“Literacy”��Top-down Universalization, Bottom-up Promotion and Retaining in Village: A Case of School System Adjustment and Its Historical Change in a Rural County in China
Research Institute of Rural Education, Northeast Normal University
Abstract The author conducted a complicated historic review of the evolution of the township schools against the background of the national and societal structural changes as well as educational policy evolution during the 115 years from 1990 to 2014. The review found that the rural schools, regarded as center for “education” and “civilization” in the underclass field, experienced aggravated decline due to both external “interferences” and internal “deviations”. The phenomenon of massive consolidation of rural school in modern China is named “bottom-up literacy promotion” by scholars, an opposite to the historical phenomenon of massive construction of rural schools, known as “top-down literacy universalization,” has led to educational dilemma in the underclass. Based on discourse analysis and field observation with various participants on various field sites, the author found that the “bottom-up literacy promotion” phenomenon is resulted from both external social incentives and internal educational motives. The former include village culture subaltern to the urban culture, the breakdown of the knowledge and power in villages, the stratification of peasent group and the difficulties of help, educational poverty under the consumption mentality, while the latter include low attraction to rural teachers, lack of staff quota, and excessive administrative control.
Li Tao. “Literacy”��Top-down Universalization, Bottom-up Promotion and Retaining in Village: A Case of School System Adjustment and Its Historical Change in a Rural County in China[J]. journal1, 2018, 21(2): 93-122.
