Challenges for china’s education in the 21th century--论文代写范文

当邓小平推行改革开放,中国社会在社会经济,政治和文化领域，经历了较大变化。在现代化的过程中,中国社会越来越复杂和分化,市场经济的发展导致了学生的唯物主义和个人主义价值取向。这篇paper代写范文讲述了这一问题。

Introduction
  There are concerns about how the formation of cultural identity, popular culture, politics and school education intersect with the multiple relationships and dynamics of power between the China state, teachers, and students. Critical theorists such as Apple (1990, 2002), Segarra and Ricardo (1999) argue that competing pedagogical ideologies are the result of the fact that education is inherently a ‘political act’. As noted by Law (2002), despite national leaders' high expectations, the use of law to effect or consolidate educational reform in mainland China is affected by both legal and extra-legal factors such as politics, economics, and social norms and cultures. Modernisation in the school curriculum is being perceived as part of the process of transformation in Chinese political culture from collective communism towards openness to popular culture. Some knowledge among teachers of current popular culture is a step towards learning about students’ interests. However, this move has resulted in three dilemmas for the transmission of cultural values and political or national beliefs in school education: (a) conflict between the co-existence in the curriculum of communist and political education and the individualist tendencies of popular culture; (b) between traditional Chinese values and culture, and the moral challenges to these values in popular culture; and (c) between schools, teacher education and student interactions in response to the presence of popular culture in the classroom.

  When Deng Xiaoping opened China to the forces of global capitalism, Chinese society went through unruly changes in its socio-economic, political and cultural realms. Stockman (2000) argued that Chinese society was becoming more complex and differentiated in the course of modernisation; and that indigenous popular-culture products, such as state-sponsored MTV, larger networks, such as China Central Television (CCTV) and Shanghai TV, popular concerts, TV soap operas, and kung fu fiction, were allowed and even encouraged to prosper and to compete with Western commercial popular culture. The state has to weaken the tensions and conflicts that arise between increasing mass demand and ideological control in school education. Chinese youth are criticised as having down-played the collective well-being of the official ideology. Survey data on Chinese college students also show that they thought that “the biggest happiness in life” was, in the rank order, “a successful career, a happy family, and good friends, all of which were concerned with individuals”; while “contribution to society” was sixth on the list (Qian, 2003, p.30). 

  The development of a market economy has resulted in students’ materialist and individualist value orientation becoming more and more apparent in the mainland. When Beijing teenagers were asked to rate their desired occupations, the order was entrepreneur, scientist, movie or TV star, teacher, soldier and model worker, and most thought money very important (Li, 20002a, 2002b). Whereas college students in the past listened to and appreciated a few famous revolutionary singers for their ideological stance, now they admire Bill Gates or Alan Greenspan for their affluence, while school students adore film and sport stars (People Daily News, 28 January, 2003; Ho and Law, 2004a; Li, 2002a and 2002b). Education has run into a direct confrontation with popular culture, as in the case of the famous Chinese actress and singer, Zhao Wei. When the nation discovered that Zhao had worn a mini-dress printed with a war-time Japanese flag bearing the inscription health, peace, happiness and hygiene” for a Chinese state-run Shizhuang fashion magazine published in September 2001, millions of Chinese were infuriated (Gries, 2005; Ho and Law, 2004a). The incident reawakened the bitterness that many patriots still feel about Japan’s aggression towards their country in the 1930s and 1940s. A critical study of Zhao Wei in the mini-dress has been incorporated into the newly published civic and moral educational textbooks of the Hubei Province that are used as supplementary texts by pre-school, primary, and secondary students nationwide. The controversial incident is set as a negative example of patriotism in a chapter with the heading, ‘She is Wong’. This publication revealed problems of internationalisation and the emergence of popular culture, and indicated the re-education of the weak points of the new generation. 

  Moreover, the state strongly supports the transmission of official popular songs, such as ‘The Great Wall Is Long’, ‘I Belong to China’, ‘Today is Your Birthday, China’, all of which promote the political ideology of unity, nationalism and other official values (Baranovitch, 2003, p. 204). In this sense, the central State only welcomes popular music with revolutionary ideas composed by State supported song writers, while popular songs outside the State’s approval are treated as lacking educational values. This is not so much a conflict between popular music and classical music in terms of musical styles but one between state ideology and market-driven popular music (Ho and Law, 2004a). In September 2004, the Ministries of Culture and Education and other government organisations promoted 100 patriotic songs, 100 patriotic films, and 100 patriotic books to young students. In particular, the national anthem, ‘March of the Volunteers’, is still used to nurture students to serve the people by means of socialism (Lu, 2003). 

  In spite of such challenges, by and large, Confucianism continues to dominate the content of traditional Chinese education. The theory of a ‘harmonious society’, an ideal from traditional Chinese culture, is diametrically opposed to the orthodox Marxist-Leninist view of class struggle. Previously, Chinese traditions and morality were underplayed and even denounced, particularly during the cultural revolution. Alarmed by rapid economic development and its embroilment in international affairs, a revival of Confucian values is apparent (Keane, 2005). Since 1989, the Chinese People’s Congress has contributed greatly to the rise of the nationalist discourse based on cultural and ethnic identity, by “creating a wide-spread awareness of the myths, history, and linguistic tradition of the community” (Guo, 2004, p. 5). 

  Smith (1986, 1995) explains how and why nations emerge from those ethnic ties and identities that usually form their cultural basis. Social imaginative ideas are described as the “constructed landscapes of collective aspirations ... now mediated through the complex prism of modern media” (Appadurai, 1990, p.2). These ideas, which act as so-called ‘meta-narratives’ about culture, the people, and their desires, are knowledge and power systems (Foucault, 1970, 1980) that create “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1982) of belonging in the modern world. China promotes traditional Confucian respect for families as units for the production of values, moral disciplines and personal ethics (Wu, 1994; Keane, 2005). Such values can now fill the moral “ideological vacuum” created by the promotion of laissez-faire market forces (Law, 1998, p. 581). As noted by Xu (2005), the China state attempts to change “the cohesive force of national cultural affiliation” into a belief in political unity; while the new nationalist ideology is expected to use Confucianism to reinforce modernisation in socialist China (Xu, 2005, p. 146). Now a “Confucian-based” cultural China promotes “ethnicity as cultural and as identity” (Chua, 2001, p.114).

  In an information age, it is even more important for the mainland to retain the national treasure of Chinese traditions and virtues. The 1995 revised publication Outline of Moral Education in Secondary School widened the content of patriotism to include such topics as Chinese culture, national unity, and revolutionary heroes (Editorial Committee, 1995; Lee and Ho, 2005). Primary and secondary schools in many regions, such as Beijing, Guangdong, Hebei, Shanghai, and Liaoning, introduced traditional Chinese values and norms by means of books such as the new three-word classical text (Xin Sanzijing) in 1995 (Kuan and Lau, 2002). In 2001, the People’s University in Beijing was the first university on the mainland to erect a giant statue of Confucius. Filial obedience and communal solidarity are chosen as good traditional Chinese virtues in the Implementation outline on Ethic Building for Citizens, the newly revised student conduct code, and in textbooks (see Law, Forthcoming; Ministry of Education, 2004; Wang, 2004). In order to encourage the teaching of the cultural heritage and to strengthen cultural memory, many schools in China have included calligraphy in extra-curricular activities (see Li, 2004). Recently an official circular promoted traditional festivals, such as the traditional Spring Festival (or Chinese Lunar New Year), the Dragon-boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival, was issued. The promotion of traditional festivals is intended to cultivate the spirit, affections and feelings of the Chinese nation, and to create solidarity among the people of different ethnicities on the mainland (People’s Daily News, 25 June 2005). 

  National music is thought to be the ‘mother tongue’ of Chinese music culture (Ho and Law, 2004a). No matter where you go, the love of national music does not change, like the phrase in a song, “Even as I wear foreign clothes, I still have a Chinese heart; my ancestors already put a Chinese stamp on my everything” (Jin, 2003, p. 49). Since 2003, the Chinese Government has earmarked 46 million yuan (US$5.6 million) for a specific project conducted to preserve important cultural forms (People’s Daily News, 13 June 2005). This money is mainly for collecting traditional libretti, creating new plays, supporting public performances, promoting the opera institution, and training and rewarding professionals. 

 CONCLUSIONS
  This paper explores how the Chinese government values the introduction of the popular culture needed for its reform of education within broader social contexts. It will be these changes that have brought about, and will continue to bring, new ideas, beliefs and practices to China’s schools. Given the cultural and political developments over the past 20 years, popular culture in China’s education is facing many challenges and new opportunities for its students that demand investigation. For many youth, much of their experience within the cultural realm is orchestrated by the mass media. Teachers must constantly search for opportunities to promote and encourage appropriate social interaction for students at all levels of schooling.

  This paper considers popular culture as an arena of contestation, noting the contradictory impulses of both attraction and repulsion, as well as the phenomena of differentiation and assimilation in contemporary education in mainland China It suggests some changes in the orientation of the school curriculum that would meet the needs and interests of students. Some of these changes can be found in the revisions made to teaching and learning materials, as well as in the introduction of new materials for learning both traditional subjects, such as language and music, and the non-traditional subject of sex education. 

  Improving students' ideological and political quality, and fostering the building and extension of the socialist drive are of far-reaching strategic significance in fully implementing the national strategy to achieve China’s socialist modernisation. When officials all over the country launched a new wave of campaigns to assimilate popular culture into school education, what remained unchanged was the zeal with which the state always strove to transform popular culture into something, be it political ideology or an integration of socialist and Confucian educational ideals. Three pairs of interactions and confrontations can be seen with respect to: a) the collectivism of communist value education and the individualist tendencies of popular culture; b) traditional Chinese values and culture and the bad influence of popular culture; c) and the interactions between schools, teachers, and students towards popular culture in classroom learning. 

  The interwoven relationship between popular culture, national education, Confucian education and traditional culture is determined by the power exerted by the party state. Although the use of popular culture has become common in school education, patriotic education, Confucianism, and the learning of traditional Chinese culture have all been taken as frameworks for educational developments. However, the inconsistency of values education and cultural education, and the shifting of the goals of education as political policies change is now encouraged. Confucius, for example, was honoured for thousands of years, then banned during the Cultural Revolution, and is now reinstated. According to Goodman (2001), the party state still longs to be a powerful publisher and producer of culture, and the “mechanics of the relationships between politics and cultures” are considered to be continual as well as changeable (p. 247). From a macro perspective, national curricular policies, which are representative of the interests of the party state, play a decisive role in determining the degree to which international trends are reflected, and who or what will take the leading role in the future of the People’s Republic of China remains to be seen.(paper代写)

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