(Dis)Empowering technologies: ICT for education (ICT4E) in China, past and present

Abstract

Information and communication technologies (ICT) are often presented as the cure-all for various problems: ICTs for education (ICT4E) are considered promising tools for promoting self-directed, creative learning and bridging various divides, such as those between developed and developing countries, urban and rural regions, and so on. While the lofty goals of ICT4E are continuously being highlighted, surprisingly little attention has been paid to how these technologies are embedded in sociocultural and political environments. China is no exception to this narrative of techno-determinism. In China, new technologies are being widely propagated as effective instruments for erasing differences between learners and learning communities, particularly with regard to transplanting “modern” education into rural communities. The novelty of twenty-first century ICT, however, tends to obscure the fact that these techno-optimist beliefs date back to attempts in the early twentieth century to uplift rural China through the implementation of modern technologies. The article will scrutinize this history of techno-optimism and will relate it to recent attempts at “transformation by technology.” Finally, I will discuss how the new keyword in both educational modernization and the knowledge economy – “creativity” – functions as the conceptual ideological heir to “production capacity,” the core ingredient of the industrializing societies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Keywords::

• ICT4E
• techno-determinism
• techno-optimism
• creativity
• rural China
• ICT4D

Notes

^1. The discussion presented in this article results from a larger interdisciplinary research project on the digital society in China. The project has received generous funding from the Swedish Research Council (VR 2012-5630). Class observations of ICT use in Chinese classrooms have been made possible through a grant by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, P11-0390:1).

^2. See http://www.inruled.org/en/about_inruled/ (accessed 19 August 2014).

^3. See http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/briefingpapers/efa/ (accessed 27 June 2014).

^4. See e.g., the World Bank paper on Africa. Retrieved from http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTINFORMATIONANDCOMMUNICATIONANDTECHNOLOGIES/Resources/282822-1346223280837/Education.pdf (accessed 26 June 2014).

^5. See also the discussion in Heeks (2010).

^6. There is by now an abundance of literature on the suzhi project, including Anagnost (2004), Kipnis (2006), Murphy (2004) and Woronov (2009).

^7. “Western” is a discursive rather than a geographic category. In addition, Japan was an important reference society for Chinese reformers because of its apparently successful modernization by Western standards (see e.g., Reynolds, 1993).

^8. Because of space constraints, I cannot expand on the colonial aspects of educational or civilizing missions here. For a discussion, see e.g., Conklin (1998), Duara (2004), Pomeranz (2005), Schulte (2013a and 2013b), and the edited volume by Watt and Mann (2011).

^9. Yang was strongly influenced by the famous pedagogue Tao Xingzhi (1891–1946), who was a disciple of the American philosopher and pedagogue John Dewey (1859–1952) and thus a proponent of the pragmatist tradition in education.

^10. This is part of the reason that, during ideologically heated phases (such as the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution), agents were so hostile to technical or vocational education, as these programs entailed a strong class component and were therefore deemed “bourgeois.”

^11. Fu was educated at Cornell University and Yale University.

^12. Consisting of the “three rurals”: countryside, rural production, and rural population. Interestingly, the latter also comprises rural (political and administrative) cadres, which have also become the targets of ICT-based distance education, in order to be updated to the digital age.

^13. These do not necessarily include the Internet. Particularly in regions where access to the Internet is difficult, satellite broadcasting and CDs/CD players have been used as substitutes.

^14. The project was organized and implemented between 2003 and 2007 by the Ministry of Education, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Finance. See e.g., Wang and Li (2010) and INRULEDb.

^15. ICT seems to provide remarkably good communication devices for those who are traditionally marginalized, as Hilbert (2011) showed regarding women's use of digital technologies; yet Chinese strategy documents remain conspicuously silent about how ICT can empower such groups in sustainable ways.

^16. For an overview of this quasi-corporatist educational governance, see Schulte (2012a).

^17. Companies can take on roles as either hardware or software providers. To a certain extent, this is not entirely new. Historically, the textbook industry profited greatly from educational reforms.

^18. As mentioned in the section on my selection of materials, a keyword search for “informatization of education” and “creativity” in the China Academic Journals database yielded more than 2,000 journal articles.

^19. See, e.g., Yang (2012). See also the UNESCO presentation by Seo (2012).

^20. See, e.g., the advertisement on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = EfL4zBWSRHA (accessed 27 June 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Barbara Schulte

Barbara Schulte, Associate Professor for Education, Lund University, Sweden, currently investigates Chinese ICT policies in education, Chinese youth's socialization into using digital media in the classroom, and ICT training provided for local Chinese cadres. Further research topics include private schooling in urban China, educational transfer between China and the ‘West’, as well as questions of (transnational) educational governance.