Confusion and Transcendence: A Record of Concerns about Rural Education in New China

Author: Pang Shouxing
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2003-10-01
Features: We should clearly recognize that the issue of rural education in China cannot be resolved overnight. Only through gradual reform and step-by-step improvement can we eventually see success. Any attempt to achieve "one stroke of success in one action" is extremely dangerous.
Excerpt:
Eliminating Illiteracy: Literacy Illiteracy? Functional Illiteracy? Eliminating illiteracy is a major undertaking for the entire nation. In the near future, achieving a basic of nine-year compulsory education and a basic elimination of illiteracy among young and middle-aged adults across the country will be an ambitious goal for the entire Party and the people. Looking back at the history of illiteracy education over the past 50 years, we cannot help but lament our efforts. Old illiterates have not been eliminated, and new ones keep appearing. Year after year, we work tirelessly to eliminate illiteracy, yet the total number of illiterates in China still accounts for a significant proportion in the world. Therefore, we must reflect on our illiteracy eradication efforts and seek new paths.
Eliminating illiteracy is not just about learning to read and write; more importantly, it is about eliminating functional illiteracy and making it easier to acquire literacy. This has been a fundamental idea among intellectuals concerned with popular education in China since the end of the last century. In the 1920s, when Tao Xingzhi, Zhu Jingong, Chen Heqin, and others compiled the "Peasant Thousand-Character Text," they meticulously calculated and compressed the time it took for an illiterate to become literate. Their focus was on simplifying Chinese characters and selecting those most useful for the masses, discarding the useless ones. The creation of the Latinized new script further empowered mass education. The "Peasant Thousand-Character Text" stated, "Teach for one hour a day, and you can complete it in 96 days or 16 weeks." However, this was still considered too long. Another text, "The Elderly and Young Thousand-Character Text," also took four months to complete. In contrast, the new script—as sung in the "Song of the New Script" of the time—proclaimed: "The new script is truly excellent! Regardless of your age, in two months, you will master it." Tao Xingzhi said in 1936, "The current movement for the new script advocates teaching the masses with easy-to-write and easy-to-read characters, not the difficult-to-write and difficult-to-read traditional Chinese characters. The rapid abolition of traditional characters is for the sake of mass education."
Since the new script was regarded as a powerful tool for illiteracy eradication and popular education, the urgency of phoneticizing Chinese characters became very natural. By completely bypassing the difficulties of traditional characters, the phonetic script was directly used as a tool to record the spoken language of the masses. The Latinized new script movement in the 1930s and 1940s followed this path. Later, in the early 1960s, the "Phonetic Literacy Movement" in rural areas, which emphasized "reading first, learning characters later, forgetting them, and writing them phonetically," also followed this approach. By the 1990s, the "An Zijie Thousand-Character Text" illiteracy eradication experiment was launched, still adhering to this path.
While this approach itself is not wrong, it fails to address the disconnect between written language and the actual lives of farmers. In remote rural areas, literacy has little relevance to daily life. Villagers admire those who "can endure hardship" and have the skills to live, rather than those who can use official discourse or scientific language or recognize many characters. Farmers accumulate production and life experience through practice, and even without literacy, they can skillfully apply this experience in production activities. The loose relationship between production experience and cultural level has led to farmers, who rely heavily on practical experience, having little urgency for cultural needs and, consequently, less demand for mastering production techniques.
Thus, despite our efforts in illiteracy eradication, the results have fallen far short of expectations and the resources invested in the cause. It is clear that when written language is not a necessity of life, and when it may even become a burden or a burden, the effectiveness of literacy eradication efforts is predictable. Moreover, modern illiteracy is no longer the traditional concept; it emphasizes functional illiteracy, including literacy illiteracy, communication illiteracy (i.e., the inability to use modern communication tools), and computer illiteracy. For example, the widespread use of ATMs forces illiterates to accept new knowledge, and road signs make it nearly impossible for illiterates to drive. Even a person with a Ph.D. in the information age faces the challenge of rapidly outdated and obsolete knowledge. In a society that is constantly changing and evolving, people must reflect on how to adapt to the changing environment and what the minimum requirements for modern society are in terms of human qualities. This necessitates a minimum level of education and lifelong learning.
Furthermore, with changes in material production, people's needs for spiritual life are becoming increasingly high. Education is no longer seen merely as a means to train people for livelihood skills but as a path to pursuing spiritual civilization and enjoyment, or even as an end in itself. Therefore, eliminating functional illiteracy should be the focus of our illiteracy eradication efforts.
The role of the state in illiteracy eradication is undeniable. Since the founding of New China, the Party and government have been committed to illiteracy eradication. For instance, the 1956 Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Illiteracy Eradication called for the basic elimination of illiteracy among young and middle-aged adults within 15 years. By 1995, the establishment of the China Illiteracy Eradication Award Foundation reflected the state's advocacy and efforts in this regard. The illiteracy rate in China's population dropped from over 80% before liberation to around 10%, with the contribution of illiteracy education being significant.
However, we must ask: what benefits have been brought to farmers themselves while the state has achieved such remarkable successes in illiteracy eradication? John Dewey said, "If no one buys, you cannot say you have sold; if no one learns, you cannot say you have taught; even if the teacher speaks eloquently, if the learner does not listen, the effect of teaching is zero." Looking back at our illiteracy education, the phenomenon of relapse into illiteracy after eradication is extremely common. The reasons are many: there are few places in rural life where written language is used, and prolonged disuse leads to forgetting; illiteracy education itself has a fast-track component, and things learned quickly are also forgotten quickly; illiteracy education focuses only on literacy illiteracy, excluding other content that farmers use but do not learn, or learn but find useless, naturally leading to disinterest, which in turn leads to faster forgetting; illiteracy educators have limited capabilities, and mistakes in teaching occur frequently, making learners skeptical of illiteracy education; and the achievements of illiteracy education are often exaggerated, as seen in the 1998 case of falsified illiteracy eradication in Anhui Province.
We believe that the purpose of learning is not to obtain a certificate but to acquire production skills. Whether one has an illiteracy eradication certificate is irrelevant; what matters is the ability to read letters from relatives working in other places and to understand pesticide usage instructions. To develop illiteracy education, we must first improve the economic conditions of farmers. Confucius said, "First enrich, then educate," and Guan Zhong said, "When people have enough to eat and wear, they know honor and shame; when granaries are full, they know etiquette." These ancient sages' teachings offer valuable lessons for us.
Additionally, we have noticed that despite the state's detailed regulations and strong efforts in illiteracy eradication, farmers remain unchanged—old illiterates have not been eliminated, and new ones keep appearing. This is mainly because illiteracy eradication has not become a conscious effort for farmers. To turn illiteracy eradication into a conscious action for farmers, we must help them overcome their laxity, inertia, fear of difficulty, and small-minded thinking such as being content with small wealth, seeking comfort in modest prosperity, and lacking ambition. We must closely link illiteracy eradication content with the tangible interests of the vast majority of farmers and combine learning culture with learning technology. Simply asking educators to go to the countryside is not enough. Only when illiteracy eradication truly becomes a need for farmers and when farmers see tangible benefits from it can the work be truly implemented. In other words, although we have all seen farmers idly sitting in the sun during winter, knowing that they are wasting time and feeling sorry for them, we assume that if they could use so much free time to learn a skill, it would be more beneficial for themselves and society. But if greenhouse vegetables still yield more losses than profits, if cities remain closed to migrant workers, if agricultural restructuring remains more talked about than acted upon, if farmers earn less than the cost of a pack of cigarettes after a day's hard work, even with TV programs showing prosperous times and a vast world tempting people's greed, the external world remains disconnected from the lives of farmers. In such a situation, farmers' production and life will still depend on the weather, and inaction may be their normal choice. Under these circumstances, the difficulty of illiteracy eradication work can be easily imagined.
Postscript: China's destiny has always been closely tied to the progress and development of its rural areas. People will not forget that 20 years ago, the reform and opening-up began with the "big contract" system in rural areas, and the market mechanism of industrial operations was pioneered by townships. Even the democratic elections of grassroots organizations and rural village autonomy preceded those in cities. Rural China is now stepping into the new century with a fresh attitude. This situation has made the traditional proposition of "advanced cities and backward rural areas" more complex in the new context. However, rural education has not been as "free and flexible" as economic reform. The changing rural society has made the importance of rural education increasingly prominent and recognized, understood, and valued by more and more people. Yet, the development of rural education is constrained by many factors and cannot yet meet the needs of rural economic and social development. Rural education development has indeed encountered significant difficulties and obstacles, with many theoretical and practical issues urgently needing research and resolution. This is precisely the reason for studying rural education.
Studying contemporary rural education in China is not to deny anything or simply praise certain individuals or events. Rather, it aims to grasp the overall picture and summarize some aspects of the reform and development of rural education. For example, whether rural education should serve rural areas has been a long-standing debate. In 1994, at the National Education Conference, Comrade Li Lanqing, on behalf of the Central Committee and the State Council, explicitly stated that rural education should not aim at but at cultivating practical talents who can stay and be useful in rural areas. This proposal reminds people of the calls from rural educators in the 1920s and 1930s to steer rural education away from following urban trends and to focus on cultivating practical talents for rural construction. It also evokes the educational pursuits of the Mao Zedong era, such as the "two-legged" approach, the establishment of agricultural schools in rural areas, and the "village-to-village" system. It is certain that despite historical changes and vicissitudes, the principle of rural education serving rural social development and cultivating rural talent remains unchanged.
Why has the reform and development of rural education remained relatively slow and has not received as widespread attention as rural economy? This paper attempts to answer this question through research on rural education issues. However, I am fully aware that rural education reform is a vast and profound issue, and with my limited abilities, I may not be able to fully address these questions. But someone must take the risk of being a "crab-eater." I am willing to risk being seen as presumptuous and to exhaust myself in the effort, though it may not be in proper form, it is the result of my solitary struggle and dedication to the red candle. I believe I have still gained something.
As the article nears completion, I do not feel, triggered by a report. In Chongqing, a mother saw a 11-year-old girl in a mountain village drop out of school to support her family alone. To educate her own child, she took her daughter to the mountain village, partly to help the girl and partly to let her daughter experience the hardships of life and receive some education. Unexpectedly, her daughter said, "It's just the same old story of poor children. Honestly, growing up, I've seen too many similar stories, and I'm already numb to them. I already have this kind of life now, and in the future, I want to achieve a better life through study and work, so I can't possibly go back to studying a life that tries to stretch a penny into two." In her view, poverty is justified, and there is no need to learn from the poor.
Connecting this to an article about China's education issues published in the New York Times and translated from Chinese by a foreign journalist: "Across China, only 13% of children can enter middle school. In 1992, the dropout rate for junior high school rose by 6%. For each student attending one of Shanghai's best high schools, the state subsidizes $200 per year, while many rural schools receive nothing. China is producing a generation of outstanding scientists in its best schools while creating another semi-illiterate generation in the countryside. Is this fair? When these students in Shanghai's best high schools heard this question, they were a bit embarrassed but still believed there was nothing unfair about it. 'If the same amount of money were given to them, more students would benefit,' said Shirley Q.C. Zhao, an 18-year-old student at Shanghai Third [Women's] High School. 'But their facilities and teachers are not good, so it's not worth putting a lot of effort into teaching them. It's better to train us.'"
How similar! Through these arrogant and self-important remarks of well-educated middle school students, we see the gap between urban and rural education and the heavier challenges China's education faces in the future. This has made me deeply reflect. Reviewing the history of 50 years of education development in the People's Republic of China, the Party and government have never ignored rural areas or rural education. Yet, as a whole, rural China remains poor, and rural education remains backward. Who is to blame for this? Are the children of farmers destined to be poor? Where is fairness, justice, and compassion? While reviewing the materials, I have seen the bright prospects of rural education modernization in southern Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu. I have also seen cases where schools in poor areas like Gansu and Guizhou saved money by stipulating that teachers use only three chalks per week and must use the thicker ends first. I have seen farmers' parents send their children to "elite schools" or even spend heavily on apartments in Shanghai or Beijing to arrange their children's household registration for better education. I have also seen countless children in poor areas drop out of school because they cannot afford even a few tens or even a few dollars in tuition. I have seen how farmers once enthusiastically participated in illiteracy eradication, which the government used as a means to attract the masses. I have also seen how difficult illiteracy eradication has become, to the point where the government had to pay people to attend classes to meet the targets.
The world is changing, and rural education is changing too. What remains unchanged? The completion of this article was made possible by the help of many teachers and friends. Without their selfless assistance, the completion of this work would have been unimaginable. First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Jin Linxiang, whose broad-mindedness accommodated my ignorance and recklessness, whose earnest teachings inspired my confidence and courage, and whose care in daily life remains unforgettable. I would also like to thank my master's supervisor, Professor Chen Xintai, whose encouragement and urging led me into the of academia.