Impact of the Cultural Revolution on Rural Education and Economic Development

The Case of Jimo County

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6007953
AutoresDongping Han (Warren Wilson College), Han Dongping (0000-0002-9429-4673, Warren Wilson College, autor de correspondencia)
Año2001
Volumen27
Número1
Páginas59-90
Fecha de publicación2001-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaModern China (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0097-7004 • E-ISSN: 1552-6836
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/009770040102700102
OpenAlexW1993622718
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas7
Referencias citadas9

The education reforms associated with the Cultural Revolution in China produced marked changes in rural areas-among them, a massive increase in the number of schools and a reform of curriculum geared toward local needs. At the time, international development experts praised this rural program as a model for developing countries (Pepper, 1996: 32-35). Since the transformation of the regime in 1978, however, the Chinese government has denounced these very reforms as an unmitigated disaster. The ill-conceived school expansion and curriculum reforms, it is claimed, caused quality to decline, while the radical antielitist sentiments that they embodied actually harmed economic development during the Cultural Revolution decade (Shirk, 1979: 191). These claims have been widely accepted by scholars, often without empirical investigation into the actual impact of the policies. Jonathan Unger's (1982) book Education under Mao is typical. Based mostly on interviews with refugees in Hong Kong, his findings generally support the view that students lost interest in study during the Cultural Revolution and that as a result, education suffered. Kate Xiao Zhou's (1996) contribution, How the Farmers Changed China

China · Cultural revolution · Curriculum · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Government (linguistics · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Global Educational Reforms and Inequalities · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Law