Contemporary Chinese Education

Ruth Hayhoe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780873322973
• eBook ISBN: 9781315495477
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Education is seen by the Chinese as a key element in the modernisation of their country and in maintaining socialism. This book, first published in 1984, examines the nature of modern education in China since 1976, and looks at different parts of the system, the content of teaching and teaching styles. It considers how far the Chinese educational system has been affected by foreign powers and changing political ideology and is unique in that, using empirical data, it places the Chinese system in a world perspective.

Chapter One

A COMPARATIVIST’S VIEW OF CHINESE EDUCATION

Brian Holmes

Not many years ago I asked a Chinese scholar if he would help me to supervise a potential research student with a degree in Chinese, who wished to investigate some educational problems in China in comparative perspective. He declined graciously, explaining that his field was Chinese philosophy between 500 BC and 400 BC and that because he covered so many years he was already regarded by his colleagues as rather eclectic.

Against this background of monumental scholarship and, until recently, the paucity of first hand information since 1949 based on the observations of foreigners, I have to confess my ignorance of Chinese affairs. Yet for a comparative educationist modern China has a particular fascination, because while the problems its government has faced since 1949 have not been dissimilar to those faced by governments elsewhere throughout the world, policy solutions in China have been based on a borrowed ideology, many features of which are antithetical to traditional beliefs. The strength and persistence of these beliefs and the uniqueness of Chinese conditions ensure that the articles in this book provide not only invaluable information about education in modern China but a case study which illuminates for comparative educationists issues which have been of interest to them for many years.

Consequently, in this introduction I shall place educational developments in China in a comparative framework and suggest that they represent the outcome of unique responses to world wide problems.

SOURCES OF WORLD WIDE PROBLEMS SINCE 1945

Elsewhere I have identified three major explosions which created problems of policy for educationists after 1945. The first of these was the explosion of expectations in the light of which people throughout the world wished to gain political independence, enjoy improved standards of living, live in peace and be granted their basic human rights. A second major problem creating change took place after 1945, when the population of the world began to increase rapidly. Finally scientific inventions and their applications in commerce and industry created unprecedented manpower needs.[1]

Each explosion has implications for education. Among the human rights listed in the Declaration of the United Nations education occupied a prominent place. The achievement of universal primary education soon became a goal towards which governments throughout the world directed their attention. Where it already existed the provision of secondary education for all became an objective. Finally the expansion of higher education took place in response to demands that it should be regarded as a basic human right. Gradually the notion laid down in the UN Declaration that secondary and higher education should be restricted to those capable of benefiting from them was abandoned in favour of the view that lifelong education should be available to everyone. Thus today (1984) central to the aims of education in most countries is the belief that education should be provided for all citizens young and old regardless of gender, mother tongue, race, religion, socio-economic position or place of domicile. In response to these demands attempts were made to re-organise well established systems of schooling by eliminating selection for secondary schools and creating common middle or secondary schools and by expanding higher education provision.

Demographic trends have made the achievement of this goal difficult. Soon after the Second World War birth and survival rates rose dramatically, and by the early nineteen fifties millions of children throughout the world were clamouring for places in school systems which lacked buildings, equipment, teaching resources and teachers. The provision of an adequate supply of teachers was given highest priority in many countries. Less attention was paid to the kind of skills and special knowledge they should possess even in countries where, as in Europe, North America, Japan and some British dominions, levels of provision were already high. Basically class, size dominated teacher training expansionist policies.

Meanwhile scientific inventions and their applications were transforming many societies. Consumer goods of all kinds could be produced in vast quantities. Communication systems were revolutionised. Transportation, in the form of air travel, encouraged an unprecedented movement of people within and between countries. In some of them automation reduced the demand for unskilled and semi-skilled workers and created a need for highly trained technologists and skilled technicians. The kind of education which had served societies passing through the first industrial revolution became inadequate in post-industrial societies yet attitudes to worthwhile knowledge and concepts of scholarship did not change much so that curricular change took place relatively slowly.

Detalied policy responses to these changes varied. Traditional European models were abandoned in favour of school structures based on the experience of USA or USSR. Attempts were made to change systems of administration and finance. Highly centralised systems of control were decentralised to encourage local participation. Greater central control and finance was introduced into traditionally decentralised systems in order to equalise provision. As stated, systems of teacher education were expanded and attempts were made, successfully in some cases, to ensure that all teachers received some preservice initial training. Such training, it was hoped, would be provided in an institution of higher education. In some countries teacher education was incorporated into existing or new universities. In other countries special institutions of higher education were created or further developed in which intending primary and secondary school teachers were trained.

National circumstances influenced policies and the extent to which they were realised in practice. In some cases national independence and autonomous economic development received highest priority. Economic underdevelopment was associated with educational underdevelopment and bi-lateral and multi-lateral technical assistance programmes made many newly politically independent nations dependent on foreign capital and technical experts. The latter inevitably helped to introduce educational institutions patterned on those with which they were most familiar, namely those found in their own countries. Consequently the extent to which, since 1945, national systems of education have developed autonomously or under the influence of foreign experts is a starting point from which a comparative analysis can be made.

Undoubtedly national independence and identity has been a major preoccupation during a period when the pre-Second World War European empires collapsed. Neo-colonialism has persisted and the USA and USSR have competed for the political allegiance of independent nations. Attempts to create new and autonomous national identities have been constrained or thwarted by circumstances. Size, territorial boundaries and internal diversity have influenced the success of attempts to create national unity. Relatively few post-war nations satisfy the ‘ideal nation’ criteria Nicholas Hans laid down. Few possess populations who speak the same language, accept the same religious beliefs, belong to the same race, or subscribe to one secular ideology. Diversity of language, religion, race and political creed characterise most nations today. Of central concern to most governments has been how to create, and have internalised, a national ideology while allowing for linguistic freedom and racial equality. Deeply held traditions have made the task very difficult. An appeal to tradition might well mobilise feeling of identity but prevent modernisation. On the other hand some traditions reinforce diversity in terms of language and religion.

It is in the light of these general issues that the special case of China and educational developments under the leadership of Mao and members of the Communist party since 1949 can be usefully analysed. Each chapter in this book deals with a particular issue or stage of education. Together they provide an analysis of the problems faced and an authoritative account of the policies pursued, and the changes in them, since the victory of Mao’s forces created a new political situation.

THE POLITICO-ECONOMIC CONTEXT

The Communists took over a country which was economically underdeveloped and politically disunited. Like similar countries, such as India, China’s economy was based on agriculture. The vast majority of its population (over 80% are still peasants) subsisted in rural areas although there were both traditional Chinese urban centres and some large cities like Shanghai, Tianjin and Canton, which had been developed as ports by Europeans and used as commercial centres under treaties disadvantageous to the Chinese. Little had been done, except, to some extent in Manchuria, to industrialise the country whose vast size and varied terrain had ensured that the population, even in the rural areas, was very unevenly distributed. The size of the population, at that time, can only be estimated. It was probably around 500 million.[2]

As elsewhere the differences between town and country have persisted. Moreover since 1950 people from the rural areas have moved in large numbers into the urban areas, in spite of governmental efforts to prevent uncontrolled urbanisation. While available figures must be viewed with caution it seems likely that in 1949 the urban population was about 57.5 million and rose to over 89 million in 1956; a majority of the increase was due to immigration from rural areas.

Shanghai has a population of more than 11 million; official figures for 1982 gave the population of Beijing as just over 9 million and Tianjin, Chongqing and Canton have each more than 5 million inhabitants. Since then urban growth has continued, bringing with it problems which have characterised cities elsewhere. An exceptionally high population density in urban areas resulting from overcrowding in buildings, a high proportion of which are deemed unfit for occupation, is a well known phenomenon. Equally common in the cities of economically underdeveloped countries is the presence of many ‘dependents’ who are not employed in productive labour. Indeed urban unemployment and underemployment remain extremely serious problems. However hard life is in rural areas and however squalid it is in urban areas the latter attract in large numbers people hoping for a better life.

Over-riding the uneven distribution of population are general demographic trends. Since the Communists came to power the population has more than doubled, having reached by 1982 a figure of over a billion. Again population rises of more than 2 percent per annum have not been unusual in countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America since 1945. Birth rates have risen and survival rates improved dramatically. In the case of China these phenomena have been accentuated by family traditions which have continued to inform behaviour in spite of government attempts to curb population growth. Stern measures to restrict family size regardless of gender may well have provoked the reputed increase in female infanticide. The government has set birth and natural growth rate targets by 1985 at considerably less than half the estimated rates for 1979. Major educational problems are associated with the extremely rapid growth in population and the uncontrolled drift of peasants to the urban areas along the eastern seaboard.

Politically China offers an interesting case study of an economically underdeveloped country. It has many features in common with the countries of Africa and Asia, whose indigenous leaders struggled successfully after 1945 to gain freedom from the European powers. Throughout the ages and particularly during the nineteenth century Europeans attempted to influence Chinese affairs, and Buddhism became popular in periods when the central authority of the Confucian school broke down. Traders and missionaries penetrated the country as they did in Africa and Asia during the nineteenth century. Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Russia competed in a scramble for concessions and special privileges. Attempts by these powers to establish spheres of interest and influence were probably intended as precursors to formal annexation. By 1928 China seemed to be making progress towards emancipation from the ‘unequal treaties’, by which time Britain, France, Japan, the United States and some other foreign powers were involved. Before formal arrangements could be finalised the Japanese seized cities in Manchuria - their sphere of interest - and embarked on what in 1937 became a life and death struggle between China and Japan.

Many countries in Africa and Asia became part of a European empire. China did not. Competition between the powers helped to prevent its colonisation. China’s officials remained hostile to ‘foreign devils’ and refused willingly to accord their representatives diplomatic rights. At the turn of the nineteenth century Christians were persecuted in an attempt to rid the country of foreign influence. The Boxer Uprising and the empress dowager’s order that all foreigners should be killed represent extreme examples of the traditional approach of the Chinese to autonomous development. Confidence in it was, and is, based on the strength and richness of the Chinese cultural heritage and the administrative system which had evolved over centuries. These two features of Chinese history are well exemplified in the scholar official in whom erudition and administrative expertise were combined.

The movement towards complete political independence in China is characterised, as elsewhere, by indigenous revolution. The revolution of 1911 which brought Sun Yat-sen to power gave rise to a republican constitution. Subsequently the Guomindang was outlawed in 1913 and a warlord government emerged. After World War One internal squabbles prevented the unification of the country but gave rise to two movements - nationalism and Chinese Communism - which were in conflict until 1949. This conflict was not always overt. The Communists, for example, urged an end to the civil war with the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek, in order to form a united front against the Japanese and events conspired to bring this about. Thus as in the case of the Hindus and Moslems in India, the Tamils and Singhalese in Ceylon and the Ibos and Yoruba in Nigeria members of rival groups were prepared, for the time being, to forget their differences in order to fight a common foreign enemy.

In the case of China the Nationalists and Communists accepted two distinctly different ideologies both of which ran counter, in some respects, to Chinese experience. Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Guomindang, emphasised much of China’s old learning as the foundation on which his Three Principles could be built. These were, in translation, 1) nationalism to achieve national emancipation and racial equality, 2) democracy to achieve political rights for the people and 3) livelihood to ensure economic welfare. Conscious of the bases of China’s cultural greatness, Sun Yat-sen nevertheless accepted that in building nationalism, democracy and the economy the Chinese people should go out and learn what was worthwhile from the West. The leaders of the new government of the People’s Republic found in the ideology of Marx, Lenin and Stalin beliefs and policies which they hoped would mobilise the people of China to strive for the development of a modern, industrial nation. During the period 1952-57 China depended heavily on the USSR for know-how and plant. The Great Leap Forward was associated with the departure of Soviet specialists and a subsequent period of reduced agricultural and industrial production. Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966. After his death and the purge of the ‘Gang of Four’ government policies have been directed towards modernising agriculture, industry, national defence and science and technology.

Fluctuations in educational policy since 1949 reflect not only internal differences of opinion within the Communist Party but the very real dilemmas which face governments wishing to create a national consciousness based on new ideals and a modern and developing economy without either overtly doing violence to cherished traditions or arousing the opposition of those who have a vested interest in these traditions. Success depends upon the ability of political leaders to create an ideology in which radical and conservative beliefs are reconciled and to establish a political system which allows for circulation of members from the masses into the elites and between the governing and non-governing elites. Under these circumstances education is expected to play many roles. It is expected to promote national consciousness, increase political understanding and contribute, in China, to the Four Modernisations. Under conditions of linguistic and ethnic diversity, vast differences between the rural and urban populations and traditional commitments to family, classical scholarship and suspicion of foreigners, it has been no easier in China than elsewhere to establish education as a human and universal right and to use it to modernise the economy.

IDEOLOGY

Member of the Chinese Communist Party and Government leaders were initially willing to adopt Soviet policies. Central to the aims of education in the early days of Soviet power was that education as a human right should emancipate indiviudals from the ‘false consciousness’ they or their parents had acquired under capitalism. A major task in the process of emancipation was the removal of illiteracy by providing all children in the USSR with an education in their mother tongue. Fundamental to Marx’s view of education was the link he made between education and productive labour. Hence central to Soviet theories of education is the polytechnical principle which, when realised in practice, enables workers to understand the social implications, (including relationships among workers and between them and the means of production), and the practical applications in the productive life of a socialist society of the principles learned in school. Polytechnical education is designed to contribute to the all round development of individual pupils as new socialist men and women and through their proper understanding of society and production to the development of that society.

In practice Soviet policies included the creation of a common, universal ten year school in which pupils received instruction in the language chosen by parents; the development of specialised vocational and technical schools to supply industry with skilled workpeople, and the expansion of institutions of higher education - universities, polytechnics and pedagogical institutes - to meet the need of the country for technologists and professional personnel. Members of the Communist Party are responsible for the formulation of policy on the basis of research undertaken by academics associated with the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences and its research institutes. Educational policies are adopted after wide discussion with teachers and put into practice through a system of administration in which each autonomous Republic is responsible in association with local authorities, for its schools. On the authority of Lenin all the socio-political experience of mankind, properly interpreted as the outcome of a ceaseless conflict between capitalists and workers, should constitute curricula in schools. In effect this principle meant the continuation in Soviet schools of an encyclopaedic curriculum favoured by Western Europeans and the inclusion of Marxism-Leninism as the all pervading basis of political education. Teachers are well versed in this philosophy and by intention all intending teachers should receive training in an institution of higher education and subsequently should return as serving teachers for refresher courses.

Soviet policies imply radical changes in Western European systems of education. Selection for secondary schools on the basis of ability to benefit has been abandoned. Higher education, including university courses, are in principle open to all through full time, evening and correspondence arrangements. The traditional two track system in which a few carefully selected pupils entered general academic secondary schools and then went on to universities while the rest completed elementary schooling or trained for jobs in vocational schools has been slowly abolished by postponing differentiation and introducing virtually the same curriculum throughout the period of compulsory attendance in schools throughout the country. Classical languages have been downgraded. Mathematics has retained its pre-eminent position but the importance of the pure and applied sciences has been greatly stressed. Attitudes to pure knowledge and research are being transformed.

Platonic theories about inherited inequalities, the nature of the just and stable society, leadership by philosopher kings and how knowledge of permanent ‘ideas’ by intuition and reason can be acquired have all been challenged by Soviet educationists. Many theories similar to those of Plato are found in the Chinese classics and have been institutionalised in family, community and school practices. Consequently the educational ideology imported from the Soviet Union differed in many respects from orthodox Chinese educational ideology. Since, in this context, I am using the term ideology to mean a system of beliefs and values which motivate behaviour it is apparent that serious opposition to the imposition of Soviet ideology in China was inevitable. The strength of this opposition was related to the ability and willingness of Chinese intellectuals to propose alternative educational policies or to prevent Co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Editorial Preface
• Chart of the Education System
• 1. A COMPARATIVIST’S VIEW OF CHINESE EDUCATION
• 2. THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN CHINESE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
• 3. PRIMARY EDUCATION: A TWO-TRACK SYSTEM FOR DUAL TASKS
• 4. NEW DIRECTIONS IN SECONDARY EDUCATION
• 5. HIGHER EDUCATION: THE TENSION BETWEEN QUALITY AND EQUALITY
• 6. TEACHER EDUCATION IN THE EIGHTIES
• 7. ADULT EDUCATION IN URBAN INDUSTRIAL CHINA: PROBLEMS, POLICIES, AND PROSPECTS
• 8. CHINESE-WESTERN SCHOLARLY EXCHANGE: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF CHINESE EDUCATION
• Notes and References
• Statistical Appendix of Contemporary Educational Provision
• Glossary of Chinese characters for the Chinese terms used in the text
• The Contributors
• Index