Education in China

Philosophy, Politics and Culture

Janette Ryan

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780745664101, 9780745664088
• eBook ISBN: 9781509535972
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Throughout its history, education in China has played a pivotal role in the nation's governance, civic society, and the social and cultural lives of its citizens. Today we see a nation grappling with how to modernize and internationalize its education system, while still retaining China's intellectual traditions and values in the face of growing educational inequalities.

This book analyses the historical and contemporary place of education in China and how the past has influenced today's trends. Recent fundamental educational reforms have been driven by the need for continuing economic development and a highly skilled workforce, at the same time fulfilling the aspirations of its citizens and their desire for the prestige education brings. Moreover, ideological education plays a key role in enlisting citizens to the national cause. Although China has ambitious plans for its education system, several problems remain, including an examination-obsessed system and highly competitive culture, which skew the social fabric and dominate family life and childhoods.

This accessible analysis will be a welcome resource for students of comparative education as well as those across the social sciences interested in Chinese society.

1
The Genesis of Chinese Education: From Confucius to the Twenty-First Century

For millennia, education and learning have played central roles in Chinese government and society, as well as in the development of state-sponsored ideologies in which a range of ‘desirable’ moral and ethical behaviours are considered necessary for the proper governance and wellbeing of the people. Apart from a few brief periods such as the Cultural Revolution when education and educators were targeted as representing ‘feudal’ ideas, these close connections have endured to the present day.

This chapter looks at the history of China's education system to show how the past has had a deep and enduring influence. It starts from the time of Confucius and considers how Confucius's moral teachings were invoked over the centuries by different dynasties to train the scholar class and instil a moral and civic code, and to legitimize and enhance their power and hegemony. It considers how Confucianism has been both valourized and vilified in the modern period and now once again is being eulogized in contemporary educational settings and discourses. The inextricable link of education to politics, economics and culture in China is again becoming apparent as, although the formal education system suffered neglect in some recent times, it has been designated by the Chinese government as a top priority for reform and improvement to ensure the nation's continued progress and prosperity and as a key site for ideological education to ensure the allegiance of the citizenry to the national cause.

This chapter maps the role that education has played in supplying the nation's officials and thus ruling class over the past two millennia and in the development of the state bureaucracy. It discusses China's claim to be the first ‘meritocracy’, as the imperial examination system, rather than merely wealth or birth, became the avenue for social and political mobility. According to Li (Forthcoming):

Throughout China's practice of political meritocracy, there [has] existed a close relationship between education and politics, as education has always been deemed not only to promote personal development but, more importantly, to fulfill its social function to nurture qualified talents for governmental appointments.

(p. 1)

This points to the unique link between governance, culture and education that has existed in China. The discussion below provides a framework for understanding the influence of education in the affairs of the nation and also the more recent resurgence of popularity in Confucian educational ideas. There has been a ‘re-traditionalizing’ of cultural values via the re-introduction of Confucianism in moral education programmes and the promotion of Confucian educational tenets (explored further in Chapter 5).

China is a country in a hurry; it has been racing to catch up with the Western world as quickly as possible so that it can surpass it, and it has already made major gains. The Chinese government is determined to reclaim the nation's former glory and the leading position it once held in the world. An examination of past fluctuations in Chinese fortunes helps to explain current attitudes to education and the role it plays in the national psyche and in contemporary educational beliefs and practices.

People in China pride themselves on what they often cite as China's ‘5,000-year civilization’ and the fact that learning and education have been valued throughout this history. China is proudly portrayed as ‘the first meritocracy’ and Confucius is venerated as ‘the first teacher’; ‘perhaps the first teacher who taught all capable students what had been to that time reserved to the children of nobles’ (Bai 2011, pp. 617–18). In Chinese society, education has been seen as the primary vehicle for social mobility, position and status, and economic and political power and wealth. This is evidenced by the significant percentage of their income that parents (and grandparents) are prepared to spend on their children's or grandchildren's education.

The following sections charting the history of education in China are, for the sake of brevity, divided into four periods: the imperial Confucian era from the second century BCE to the mid nineteenth century; the late imperial period from the 1860s to the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949; the socialist era from 1949 to 1978; and the reform era from 1978 to the twenty-first century. Although there were immense changes and developments from the second century BCE to the nineteenth century, for example, all that can be included here are the most significant events and factors which can be seen to have shaped aspects of contemporary education over the past century and the last twenty years in particular.

The imperial Confucian period

To understand education in China and its historical antecedents, it is necessary to go back two and a half thousand years to the time of Confucius (551–479 BCE). Although education in the sense that we know it today didn't start with Confucius, what we now recognize as the educational values and ideologies of China today most certainly did.

The reasons for the primacy of education in contemporary China can be found in China's distant past, at a time when there was no ‘China’ and widespread political and civil turmoil continued until the central regions of China were unified in the third century BCE under the Qin Dynasty, the name of which (pronounced ‘chin’ in English), is thought to be the origin of the name ‘China’. The Chinese name for the country – the ‘Middle [or central] Kingdom’ (zhongguo 中国) – provides a clue to the central position that China saw and still sees itself having in the world.

Confucius lived during this period of instability with continuing warfare between rival warlords and kingdoms. This turmoil prompted him to hark back to an earlier ‘more refined’ golden era when poetry, dancing and music were revered as desirable intellectual pursuits and were demonstrated through cultural rituals. Confucius believed in the importance of the morality of the individual and of the State as essential elements for a stable, civic and well-governed society and thus a path to peace and harmony. Confucius was said to have had over 3,000 disciples and travelled through China advising kings and state officials seeking political influence, but it was his disciples and subsequent followers who later promulgated and proselytized his thoughts and phil­osophy (much like other sages such as Christ and the Buddha) through the ‘classic texts’ or scriptures. Confucianism was adopted, or co-opted, by successive dynasties, becoming the official State orthodoxy over following centuries and later introduced to other countries in the region such as Vietnam, Korea and Japan. It became the political and ideological tool by which Chinese rulers trained and selected the ruling class and its discourses of ‘morality’ were used to establish social norms and hierarchies. According to Pepper (1996):

Confucian learning, imperial power, and bureaucratic authority were thus bound together in a mutually sustaining relationship that would dominate Chinese intellectual life until the [imperial] examinations were abolished in 1905 and the imperial system was overthrown in the 1911 revolution.

(p. 47)

Confucius was not the only influential philosopher during this early period, however. Scholarly and philosophical debate flourished in the era of a ‘Hundred Schools of Thought’, from the sixth century BCE to the Qin Dynasty. Other notable philosophers of the period included Laozi (Lao-tzu), Mozi (Mo-tzu), Mengzi (Mencius) and Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu). Mencius inherited the Confucian tradition and emphasized the innate goodness of human nature and the need for this to be nurtured through education, self-cultivation and discipline. Daoism, another branch of Chinese philosophy purportedly founded by Laozi, was concerned with understanding the universe and all things in it and finding the true ‘dao’ (道) or ‘way’ through a simple life. Daoism also had its roots in the ‘Hundred Schools of Thought’, as did other schools of thought such as Legalism and Mohism. Many of these philosoph­ical traditions have influenced Chinese thought and have intermingled but Confucianism has had the most significant and enduring influence on educational thought and society more generally. Yao (2008) argues that Confucianism ‘is more a tradition generally rooted in Chinese culture and nurtured by Confucius and Confucians rather than a new religion created, or a new value system initiated, by Confucius himself alone’ (p. 17).

The scriptures extolling the virtues and practices that Confucius personified and advocated were the subject of intense disagreements and interpretations by scholars throughout following centuries. Thus, ‘Confucianism’ has evolved over a long period of frequent debates about the fidelity and interpretation of Confucius's ideas and the ancient texts. According to Spence (1999), some of the ‘ancient’ texts were actually later forgeries. In truth, what is known as Confucianism, or ‘ruxue’ (儒学), has changed and been re-interpreted or appropriated over the centuries and used to legitimize or give force to various State political and social agendas.

The popularity of Confucianism has waxed and waned according to the political and social conditions of the day. It has been selectively used by the State in radically different ways to justify or promote often contradictory worldviews (much like other ‘religions’). More recent attempts to instil moral values among young people have seen the resurrection of the ‘true teachings’ of Confucius and even their portrayal as being compatible with liberal and student-centred views of pedagogy (see Chapter 5). Law (2017), conversely, argues that Confucianism has been used over time to promote obedience to the State:

The imperial state further used education and imperial civil examination (keju) to foster obedient citizenry by teaching, spreading and perpetuating those Confucian ideas in favour of the state leadership, such as loyalty to the emperor and filial piety to the father (p. 258) … for centuries Chinese education has tilted more toward creating obedient citizenry than liberating individuality.

(p. 260)

Confucianism is not a religion but rather an ideology; it is not concerned with the supernatural but focuses on what happens on earth. Its most common representation is as a philosophy or code of ethics with morality, virtue and the perfectibility of the self at its heart and offering the promise of a harmonious and ethical society governed by an educated class of scholar-officials. The ruling hierarchy was thus built not on military prowess but on philosophical beliefs with the Emperor portrayed as a ‘Philosopher King’ and the ruling elite or gentry as the scholar-officials (shidafu 士大夫). The Confucian ‘curriculum’ was a liberal one with an emphasis on philosophy, literature and history, and graduate officials were meant to embody the highest ideals, perfecting themselves through life-long learning.

Confucianism was essentially concerned with personal ethics, good governance and social order, or a ‘good society’. The Confucian ‘five relationships’ of society were patriarchal a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Map
• Chronology
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1: The Genesis of Chinese Education: From Confucius to the Twenty-First Century
• 2: Formal and Informal Education: Policies, Structures, Governance and Contexts
• 3: Reform and Resistance
• 4: Inequalities and Disparities
• 5: Ideologies in Competition
• 6: Changing Relationships with the World and Future Challenges
• References
• Index
• End User License Agreement