of such a
character are then modesty and integrity.
These human excellences – the excellences or virtues that issue from what Aristotle
would call the right habits - are in fact to be the constant focus of what we might think of as the
life-long learning program of Confucian ethics, as characterized in one of the most famous of the
Analects:
At fifteen my heart-and-mind was set on learning.
At thirty my character had been formed.
At forty I had no more perplexities.
At fifty I realized the propensities of tien (T’ian-ming).
At sixty I was at ease with whatever I heard.
At seventy I could give my heart-and-mind free rein without overstepping the boundaries.
Finally, this life-long pursuit of excellence, of (the rarely achieved goal of) becoming an
exemplary person, is to always enjoy first priority - even over wealth and honor. According to
the Analects, Confucius anticipates Socrates in The Republic and The Apology on just this point:
4.5 The Master said, “Wealth and honor are what people want, but if they are the
consequence of deviating from the way (dao), I would have no part of them. Poverty and
disgrace are what people deplore, but if they are the consequence of staying on the way, I
would not avoid them.6
In short, for both Socrates and Confucius, the pursuit of human excellence or virtue comes first –
not at the cost of other human goods, including material well-being. Rather, these important
human goods are seen to follow from the pursuit of excellence. Indeed, these human goods can
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be seen to be necessary conditions for the pursuit of virtue. Free persons, among other things,
must be free from the constraints of material and economic necessity that would otherwise
prevent them from achieving their full potentials and freedoms. Slaves are not free, Aristotle
would remind us – and in more contemporary terms, “necessitous men are not free men.” So
Franklin Roosevelt warned as he penned a now largely forgotten document in American history,
a Declaration of Economic Rights that recognized that the fascist regimes of Italy and Germany
arose in part out of economic desperation.
But at the same time, putting the pursuit of wealth, honor, power, etc., before the pursuit
of human excellence, they each warn, means the loss of that excellence. Whether we lose the
possibility of eudaimonia (well-being), lose our attunement to the dao, or, in the Christian
tradition, gain the whole world but lose our soul – in any case, we lose what most makes life
worth living, what most gives life its authentic meaning.
One of the foremost goals of liberal arts education, I submit, is precisely to consistently
put forward the importance of human excellence above all else – not as a dogmatic assumption,
but as the considered conclusion of a wide range of traditions and beliefs. Of course, our
understanding of what excellence may mean and how it is to be achieved may well change over
time and across cultures. Indeed, this constant reflection on the specific elements of excellence
and how they are to be achieved is an intrinsic part of the praxis of liberal arts education and the
individual and collective reflection it fosters. But again, to lose sight of the priority of human
excellence or virtue is very risky business (pun intended).
B. Global education for global citizens
This brief comparison between Socratic and Confucian virtue ethics suggests not only that,
alongside their irreducible differences, both traditions may share some agreement as to the ideals
and goals of liberal arts education.7 In addition, this agreement and coherency provide some
ground for optimism that, alongside our insistence that distinctive cultural differences be
preserved, respected, and enjoyed, we may also come to some agreement as to the goals of liberal
arts education for citizens of the world (cosmopolitans), not simply citizens of one country.
In fact, the arguments for a global liberal arts education do not end with such enjoyable
considerations of coherencies and agreements among diverse cultures. To begin with, it has been
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common in Western countries to observe that “the world is shrinking” – a phenomenon
nowadays included as part of the larger complex of processes called globalization. The shrinking
world or “global village” means first of all that peoples’ social, economic, and political lives are
more and more interwoven with one another. This means in part that today we enjoy much
greater opportunities for “cultural flows,” for engaging with an ever-wider range of people from
an ever-wider range of cultures and traditions. In part, this directly serves the central goal of
liberal arts education of pursuing human excellence. Part of that pursuit, as Plato’s allegory of
the cave makes clear, is to move beyond the perspectives and views of a single culture or
tradition, towards a more encompassing worldview that might be shared with other
cosmopolitans – others who have likewise come to recognize that their own culture or tradition
(the cave in Plato’s allegory) does not necessarily provide the complete and final truth on all
things. This recognition can be characterized as an epistemological humility – i.e., precisely the
understanding that one’s best beliefs and views may be limited, e.g., dependent upon a specific
context, tradition, etc. for their meaning, rather than necessarily shared as universal truths by all
peoples.
This humility is both the condition and result of our encounters with others from cultures
and traditions different from our own. That is, if we are engage in dialogue and relationships
with the diverse peoples and traditions of the globe – such dialogue and relationship can be
fruitful only if we acknowledge the integrity, value, and legitimacy of these diverse cultures and
traditions. To say it negatively: if instead we respond ethnocentrically – i.e., with the
insistence that my culture, beliefs, practices, language, etc., are the only right ones, and all
different cultures, beliefs, practices, languages, etc. are inferior or simply wrong – we are
condemned to the warfare and colonialism that have indeed marked (and continue to mark)
human history. Happily, however, one of the common results of our encounters with “others” is
precisely the movement visualized in Plato’s allegory of the cave, i.e., the recognition that the
way others “do things” – speak, behave, believe, worship, build, etc. – are also human and
humane ways of being and believing: but this means, of course, that ours is not the only
legitimate culture and way of being.
Such epistemological humility is clearly a condition of participating in a global society –
especially if we prefer peaceful and fruitful participation to the fragmentation and violence of
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those who insist on the exclusive rightness of their own specific views. It is precisely the
recognition that this humility, as part of the human excellences or virtues in all traditions (so far
as I can tell), results from our moving out of our own culture and exploring in depth the cultures
and traditions of others that marks the Western model of Renaissance humanism, and the
emphasis in liberal arts education on language study and travel abroad (Ess 2002b). As well,
such epistemological humility is again the condition and result of the emphasis in liberal arts
education on critical – especially self-critical – reflection, i.e., the practice of articulating our
most basic assumptions and views, precisely in order to critically assess and evaluate these to
determine how far they may be true, not just for us, but for the larger human community.
My point here, then, is just that the realities of an increasingly interconnected world
demand the epistemological humility fostered by liberal arts education and (ideally) our multiple
encounters with diverse peoples and cultures. Indeed, this is not simply the conclusion of an
academic reflection on Socratic and Confucian virtue ethics, nor the result of recalling diverse
ways in which such humility is fostered by liberal arts education. In addition, there is a simple
real-world argument demonstrating the urgency and importance of our fostering such humility
however we can. September 11, 2001, may be the most striking example for Americans: but
there are all too many examples, in both history and the contemporary world, that make clear the
bloody consequences of failing to acquire this humility.
Finally, my hope that liberal arts education may help prepare students to be global
citizens – indeed, that they may actively contribute to a more just and peaceful world – is not
solely a Western ideal. In fact, as I first learned from my friend and colleague Soraj
Hongladarom – the Thai experience may well provide us with an important model, one shaped by
praxis, of how to sustain and enhance our individual and cultural identities as shaped by ethnicity
and nation – and at the same time engage with one another on a global scale as cosmopolitans
who share enough in common that we might not only avoid warfare, but also work together
towards shared visions of excellence and virtue.
2. Liberal Arts and Distance Education: Western Perspectives and Experiences
In the 1990s, at the peak of enthusiasm for distance education as the latest example of how
computer technologies would "revolutionize" education, pundits and proponents confidently
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predicted that online learning would eliminate the traditional bricks-and-mortar universities. For
a number of reasons that we can now explore, this revolutionary sentiment has been largely
replaced by a much more balanced view - one that focuses more and more on blending the best
possibilities of online education with the best practices of face-to-face teaching and learning.
Here I want to discuss four of the factors that seem to me to be most important in arguing for
such a turn from revolution to reformation.
A. The shift from modern/postmodern Cartesian dualisms and a thematic quest for "liberation in
cyberspace" to (re)new(ed) recognition of the role of embodiment in community life.
Briefly stated, significant research has called into question the 1980s and 1990s postmodern
enthusiasm for a communicative revolution - e.g., the shift into what Walter Ong has called "the
secondary orality of cyberspace" - that was supposed to be as radically transformative of
individuals and cultures as the invention of the printing press, if not the discovery of fire. As but
one example, contra early enthusiasm for "life online" and the virtual community as replacing
real-life communities (including their distinctive traditions, histories, rituals, etc.) - a number of
commentators and researchers began to observe that the body was not so easily divorced from the
mind and simply left behind at the terminal. Highlights in the development of this theme include
the work of Allucquere Rosanne Stone (1991); the research on virtual communities of Nancy
Baym (1995, 2002) and Katherine Hayles' arguments for a "post-post-modern" "post-human"
who is marked by a rejection of the Cartesian dualisms underlying the postmodern enthusiasm
for liberation in cyberspace (1999). This shift, moreover, is accompanied by a parallel renewal
of interest among philosophers in both phenomenological and hermeneutical approaches,
including a thematic interest in embodiment - including the works of Barbara Becker (2000,
2001) and Albert Borgmann (1999).
Nor is this shift restricted solely to the academic researchers and philosophers. Rather,
two of the most prominent proponents for the electronic revolution of the 1990s - Harold
Rheingold and Jay David Bolter - have taken much more guarded stances in their most recent
writings, in part because of a renewed appreciation of the role of bodies in our experiences of
learning and community (Bolter, 2001; Rheingold 2000; see Ess 2002c, 2003, for further
discussion).
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As a final point: whatever the role of CMC and other forms of electronic communication
may play in facilitating democratic governance - it is equally clear from the political events of the
1990s and early 21st century that political change likewise requires bodies. That is, it has
ultimately been the risks of embodied beings - by the thousands and tens of thousands - in places
as diverse as Yugoslavia, Indonesia, and the Philippines that have made the difference in helping
shift political power from more repressive to more democratic regimes.
B. Economic realities: contra earlier predictions of profitability, online education emerges as
both more expensive and more difficult to implement than proponents initially recognized.
While college and university administrations may not always turn first to philosophers and
researchers for advice - administrations are profoundly sensitive to economic realities. Here
again there has been a clear turn from the 1990s’ enthusiasm for distance learning.
For example, a recently analysis of media costs has shown that
…print, audio-cassettes, and pre-recorded Instructional Television are the only media that
are relatively low cost for courses with populations of from under 250 students a year to
over 1000 student a year. In addition, radio is also likely to be low cost on courses with
populations of 1000 or more students [21(p.5)]. Hülsmann, on the basis of his study of
the costs of 11 courses offered by 9 different European distance teaching organisations,
argues that at £350 per student learning hour print is the cheapest medium to develop.
Putting text up on the internet costs at least twice that, and possibly more. After that costs
escalate through audio (£1,700), CD-ROM (£13,000), video (£35,000) and TV
(£121,000) [22(p.17)]. (Rumble, 2001)
Nor is this experience limited to the U.K.:
Arizona Learning Systems found a wide variation in the costs of developing a course, of
from US$6000 to $1,000,000 for a three unit internet course, depending on the approach
used. Much of this is the cost of academic and technical labor. The cheapest approach
involved the presentation of simple course outlines and assignments; the most expensive,
at $1,000,000, involved virtual reality [23(pp.13-14)] (Rumble, 2001)
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A central cost, perhaps not surprisingly, is the faculty labor required to create distance learning
resources:
All the research shows that it takes more academic time to develop media that will
occupy a student for one hour, than it takes to develop a one hour lecture ….
Sparkes reckoned that it took from 2 to 10 hours to prepare a lecture, from 1 to 10 hours
to prepare a small group session, and from 3 to 10 hours to prepare a video-tape lecture;
however, it took at least 50 to 100 academic hours to prepare a teaching text, 100 hours to
prepare a television broadcast, 200 hours to develop computer-aided learning, and 300
hours to develop interactive materials - to which in all cases one needed to add the time
of technical support staff [26(p.219)]. Boettcher suggests that it takes an average of about
18 hours faculty time to create an hour of instruction online [27]. (Rumble, 2001:
emphasis added, CE)
Simply put: as experience has made clear the real costs of distance education in terms of
infrastructure, technical support, and faculty time and labor - there is a growing realization that
distance learning will not serve as an economic cash cow for institutions of higher education.
The following comment is characteristic:
"The expectations were that online courses would be a new revenue source and
something that colleges had to look into," says John E. Kobara, the president of
OnlineLearning.net, a company hired by the University of California at Los Angeles and
others to help them market and deliver online courses. "A year ago, there was no
chancellor or president in the country who didn't say that universities should be seriously
thinking about online courses. Today, they are going back and asking some important and
tough questions, such as: 'Are we making any money off of it?' 'Can we even pay for it?'
And 'Have we estimated the full costs?'" (Carr, 2001)
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C. Cultural issues: contra assumptions that CMC technologies are neutral tools - especially
European experience has demonstrated both the cultural biases of these technologies and the
larger difficulties of educating across diverse cultural traditions.
Beyond these concerns with the real costs of distance education - our setting in Asia also requires
us to pay careful attention to a specific risk of using CMC technologies, at least in their current
form. Simply put: in contrast with the view that communication technologies may be somehow
neutral or “just tools” – it has become increasingly clear that our communication technologies
embed and foster specific cultural values and communicative preferences. The relevant
literature, indeed, has exploded over the past few years.
Here I can only highlight some striking examples.
i. Capitalism as culture: the commodification of CMC – and thus of what is conveyed via CMC.
There is growing concern that our uses of the Internet and the Web are increasingly shaped by a
consumer culture fostered by capitalism. Briefly, as "users" of these technologies spend more
and more of their time as consumers of technology, their use of the Internet and the Web may be
more and more shaped by these practices of consumption - including their being extensively
manipulated by the companies and corporations that seek to market their goods and services to
users as customers. However much individuals may "choose" to participate in these technologies
as consumers - the first point is that the more we learn how to be consumers pursuing our selfinterest vis-à-vis the seemingly limitless offerings of the Web and the Net, the less we learn how
to be critical students and teachers engaged in the sorts of dialogues that help: shape our selfunderstanding and awareness of the larger world; develop the skills of engaging with one another
in real-world contexts; and foster our effective engagement in the world for the sake of greater
justice, freedom, and peace.
The point here is not to demonize capitalism or to ignore the benefits of economic
prosperity. Again, “necessitous men are not free men” – and my reading of virtue as taught by
Socrates, Jesus, and Confucius is not one that says that the pursuit of virtue is opposed to the
pursuit of economic well-being. On the contrary, it seems clear – especially from Aristotle – that
material well-being is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the pursuit of excellence.
Rather, my point is that the commercialization of the Internet – and of education – runs the risk
of having us lose sight entirely of the pursuit of virtue and excellence. Much like the men of
Ess – ITUA Conference - 15
Athens, we run the danger of putting money and prestige first – in which case, the pursuit of
virtue and excellence is forgotten altogether.8
The larger point is that consumerism represents a specific cultural value - i.e., one largely
accepted without question in the United States, but greeted with greater critical concern both in
Europe and Asia. In this light, promoting consumerism - however unintentionally - thus
represents a real threat to those cultures that do not emphasize consumption and consumerism as
a primary good.9
ii. Cultural Conflicts: Western CMC technologies vs. Eastern communication preferences and
cultural values.
A second form of "computer-mediated colonization" is threatened as the CMC technologies of
distance learning, designed and (largely) used according to the communicative preferences and
cultural values of their Western sources, favor and foster those preferences and values over the
preferences and values of Eastern societies.
In fact, such conflicts between Western CMC technologies and Eastern cultures have
been documented since the early 1990s in the case of Singapore. Since the mid-1990s, research
on this topic has dramatically expanded, and it is now quite easy to document these conflicts.10
For our purposes, it will suffice to illustrate these conflicts with just two sorts of examples.
To begin with, Hall (1976) has articulated the contrast between high context/low content
and high content/low context communication preferences as distinguishing diverse cultures. The
standard ASCII e-mail is a straightforward example of a high content/low context form of
communication: most of the message consists precisely of content - very little of the message
works to establish the social contexts and relationships of either the sender(s) or receiver(s). By
contrast, in high context/low content cultures, the emphasis is much more on establishing the
precise social relationships and contexts of communicants, through a suite of both verbal and
non-verbal exchanges and cues. Not surprisingly, CMC technologies as developed, designed,
and initially used primarily in Western high content/low context cultures thus reflect this
communicative preference, as the example of ASCII e-mail shows. The cultural conflict between
this Western communicative preference and the high context/low content preference of Eastern
cultures is dramatically illustrated in the ways in which Japanese engineers first rejected Western
CSCW (computer-supported cooperative work) systems as ill-suited to their communicative
Ess – ITUA Conference - 16
preferences. They then developed their own systems that, using high-bandwidth video, conveyed
not only the text and diagrams (content) of shared work, but also the non-verbal cues of social
context - body distance, gaze, and gesture (see Heaton, 2001).
These sorts of cultural conflicts, in fact, can not only make Western CMC technologies
ill-suited for Eastern societies: they can more directly undermine fundamental values defining
Eastern cultures. For example, Abdat and Pervan (2000) have documented how anonymity in a
Group Support System (GSS), as intended and valued by its Western designers, precisely
encouraged its Indonesian users to raise critical questions about issues under discussion. While
Western proponents of CMC celebrate how anonymity thus encourages more open and more
egalitarian communication - these cultural values directly conflict with the emphasis on facesaving and respect for higher authority in Confucian cultures. Thanasankit and Corbitt (2000)
make this same point with regard to Thai culture, and reiterate the claim that these conflicts will
hold for much of the Chinese-based/influenced cultures of Southeast Asia (see esp. 238f.) Along
these same lines, Rahmati (2000) documents how the use of Western-designed GSS changes
Malaysian students away from central cultural characteristics - namely, a distinctive religious
commitment, high fatalism, high uncertainty avoidance, collectivism, traditionalism, and (again)
the value of keeping face.
Simply put: if educators in Asia wish to exploit CMC technologies for the sake of
distance learning - they will want to carefully examine how far using these technologies may also
impose cultural values and communicative preferences not necessarily shared or desired by their
students.
iii. Cross-cultural challenges to distance education
It may be instructive to note, in fact, that such cultural conflicts have already been encountered
within the Western context and discussed as significant challenges to online learning. In the
Western context, the Open University (Milton Keynes, U.K.) is perhaps the premier distance
learning institution: the Open University has taken distance learning as its mission since its
inception in the 1960s, and has developed the most extensive program of distance learning in
Europe.
OU philosopher Ellie Chambers (2001) has recently identified several of the primary
difficulties of cross-cultural distance education:
Ess – ITUA Conference - 17
…non-native English speakers and those from other cultures studying programmes
provided in English tend to encounter significant barriers to successful study. These
barriers include: linguistic competence; unfamiliarity with the social conventions
governing students’ interactions with their peers and teachers, and with the procedures,
educational requirements and norms of the providing academy; the relative invisibility of
these students’ own national/cultural perspectives and values.
Not surprisingly, "Such disadvantage is likely to undermine the students’ performance, affecting
their ability to ‘make the grade’, and is socio-cultural in nature." The appropriate response,
according to Chambers, is to avoid a "global imperialistic stance" - i.e., simply imposing the
language, social conventions, and education norms of one culture upon all others. Instead, an
educational pluralism is required:
Features need to be built in to global programmes to offset cultural disadvantage; positive
steps need to be taken to promote pluralism. And, as communications technology
becomes ever more central to global education provision and, with it, forms of
collaborative study, so the need to explore the possibilities for pluralism can only become
more urgent. Clearly, this will require serious commitment on the providers’ part
(including of resources), sympathetic engagement with ‘other’ students and some exercise
of the imagination towards developing teaching-learning strategies that effectively
include them.11
The point here is that cross-cultural issues have created significant problems for distance learning
within what we ordinarily think of as Western cultures. This experience not only reiterates my
concern that distance learning in Asia, insofar as it relies primarily on Western CMC
technologies that favor Western communicative preferences and cultural values, will evoke
rather fundamental cultural conflicts. But at the same time, more hopefully, perhaps some of the
lessons regarding cross-cultural distance education can be suggestive for instructors in the Asian
context as well.
D. Pedagogical/epistemological issues: the (re)turn to embodiment - Dreyfus on practical
wisdom and distance education; the turn to blended approaches
Ess – ITUA Conference - 18
Finally, we can examine one of the most significant of philosophically-informed arguments
regarding the strengths and limits of distance education - namely, Hubert Dreyfus' analysis of
how we learn as embodied beings. This analysis is of value for us for several reasons. One, it
coheres with the recent (re)turn in CMC research and philosophy more generally to embodiment
and the recognition of the irreducible role of the body in how we come to understand our world
and develop lives of meaning within it. Two, Dreyfus orients his taxonomy of the stages of
learning to the liberal arts goal of acquiring wisdom - and thus his work is consonant with my
emphasis on the development of human excellence as a central goal of liberal arts education.
Finally, his analysis nicely coheres with the shift in recent years towards blended approaches to
learning, i.e., ones that combine the best possibilities of both face-to-face and computer-mediated
forms of communication.
Dreyfus identifies seven stages of learning - the first of which are
1. Novice
2. Advanced Beginner
3. Competence
It is at this third level of competence that Dreyfus sees the limits of online education. The general
initial point here is that while students have been equipped in the earlier stages with basic
information and maxims that help him/her apply that information to a range of contexts - at this
third level,
…the number of potentially relevant elements and procedures that the learner is able to
recognize and follow becomes overwhelming. At this point, since a sense of what is
important in any particular situation is missing, performance becomes nerve-racking and
exhausting, and the student might well wonder how anybody ever masters the skill. (35)
How is the student to learn how to cut through the static of overwhelming possibility?
According to Dreyfus,
…people learn, through instruction or experience, to devise a plan, or choose a
perspective, that then determines which elements of the situation or domain must be
treated as important and which ones can be ignored. As students learn to restrict
themselves to only a few of the vast number of possibly relevant features and aspects,
understanding and decision making become easier. (36)
Ess – ITUA Conference - 19
What we seek, then, are rules and procedures to help identify the pertinent details that will help
us "get a grip" on how to apply what we know to a specific situation (to anticipate his phrase
from his later discussion of Merleau-Ponty):
But such rules are not as easy to come by as are the rules and maxims given to beginners
in manuals and lectures. Indeed, in any skill domain the performer encounters a vast
number of situations different from each other in subtle ways. There are, in fact, more
situations than can be named or precisely defined, so no one can prepare for the learner a
list of types of possible situations and what to do or look for in each. Students, therefore,
must decide for themselves in each situation what plan or perspective to adopt, without
being sure that it will turn out to be appropriate. (36)
In pedagogical and philosophical terms, what the student has yet to learn here is judgment - i.e.,
precisely the ability to determine which rules and/or skills should be applied to a specific
situation. Moreover, because we are embodied beings - our decisions and acts make a difference:
we care about the outcomes, and often times what we care about - success, avoiding failure,
reputation, etc. - are at risk in our decisions and acts. But this only makes things more complex:
as Dreyfus notes, "…as the competent student becomes more and more emotionally involved in
his task, it / becomes increasingly difficult for him to draw back and adopt the detached maximfollowing stance of the advanced beginner" (37f.).
It is at this critical juncture - i.e., the juxtaposition of the competent student's inability to
judge as well as his or her more experienced teacher as to how to proceed, coupled with new
levels of urgency, uncertainty, vulnerability, and risk - that the teacher's interactions with the
student become especially crucial. Briefly, Dreyfus argues that from here, students increasingly
require the guidance and example of their teachers as embodied beings in real-world contexts in
order to progress through the remaining stages of learning - (4) proficiency, (5) expertise, (6)
mastery, and (7) practical wisdom. To begin with, proficiency is acquired through the practice of
skills under the guidance and example of a teacher - so as to help the student move from the
beginners' effort to consciously apply specific rules (which ones?) to a suite of more intuitive
responses that emerge through guided experience as an embodied learner (40). As Dreyfus notes,
"Action becomes easier and less stressful as the learner simply sees what needs to be done rather
than using a calculative procedure to select on of several possible alternatives" (40). At the same
Ess – ITUA Conference - 20
time, however, "A student at this level sees the problem that needs to be solved but has to figure
out what the answer is" (41). This difficulty requires the turn to the next stage, that of expertise:
The expert not only sees what needs to be achieved; thanks to his vast repertoire of
situational discriminations, he also sees immediately how to achieve his goal. Thus, the
ability to make more subtle and refined discriminations is what distinguishes the expert
from the proficient performer. Among many situations, all seen as similar with respect to
plan or perspective, the expert has learned to distinguish those situations requiring one
reaction from those demanding / another. That is, with enough experience in a variety of
situations, all seen from the same perspective but requiring different tactical decisions,
the brain of the expert gradually decomposes this class of situations into subclasses, each
of which requires a specific response. This allows the immediate intuitive situational
response that is characteristic of expertise. (41f.)
It is here that Aristotle becomes an explicit component of Dreyfus' taxonomy:
What must be done, simply is done. As Aristotle says, the expert ‘straightaway’ does ‘the
appropriate thing, at the appropriate time, in the appropriate way’. (42)
Dreyfus illustrates the next level, mastery, with the example of musician who seek to develop
new styles and innovative abilities.
Musicians have learned from experience that those who follow one master are not as
creative performers as those who have worked sequentially with several. The apprentice,
therefore, needs to leave his first master and work with a master with a different style. In
fact, he needs to study with several such masters. Journeymen in medieval times, and
performing artists even now, when they become good enough to develop a style of their
own, travel around and work in various communities of practice. In music, the teachers
encourage their students to work with them for a while and then go to other teachers.
Likewise, graduate students usually assist several professors, and young scientists may
work in several laboratories. (45)
Finally, Dreyfus likens the last stage of learning, practical wisdom, to the sort of complete
absorption of ways of thinking, feeling, and being that mark our experience as embodied
members of a specific culture. And it is at this juncture that the contrast becomes clearest
between what we can acquire as disembodied minds connected through computer terminals and
Ess – ITUA Conference - 21
what we know as utterly immersed in the ways and mores of our culture and our practice of
wisdom:
Like embodied commonsense understanding, cultural style is too embodied to be
captured in a theory, and passed on by talking heads. It is simply passed on silently from
body to body, yet it is what makes us human beings and provides the background against
which all other learning is possible. It is only by being an apprentice to one’s parents and
teachers that one gains what Aristotle calls practical wisdom – the general ability to do
the appropriate thing, at the appropriate time, in the appropriate way. If we were able to
leave our bodies behind and live in cyberspace and chose to do so, nurturing children and
passing on one’s variation of one’s cultural style to them would become impossible. (48)
In sum, while CMC technologies may well help us move through the initial levels of beginner,
novice, and competency, "... only emotional, involved, embodied human beings can become
proficient and expert" (48). But this means that
… while they are teaching specific skills, teachers must also be incarnating and
encouraging involvement. Moreover, learning through apprenticeship requires the
presence of experts, and picking up the style of life that we share with others in our
culture requires being in the presence of our elders. (48)
It's important to note that this is only half of the argument. In the following chapter, Dreyfus
works through this taxonomy again, using examples of interns going on rounds with physicians,
learning to play football, etc., vis-à-vis what can be conveyed through the current technologies of
telepresence. Especially given his starting points in Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological analyses
of our experience as embodied beings, Dreyfus then makes the case that the perspective of
embodied beings vs. viewing the world through a screen and having control over the perspective
one takes as part of one's experience vs. watching a screen are crucial elements of learning,
especially at the higher stages, that cannot be replicated with contemporary telepresence
technologies.
In sum: if we're talking about certain kinds of learning - those closest by analogy to Dreyfus'
favorite examples of skills (playing chess, driving a car, playing a musical instrument, practicing
Ess – ITUA Conference - 22
as a physician) - then it seems clear that distance learning can only take us far (in his terms,
competency), but only so far, i.e., not to the higher levels of mastery, expertise, and wisdom.12
This conclusion, moreover, reflects not only Dreyfus' own analysis - informed by his own
experience as a teacher who has also utilized many of the technologies of distance learning: it is
further consistent with at least one recent study on distance education. Parker and Gemino
(2001) find, to begin with, that
1. No significant difference was found in final exam scores between place-based and
virtual seminar students (HA).
This result indicates that place-based and virtual seminars can both be effective methods
for delivering course information. 13
At the same time, however,
2. Students taking the virtual seminar scored significantly higher on the conceptual
section of the final exam than place-based students (HB).
For Parker and Gemino, higher conceptual scores for students using virtual seminars are related
to the increased interactivity associated with virtual seminars. At the same time, this finding is
consistent with Dreyfus' observation that CMC environments may be quite good for the
elementary stages of learning - i.e., acquiring knowledge of rules and concepts.
Finally, Parker and Gemino found that
3. Students taking the virtual seminar scored significantly lower on the technique section
of the final exam than place-based students (HC).
Again, this finding is immediately consistent with Dreyfus' argument that learning how to apply
rules and concepts in the specific situations we encounter as embodied beings requires teaching
and learning in embodied, real-world contexts. Indeed, Parker and Gemino directly reinforce
Dreyfus' point:
The lower technical scores for the students in the virtual seminar may reflect the lack of
appropriate analogs upon which to base their knowledge. Place-based seminars provide
an immediate feedback and can more thoroughly handle questions about a particular case.
Since the students in a place-based environment are provided with a better opportunity to
develop analogs early in their learning, place-based students were expected to have higher
Ess – ITUA Conference - 23
technique scores. The results indicate that place-based students did indeed show
significantly better scores in technique than virtual seminars.
In this light, it is perhaps not surprising that in the U.S. context, there is in fact a marked shift
away from an exclusive emphasis on distance learning and virtual seminars to blended or
"hybrid" approaches that seek to conjoin the best possibilities of both face-to-face/embodied
contexts and CMC contexts. This shift is described, for example, by Jeffrey R. Young, writing
for the Chronicle of Higher Education this year (2002) - and forms the theme of an important
conference that has historically focused solely on online/distance learning issues.14
Concluding remarks
If I’m correct in arguing that
liberal arts education, in both Western and more global forms, must aim always first at
human excellence and practical wisdom (phronesis) as the both the goals and abilities
necessary to both individual (ethical) and collective (political) human well-being;
and if
especially philosophical analyses of pedagogy (Dreyfus) and related lessons from the
praxis of CMC technologies and distance education (including American and European
experience) are taken seriously;
then it seems clear that what I have portrayed as the central and highest goals of liberal arts
education - the cultivation of human excellence and the pursuit of wisdom - cannot be fully
taught through online technologies alone, at least as they currently exist. Rather, if mastery,
expertise, and practical wisdom are to be acquired by students as embodied beings - they will
require teachers who incarnate the skills and wisdom that mark the highest levels of human
accomplishment.
This is not to say that distance education is of no value or relevance to liberal arts
education and its highest goals. On the contrary, as the recent shift to blended or "hybrid"
approaches suggests, what is called for is the careful and appropriate use of distance learning.
This would mean in the first instance that we take up distance learning with a realistic
understanding of its full costs and of what forms of learning it appears to best facilitate - namely,
the acquisition of the knowledge of rules and concepts that marks the early stages of learning.
Ess – ITUA Conference - 24
Especially if we can use Dreyfus' taxonomy as an accurate description of the stages and proper
trajectory of liberal learning - i.e., towards the development of real-world skills, judgment, and
practical wisdom --then it would seem that liberal arts education would indeed benefit from the
careful and appropriate use of the best possibilities of distance learning in conjunction with the
best possibilities of face-to-face education. This means, roughly, that we would use - where
appropriate and cost-effective - distance learning approaches for the early stages of learning (i.e.,
the acquisition of rules and concepts) in conjunction with teaching and learning in face-to-face
contexts to foster students' abilities to appropriately apply such knowledge in the multiple
contexts we encounter day to day as embodied human beings. In particular, such face-to-face
teaching and learning seems essential to achieving the highest goals of liberal learning - i.e., the
cultivation of human excellence, including the pursuit of practical wisdom.
Indeed, I am optimistic that such a blended approach in liberal arts education may make a
distinctive contribution to the sort of education that is needed for the cosmo-politans or global
citizens desperately needed in our increasingly interconnected world. In particular, the Internet
and the Web, as they enable cultural flows of a previously unimagined scope and extent, can
foster precisely the sorts of cultural encounters across the peoples of the globe that, at best, issue
in the epistemological humility crucial for genuinely fruitful cross-cultural dialogue and
understanding. As a specific instance, consider the example reported at this conference of using
the Internet and the Web to help Japanese and Korean students practice their (novice) English
skills with one another - an appropriate use of the technology, according to Dreyfus' taxonomy,
as this use focused primarily on the acquisition of basic rules and their rudimentary application
(Park, 2002). At the same time, these exchanges led to more extensive discussions among the
students that helped them explore and come to better understand and appreciate one another's
cultures, histories, traditions, etc. Following the model for establishing real-world relationships
between Palestinians and Israelis developed by Michael Dahan (2001) - these initial electronic
relationships promise to provide the foundation for more extensive, real-world /face-to-face
relationships between the Japanese and Korean students. But if these students are to move
beyond the initial levels of online competency towards expertise, mastery, and wisdom, they will
do so only through multiple offline experiences with one another - guided by their teachers'
examples - i.e., precisely in embodied, real-world, face-to-face contexts.
Ess – ITUA Conference - 25
Much more can be said about the sort of education needed by the cosmopolitans who
seek precisely to develop those skills and abilities, including practical wisdom, that will make
possible a global society in which the diversity of cultures is maintained through the kind of
epistemological humility and familiarity with cultures beyond one’s own cave that I described at
the outset. In the Western context, I and others (e.g., Hamelink 2000, Ropolyi 2000, Mehl, 2000)
have argued for a Socratic-Aristotelian education aimed towards critical thinking, dialogue, and
practical wisdom that further follows the example of Renaissance humanism to insist on
embodied, real-world experience of living in cultures beyond one’s own, in order to most deeply
appreciate (i.e., at the embodied level) fundamental cultural differences and to develop the
various skills (beginning with language) and wisdom necessary to comfortably engage with
“others” in ways that recognize and preserve fundamental cultural differences while
simultaneously bridging across them. And nicely enough, these global directions in liberal arts
education are not simply the pipe-dreams of armchair philosophers. Rather, there are - beyond
the examples already mentioned here (Thailand [Hongladarom 2000, 2001] and Korea/Japan
[Park 2002]) - empirical and praxis-oriented examples of implementing CMC technologies in
diverse cultural settings that underscore both the importance and the possibility of realizing such
an education, at least as they begin by emphasizing the importance of social context of use of
these technologies, beginning with a fundamental recognition of the primary importance of local
community values as the framework within which these technologies are to be implemented
(e.g., Harris et al, 2001; Sy, 2001). Indeed, as the Thai example (Hongladarom 2000, 2001) and
others make clear, these conceptions of education are not exclusively Western. On the contrary,
especially as they rest on a (re)new(ed) recognition of the role of embodiment in our identity,
learning, and engagement with one another - they cohere with the nondualistic conceptions of
being human and human excellence in Eastern traditions, including, as my opening remarks
suggest, classical Confucian thought. (For a more extensive discussion, see Rosemont, 2001;
Ess, 2002b, 2003).
Clearly, dialogue about and development of such a global ethos as the goal of a genuinely
global liberal arts education are very much in the beginning stages. But I am optimistic that
CMC technologies in general and distance learning in particular will play fundamental roles in
Ess – ITUA Conference - 26
these dialogues and constructions. My argument has been that these roles are most effective only
as we recognize both their strengths and limits as media for educating excellent human beings.
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in English Education. Keynote address, Information Technologies and the Universities of
Asia (ITUA) conference, Bangkok, Thailand, April 3.
Parker, Drew and Andrew Gemino. Inside Online Learning: Comparing Conceptual and
Technique Learning Performance in Place-based and ALN Format. Journal of
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Asynchronous Learning Networks (5: 2 - September 2001).
<http://www.aln.org/alnweb/journal/Vol5_issue2/Parker/ParkerGemino.htm>
Ramati, Nasrim. 2001. The Impact of Cultural Values on Computer Mediated Group Work. In
Fay Sudweeks and Charles Ess, eds., cultural attitudes towards technology and
communication: Proceedings of the Second International Conference … Perth, Australia,
12-15 July 2000, 257-74. School of Information Technology, Murdoch University: Perth,
Australia.
Rheingold, Harold. 2000. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Ropolyi, Laszlo. 2000. Some Theses about the Reformation of Knowledge. Internet Research
1.0: The State of the Interdiscipline (First Conference of the Association of Internet
Researchers), University of Kansas, Lawrence, Sept. 17.
Rosemont, Henry. 2001. Rationality and Religious Experience: The Continuing Relevance of the
World’s Spiritual Traditions. With a Commentary by Huston Smith. Chicago and La
Salle, Illinois: Open Court.
Rumble, Greville. The Costs and Costing of Networked Learning, Journal Of Asynchronous
Learning Networks (5: 2 - September 2001).
<http://www.aln.org/alnweb/journal/Vol5_issue2/Rumble/Rumble.htm>
Russell, Thomas L. 1999. The no significant difference phenomenon: as reported in 355
research reports, summaries and papers. North Carolina: North Carolina State
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Media and Society, 3 (3: September): 297-313.
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Thanasankit, Theerasak and Brian J. Corbitt. 2000. Thai Culture and Communication of Decision
Making Processes in Requirements Engineering. In Fay Sudweeks and Charles Ess
(eds.), Proceedings: Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication 2000.
Perth, Australia: Murdoch University, 217-242.
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Baumeister, John, Williams, and Kevin Wilson (eds.), Teaching Across Frontiers: A
Handbook for International Online Seminars, 61-69. Tübingen, Germany: Deutsches
Institut für Fernstudienforschung an der Universität Tübingen.
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Ess, eds., Second International Conference on Cultural Attitudes towards Technology
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<http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/~sudweeks/catac00/>
Young, Jeffrey R. 2002. “'Hybrid' Teaching Seeks to End the Divide Between Traditional and
Online Instruction,” Chronicle of Higher Education 22, March 2002.
Yu, Jiyuan. (1988) forthcoming. Virtue: Confucius and Aristotle. (Originally published in
Philosophy East and West [2]), in The Examined Life: The Chinese Perspective.
PLACE? Global Publications.

First of all, I very gratefully acknowledge the tremendous work and most gracious hospitality of the ITUA conference coorganizers, Drs. Soraj Hongladarom and Larry Chong. I am deeply honored and most grateful for their kind invitation to speak at
ITUA 2002. I am equally honored and grateful to the Thailand Research Fund's Royal Golden Jubilee grant that made my visit
to Thailand possible. I also wish to express profound gratitude to Chatchai Khumtaveeporn, Associate Dean for Academic
Affairs, Rangsit University (Bangkok), for his generous and most enjoyable hospitality and guidance.
Portions of my original speech drew from sections of articles that had not yet appeared in print. This version for the
conference proceedings also draws from them directly. I am grateful to the editors of the journals Metaphilosophy and Ethics
and Information Technology who have kindly allowed me to reproduce sections of those articles here.
This quote was taken from Lydia Zajc, “Plea For Web Continuity,” South China Morning Post on-line,
<http://technology.scmp.com/ZZZ0CJNKYLC.html>, accessed in August, 2001 (registration required):
Berners-Lee also weighs in on the digital divide, saying that the Web has become another advantage that wealthier nations have
over developing nations. "I think the richer countries have a duty to help the poor countries get Internet access as well as the
other things," he explains. Access should also go hand-in-hand with greater content development in the developing world: "The
diversity of cultures in this world is really important. It's the richness that we have which, in fact, will save us from being caught
up in one big idea."
1
2
"The human being must always be an end and not a means, a subject and not an object, not a commodity of trade." "Second, the
value of human cultures. ... Globalization must not be a new version of colonialism. It must respect the diversity of cultures
which, within the universal harmony of peoples, are life's interpretative keys." "As humanity embarks upon the process of
globalization, it can no longer do without a common code of ethics," the Pope concluded. "In all the variety of cultural forms,
universal human values exist and they must be brought out and emphasized as the guiding force of all development and
progress."
Ess – ITUA Conference - 31
“Globalization Could Slip Into Colonialism, Pope Warns,” <Zenit.org>, April 27, 2001
3
Cf. as well his earlier remark with regard to poetry - in some sense, "the last temptation" away from a primary pursuit of human
excellence:
"For the contest [agon] is great, my dear Glaucon," I said, "greater than it seems - this contest that concerns becoming
good or bad - so we mustn't be tempted by honor or money or any ruling office or, for that matter, poetry, into thinking
that it's worthwhile to neglect justice and the rest of virtue." (608b/291)
The first reference is the standard Stephanus page number(s); the second reference is the page number in The Republic of Plato.
Translated, with notes an interpretive essay, and a new introduction by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, c. 1968, 1991).
The English translation is Bloom's.
4
While it may go without saying - it is important to recall here that the categories "Western" and "Eastern" are highly dependent
on historical context for their meaning - and, indeed, are perhaps more misleading than genuinely helpful.These terms apparently
acquire their greatest significance during the period of "Western" domination and colonialism - i.e., from the late 1400s C.E.
through the conclusion of the Cold War. With regret that I thus run the risk of reifying a cultural distinction that is no longer
tenable, I use the terms "East" and "West" here only as a convenient shorthand - one that can be discarded as soon as we move
the discussion to a greater level of detail.
5
For a more considered comparison between Confucian and Aristotelian virtue ethics, see Yu (forthcoming).
6
Cf. as well:
4.11: The Master notes, “Exemplary people cherish their excellence; petty persons cherish their land. Exemplary
persons cherish fairness; petty persons cherish the thought of gain.”
All translations are taken from Ames and Rosemont, Jr., 1998.
7
It is important to stress here that such coherencies are not necessarily absolute agreements on a shared common ground or point
of simple identity between two very different traditions. While such common grounds are crucial – a pluralistic model of the
relationship between two irreducibly different worldviews, beliefs, traditions, etc., preserves the differences that distinguish and
define each element alongside any notions of their coherency, connection, etc. There are any number of conceptual models for
such pluralism, beginning with Plato’s use of analogy in The Republic – i.e., the analogy of the line (Republic, Book VI, 509d511e/190-192). Aristotle builds on this model in his development of pros hen and analogical equivocals – i.e., terms that are
neither purely univocal (marked by a single meaning) nor purely equivocal (marked by absolutely different meanings), but by
middle grounds that allow for both irreducible difference alongside connection in the form of “pointing towards one” (pros hen)
meaning. While conceptually more complex, analogical equivocals likewise employ a structure that preserves irreducible
differences while articulating connections in the face of these differences.
In the 20th century, Wittgenstein’s notion of “family resemblances” also provides a way to think about connections
(resemblances) alongside irreducible differences.
Either way, the point is that we are not forced to choose between sheer agreement on only shared points of view, belief,
tradition, etc. (what Barber would call “McWorld”) or sheer difference that, while preserving cultural integrity and diversity,
would do so at the cost of absolute fragmentation (at the extreme, “Jihad” in a carefully qualified sense). Rather, pluralistic
models allow us to enjoy both coherencies and agreements alongside our recognition and appreciation of the irreducible
differences that distinguish and define diverse cultural traditions and identities.
8
The literature on the tensions between the democratization claim and commercialization/commodification is growing rapidly:
here let me refer the interested reader to Sy 2001, and Willis 2000.
Willis, in particular, critiques the Western conflation between democracy and consumerism as exemplified in Wired magazine as
follows:
The libertarian version of democracy, as Wired makes clear, however, is rather the (limited) plebiscite notion of
"clicking For or Against" - i.e., responding to ostensible choices, absent dialogue, debate, and the hard slow work of
building consensus among diverse perspectives (cf. Ess 1996). This latter view, however, makes sense in the
ideological framework of Wired because it coheres and resonates with the free market of commerce as the primary
model of human interaction. Our behaviors and choices as producers and consumers, as negotiators in a marketplace,
are thereby conflated with "democracy". Consumer trading is equated with public participation - one participates in
"democracy" (meaning, the free market or its analogue) by behaving as a consumer. For Willis, however, as for
Habermas and others, there is an important contrast to be made between "...an (exclusive) networked trading post
(based on consumption-power)" and "...a participatory democratic community."
This commodification of democracy, one that morphs it into (and thereby subsumes it under) a primary free market model, is part
of a larger pattern of commodification that Willis calls "über-consumption." Willis cites here Solnit, who finds PacMan to be the
symbolic metaphor of such über-consumption - its sole purpose, after all, as a disembodied head-mouth "was to devour what is in
its path as it proceeds through an invisible maze" (1995, 230f.).
Ess – ITUA Conference - 32
As I have argued elsewhere (Ess 2000), in this direction the consumer-user becomes the Star Trek Borg, an organicmechanical collective that relentlessly consumes and homogenizes all cultural and biological resources in the species it
encounters. Its power is absolute, and "resistance is futile." While such consumerist drones are perfectly suited to helping
economies hum along - they thereby contribute to a perhaps inadvertent but nonetheless inexorable “computer-mediated
colonization” of “target cultures.” In addition, if we train our students solely to be such uncritical consumers - they will fail to
embody the habits, values, skills, and goals of which excellent human beings (East or West), phronesis, and democracies are
made. (Cf. Ess, 2002a)
9
Sardjiman is quoted as saying, "Most Internet sites pose a danger to our education system and our culture, in particular
pornography sites and sites that promote consumerism to our students” (de Kloet, 2002).
10
For a much more extensive treatment of this topic, see Ess 2001, and Ess and Sudweeks 2001.
11
For additional studies and remarks on cross-cultural issues in online teaching in the European context, see Williams (2000).
Based on collective experience in the CEFES (Creating a European Forum for European Studies) project (as supported by the EU
Socrates Programme), Williams draws the following lessons:

Linguistic and cultural diversity can lead to both practical and intellectual problems in transnational exchanges.

Practical measures, such as the creation of national sub-folders, should be taken to address the needs of students
who are less proficient in the lingua franca.

Limited linguistic proficiency need not in itself be a barrier to effective participation; some students relish the
opportunity to practise their language skills.

Joint moderators need to be aware of, and respect, each other’s intellectual and educational traditions.

Students need adequate preparation for academic contributions employing an unfamiliar intellectual approach.

In the transnational environment, an approach to the material which builds on familiar, concrete experiences will
often be better suited to the students. (69)
12
It is useful to notice that Dreyfus' conclusions are echoed by Andrew Lippman, founding Associate Director of the MIT Media
Laboratory:
[distance learning] doesn’t scale because it can’t include the experience. It is hard to wholeheartedly fall in love with
distance learning because the truth of the matter is, there is a chemistry involved in being in the place. There is just no
way that you can match that chemistry through any kind of wire. (2002)
Further, that such a prominent pioneer of media technologies is cited in Syllabus, perhaps the leading journal in the U.S. for the
promotion of computing and networking technologies in higher education, marks a remarkable change from the breathless and
uncritical enthusiasm for these technologies apparent in Syllabus' earlier years.
13
This points to another, larger issue: contrary to the early claims of proponents that distance education would revolutionize
learning by leading to superior results - a number of meta-studies of research have demonstrated the so-called "no significant
difference" phenomenon: simply put - and consistent with Parker and Gemino's first finding - there is little empirical evidence to
suggest that distance education, despite its considerable costs in terms of infrastructure, technical support, and faculty labor,
actually leads to improved outcomes in education. See Russell 1999; Fischer 2000.
14
"Technical Community College 2002: Hybrid Dreams - The Next Leap for Internet-Mediated Learning," Seventh Annual
Teaching in the Community Colleges Online Conference (May 21-23, 2002).
<http://leahi.kcc.hawaii.edu/org/tcon2002/index.html>
Ess – ITUA Conference - 33