It shall be convenient, for the purpose of the present essay, to divide the history of the educational system of China into five major periods:
Pre-1840 (Imperial Education)
1840-1949 (Opium War - P.R.C.)
1949-1966 (P.R.C. - Cultural Revolution)
1966-1976 (Cultural Revolution)
1976-present (Post-Mao Reforms)
Pre-1840. The roots of a system of formal education in China can be traced back at least as far as the 16th century B.C. later Shang Dynasty (1523-1027 B.C.) Throughout this period education was the privilege of the elite few, and for the most part existed for no other purpose than to produce government officials. Early on, the curriculum centered on the so-called “Six Arts”: Rites, Music, Archery, Chairot-Riding, History, and Mathematics However, based on the teachings of Confucius (551-479 B.C.) during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770-221 B.C.), the curriculum gradually gave way one based on The Four Books and The Five Classics These works outlined the principles of society and government, as well as codes for personal conduct, and collectively define Confucian philosophy, which exerted a fundamental influence on virtually all aspects of life, and certainly on education, at least until the Liberation and ascent to power by the Communists in 1949.
A system that educated an elite class was established and steadfastly maintained, perpetuating subsequent generations of an educated elite resting incongruously on a base of mass illiteracy. This is not to say that the government actively provided for any form of “public education.” Instead, the imperial government had an active hand in education only inasmuch as it administered the various levels of the imperial or civil service examinations, which were used for the selection of imperial officers. The exams themselved consisted of essay questions that tested the candidate's understanding of Confucius' teachings. The students could prepare for these examinations by enrolling in the private instutions of higher education of the say, the shuyuan, which existed for no other reason than to prepare students for the civil service examinations.
1840-1949. Throughout the thousands of years of imperial rule, even as one dynasty gave way to the next, the Chinese were steadfast in their belief that socially and intellectually they had no peers, especially as compared with Western cultures. They had a highly developed culture, and with the “four inventions” (gunpower, the compass, movable type and paper), they felt also that they had a rich technological tradition. However, with the humiliating defeat at the hands of the British in the Opium War (1840-1842), the Chinese were forced to grudgingly re-evaluate their dominance, at least in the area of science and technology. Following the defeat in the Opium War and the ensuing cessation of Hong Kong to Great Britian, Western education gradually began to take root in China, for the most part through schools founded by Christian missionaries. While the majority of Chinese gentry looked upon these developments with a sense of humiliation and extreme suspicion, a few more pragmatic and liberal-minded officials saw the opportunity for a balanced approach to education, where Confucian classics would continue to form the core, augmented by a component of Western technology.
Against a backdrop of massive illiteracy, the system of civil service examinations continued to be the only route to officialdom. However, with the defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, the Chinese finally became convinced that their own future would rest, at least in part, on the acceptance of certain aspects of Western-style education. (Indeed, Japan had already been successful in adapting Western education to a non-Western society.) In 1905 the civil service examination system was dismantled, and a series of reform measures were issued by the Qing Dynasty court calling for the old academies to be reorganized into a modern system of primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education, to be based on Western models.
Shortly thereafter, in 1911, the Qing Dynasty itself was overthrown in the bourgeois revolution, and a Republican form of government was established. By this time, there were already European, American and Japanese educational models on Chinese soil. Because of Japan's successful adaptation, their system was tried first, implemented by a large number of Japanese-trained Chinese scholars. During the chaotic warlord period of the early 1920s, this gradually gave way to a system more closely patterned on American models. Even before this, however, especially during the “May Fourth Period” of 1915-1920, there were intense debates and disputes over the cloning of Western-style educational systems in a country trying to find a new identity after millennia of dynastic rule. Of course, it is inaccurate to say that the debates were centered only on educational matters; they were largely political, inspired in part by the Russian revolution and the subsequent takeover by the Marxist government. In turn, the Chinese Communist Party was born in 1921, with its own ideas about the “correct” form of education in China.
All sides in the debate agreed that a system was needed that could provide for the technological needs of the country without sacrificing its Chinese identity, and at the same time could be expanded so as to reach the masses in a predominately rural society. During this period a number of experiments were attempted, including the short-lived Hunan Self-Study University established by Mao Zedong and friends in 1921. One of the prime objectives of this experimental university was to bring higher education to those who otherwise could not afford it. With the Japanese invasion in the late 1930s, this and other experiments and debates were suspended until after the Liberation in 1949.
1949-1966. Shortly after the Liberation by the Chinese Communists, a new educational system was imported: the Soviet Model. This was done with even less concern for the special features of the Chinese environment than was the case following the Sino-Japanese War. As before, the motivation was driven by technological needs, and the Soviet Union was now held as the new prototype for success. However, the Soviet model did very little to address the problem of mass illiteracy. By 1956, it was still the case that fewer than one-half of primary and secondary aged children were in school.
Most of the energy during this period was devoted to the development and restructuring higher education. As a result of this restructuring, the number of comprehensive universities diminished in number, while the number of specialized colleges showed a significant increase. In to the restructuring efforts, the Ministry of Higher Education was given a stronger role in overseeing the administration of the comprehensive and polytechnical universities, as well as the teacher-training institutions. Unfortunately, by 1961, the failed policies of the Great Leap Forward, a spate of natural disasters, and the breaking of relations with the Soviet Union thwarted further progress along these lines. Even before this, the Anti-Rightest Campaign in 1957 (which came on the heels of the Hundred Flowers Movement), had alienated the intellectuals, many of whom had been instrumental in bringing about the sought-after educational reforms.
With the Soviet model no longer the paradigm, the government resumed earlier attempts at a balance between Confucian and Western-style education. Mao's “walking on two legs” ( liangtiaotui zoulu ) exhortation, took its form as a two-track educational system:
vocational and work-study schooling, and
regular university, college and college preparatory schooling.
This two-track system developed fairly smoothly, until the breakout of the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
1966-1976. The two-tiered system of education was seen by many as one that would continue to produce an echelon of elite few, with the masses having to settle for something less (viz. the first track), if even that. Increasingly it became felt that the administrators in the “regular” schools were the culprits, that they were perpetuating a system in such a way that could only be viewed as self-serving. On May 25, 1966, the party secretary of the philosophy department at Peking University, Nie Yuanzi and six other colleagues hung a “big character poster” critical of the university's administration. This event was covered extensively in the national media, and the Cultural Revolution was under way.
Political struggles against administrators quickly spread to schools across the country. The government's first formal response was the commissioning of “workteams” by Liu Shaoqi to oversee, and in many cases contain the revolutionary activities. Different workteams responded in a variety, some siding strongly with the revolutionary students, others more inclined to protect the administrations. However, by mid-June of 1966, Chairman Mao overtly questioned Liu's handling of the Cultural Revolution and soon withdrew the workteams. This was seen by the students as a clear sanction for their revolutionary efforts, and the Cultural Revolution on the campuses escalated accordingly. On August 8, 1966, at the eleventh plenum of the eight Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, the scope and strategy of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was defined, and once again it was proclaimed that education had been controlled by bourgeois intellectuals, and that the creation of a new system more closely based on Mao's teachings was needed.
