Political Influence
Jinjun Liang
Jinjun Liang
In the second part of the journal, taking Chinese learners as an example, I argued culture was one of the important factors that affect students’ performance but that might not be a good thing for the students. In this part, I am going to examine the political landscape on which learning culture in China has bred and the influence it might have on my beliefs about education.
It was mentioned in the last part that education was starting to spread to the common Chinese around 2500 years ago (Wan, 1980), but this was a social movement rather than an action of the mercy of the upper classes. However, after the invention of the imperial examination, education for the masses was later encouraged by governments throughout the ancient history of China. This is because education enhanced social stability and helped prevent social unrest (Bai & Jia, 2016). The most gifted minds in ancient China devoted their lives and intellect into learning Confucius classics, which promoted absolute loyalty to the emperors, rather than to creativity or criticizing the authorities. Without the leadership of these literate and intelligent minds, social movements were often cracked down in their infancy.
Even without the imperial examination system, modern-day China continues to be in the fever of exam-driven education (Yu & Suen, 2005). As a result, education is functioning politically to maintain an authoritarian social order on purpose, like it did in imperial China. Ironically, this function of education aligns with my belief (see Figure 2 on the previous page), which is public education “exists for the benefit of the social order”. This irony somehow explains why I can not appreciate this behaviourist style (Skinner, 1990) of teaching and learning, that is, the social order it maintains is not the type of order I strive for. A healthy democracy, in which I am dreaming to take part, requires active social/political participation of critical and independent thinking individuals. A democratic social order, in turn, requires a public education system with the ability of mass production of such individuals.
I believe, in addition to my thirst for democratic participation, my experience in an authoritarian social order and the type of education, that maintains it, is an advantage to my teaching in New Zealand classrooms. I would mindfully practice inquiry-based (Sinnema & Aitken, 2016) and social-constructivist (Barker & Buntting, 2016) approaches to teaching, more than someone takes democracy for granted. Nevertheless, my desperation for democracy might blind me to the flaws of some popular education policies in this country. Therefore, I would need to control my desperation for democracy with frequent self-reflection.