I read in this morning's Financial Times that the Chinese government is
going to encourage private education. Even though private schools have been
established in China since the early 90s and now number around 3,500 (a
small number, given the population of China), they have been living on the
edge of prosecution by the authorities because, strictly speaking, selling
education for profit has been prohibited and school property has been
deemed to belong to the state.
However, private schools are now officially regarded as being part of the
normal market economy -- to which China is heading with all speed -- and to
be encouraged. So far, private schools have catered to the children of the
rich and highly-placed communist nomenclatura (no doubt the reason why they
have been allowed to survive), with fees as high as $5,000 p.a. in Shanghai
-- far beyond anything that normal Chinese parents could afford. But now,
local parent groups and communities will be able to start schools with much
lower fees.
China has been carrying out a great number of reforms in recent years --
such as allowing the worst state banks with high debts to go to the wall --
but this seems to be the most significant step forward yet. Because of the
very low standard of living in China, it is likely that large numbers of
fee-paid private schools will be supported by ordinary (that is, poor)
parents in exactly the same way that fee-paid schools started springing up
in the villages, towns and cities of England from about 200 years ago. They
thrived because, unlike today, the poorest parents at the dawn of the
industrial age were totally sold on the importance of education, and
children were consequently highly motivated. (This was also the period of
Miners' and Mechanics' Institutes, entirely supported by poor working
people for their own education.) However, the UK government at the turn of
the 19th century then destroyed private schools by providing free schools.
Hopefully, the Chinese will not be able to do the same for some decades at
least -- or else they would now be strengthening the state education system
rather than encouraging private schools.
The State take-over of private schools which catered for over 90% of the
working population in the 1860-1890s in England was the beginning of the
end for truly democratic education in which parents had some say what
curricula they wanted and some choice of schools. Previously, there wasn't
much choice and schools varied enormously in quality, but they were real
choices and the real power was where it should be -- with the parents and
the local teachers and not the State. Since then parents have become
steadily demotivated from taking an interest in their childrens' education;
increasingly, post-puberty children now regard schools as dreary and boring
places with little relevance either to their own interests or the world
outside.
For most parents and children in western countries, education is no longer
something to be desirable in itself and to be strived for; it has become a
"right". Also, it is regarded as something that can be poured from the
school bottle into every recipient child so that he or she will
automatically be able to have a job. But the job market doesn't obey the
curricula of State schools. It has a life of its own and sometimes, as in
the last decade or so as we leave the industrial age, it is very lively and
changeable. China now has a chance of a whole new generation of highly
motivated parents and children and, as a byproduct, being able to match its
education system much more closely to the real world going on outside.
Keith Hudson
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Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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