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Turning Rurality into Modernity: Suzhi Education in a Suburban Public School of Migrant Children in Xiamen*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2011

Yi Lin
Yi Lin
Affiliation:
Xiamen University. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in a public school of largely migrant children in suburban Xiamen, south-east China, this article first looks into the formation of class lines between people with different backgrounds – migrant, urban or rural – against the suzhi jiaoyu programme of the school. This programme particularly targets the rural populace with a carefully and specifically selected curriculum and quantifiable techniques, in order to turn them into the self-individuated and homogenized subjects of China's modernization project. However, this article also argues that the coercive concept of suzhi has revealed internal contradictions that render any attempt at consensus on what plural qualities constitute capital Q Quality self-contradictory and ultimately less productive. Lastly, it suggests that suzhi may be better understood as an ever-ongoing project of meaning making that aims to form a body of knowledge in China's exploration of new paradigms of governance.

Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 206 , June 2011 , pp. 313 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2011

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References

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18 This policy also means that public schools must take all school-aged children within its administrative area before it is allowed to enrol students from other areas.

19 Also see Chan and Buckingham, “Is China abolishing the hukou system?”

20 Kipnis, “The disturbing educational discipline of ‘peasants’,” p. 10.

21 Peiyang rather than jiaoyu (education) is a preferred vernacular expression among governments, schoolteachers and the public, and thus its English translation “cultivation” is used in this article to show its ideological tone.

22 Ministry of Education, “2001–2010, objectives of the national curriculum reform of basic education,” http://www.jyb.cn/gb/2001/10/24/jcjy/jxgg/1.htm, accessed 6 May 2009.

23 Kipnis similarly argues that, in post-Mao China, the low quality of an individual is not only associated with notions of social class that is often directed against “uncultured” people such as peasants, but also referred to the lack of creativity or well-rounded personality` (“The disturbing educational discipline of ‘peasants’,” p.11).

24 Murphy, “Turning peasants into modern Chinese citizens,” p. 2. Also see Brownell, “Beijing's Olympic education programme,” pp. 44–45, and Woronov, “Governing China's children,” pp. 571–72, for the information of the emergence of suzhi jiaoyu.

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27 Kipnis has a similar observation in his illustration of variations in educational success of students with either a rural or an entrepreneurial background (“The disturbing educational discipline of ‘peasants’,” pp. 8–10). However, he has failed to point out that it was not so much hardship or guaranteed material wellbeing per se, but a frame of reference that largely determined students’ motivation for study.

28 Xiamen as a whole had long been a rural area of primarily fishing or farming, and did not become prosperous until it was granted SEZ status.

29 According to my survey, there are about 600 books or articles between 1983 and 2009 with “human modernization” in their title. A major argument in this body of literature is around “(small) peasant thinking” that is said to hamper China from modernization.

30 Hargreaves, “Four ages of professionalism and professional learning,” p. 683.

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32 Kipnis, “Suzhi: a keyword approach,” p. 304.

33 Ibid.

34 Also see ibid.; Brownell, “Beijing's Olympic education programme”; and Murphy, “Turning peasants into modern Chinese citizens.”

35 However, this was an inaccurate impression by the administrator, which more serves to show how a Chinese educator perceives “Chinese race” in a way that echoes the longstanding discourse of “racial improvement” throughout modern Chinese history (see below).

36 Kipnis, “Suzhi: a keyword approach,” pp. 305–06.

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40 Kipnis, “Suzhi: a keyword approach” captures this cultivation propensity in the Harvard Girl, Liu Yiting.

41 See Culp, “Rethinking governmentality” for a similar case in Republican China.

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44 Ibid.

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50 Ibid.

51 Woronov, “Governing China's children,” p. 585.

52 Dickson, “Integrating wealth and power in China”; Nonini, “Is China becoming neoliberal?”; Pieke, “The production of rulers.”