The development of rural nonformal education in China.

摘要

China, a developing country with more than one billion people, is experiencing a fundamental change from a closed society to an open one. The economic development in China now requires much more than the political movements the Communist Party has been able to mobilize in the past forty years. Economic development needs millions of people with knowledge of modern science, technology, and management skills. Faced with this new situation, China's former educational system found itself with an immense responsibility without the adequate infrastructure to address the new demands. A key option is to develop nonformal education as a helpful remedy to its labor force, especially for its uneducated rural agro-labor force.;The dissertation is based on library research drawing on published materials and a variety of available reports and documents from Chinese officials. It is also based on the author's living and work experience of 38 years in China and a recent visit for on-site research in China. This document gives a general introduction to contemporary Chinese education, identifies the needs for educational development in the rural areas, and suggests a television educational program to help educational development in Chinese rural areas.;China has a long history of education. Yet during most of its history, education has been an option for the privileged class. The focus of education has had little if anything to do with the rural people who comprise 80 percent of the population of the country. The peasants' low level of education has limited rural agricultural production. With the economic development spreading throughout the whole country, the structure of rural agricultural production also needs to change. People need to know how to change. A crucial and effective way to make this change is to give the countryside people knowledge of agriculture, science, and technology. This dissertation proposes a television program to meet the rural educational need. This TV project offers the rural population basic, televised educational and agricultural science lectures to which rural people have no access through formal and other nonformal educational systems.