Adult Education in China

Carman St John Hunter, Martha McKee Keehn, Carman St John Hunter, Martha McKee Keehn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351005005
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Originally published in 1985. China is currently making a massive effort to educate its workforce in a formal and structured system. A good deal has been written about China's attempts, since 1949, to eradicate illiteracy and to universalise primary and secondary school education but the subject of this book is an educational system established to meet the needs of those already employed whether in government, industry or agriculture.

Two study teams, sponsored by the lnternational Council for Adult Education, visited China in 1981 to explore this educational phenomenon. Their findings, updated by subsequent ICAE visits and enriched by further reading, form the basis of this book. This is the story of the Chinese experience of developing adult education. It will be valuable to those involved in extending education in the industrialised world who are pursuing modernisation goals for people long excluded from the formal education system.

Chapter One

THE CHINESE CONTEXT

What is happening in China – a massive effort to educate the work force in a formal and structured system – has never before occurred on such a scale in history. These events are of increasing relevance to the international community. They are of special interest to those adult educators who provide in- service training, education at the work-place or scientific and technical training for industrial workers or farmers.

Two study teams, sponsored by the International Council for Adult Education, visited China in 1981 to explore this educational phenomenon. Their findings, updated by subsequent ICAE visits and enriched by further reading, form the basis for this book.

A good deal has been written about China’s attempts since 1949 to eradicate illiteracy and universalise primary and secondary education. Less is known, however, about the subject of this book – an educational system established to meet the needs of those already employed, whether in government, indus try or agriculture. It is a highly structured system that parallels formal schooling, from primary level through university equivalency.

This story of the Chinese experience, both its success and its weaknesses, is valuable to educators in the already industrialised nations as well as those in the developing world who are pursuing modernisation goals for people long excluded from the formal education system.

A. Background

In industrialised nations like the United States, Canada and western Europe, one current major challenge is to find ways to re-educate the work force to keep pace with changes in technology that make the skills of a past decade outmoded. Continuing education is a necessity for everyone in the late 20th century. No school system, however efficient, can fully prepare people for life-long participation in any society today. China has created an apparently successful model for continuing or recurrent adult education. Those who want to participate in the dialogue that has begun with Chinese educators cannot understand the present Chinese system without some sense of where it came from and of the context within which it exists. What has happened and is happening in China is largely unknown by educators in the rest of the world.

Immediately following the victory of Mao Zedong and the People’s Liberation Army, and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, China and much of the rest of the world were cut off from each other. Although China was never a full colony of any foreign power, it had been effectively dominated and in some cases occupied by many powers. The newly formed socialist government wanted time to develop on its own, free of foreign interference in its political, economic and social affairs. The generation of isolation was also due, in part, to the tremendous fear on the part of the West, especially the United States, of Communist rule in so large a nation.

The period of mutual ignorance lasted from 1949 until the mid-seventies. Those who believed that they knew the old China well are discovering that much of what they understood has been turned upside down in the last several decades. Countries in Africa and Latin America that had little prior contact with China are realising that they can no longer remain in ignorance about more than one-fifth of the human race. The possibility for interaction – indeed, the invitation to share experiences – requires more background than most in the world, north or south, presently possess.

Faced with the reality of modern China, many react only to its strangeness. They wonder if they can ever understand or learn from a country so vast and a population so numerous. The scale of educational activity and demand in China staggers the imagination. This is true of even large countries like India, the United States, Nigeria or Brazil. Educators from smaller nations, on hearing that there are 400 million Chinese 14 years of age or older engaged in productive labour, or 35 million enrolled in out-of-school education, may believe that such numbers have no meaning in relation to their own problems.

Yet the essence of the challenge is the same: how can population groups left behind or left out of the regular education system be brought into full participation in the development of a society? Policies and approaches used in China may provide a model useful to other nations even though the scale is very different.

B. Scope of Adult Education in China

The broad scope of adult education as it is understood in China includes the wide range of learning modes outside of the normal age-graded school system. It includes formal classroom instruction and nonformal learning through discussion groups, peer instruction and apprenticeships. It also embraces the informal, self-initiated learning that takes place in family, work settings and the society as a whole.

1. A Multiplicity of Opportunity

A great diversity of educational opportunities exists for adults in China. These activities and programmes have a wide range of sponsorship, take place in varied settings, use differing methodologies and have impact in different ways on the life and continuing education of Chinese adults. They are similar to, although more extensive than, adult education activities in other countries. In China all of the learning opportunities that serve persons of about 14 years and older who are not in the regular formal system are understood to be adult education.

It is particularly important for outsiders to understand this broad picture because within adult education in China there is one particular segment or stream that, because of its size and centrality in the thinking of the government and the Ministry of Education in particular, tends to overshadow all other adult education opportunity. This is the structured, planned stream of adult education that is the responsibility of the Adult Education Department within the Ministry.

What makes adult education different in China is that, in addition to more familiar adult education opportunities, the Chinese have created a formal education system for some 35 million rural and urban learners already a part of the work force. These are women, men and young people who are employed but who either never entered or who were dropped out of the regular school system. We are talking about a massive ‘second chance’ system available on either a part-time or a full-time basis with guaranteed future promotions. It is a formal and graded system, national in scope and high in educational quality; it is the only part of adult education that is under the Ministry of Education.

School equivalency: a parallel system. The education of workers and peasants is understood in the central educational planning of the Ministry of Education to be as important as the regular system of primary, elementary, junior and senior middle school, university and post-graduate education. The programmes of the Adult Education Department are viewed as school equivalency and 15 percent of all who are studying at any level are in such programmes.

Because the regular system is unable to meet the needs of the economy for rapid modernisation, the adult education system is an essential supplement in terms of increasing the pool of trained workers. It is also an efficient means of upgrading worker skills. In the future, it will be the chief means of guaranteeing the opportunity for continuing education for workers in industry and in rural areas.

2. Problems of Terminology

Before Chinese educators and those from other parts of the world can usefully compare their experience and learn from each other, certain terms need to be clarified. In addition to the discussion that follows, we include a glossary that explains the use and meaning of some common and important terms as they are used in China.

Formal vs nonformal. Western educators and those concerned with adult education for development purposes in much of the Third World have, for the most part, accepted a differentiation between the terms formal, nonformal and informal education. This differentiation, useful elsewhere, serves more to obfuscate than to clarify in China. It is a particular barrier to those who also attach to ‘nonformal education’ the connotations of a particular philosophy of teaching and learning or assign to the term particular adult learning techniques and processes: ‘learner-centred’, ‘self-actualising’, ‘participatory’, ‘integrated’ for instance.

The Chinese were somewhat baffled by team members’ preoccupation with the question of formal versus nonformal education. To them, this is not an issue. The purpose of adult education in China is to provide equal outcomes to educational efforts pursued along different paths. Presented with the basic assumptions of adult education in the West, Yao Zhongda*explained that formalisation of adult education in China relates to clearly set goals and levels, to recognition, structures and system rather than to methods of teaching. Both regular and worker/peasant education are part of the formalised system under the Ministry of Education. Standards, staffing, credentialling and work assignments of graduates from the worker/peasant stream are intended to be the same as those in the regular system.

The Chinese have created the Adult Education Department to help China become a massive learning society for the purposes of modernisation. They believe this can best be accomplished by ‘formalising’ adult education by systematising, accrediting and standardising education programmes for adults. In so doing, they seek to legitimise adult education.

In this study, the term ‘regular system’ refers to the normal age-graded system more commonly known outside China as ‘formal education’. Our focus is on the programmes that are directed toward those already productively employed; the term ‘worker and peasant education’ therefore may appear as often as ‘adult education’ in the discussions that follow.

Graduation/academic degrees. No academic degrees were granted in either the regular or worker/peasant systems between 1949 and 1981, and ‘graduation’ thus simply refers to completion of the level of education or course referred to (a fairly common usage in other countries also). The Minister for Education in September 1981 announced ‘the institution of the awarding of academic degrees’ as one method of recognising able people, along with formalising such titles as ‘model worker’ and ‘advanced worker’. Degrees were reintroduced in 1982. When the accreditation process is completed, it is intended that a degree from an accredited workers’ or peasants’ university will carry the same weight as one from the regular system.

Peasants. Peasants tends to be used to refer to the whole rural population, although it may also be used more precisely to describe those engaged in small-scale agriculture.

Workers/staff/cadres. Workers sometimes means those in urban areas generally, but more usually all on the payroll of an enterprise such as a factory or mine. It is also used to refer to the non-staff employees – those often called ‘blue collar workers’ in the West. Worker/staff members then becomes the term that includes all employees on the enterprise payroll. ‘Staff member’ or ‘staff worker’ might also be used rather than worker in, for instance, a department store. At one small factory in Dalian, for instance, we were told that 306 of the 370 staff were workers; the balance were staff or cadres – administrative or managerial personnel.

Cadre is confusing to those accustomed to using the term as a collective noun meaning a nucleus of trained personnel able to assume leadership. As used by the Chinese, it denotes anyone in a position of responsibility, especially government or Party personnel. The New York Times seems to translate th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Editor’s note
• Chinese Romanisation
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• 1. THE CHINESE CONTEXT
• 2. THE SETTING FOR THE EDUCATION OF THE WORK FORCE
• 3. WORKER/PEASANT EDUCATION: THE PROGRAMMES
• 4. A LEARNING SOCIETY
• 5. SUMMING UP: LESSONS, ISSUES AND UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
• Postscript: Worker/Peasant Education Revisited
• Glossary
• Recommended Additional Reading
• Maps
• APPENDICES