Chinese are known worldwide as top students and scholars, but intellectuals were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, and now only recently has attending college education been possible for the majority. China is transforming its higher-education system, now the largest in the world, to include collaboration with Western scholars and to provide history and contemporary educational access to students in rural areas. Education in China provides unique coverage of learning at all levels.
In twenty-first-century China, socialist educational traditions have given way to practices that increasingly emphasize the individual. This volume investigates that trend, drawing on Hansen's fieldwork in a rural high school in Zhejiang where students, teachers, and officials of different generations, genders, and social backgrounds form what is essentially a miniature version of Chinese society. Hansen paints a complex picture of the emerging “neosocialist” educational system and shows how individualization of students both challenges and reinforces state control of society.
In Education in China, ca. 1840–present the authors offer a description of the Chinese education system. In doing so, they touch upon various debates such as on educational modernization and the role of female education. Relevant statistical data is provided as well.
China has been ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse. This volume recasts the pedagogical and policy challenges of minority education in China in the light of the state's efforts to balance unity and diversity. It brings together leading experts including both critical voices writing from outside China and those working inside China's educational system. The essays explore different aspects of ethnic minority education in China: the challenges associated with bilingual and trilingual education in Xinjiang and Tibet; Han Chinese reactions to preferential minority education; the ro.
The Handbook of Education in China provides both a comprehensive overview and an original interpretation of key aspects of education in the People’s Republic of China. It has four parts: The Historical Background; The Contemporary Chinese System; Problems and Policies; The Special Administrative Regions: Macau and Hong Kong. The Handbook is an essential reference for those interested in Chinese education; as well as a comprehensive textbook that provides valuable supplementary material for those studying Chinese politics, economy, culture and society more generally.
This comparative study of the Naxi and Tai minority groups in Southwestern China examines the implementation and reception of state minority education policy. Hansen (Center for Development and the Environment, U. of Oslo) argues that state policy is not uniformly successful among all minorities, no
Most studies of Buddhist communities tend to be limited to villages, individual temple communities, or a single national community. Buddhist monastics, however, cross a number of these different framings: They are part of local communities, are governed through national legal frameworks, and participate in both national and transnational Buddhist networks. Educating Monks makes visible the ways Buddhist communities are shaped by all of the above—collectively and often simultaneously. Educating Monks examines a minority Buddhist community in Sipsongpannā, a region located on China’s southwest border with Myanmar and Laos. Its people, the Dai-lue, are “double minorities”: They are recognized by the Chinese state as part of a minority group, and they practice Theravāda Buddhism, a minority form within China, where Mahāyāna Buddhism is the norm. Theravāda has long been the primary training ground for Dai-lue men, and since the return of Buddhism to the area in the years following Mao Zedong’s death, the Dai-lue have put many of their resources into providing monastic education for their sons. However, the author’s analysis of institutional organization within Sipsongpannā, the governance of religion there, and the movements of monks (revealing the “ethnoscapes” that the monks of Sipsongpannā participate in) points to educational contexts that depend not just on local villagers, but also resources from the local (Communist) government and aid form Chinese Mahāyāna monks and Theravāda monks from Thailand and Myanmar. While the Dai-lue monks draw on these various resources for the development of the sangha, they do not share the same agenda and must continually engage in a careful political dance between villagers who want to revive traditional forms of Buddhism, a Chinese state that is at best indifferent to the continuation of Buddhism, and transnational monks that want to import their own modern forms of Buddhism into the region. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with Dai-lue monks in China, Thailand, and Singapore, this ambitious and sophisticated study will find a ready audience among students and scholars of the anthropology of Buddhism, and religion, education, and transnationalism in Southeast and East Asia.
Transformative market reforms in China since the late 1970s have improved living standards dramatically, but have also led to unprecedented economic inequality. During this period, China’s educational system was restructured to support economic development, with educational reforms occurring at a startling pace. Today, the educational system has diversified in structure, finance, and content; it has become more market-oriented; and it is serving an increasingly diverse student population. These changes carry significant consequences for China’s social mobility and inequality, and future economic prospects. In Education and Reform in China, leading scholars in the fields of education, sociology, demography, and economics investigate the evolution of educational access and attainment, educational quality, and the economic consequences of being educated. Education and Reform in China shows that economic advancement is increasingly tied to education in China, even as educational services are increasingly marketized. The volume investigates the varying impact of change for different social, ethnic, economic and geographic groups. Offering interdisciplinary views on the changing role of education in Chinese society, and on China’s educational achievements and policy challenges, this book will be an important resource for those interested in education, public policy, and development issues in China.
