Gregory P. Fairbrother

Asian Perspectives on Citizenship Education in Review: Postcolonial Constructions or Precolonial Values?

There is an important sense in which trying to reduce the studies in this book to a set of common themes or generalisations cannot do justice to the complexity and richness of the individual studies. Yet as Stein (2002), writing about ‘global cinema’, has recently pointed out, it is ‘vitally important to develop critical tools that can read films from a transnational perspective’. There is little doubt, based on the preceding studies in this book, that citizenship education can also be regarded as transnational in character even though, like film, it is largely constructed within the boundaries of individual nation-states. This way of viewing citizenship education suggests that we need to develop a way of talking about and understanding it in the richness of its local contexts while also recognizing its commonalities, shared values and aspirations in developing an intelligent citizenry.

Rethinking Hegemony and Resistance to Political Education in Mainland China and Hong Kong

The focus of this article is on Hong Kong and mainland Chinese university student reactions, in two time periods, to national themes in education as part of state attempts to establish and maintain legitimacy. I argue that among these reactions is one of resistance to the process of state hegemony. To make this point, the article builds on several arguments derived from the literature on citizenship education in mainland China and in colonial and postcolonial Hong Kong. According to these arguments, national themes were neglected in civic education in colonial Hong Kong but gained prominence within educational policy discourse with the return of the territory to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 (Morris 1997; Law 2004; Fairbrother 2005b). By contrast, national themes were particularly prominent in 1990s mainland Chinese political education, but they were accompanied in a later broadening of political education discourse by themes related to legality, such as understandings of rule by law, due process, and individual rights. Relevant also is that the mainland Chinese state’s attention to nationality in 1990s education was associated with a newly emphasized claim to legitimacy on the basis of representing and promoting patriotism (Ding 1994; Zhao 1998). By the early 2000s, however, new ideologies based on the claims of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to represent all sectors of society and to promote individual rights and rule by law supplemented justifications for legitimacy based on nationality. In Hong Kong, the colonial state’s claims to legitimacy were based on a high degree of public consultation in governance and the provision of social services but most importantly on maintaining social stability, which potentially could be damaged if Chinese nationality were actively promoted in society and schooling. While the Hong Kong Special Administrative

Power and Right in Hong Kong's Citizenship Education

This article looks at the meaning of citizenship in Hong Kong over the last three decades by examining discussions of citizenship education among political executives, legislators, and educational policymakers. Drawing on Foucaults conceptions of power as discipline and government, and highlighting the relationships between power, rights, and freedom, it focuses on the values of responsibility, rights, democracy, and national identity in citizenship education discourse. Taking citizenship education as an activity in the exercise of power, the article recommends looking at these values in a new light and recognizing citizenship educations inherently political nature regardless of the extent of its overly political content.

Patriotic Education in a Chinese Middle School

Throughout the history of the People’s Republic of China, schools, among other societal institutions, have been called upon to shape citizens’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour toward society, the nation, and the state through political education. Calls to emphasize, reform, and strengthen the role of the school in the formation of students’ political attitudes have been made in the name of ideological-political education (sixiang zhengzhi jiaoyu), moral education (daode jiaoyu or deyu), and most explicitly, patriotic education (aiguozhuyi jiaoyu). A number of scholars have reviewed trends in these forms of education in Mainland China since 1949, drawing attention to the motivations of the Chinese government in promoting different approaches and adapting content in response to changing political circumstances or threats to its legitimacy. Martin (1975) shows how the government attempted to break with pre-1949 Confucian tradition by promoting new socialist behaviour and values among schoolchildren through the content of elementary school language textbooks. Comparing similar textbooks from the early and late 1970s, Kwong (1985) draws attention to shifts in their content related to changing political leadership, political philosophy, and political culture during and after the Cultural Revolution. Meyer (1988) and Lee (1996) also describe changing goals and values in political education policy and content in the years preceding 1989, reflecting repeated ideological movements and debates.

Citizenship Education in a Divided China, 1949‐1995

Abstract This article examines the reflection of national goals and ideologies in the civic education curricula of Mainland China and Taiwan. Acomparison of junior secondary school textbooks from the 1950s and the 1990s shows how the curriculum embodies the states’ changing national priorities and justificatory ideologies. Specifically, in the early period, the focus of the curriculum was on goals and values which distinguished each state from the other. By the 1990s, despite continuing ideological differences, there was a common focus on the importance of economic and social development.

Civic Education Curriculum Reform in Hong Kong: What Should Be the Direction under Chinese Sovereignty?.

This article uses results from a cross-national analysis of the impact of varying approaches to civic education curriculum delivery on three learning outcomes, to draw conclusions about the value of a government-mandated compulsory, independent subject of civic education in the school curriculum. It starts from the context of Hong Kong, where there have been repeated calls for the government to reform civic education, and compares this context with that of England, where citizenship education was made a statutory subject in 2002. The article then examines from the cases of 25 societies whether a compulsory approach to and/or independent subject of civic education is associated with better learning of civic knowledge, knowledge of democracy, and patriotism. Finding that the impact of curricular approaches is somewhat negligible taking other factors into consideration, the article concludes that civic education reformers should consider the costs of limiting school autonomy in curriculum delivery.

Pedagogies of Cultural Integration in Chinese Citizenship Education

Throughout the Maoist era (1949–1976), Chinese education served twin purposes: to cultivate scientific and technological talent as an impetus for national rejuvenation and to serve as a mechanism for political indoctrination. Not surprisingly, ideological-political education played an essential function. Once Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978, China embarked on top-down reforms that dissolved the original central economic planning system and pursued a market model. The ongoing economic reforms, with an increasing engagement with the global community, have gradually transformed the social fabric and spurred a number of societal challenges, such as increased inequality and calls for democracy (Gittings, 2006). Over the past three decades, Chinese society has witnessed a struggle for the relaxation of strict political control and authoritarian party rule, and experienced an eagerness to build a democratic civil society, especially from the intellectual and grassroots sectors. Ideological shifts and social transition have opened the door to educational reforms such as curriculum reforms and the decentralisation of educational policy, school financing, and administration (Mok, 1997). Although changes in the orientation and curriculum of moral education have received widespread attention (Zhong & Lee, 2008), very little has been written about the backstage players, Chinese scholars who have been actively committed to the reforms and have often worked on government advisory bodies.

Between Britain and China: Hong Kong's citizenship education policy paradigm

Abstract This article offers a new explanation for considerable continuity in citizenship education policy in Hong Kong despite the change from British to Chinese sovereignty. Focusing on the form by which citizenship education is carried out and the instruments by which it has been promoted, the article argues that citizenship education has been both enabled and constrained by a distinctive policy paradigm developed out of traditional Chinese moral education, a British ambivalence toward political education, and a reaction against Mainland Chinese Communist political education. A comparison of citizenship education policy in China, Britain, and Hong Kong reveals that a key aspect of this paradigm is a fear of indoctrination, which has been made explicit in public sentiment, policy debates, and policy programs.

Protection by, or from, the Government: Debating citizenship education policy in Hong Kong's Legislative Council

This article discusses citizenship education, education policy and discourse to explore their relations with the exercise of power in society. Taking the case of 1990 and 1997 legislative debates on citizenship education policy in Hong Kong, it briefly surveys the substantive arguments favouring or opposing the retention of government controls over politics in schools. It then examines in more detail the discourses used by legislators which constitute students, teachers and the government. This discussion shows that not only does citizenship education represent a power relation between the state and citizens, with policy representative of the power of the state over educational workers, but also that the targets of policy are empowered and disempowered through the strategic use of discourse.

Globalisation and Tertiary Education in the Asia-Pacific: The Changing Nature of a Dynamic Market. Edited by Christopher Findlay and William G. Tierney

young Internet users expect the medium to perform. My sense is that official expectations (from teachers, education authorities and some parents) tend to be excessively instrumental: the task of the medium is to point towards and provide the right answers, just as a text book might be expected to offer the definitive account of a subject. From that perspective, most people are bound to be disappointed by not only most online content, but most newspapers, magazines, television programmes and library books. If, on the other hand, one’s expectation of the Internet is that it will open up a range of perspectives, unintended connections and questions that transcend the original search for information, then my sense is that a) one is less likely to be disappointed and b) trust strategies will need to be rather more sophisticated than the ‘believe it–believe it not’ evaluations of instrumentalist credibility. Perhaps the next systematic study of kids and credibility could address the nature of, and barriers to, such strategies.