Radicalism and Education Reform in 20th-Century China
The Search for an Ideal Development Model

The first comprehensive book to cover the whole sweep of twentieth-century Chinese education.

Suzanne Pepper (Author)

9780521778602, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 10 July 2000

626 pages, 61 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.2 cm, 0.82 kg

"A masterly synthesis of years of scholarly research, it is destined to become the standard reference work on the subject for years to come." Journal of Asian Studies

In 1976, China's 'education revolution' was being hailed by foreign observers as an inspiration for all low-income countries. By 1980, the Chinese themselves had disavowed the experience, declaring it devoid of even a single redeeming virtue. This is the first comprehensive book to cover the whole sweep of twentieth-century Chinese education, and to provide a detailed study of what occurred in the countryside under the radical Maoist education experiments during the Cultural Revolution. The study of both pre- and post-1949 China provided the crucial historical perspective to distinguish continuities from innovations. Rather than the epitome of good or evil, China's educational experiences of the 1970s instead emerged as the most tumultuous episode in a long and contentious struggle to adapt Western ways for use in a non-Western society.

1. Educational developments and the Chinese experience
Part I. Origins of Radical Education Reform: 2. Development dilemmas in the Republican era
3. The inheritance
4. The modern school system
5. The critical backlash
6. Early communist alternatives
Part II. Learning from the Soviet Union: 7. Introducing the Soviet Union
8. The Soviet model for Chinese higher education
9. Sino-Soviet regularization and school system reform
10. Blooming, contending, and criticizing the Soviet model
Part III. Cultural Revolution and Radical Education Reform: 11. The origins of cultural revolution
12. The great leap in education
13. A system divided: walking on two legs into the 1960s
14. Education reform as the catalyst for class struggle
15. Education reform as the culmination of class struggle: the professional educator's perspective
16. Education reform as the culmination of class struggle: the critical ideals triumphant at last
17. The Cultural Revolution negated
18. The mixed triumph of regularity
19. Chinese radicalism and education development.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Asian history [HBJF]