Knowledge and power: the interface between religion and education in China

Abstract

Religion is becoming increasingly popular among students in post-Mao China, especially in the higher education arena. This growing interest in religion poses a potential challenge to the compulsory Marxist ideology taught in the school curriculum. Focusing on a group of university student believers from different religious traditions, this study explores how Chinese students negotiate their religious beliefs with the Marxism-based knowledge acquired from primary to tertiary educational levels. Three patterns are observed in the religious students’ accounts: (a) grounding in religious conviction; (b) negotiation through lived experience; and (c) deconstruction of Marxist thought from an academic perspective. Drawing on Young’s theoretical concept of the ‘knowledge of the powerful’, this study reveals an interplay between the different forms of knowledge that shape religious students’ beliefs and identities in China.

Keywords:

• Knowledge
• curriculum
• religion
• ideology
• university

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to Zeng Ni, Yang Mo, Jiang Jia, and Li Caihong and all informants involved in the project. The author is also grateful to Dr Ho Wai Yip and two anonymous reviewers who provided valuable and constructive comments on the earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1. Daoism, also spelled ‘Taoism’ in English, means the ‘traditions of the Way’ and is the indigenous religion of China (Miller, 2003, p. 17).