Radicalism and Education Reform in China by Suzanne Pepper

This is a really good book. this is such an example of excellent scholarly rigor. it is fascinating too. The first chapter should be included in my "Comparative Education" course. In fact I wonder if I should even include it in my sociological foundations class. perhaps i can talk about it in class but not include it as required reading. how about that?

why do i like the first chapter so much? well firstly it takes head on the questions of neo-marxist ideas of education and also of development. that is another reason i like it because it is at the nexus of education and development. hey! that is a potential yearning in my heart of hearts to pursue.... the relationship between education adn development. the honest soul seeking search for a kind of education that i can devote myself to promoting that actually promotes advancement and societal progress.

in this book Pepper lists everything out it appears to me... all the tortuous paradoxes and contradictions of educational development

relevance vs. prestige--e.g. national curricula often are suited to city children and have little relevance to the lives of rural children. they have been focused on preparation for university study rather than direct employment. off and on it is proposed that rural children should have greater access to farming knowledge or to vocational training but then the criticism is that there is inequality built into the system, the system is especially designed for social reproduction... etc.

there is the dilemma between the traditional and the modern/western. in her presentaiton it is made much clearer the western nature of modernity or vice versa. the struggles back and forth between the cultural conservatives and those who would reject everything chinese and embrace everything modern. the struggle for the delicate balance. fascinating that these struggles still continue.

role of education in political destabilization...education can raise aspiration but not deliver employment opportunities resulting in social unrest...should i be looking at the work of political scientists about political socialization... yes of course i should i should be reading up a storm, a STORM i tell you... just read read read every free moment that you get... read novels, read political scientists and be interested in everything... "find the value in everything."

the first few chapters after the first chapter lay the ground work for the main discussion of the cultural revolution perhaps by discussing the struggles and tensions between the modern/western system and the traditional system. she takes us through the disdain for all thing foreign, through the sudden craze of all things foreign, and then the boxer rebellion, and then the warlords (shanxi was the one province mentioned for successful implementation of mass education) ...

it is interesting also how the old cliche "history always repeats itself" does seem to be true. p. 59

"in fact key trends were already evident during the first decade of the century that would have a lasting impact on the development of china's modern school system. those trends were:

the continuing undercurrent of conservative opposition;
the assumption that Western learning would bring China wealth and power;
the assumption that study abroad adn foreign degrees could be substituted for classical learning adn teh examination system;
a consequent voluntary dependence on foreign education systems as models for develpment; the paradox of the reform mentality, or constant change as oen of the few constants in a society struggling to reconstruct itself ut uanable to agree on what course to take."

the next stage is the may 4th movement and again the love affair with western ideals. Lu Xun's work is notable for its educational themes--the struggle between the traditional/feudal/confucian and the western/modern.

Pepper cites teh work of Guo Bingwen "The Chinese system of public education" in 1914 which lists the current issues of the day

missionary education--turning out "aliens" in their own land
ethics--how to develop character without confucian curriculum
discipline--curbing spirit of independence and unruliness
funding--financing of new schools
mass education--how to overcome bias in higher education
relating educaiton to life--"from the moment a child enters school, he begins to alienate himself from the life of the family and that of the community, and by the time he graduates he is fit neither to be a farmer nor a merchant."
education and government service--eliminate the idea that education was a stepping stone for govt. service
teacher training--
centralization--how to find the right mix of centralization(to achieve control, promote national consciousness over local identities, promote the national language over local dialects, prescribe national curricula, approve textbooks) and decentralization (to promote local initiative, mobilize local resources, adapt the approved curricula to local needs)

the critique of western education in china had fused into a common denominator of key issues--urban elite divorced from practical needs of chinese society; mechanical application of western ideas and educational models; separation between mental and manual labor; relevance to china's most pressing needs.

may 4th movement--a new culture, spread of the vernacular, advocated western science, democracy, philosophy, literature, skepticism of tradition.

p. 129 during the Yan'an period after the long march an education system was set up --there were three basic forms of education--general (elementary), military, social (adult literacy classes and social activities). all were infused with political and patriotic content designed to raise popular consciousness along with cultural level"...

p. 142-154 covers education reforms and "rationale" during the Yan'an period. It seems this section is worthy of close study and can be used in my writing.

1. marxists advocated combining production with knowledge... these ideas were to be "translated into proper Chinese". the result should be a kind of education joined together with the people, not separated from them...the conventional system was not seen as suited to the needs of poverty, economic survival, war, revolution. the education in the border regions was to have objectives directly related to life and work adn could take on many different forms...all should base their curricula on the armed struggle, border region construction, and production.

April 1944--directive for elementary schools--minban gongzhu--run by the people and fincanced by teh villages themselves...flexibility seemed to be the main guidance, all should be left to the local people to decide . no flexibility in textbooks--not permitted to use confucian textbooks, new textbooks were being created in the old style but with new content. county level leaders were to be held responsible for guidance and supervision.

interesting dilemmas were faced between compulsion and leaving the masses to their own devices p. 146. some villages liked having control of their schools and others demanded that they have government run or central schools in their village. there were the complications of explaining the significance of minban schools as compared with private schools and government run schools. minban schools were open to all but everyone had responsibility also for running them.

"herein lay the crux of the problem: the policy itself was decreed from above, yet local cadres were being directed to make minban schools a mass-line operation." ... "so voluntarism relies on self-awareness; but self-awareness is aroused and induced by the leaders. from this it can be seen that leadership is absolutely not compulsion, and voluntarism absolutely cannot mean noninterference. management by the people with public assistance is voluntarism plus leadership. the two cannot be separated."

the report also pointed out the problems with the teachers.

p. 149-151 discuss secondary and higher education. the discussion of yanda and the ideals that had inspired the CCP's first official reform of higher education are quite fascinating and very instructive in light of the new attempts at education reform.

"new teachign methods were to be developed based on three special characteristics--"the union of study and teaching with practical application. second, independent study should be prmary and instruction supplementary, and third was a democratic spirit"...

now isn't that interesting! these are ideals that are recycled again the current reform movement, all three of them! i need to weave this into my work somehow.

at the time of the revolution the education reforms of the yanan period dissolved and the CCP inherited the conventional education system of the republican era.

p. 160 the era of "learning from the soviet union"
leftist ideas inspired by John Dewey "education for life" were attacked

suggestions from a Soviet adviser
be wary and vigilant against american ideas about pedagogy, iq testing, separating children apart to teach
p. 161 "the governmetn should issue orders defining clearly the curriculum, teaching and study methods, and disciplinary procedures. there should b e strict rules and regulations for all aspects of school life. nothing should be treated lightly or left to chance. each student should be tested each semeseter adn methods stipulated for evaluationg and recording the individual's study and conduct. lax discipline should nto be tolerated among either teachers or students. as a symbolic feature fo the propers chool environment, when teh teacher entered teh classroom each day all students should rise in unision and remain standing until the teacher had taken his or her place at the lectern. the curriculum should be arranged in orderly sequence for each subject, so that each year's course work was built systematically upon the foundation laid the previous year. this meant a fixed and planned curriculum with teaching outlines for all subjects at all levels."

features of the new soviet inspired system:
change built into the system
materialist point of view to explain everything
banishing the idea that study adn the curriculum should be divorced from politics--the content of all courses whether geography, history, literature had to be revised in accordance with the principle that learnign and politics could not be separated.

"banished as well were the old teaching methods which revolved around four points only: teacher, textbook, blackboard and chalk. the new methods in soviet school required all kinds of teaching aids: maps, charts, specimens, equipment, laboratories, and campus gardens. these were regarded as essential for illustration, observation, and hands-on student experimentation."




p. 169-170 September 1951 a four month thought reform program for university personnel in beijing and tianjin. there is a description of how a national campaign of this sort is organized here on this page.


p. 169 seven topics necessary for intellectual's thought reform: standpoint, attitudes, whom they should serve, problems of thought, problems of knowledge, democracy, and the practice of personal criticism and self-criticism.
p. 170--zhou enlai gave the keynote address. deputy minister of education qian junrui also spoke. he chastized the college teachers for not making progress in their thought. he said that the system, content, and methods of china's tertiary education had to be changed. he identified three types of incorrect viewpoints and work styles among college teachers that would have to be overcome.

1. anglo-american bias
2. the overwhelming motivation of intellectuals with their own security, wealth and prestige
3. dogmatic in their work and divorced from reality "reading out from textbooks adn the duck-stuffing method are still common ways of teachign in our institutions of higher learning. among them the most popular and harmful is teh mechanical copying of foreign dogmas. old things studied 10, 20, 3o years ago in england or america, foreign textbooks, even lecturing in english, making the students take notes and prepare exercises in english--really what is the point of it?"--the substance of education would also be revised, including curricula, textbooks and teaching methods."

ambivalence in education reforms!! the same ambivalence that had characterized education reform in china since the 1920s.

p. 174 more on the jiaoxue yanjiu zu that were learned from the soviets. similar to teh earlier chinese version of the education research committee which were set up in the 1930s to improve elementary education. (look up both of these in more detail and use this reference in all of my articles!)

Chapter 9 is about elementary and secondary education during the soviet era and so seems to be an important chapter to study closely.

the goal during this era was to train large numbers of "new-style worker-peasant intellectuals" using all manner of methods, and flexible approaches. integration of "irregular" forms.

ambivalence persists--on the one hand incorporating education for workers adn peasants and on the other hand stalin-era regularity.

p. 193--"all who advocate ways of thinking and action which would abolish teh school system adn the examination system, and one-sidedly emphasize the importance of living experience while neglecting systematic knowledge and theoretical studies, are mistaken and will end in failure"

p. 196--development of schooling in the countryside had been the focus. now policy makers were arguing that the development of schooling in the cities could no longer be neglected as this was where the industrialization was happening. again the dilemma of scaling down quantity in order to focus on quantity. the closing down of minban schools only to reopen them again a few years later. these changes seem to have resulted in a vacillation of attendance at elementary schools.

fluctuating financing also had an impact on enrollments e.g. land rents sustatained privately funded secondary schools but with agrarian land reform this source of funding was lost. system for secondary ed still remained--putong and then vocational.

1953 key point school development.

this chapter is all about education with its purpose to focus on industrialization--economic development.

even in 1950s continued emphasis on raising "quality"... does anything ever change or is it always just the same record played over and over again?

p. 208 tongkao--unified examinations reintroduced in order to be able to judge teacher work adn their success in adhering to the prescribed teaching plans and syllabi.

p. 229 soviet method of teaching for "all-around development"!!
they preferred teaching according to individual aptitude yincai shi jiao

p. 229 "some argued that the teaching outlines and plans should be scrapped since they prevented the free expression of ideas in teh classroom. others thought they could be retained but used for references only. the sense of the meeting as announced was that the teaching plans were essential for systematic learning but ways should be found to prevent the dogmatic adherence to only one school of thought as presented in teh plans."

elementary and secondary schooling in late 1950s-- severe lack of educational opportunity. sought to address educational issues by providing quality education for a few and something less for everyone else. a preoccupation with all-around education vs. aptitude education.
the assumption was that individual students learn at different speeds and so should be taught accordingly. much experimentation with "aptitude teaching"

p. 235 "student's thought has been activated as never before...the air is filled with the smell of independent thought and study" and with several other "unhealthy phenomena" as well. controversy over the management of after shcool free time.

1956 criticism of "all round development" and mechanical copying.

p. 269 1958--start of the great leap forward and of the cultural revolution
"the cultural revolution is a movement for the cultural emancipation of all the laboring people"

p. 271 once again this mention of Dewey-like philosophy "Strengthening the ties of school with life"

introduction of productive labor into the schools. six measure were advanced to break with bourgeois academic authority--
p. 273
1. free airing of views, big character posters to raise political consciousness, improved teaching quality, promote unity
2. teachers and students should participate together in planning of school education pland and course outlines
3. professional teachign staff should be augmented with people with practical experience
4. students to participate in evaluation of classmates performance
5. leadership personnel to fraternize with students in life and labor
6. teachers were to establishign mutual relationships with students based on democtratic equality
7. school finances and building plans to be made public to allow teachers, students and staff to participate in management


cultural revolutionaries--advanced education and culture workders of proclaimed worker-peasant origins

p. 335--in 1960s the aim was to revise the fixed and unvarying formulas for teaching used in the 1950s. these formulas were as follows
for exmaple a history lesson


first day of the lesson:
first 5-10 minutes review the previous lesson, another few minutes to link the previous lesson to the current lesson, most of the class period would then be devoted to reading the lesson aloud, consolidation, questions for the students


second and third days of lesson: further anlayze the lesson, discuss, summarize, student's comprehension tested, homework assignement given.


experimental classes set up... but in the end teacher more or less agreed that the 1950s methods were after all the best way of preparing a lesson.


p. 378 educational reform was also at the heart of the cultural revolution as education is so fundamental to the superstructure.

p. 380 pepper gives an interpretation of Mao's strategy to pit the intellectuals and the cadres against each other and blame each other for their role in the bourgeois nature of the education system...she notes that no one ever challenged mao's verdict of the bourgeois nature of the system. "not only has his verdict been established as the new orthodoxy, but he had manipulated the movement so that successors of the two main protagonists he targeted--that is teh children of the cadres adn the intellectuals--had ended with each side blaming the other sides parents for the faults they all now accepted."

p. 381 pepper is saying some really puzzling and intriguing things here...

1. china's modern system of education was established at the beginning of the century
2. maos presided over the most radical set of reforms to be imposed upon china's modern school system since the founding of the system
3. it was this set of reforms that caught the eye and imagination of the international development community
4. she argues that this period was teh worst of times (from the standpoint of a professional education) adn the best of times (for the radical reform ideals)

with the old education system finally dismantled people searched desperately for new principles to guide their development. they drew on teh words of mao zedong.

key quote "education shoudl be revolutionized, school term should be shortened, students should in their studies learn other things like industrial work, farming and military affairs"
second most quoted quote authorized working class to take leadership in all things.
intellectuals must be reeducated by the workers, peasants and soldiers, and all cadres must engage in manual labor.

students should be selected from among workers and peasants with practical experience, and they should return to production after a few years of study.

accordingly, one or two years work replace graduation from senior middle school as teh new prerequisite for college. the unified national college entrance examinations were abolished, colleges selected student recommended by the work units, natioanl unified curricula were abolished leaving each institution to rebuild its own ased on teh radical principles of shorter courses, less classroom learning, and more practie plus labor adn politics. ...aim was to make intelleductuals of the laborers adn laborers of the intellectuals."


p. 385 aims for the reform of elementary education were "self-consciously anti-elitist, egalitarian, and designed to reduce the three great distinctions--between town and country, industry and agriculture, mental and manual labor"

very focused on local community development--teacher to be drawn from local community, party organization and revolutionary commitees at commune and briaged elvels woudl be responsible for school amangement together with school eladers. for students the aim was toacheieve universal schooling, and overcome the notion that education was useless if it did not lead outward and upward...schools should be located close to home as possible, every production brigade should run its own complete elementary school with branches in isolated villages.

p. 393 drawing on her interviewees background pepper points out that they represent an unprecedented urban to rural movement of historic dimensions. "nor was teh outside worlds attention misplaced since the movement was unique in reversing the rural to urban drift from impoverished countryside to overcrowded cities typical of modernization generally."

p. 411 interviewees complain mostly about the loss of "zhidu" during this time. one interviewee lists teh following zhidu that were destroyed: the enrollment system, the promotion system, examinations, rewards and punishments, teachers' course preparation, organization, financies, work and rest, keeping of records adn files, the curriculum...everything neatly laid out in place, predictable, controllable adn regular.

Mao's 1964 spring festival comments--"He had likened testing methods in China's schools to teh style of teh old imperial examinations, saying students shoudl be graded instead for creativity adn allowed to copy one another's test papers. "

p. 415 all interviewees seemed to acknowledge the expansion of educational opportunity during the cultural revolution "Yes there is a contradiction: on one hand htere was a wreckign of teacher's knowledge and cultural levels. but on the other schools developed"

her most embittered interviewee said "the cultural revolution was a disaster especially in the cities... but in the countryside it was different. there, they actually set up more schools"

p. 491 education has been a "front-line issue" since the founding of new china.

"the old familiar ambivalence between regularity and radical education reform...and the ambivalence, as in earlier decades, was so pervasive as to be evident in soem degree at all academic levels, in all settings, both urban and rural, among different generations, classes and factional affiliations, and even sometimes within individuals themselves."

p. 495 "Deng Xiaoping's quest for modernization and advanced world standards"