Confucian revival and the hybrid educational narratives in contemporary China: a critical rethinking of scale in globalisation and education

ABSTRACT

Today China witnesses a renaissance of classical studies and Confucian Academies across the nation. With an estimated 10 million children attending Confucian kindergartens, classes, and schools, cultural heritage has increasingly become a new marker of social distinction. At the same time, Confucian tradition is often associated with excessive testing, competition, and academic burdens that continue to hinder China's educational innovation. Disenchanted with state-run schools, many urban middle-class families turn to alternative schools that use imported pedagogies such as the Waldorf, Montessori, and Reggio to cultivate a better future for their children. In reform-era China, Westernisation coexists with a return to tradition to produce a fascinatingly complex cultural-pedagogical terrain. This paper examines such curiously hybrid educational narratives to understand the idiosyncratic features of Chinese educational globalisation and offer a critical perspective to rethink the concept of scale in comparative education research.

KEYWORDS:

• Confucian revival
• globalisation
• hybridity
• urban China
• scale
• comparative education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The definition of guoxue has morphed over time and provoked a great deal of controversies among scholars, policymakers, and the general public. Originally imported from Japan, guoxue has assumed a wide range of meanings including Chinese cultural psychology, high Chinese culture, traditional Chinese culture, national superior culture, etc. Some scholars consider Confucianism as the core of guoxue. See Xu (2015, 117–118).

2 http://cul.china.com.cn/zt/2014-12/11/content_7436189.htm retrieved on April 11, 2017.

3 I have personally observed and participated in one such academy in Zhuhai City of Guangdong Province, where young professionals, college students, and neighbourhood folks meet every Sunday in a Taoist temple to study The Analects and other classical texts. Grassroots academies are sometimes organised by participants themselves without a fee structure, alongside other for-profit guoxue classes also available in the marketplace.

4 For instance, some Confucian academies charge around USD1000–2000 a year for weekly classes, a cost not easily affordable by ordinary households. See Teo (2015).

5 See http://www.cankaoxiaoxi.com/china/20161017/1347257.shtml, retrieved May 31, 2018.

6 Yidan xuetang tongxun, no.9, 2.

7 Rather than the joyful and humane character associated with classics learning, scholars have noticed the mechanical and monotonous nature of this method of learning, which often involves extensive use of ceremonial rites and even physical work (such as cooking and cleaning) for young children. See Billioud and Thoraval (2014, 89).

8 This incompleteness is also part of a global pattern, as seen in continued cultural engineering of citizenship in many parts of the world.