Chinese are known worldwide as top students and scholars, but intellectuals were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, and now only recently has attending college education been possible for the majority. China is transforming its higher-education system, now the largest in the world, to include collaboration with Western scholars and to provide history and contemporary educational access to students in rural areas. Education in China provides unique coverage of learning at all levels.

This is the first comprehensive study in English on the social, institutional and intellectual aspects of traditional Chinese education. The book introduces the Confucian ideal of 'studying for one's own sake', but argues that various intellectual traditions combined to create China's educational legacy. The book studies the development of schools and the examination system, the interaction between state, society and education, and the vicissitudes of the private academies. It examines family education, life of intellectuals, and the conventions of intellectual discourse. It also discusses the formation of the tradition of classical learning, and presents the first detailed account of student movements in traditional China, with an extensive bibliography. While a general survey, this book includes various new ideas and inquiries. It concludes with a critical evaluation of China's rich educational experiences.

In Education in China, ca. 1840–present the authors offer a description of the Chinese education system. In doing so, they touch upon various debates such as on educational modernization and the role of female education. Relevant statistical data is provided as well.

The book provides highlights on the key concepts and trends of evolution in History of School Education in China, as one of the series of books of “China Classified Histories”.

China has the largest education system in the world. The total enrollment of students in regular and adult schools at all levels exceeds 320 million, accounting for more than a quarter of the nation's population. Western educators, foreign companies, and individual entrepreneurs have invested in Chinese education but, perhaps because of the complexity of the Chinese education system and the rapid development of educational reforms, have had little success. This work examines the education system in post-Mao China from 1976 to the present. It explores how the Chinese government sees the development of its educational practices within the nation's broader social, economic, political, and cultural contexts; how it identifies new issues that emerge in the process of what might be called educational globalization; how it translates these issues into specific educational policies, activities, and goals; how the education reforms fit China's social and political realities and objectives; how the new policies affect foreign student affairs and Chinese students studying abroad; the ways in which the government promotes international educational cooperation and exchange; the opportunities for Western institutions to introduce programs in China; and current trends and their effect on the internationalization of education.

A comprehensive collection on twentieth-century educational practices in China

The post-Mao period has witnessed rapid social and economic transformation in all walks of Chinese life – much of it fuelled by, or reflected in, changes to the country’s education system. This book analyses the development of that system since the abandonment of radical Maoism and the inauguration of ‘Reform and Opening’ in the late 1970s. The principal focus is on formal education in schools and conventional institutions of tertiary education, but there is also some discussion of preschools, vocational training, and learning in non-formal contexts. The book begins with a discussion of the historical and comparative context for evaluating China’s educational ‘achievements’, followed by an extensive discussion of the key transitions in education policymaking during the ‘Reform and Opening’ period. This informs the subsequent examination of changes affecting the different phases of education from preschool to tertiary level. There are also chapters dealing specifically with the financing and administration of schooling, curriculum development, the public examinations system, the teaching profession, the phenomenon of marketisation, and the ‘international dimension’ of Chinese education. The book concludes with an assessment of the social consequences of educational change in the post-Mao era and a critical discussion of the recent fashion in certain Western countries for hailing China as an educational model. The analysis is supported by a wealth of sources – primary and secondary, textual and statistical – and is informed by both authors’ wide-ranging experience of Chinese education. As the first monograph on China's educational development during the forty years of the post-Mao era, this book will be essential reading for all those seeking to understand the world’s largest education system. It will also be crucial reference for educational comparativists, and for scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds researching contemporary Chinese society.