“China's over 2000 counties accommodate more than 50% of the nation's students. ... To understand China, the countryside is the best population to consider. Similarly, to understand education, county-level education is the best focus. In the accelerated reform of China's education system, without proper consideration of county-level education, it is impossible to comprehend the 'foundation' of education in China.” - Lin Xiaoying
Through this book, Professor Lin outlines the current landscape of county-level education in China after spending three years doing field research. The results of small sample qualitative research contain surprising universality. Some insights are striking to me.
"After people have generally experienced the practice and indoctrination of the market economy, 'insufficient funding' is easily identified as the root cause of all problems, thereby masking the real roots of many issues." (p. 355) The term "root cause" is vaguely defined. However, this easy attribution often shifts the responsibility for finding and making feasible improvements into a resigned acceptance.
"Education has become a pursuit of maximizing costs." (p. 356) Traditional microeconomics assumes a rationality of maximizing benefits and minimizing costs. To say that education instead seeks to maximize costs resonates with the current situation in China where students are forced to put everything at stake regardless of returns. This is how absurd it is nowadays. By treating the results of college entrance exams as the ultimate or even sole reward, relinquishing the right (in fact, the obligation) to assess inputs in real-time, what kind of people are they educating when everything is subordinated to 'learning'?
"In recent years, educational reforms have targeted parent education, family education, and home-school cooperation, hoping to incorporate parents into the big picture of educational reform. However, have policymakers considered whether it is reasonable, legitimate, and feasible to intervene directly in family matters with public sector reform logic, given that parents and their families belong to the private realm? Since World War II, societal development has finally distinguished public and private realms, requiring public power to be confined within specific systems. The family naturally has the responsibility and function of nurturing and educating children, but first and foremost, the family is not an educational institution. Instead, it is a fundamental base and starting point for an individual's existence in the world, a place for natural growth. This is where tradition, culture, habits, and customs should come into play, and the focus and foothold of educational reform should not be so misplaced." (p. 393) The criticism is valid. However, the lack of dignity in the private domain seems to have been a problem in China for more than just a day or two.
Professor Lin's narrative and reflections as a researcher are incredibly sincere. During my own research journey, I often felt lost as I constantly saw myself as a powerless researcher in a field with a very low barrier to entry: I neither have teaching experience in basic education schools nor can I directly participate in educational reform or improvement. I am not even an education major, just a curious citizen who tries to remedy the past he deemed tragic and just to help people out. But there are role models that inspire me to keep on pushing.
One idol is Rousseau, who, near the end of his life plagued by poverty and illness, still wrote 'Reveries of a Solitary Walker' in an angry tone. This book puzzled me. How could he remain absolutely certain of his correctness, even under threat and in poverty? Another idol is Foucault, whom I encountered in a biography written about him (Foucault's Love and Death). I was inspired by this great thinker as he was literally risking his life for his research. By comparison, my research is just a quiet drop in the ocean, it is nowhere near being brave. The third idol is Bourdieu, who in 'Sketch for a Self-Analysis' compiled and analyzed his academic trajectory, his dislikes, approvals, uncompromising attitude, and his shift from philosophy to empirical social research in 'The Weight of the World', wherein his fearless persistence shames me. He said, “The mere desire to observe and prove led me to devote myself wholeheartedly to the fervent work that would allow me to understand my experiences, humble and meager as I am as their witness, at all costs to explain these experiences.” They regard themselves as snails, looking back at the trail they leave after moving a distance, then continuing boldly forward." (p. 409)
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