Ronald N. Montaperto - Chinas Schools in Flux: Report by the State Education Leaders Delegation, National Committee on United States-China Relations

Report by the State Education Leaders
Delegation, National Committee on
United StatesChina Relations

First published in 1979 by M.E. Sharpe Inc.

This edition first published in 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1979 M.E. Sharpe Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-138-30826-8 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-315-14674-4 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-31015-5 (Volume 2) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-14656-0 (Volume 2) (ebk)

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

M. E. Sharpe Inc. 1979
901 North Broadway
White Plains, New York 10603

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission

First published in the U.S.A. 1979
First published in the U.K. 1980

Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in Delhi
Dublin Hong Kong Johannesburg Lagos
Melbourne New York Singapore Tokyo

This book is sold subject to the standard conditions of the Net Book Agreement

The State Education Leaders Delegation traveled to the Peoples Republic of China in October 1977 under the auspices of the National Committee on United States-China Relations and at the invitation of the Chinese Ministry of Education. The purpose of the visit was to observe and discuss the new directions of Chinas schools.

The Delegation was composed of leaders in the field of American education mainly at the state level, where primary responsibility for administration of elementary and secondary schools rests in the United States. Ralph W. Tyler, who served as delegation leader, is one of Americas foremost philosophers of education. His titles, past and present, include dean of the School of Education at the University of Chicago, director of the Chicago program of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, senior consultant with Science Research Associates in Chicago, and director emeritus of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. William A. Delano, counsel for Global Perspectives in Education in New York and an Executive Committee member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, acted as deputy leader. Other members included the Assistant Secretary for Education of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare; six state commissioners of education and superintendents of public instruction; the president and the president-elect of the National Association of State Boards of Education; the Presidents of the National and California Parent Teachers Associations; and the director of the Workshop Center for Open Education at City College in New York. In addition to these fourteen educators, the delegation was accompanied by a professor of political science at Indiana University whose major field of study is Chinas youth; the deputy director of the Office of East Asian and Pacific Programs of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the Department of State; and the author of this preface, a program associate of the National Committee on United States-China Relations.

On the morning of October 28 the delegation arrived in Peking from Karachi, Pakistan, after a night flight across the Himalayas. We departed China on November 14 from Kwangchou (Canton) by train for Hong Kong. During the intervening eighteen days the group visited four preschool centers; three primary schools; one middle school; six colleges, universities, and vocational schools; two school-run factories; the Shanghai Childrens Palace; and the homes of eight Chinese families with school-age children. The delegation held eight seminars with Chinese education specialists; over 100 people attended the one in Peking. The discussions usually pertained to the administration of education in China (in which case Chinese educators answered questions put by our delegation) or the administration of education in the United States (in which we responded to questions asked by Chinese). In Peking there was also a 90- minute meeting with Minister of Education Liu Hsi-yao, and in Nanking the delegation spent nearly two hours discussing provincial education with Madame Fang Fei, the deputy chief of education for Kiangsu Province.

The delegation left for China at an interesting time. Media in the United States carried the news that a major effort was freshly underway to get Chinas schools back to the basics.

To illustrate, only days before our arrival more than 20 million young Chinese eligible to enter college had been given the news that for the first time in more than a decade everyone who applied for college would be required to take entrance examinations and be judged primarily by academic skills and not by class background (the predominant criterion of the 19661976 era). Some 5.7 million candidates took the examination in early December in competition for 300,000 enrollment slots.