Chinese Education The Education System In China example essay topic

Chinese Education The Education system in China although different than America's has many good qualities. The view of Education in China has changed dramatically over the last forty years; it has gone from there being no real system to one that is held up to be one of the best in the world. In this paper I will go through the history of Chinese education and show how much it truly has changed. I will also look at how it is now and what China can expect for its future.

In 1949 The People's Republic of China was formed by the Communist party. This happened after much struggle between the communists and the nationalists. The leader of the communist party and the new People's Republic was Mao Zedong. When the communists took over China they implemented many new ideas that were supposed to bring China up to speed in regards to the industrial development. He started the five year plan in which the people and government of China was to focus on the development of industry and to challenge the old ways of thinking. The old ways were called "the four olds" these were habits, ideas, customs, and cultures.

After three years Mao asked for feedback of all of the changes that had been occurring, this was called "The Hundred Flowers Campaign". The people didn't all like what had been happening; especially the educated and they gave bad feedback to Mao. He decided to purge the society of these "poisonous weeds" as he called the educated because they challenged his authority. At this time all education was focused on redness which is the communist ideology. This is when the battle of the government verses the educated began and continued for many years. For many years the different plans that Mao thought of were not as successful as he had hoped.

In 1959 Mao Zedong stepped down as the nation's leader but remained as the communist's party leader. He did this in order to take responsibility for the failures of the Great Leap Forward, and the other problems that had been caused under his leadership. Then in 1965 Mao took control of the government once again and this is when he established the Proletariat Cultural Revolution. Mao believed that the educated people were to blame for the many problems of China, he thought they hindered Marxism. So from 1966 to 1976 the entire education system was closed down in order to fix the problems caused and to focus more on redness, these ten years were called "the ten bad years". Education created new ideas and thoughts which allowed people to think for themselves which is not what Mao wanted them to do.

He sent several of the educated people to communes and he also killed many of them. These ten years came to an end when Mao died in 1976. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping became the leader of the People's Republic of China, and he began the "De-Mao ization" process. This allowed the people a chance to express how they really felt about the way Mao ran the country. It was then that the educated were looked upon to help fix the many problems that Mao had created, and were being allowed more freedom than they had ever had before. Xiaoping created the new "Open Door Policy" in 1980 which allowed people to leave China and visit and also to bring back the ideas that they had learned in western cultures, more than 200,000 people were sent abroad.

They were allowed to study oversees and it was because of this that many of the western ideas were introduced into Chinese society. This didn't work as well as they had planned because when the students came back they were very liberal and looked down on the people and the way of life of the Chinese. On June 4, 1989 over one million students came to protest in Tiananmen Square because they wanted China to give them more freedom, and they wanted all the changes to happen faster. In order to stop the protest the government sent in the Chinese army to dispel them, most of the student leaders were arrested and then killed. In order to understand the education system in China you must know the different characteristics that make it up.

These characteristics are size, comprehensive, imbalanced, competitive, and centralised. The Chinese educational system is the biggest educational system in the world. There are 330,000,000 students in China! This is greater than the entire population of the United States of America! The education system goes through grades pre-kindergarten (before age 6) to post graduate (2-3 years for Masters; 2-3 years for Doctorates).

The Chinese educational system is not a balanced educational system. While there are some schools in the cities that can match some of our western countries in terms of resourcing the vast majority of schools are in the countryside. The Chinese educational system is a highly competitive educational system. Because of the huge population waiting to be educated, and the limited space in colleges and universities, entrance to higher educational institutions must be very competitive.

The Chinese educational system is a centralised educational system. The legislation of education rests not locally or provincially but centrally, with the Ministry. One of the reasons that the education system has continued to grow and change is because of the help from foreign countries. The reason for this aid is because the different countries have seen and heard about the state of education in China. It is because they value education at such a high standard that they are offering their help.

Education is the way to the future. The people who are educated are going to be the ones that run the country and if foreign countries can be a part of helping this process, then in the future they will have favors to call in on China in times of need. It is because of this foreign aid that the education system is becoming more westernized, but there are still many differences between China's and America's education systems. There are many concerns that China is facing right now. Some of these problems regard adult education, vocational education, and the new technological advances. The focus on adult education is more of a literacy campaign.

Due to the "Ten bad Years" when the education system was shutdown many people never learned to read. It is because of this that adult education is on the rise in China. But even with the new adult education systems in place 27% of the population is still illiterate. The vocational schools are producing over 50% percent of China's workers. This is allowing them to be more experienced in their particular field. The technological age has come into China and allowed its people access to new information that they never had before.

These technological advances created online degree programs which made education easier to access. It also brought the world of email and the internet, which allowed even more of the western culture to come into China because you could find anything with in a few minutes spent online. The government had to decide whether these advances needed to be controlled, because technology changes everything from how things are run to the way people think. And if the government wanted to keep its people under control then they had to keep a tight hold on how they thought and what affected them. The government also wanted to control this aspect of education. They ask questions such as what are the ways that education leads to freedom for individuals.

This is not something that the Chinese government is too fond of, because along with freedom comes people wanting to change the government. Another question that they ask is what are the ways that education leads to the conformity for individuals. This happens with the teaching of redness in schools, and the lack of free thought allowed in the schools. Another question is what are the ways that education leads to freedom for society. This happens with the new ideas being brought into society that give people new thoughts, and allows them to see the negative aspects of their lives.

The last question is what are the ways education leads to conformity for society. Once again this happens through the reinforcement of redness, and telling the people how to think and feel about certain aspects of their lives. One thing that makes education harder to receive is because in order to get a proper education you have to have money and people in rural areas have a lot less money than those in the urban area. It is because of this that the people who live in the urban areas are more likely to receive a good education than those who live in the rural areas.

In the rural areas even if you are able to get an education you are only allowed to go a half of a day to class because you have to go home to work on your families farm for the other half. In Modern china education is not something that is given enough funding. Zhu Kai xuan who was the director of State Education Commission said "Total government spending for education is slated to reach 4% of the GNP by the year 2000 according to the ninth five year plan (1996-2000)". (China Handbook) Some of the things that make the Chinese Education system different than the American Education system are mostly small things but there are some larger differences as well. Some of the small differences are that in China the students attend school six days a week, and that they have vacations in July and August. Some of the larger differences are that standardized tests are considered more important than grades when being considered for colleges, and that children are not supposed to ask questions in class they are only supposed to listen to lectures.

In America questions are considered to be one of the major keys to understanding what you are learning. Questions are encouraged to broaden the thoughts of not only the students but also possibly the teachers as well. There are reasons that the Chinese education system is the way that it is and that is their choice to keep it that way. The government has major control over what is taught in schools and this effects what happens in them and what is learned. In America a school's curriculum are made up by the local government and so it can vary from state to state. This is not to say that American education is right and China's education is wrong I am just pointing out the differences.