Preparing for the twenty-first century

Over the past decade, educational reform in China has been wide ranging, touching all levels and every aspect of education. Within higher education, the literature on teaching and learning methodologies has examined both liberal education in the West and ‘Confucian’ cultures of learning. This chapter will explore the context, content, and implications of this effort and examine how liberal education has (and has not) served as a model for Chinese educators. This chapter examines these topics from the vantage point of the Lingnan Foundation, a small foundation with a long history of over 120 years (www.lingnanfoundation.org) of working cooperatively in South China, and with its partner, Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU), a university in Guangzhou, China.