Radicalism and Education Reform in 20th-Century China - The Search for an Ideal Development Model (Hardcover)

In 1976, China's education revolution was being hailed by foreign observers as an inspiration for all low-income countries. By 1980, the Chinese themselves had disavowed the experience, declaring it devoid of even a single redeeming virtue. This is a comprehensive book covering the whole sweep of 20th-century Chinese education, and providing a detailed study of what occurred in the countryside under the radical Maoist education experiments during the Cultural Revolution. The study of both pre- and post-1949 China provided the crucial historical perspective to distinguish continuities from innovations. Rather than the epitome of good or evil, China's educational experiences of the 1970s instead emerged as the most tumultuous episode in a long and contentious struggle to adapt Western ways for use in a non-Western society.