Will The Chinese Learning Initiative Evoke The Long-Awaited Fifth Modernization?
In Boshler’s article Will The Chinese Learning Initiative Evoke The Long-Awaited Fifth Modernization?, he discusses the changes that different people within the China are seeing as a needed change to their educational system and the way they think of education and learning. They discuss they differences in the Chinese philosophy on education and life-long learning in comparison to the philosophy of other cultures. In their culture, education is not something that is controlled by the individual schools, but it is something that is controlled by the government. In this article, they discuss the changes that have been taking place in the education within China over several decades.
One of the changes that is discussed is the change of the thought process when it comes to learning. Instead of all learning taking place within a school environment, it is suggested that the people learn to become life-long learners and be learning new ideas and techniques throughout their lives. The reasoning for this is the changes not only within their society but the changes within our entire planet. The problem that they have with this idea is that the government within China is not willing to give up total control to the people so that they can experience all of the changes that are going on within our world. The culture within China is one of a very formal educational system whereas it is suggested that in many other countries it is not such a formal system. It is believed that the concept will work within in their system, but it will take time for not only the people to adjust and adapt to it, but for the government to also allow more freedom within the educational system.
Overall, it is suggested that part of the difficulties with changing the educational and learning system within China is due to not only the reluctance in some cases of the people for changes that they are unsure of, but of the government willing to give up some of the control to the people. They all agree that learning throughout life is essential due to the ever changing nature of our world, but it is hard to get a system set up that will work for their entire country when one looks at the demographics of their country.
Boshler, Roger and Huang, Yan (2006).Will the Chinese learning initiative evoke the long-awaited fifth modernization?. Planning and Changing. 37, 56-70.