Radicalism and Education Reform in 20th-Century China : The Search for an Ideal Development Model

In 1976, China's 'education revolution' was being hailed by foreign observers as an inspiration for all low-income countries. By 1980, the Chinese themselves had disavowed the experience, declaring it devoid of even a single redeeming virtue. This is the first comprehensive book to cover the whole sweep of twentieth-century Chinese education, and to provide a detailed study of what occurred in the countryside under the radical Maoist education experiments during the Cultural Revolution. The study of both pre- and post-1949 China provided the crucial historical perspective to distinguish continuities from innovations. Rather than the epitome of good or evil, China's educational experiences of the 1970s instead emerged as the most tumultuous episode in a long and contentious struggle to adapt Western ways for use in a non-Western society. Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 1 Educational development and the Chinese experience......Page 14 Part I The republican era: origins of radical education reform......Page 48 2 Development dilemmas in the republican era: the League of Nations report......Page 50 3 The inheritance......Page 59 4 The modern school system......Page 72 5 The critical backlash......Page 99 6 Early communist alternatives: Jiangxi and Yan 'an......Page 131 Part II Learning from the Soviet Union......Page 168 7 Introducing the Soviet Union......Page 170 8 The Soviet model for Chinese higher education......Page 177 9 Sino-Soviet regularization and school system reform......Page 205 10 Blooming, contending, and criticizing the Soviet model......Page 230 Part III Cultural revolution and radical education reform......Page 270 11 On Stalin, Khrushchev, and the origins of cultural revolution......Page 272 12 The great leap in education......Page 291 13 A system divided: walking on two legs into the ig6os......Page 315 14 Education reform as the catalyst for cultural revolution and class struggle: the IQ66-IQ68 mobilization phase......Page 365 15 Education reform as the culmination of class struggle: the professional educator's perspective......Page 394 16 Education reform as the culmination of class struggle: the critical ideals triumphant at last......Page 427 17 The Cultural Revolution negated......Page 479 18 The mixed triumph of regularity......Page 504 19 Chinese radicalism and education development......Page 525 The Hong Kong interviews......Page 550 Select bibliography......Page 570 Index......Page 602 The author's search for clues to this sudden change ultimately spanned most of the 20th century. The study of both pre- and post-1949 China provided the historical perspective necessary to distinguish the continuities from innovations and to trace communist educational decisions back to their pre-communist antecedents. Rather than the epitome of good or evil, China's 1970s educational experience emerged instead as only the most tumultuous episode in a long and contentious struggle to adapt Western ways for use in a non-Western society In 1976, China's "education revolution" was being hailed by foreign observers as an inspiration for all low-income countries. By 1980, the Chinese themselves had disavowed the experience, declaring it devoid of even a single redeeming virtue. This is the first comprehensive book to cover the whole sweep of twentieth-century Chinese education, and in particular to provide a detailed study of what occurred in the countryside under the radical Maoist education experiments of the Cultural Revolution. This study was inspired by the dramatic shift that occurred between 1976 and 1980 in China's education policies and the outside world's perception of them. In 1976, China's "education revolution" was being hailed by foreign observers as an inspiration for all low-income countries and many others as well, whether communist or otherwise. By 1980, the Chinese themselves had disavowed the experience, declaring it devoid of even a single redeeming virtue By the mid-1970s, China's experience was being heralded within the international development community as a new model worthy of praise and emulation. Suzanne Pepper. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 557-587) And Index.