Governing Educational Desire: Culture, Politics and Schooling in China

摘要

Andrew Kipnis has been visiting Zouping county in Shandong province for the past two decades. Recently he spent over three months in sixth-grade classrooms in the county. He also visited numerous students' families in villages and towns throughout Zouping. This provides the basis for his rich description of local manifestations of "educational desire," the feverish pursuit of educational glory. In one vignette, Kipnis tells his readers about a county middle school which resembles a small university campus with its sophisticated IT, gym and music equipment. In another, he outlines the daily schedule in a township boarding school where students rise at 6.15 and go to bed at 9.40, with a quarter of an hour in the afternoon for eye exercises to relieve the physical strain of intensive study. According to Kipnis, so ingrained is the obsession with study that higher-level officials' efforts to stymie the excesses, by for instance issuing regulations to limit homework loads, cause teachers, parents and students to devise counter strategies in order to secure educational advantage.