Books without borders

Homer, Aeschylus, Galileo, Melville, and Madison go to China

Plot

A vivid narrative of education in a classroom in Beijing China, day by day, month by month, the book follows Ms. Franks' experiences teaching a seminar on the topic of change to gifted Chinses high-school students hoping for admission to American colleges and universities. Ms. Franks offers them a concept of education goes beyond knowing the right answers to questions on standardized tests. Instead, she raises questions about the best life, suffering and justice, that are an essential part of the education of a human, humane person. At the same time, Ms. Franks herself as she confronts her own assumptions and pre-suppositions about books and arguments that she has been familiar with her whole adult life. By looking through the eyes of her Chinese students, she sees for the first time the powerful strangeness of many of our Western texts and habits of mind. Reading Chinese classic texts, she engages in a mirror image of what she asked her students to do, bringing the insights gained to bear on her experience of China.