Education In The Twentieth Century

The Twentieth Century marked an important transition period for education in China that comprises four distinct stages, which closely relates to important political events. The first stage, from 1900 to 1912, characterised by the end of the Qing dynasty in which the first introduction to Western academic ideas. Subsequently, the second stage lasted from 1912 to 1948 under the KMT regime. During this period, there was more presentation on Western ideologies. Then came the Maoist period, from 1938 to 1976, in which schools promoted Mao’s teachings that were inspired by Russian pedagogy. From 1976 to 1997 in the post-Mao era, although schools continued to deliver Mao’s teachings, the reappearance of public examinations was met with resistance.

Likewise, Well-educated and wealthy individuals became targets, and Mao considered schools as one of his channel ripe for propaganda. Shown in Da Chen’s novel China’s son he wrote “Mr Sun was bidding us a sad goodbye. He was heading to a re-education camp for teachers …... a directive from the central government that from now on all schools would be governed by poor farmers”(Chen, 2001, p. 15). This policy indicated that the Communist Party sent qualified teachers to reform camp and the teaching quality had regressed. Instead, uneducated farmers replaced teachers for teaching which hugely affects the student's education, and yet farmers were completely unqualified to teach. Therefore, farmers were not capable of delivering knowledge to students. Moreover, the communist party decided to restrict Da from attending junior high because his father and grandpa went to college. On the contrary, the worse students from his elementary school went on to junior high (Chen, 2001, p.79). This decision clearly showed that Mao judged more on the student's family background than their grades. Similarly, the curriculum in the Mao era was radically different regarding delivery. In conclusion, these policies were propaganda tools used to deliver Maoism Included banishing children from

For instance, “Chinese education system was deemed to be a major factor in the advancement of economic and modernization. Science and technology became an important focus of education policy” (Tao, 2014). This policy showed that Deng promoted new reform policies to reintroduce Western concepts, state-run schools experienced dramatic improvements and provided a primary education across China. Correspondingly, Deng removed the propaganda element that existed in Mao's curriculum, meaning the system judged more on the student's merit than their family lineage as in the past which motivated economic progression and innovation rather than filling senior official positions. Therefore, the education system at all levels became much more competitive. Overall, The post-Mao period was arguably the most important in terms of reforming the Chinese education system because the availabilities of schooling and curriculum content made a stark improvement. In addition, the number of engineers produced reflected that this education reform played a fundamental role in providing qualified human capital. Today America produces only 60,000 to 70,000 engineers per year while China produces over 400,000 engineers per year(Carson,