Separadores (marcapáginas) del versículo bíblico

I started this study with the purpose to critically reflect on changes in Chinese

curriculum governance after 1986. Through a socio-philosophical approach, this study

not only investigates authority-sharing issues emerging in the reform process, but also

connects these issues with the most fundamental value orientation of Chinese

education with regard to the aim of education.

First of all, this study describes the historical and contemporary backgrounds of

current curriculum reform in China. Chinese education has undergone spectacular

development and substantial reforms since 1949. In Maoist China (1949-1976),

Chinese schools were centrally funded and administered by the state. Chinese

curriculum system featured a set of unified standards imposed by the central state.

However, the rigidly centralized governance over schooling in China resulted in

inefficiency and ineffectiveness in carrying out national education policies, due to

lack of plasticity and adaptability. Meanwhile, the cost to maintain such a highly

centralized education system became an unaffordable fiscal burden, especially after a

decade of the Great Cultural Revolution that caused severe social chaos and economic

collapse. The central state has to encourage local governments and education

institutions to search for alternative financial sources and transfer some administration

work down to the local level. The changed central-local relation in education finance

and administration inevitably leads to a series of substantial adjustments in China‘s

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unified national curriculum which excluded local diversities and individual needs. At

the same time, the accelerated globalization process not only nurtures interconnection

among states but also provides more opportunities for joint work between the local

and global. In this climate, decentralization has become a reform strategy widely

adopted by many countries. The current curriculum reform in China is not immune

from the global trend of education decentralization. To a great degree, the current

curriculum reform is not a proactive approach to enhance China‘s curriculum system, but more like a reactive response to new issues arising from Chinese economic reform

and global trend of decentralizing education services.

Secondly, this study analyzes concrete content of current curriculum reform and

demonstrates the apparently loosened control over Chinese curriculum system. The

top-down Chinese curriculum reform initiated in 1986 is not a simple readjustment in

the content of schooling or replacement of textbooks, but an attempt to fundamentally

reconstruct China‘s curriculum system in a transitional period. Different from previous practices in which the national curriculum was designed by the central state

alone and carried out by the localities. This time, the central state encourages local

innovation and participation, working with local education authorities, schools and

other social sectors. To accommodate local diversities, the new system is composed of

national curriculum, local curriculum and school-based curriculum. The emphasis on

the EQO education takes individual students‘ all-around development into account. These reform efforts create an illusion that the central state is loosening its control

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over Chinese curriculum system. However, with a long history of highly centralized

control over major sectors in the state, the central-local relation in China‘s curriculum

system is much more complex that it seems.

Thirdly, this study clarifies the ambiguity in defining decentralization based on

Mark Hanson‘s theory and reexamines changes in Chinese curriculum governance

using this conceptual framework. In Mark Hanson‘s (1989a, 1989b, 2000 & 2006)

conceptual framework of education decentralization, it is important to investigate

whether changes in an education system have been accompanied with a shift of real

authority in the decision-making process. Even though the reform has been made for

over two decades, the authority of the central state still prevails across China‘s curriculum system. In essence, the efforts to diversify China‘s curriculum system are implemented in a uniform manner determined by the central state. While transferring

work to the local level, the central state has actually strengthened its authority over

school curriculum system. On the one hand, the central state concentrates on

education legislation, laying down national guidelines and overall plans to regulate all

aspects of schooling in China. On the other hand, a highly structured supervision

system is restored to ensure all efforts in reforming Chinese curriculum system are on

the right track. With little support for local autonomy in decision-making process,

local education bureaucracies and schools rely on the instructions from the hierarchy

above to do the work. Certainly, centrality is still heavily weighted by the state in

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China‘s curriculum system remains superficial, taking the shape of deconcentration. More exactly, the top-down curriculum reform is a process toward centralized

decentralization.

Fourthly, to explain why the central state is unwilling to transfer its authority

over school curriculum to the local level, this study demonstrates the particular social

and political functions of school curriculum through the theoretical lens offered by

Michel Foucault and Raymond Williams. Foucault (1975) describes schools as

disciplinary institutions which not only train docile bodies but also produce

submissive minds. In contemporary context, a unified curriculum system implies

constant subjections and obedience to social norms, and thus it is part of the

disciplinary mechanism in exerting control over social members and social discourse.

In the case of Chinese curriculum reform, diversities in ―knowledge‖ are assumed to be a threat to a consensus culture and ultimately destabilize a homogenous society.

There is always a strong need of a social filter to resolve diverse discourse into a set

of unified social meanings. Relying on the control over school curriculum, the central

state normalizes its authority in daily schooling and eventually builds a consensus on

social discourse through imposing national curriculum standards and requirement.

In contemporary education systems, national curriculum represents an

assembly of official knowledge that is legislated by the state power and considered

the most prestigious knowledge in a national context. However, the legislation

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manipulating knowledge we exert power and in exerting power we manipulate

knowledge. Raymond Williams (1973) emphasizes that education is involved in a

continual making and remaking of an effective dominant culture and educational

institutions are the main agencies in distributing dominant culture. In reality, the

dominant group not only sets up limits on the selection process in formulating school

curriculum, but also exerts pressure on the organization and distribution of school

curriculum. The political purpose is to indoctrinate the dominant culture to young

generations and reinforce existing power relations. The Chinese curriculum is not an

exception.

Finally, the dissertation analyzes the apparent bottlenecks and deep value

dilemmas which impede current Chinese curriculum reform efforts to achieve its goal

of building a more inclusive curriculum system in China. To cope with problems in

Chinese schooling, the strategy of centralized decentralization is adopted to avoid the

loss of control over school curriculum in this transitional period. This superficial

decentralization merely involves a transferring of work/responsibility, but not the real

authority. In the process, the split between authority and responsibility becomes

inevitable and even causes bottlenecks in building a more inclusive curriculum system

in China. In fact, both centralization and decentralization may be useful governing

technologies in balancing central-local relations in the education sector and

coordinating between the national goals of education set by the state and the realities

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relationship between the state and education. The crux of the problematic state-

education relationship in Chinese curriculum reform is the utilitarian view of

schooling, which puts undue emphasis on economic or social benefits brought about

by education.

Since the 1949, the central state under the direct leadership of the Chinese

Communist Party (CCPCC) has played a dominant role in Chinese education. As Mun

Tsang (2000) summarizes,

the party leaders fought over alternative goals and approaches to

national development, and as the education system served as a reactive

vehicle for realizing the party‘s development objectives rather than an autonomous institution for social changes, educators, parents, and

student have been unwilling caught in cycles of heart-wrenching

dislocations and adjustments…Policy shifts in education reflect shifts in power and development perspective among party factions. (p. 23)

Viewing Chinese schooling as a manipulated social device under the control of the

central state, to what extent and to what direction the reform efforts in Chinese

curriculum highly depends on the extent of critically rethinking the utilitarianism

view of Chinese schooling at the cultural level.

At the institutional level, structural adjustment in central-local relations in

Chinese curriculum reform can‘t continue without political reform. In a nation as large as China, how to achieve social stability with fast economic growth is the top