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Sensibility Behind Sense: A Critical Review of a Popular Autobiographical Writing on Chinese Education - Zifan Jiang (姜子凡), 2023 (sagepub.com)
Article Information
Article first published online: March 7, 2023
Issue published: August 2023
Author
Zifan Jiang (姜子凡)
Institute of Curriculum & Instruction, East China Normal University
Little Soldiers: An American Boy, A Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve is an autobiographical work in which the author, Lenora Chu, describes her and her husband's experience of sending their son Rainy to a prestigious public kindergarten in Shanghai. Drawing primarily from the actions of various figures in their son's learning environment, Chu describes the phenomena that she thinks are characteristic of Chinese culture and society. She categorizes the practice, function, and nature of the Chinese public education system through unsystemized private interviews with acquainted individuals, and proffers her interpretations based on personal experience.
Chu's book is subdivided into three parts: “The System,” “Change,” and “Chinese Lessons.” Accordingly, the author charts a possible trajectory of “progress” that China's educational system could have embarked upon. Three major themes illustrate Chu's argument. First, China's educational system is characterized as top-down and teacher-centered, dictating the terms for learning and teaching. Second, changes should be made so that more “American” elements can be incorporated. Third, the value of China's educational system—if there is any—is its rigorous instrumentality in providing curriculum content.
Although written for the mass market, the impact of Chu's book has attracted the attention of academia as well. In his blog, Larry Cuban (2021) favorably introduced Chu's work with lengthy quotations, considering it an informative autobiographical account that corroborates the OECD's (2016) “Education in China: A Snapshot.” Therefore, reviewing this popular publication provides an opportunity to discern how a U.S.-centric view is epistemically detrimental to the growth of a more balanced understanding of global education.
Despite their commercial motivations, Chu's illustrations do not necessarily target societies and cultures that are foreign to popular ideas of the U.S. James A. Banks (2020, p. 72) highlights how cross-cultural researchers may conduct research with only a “partial understanding of and little appreciation for the values, perspectives, and knowledge of the community” that they study. Chu's book is symptomatic of the “partial understanding” and “little appreciation” that have gained momentum beyond the domain of popular writing.
“The System” is the first part of Little Soldiers wherein Chu seems to be relentless in combining “traditional” and “socialist” elements in the depiction of a seemingly “unjust” system, most cruelly reflected in the standardized exam regime. Affirming Chu's recognition, education has been prioritized both privately and publicly in Chinese society. However, the “structure, internal symbolic order and ritualistic relationship” (Willis, 2020, p. 5) that Chu presents in her book is static, monotonous, and unidimensional. The considerable discrepancies in social, economic, and educational capital among schools, districts, and regions throughout China are blatantly ignored. In light of increasingly voluminous publications attributing educational inequalities to the reduction in public welfare, such misconceptions of China's educational system are hardly justifiable. The state's essential function of maintaining educational equity is completely missing.
The second and third sections, entitled “Change” and “Chinese Lessons,” demonstrate collectively how Chu considers only the instrumental aspect of Chinese education to be valuable while criticizing the moral and social premises of China's educational system. Her line of argument indicates not only an oblivion of “Asia Literacy” (Takayama, 2016, p. 70), but also a conflicting construction of China's educational system (and that of Asia in general) as “both an object of desire and derision” (Rizvi, 1997, p. 19).
Publications such as Chu's, albeit autobiographical and non-fictional, are sensationalist and stereotypical. One hopes that more evenly balanced writings, and critiques thereof, can be shared and published amongst the public as well as academics. In the increasingly contentious and polarized world, “glocalization,” which is to be understood as the celebration and legitimation of the harmonization of communal and national pursuits and those of the individual (Robertson, 1992), may, in the future, have a fairer share in the world.