Policy for Whom? Educational Policies in Western China’s Impoverished Muslim Communities

• In Event: Looking Deeper Into China’s Unequal Access to Higher Education

Abstract

This paper discusses how local educational policies are shaped and practiced in an ethnic minority county in northwestern China. In analyzing the implementation processes of educational policies, Raymond Boudon’s rationality framework was adopted to explain the social actions of different parties which primarily include the county government, the township and village level officials, school staff, and parents. The data consists of interviews and observations, which were collected from seven months’ ethnographic fieldwork in a Muslim community of Gansu province, northwestern China. By examining the interaction between local educational policies and Chinese Muslim parents’ responses, this paper argues that the present educational policies in China’s impoverished ethnic minority areas need to consider more of the local parents’ demands of education, rather than to construct the myth of modern public education.
Under external political pressure from the central government, the local officials sought to increase enrollment and completion rates in basic education, as well as the pass rates in the national college and university entrance examination. Abundant resources were invested into the local ethnic minority schools and these efforts became a stepping-stone for promotion of local officials. Yet, ethnic minority families viewed the policies as having little positive impact on their living standards. Muslim parents viewed public schools as a tool for financial well-being by providing Muslims with enough basic education to eventually leave home to become migrant workers in nearby cities. At the same time, parents use community based religious education to maintain their Muslim identity and transmit it to the next generation. Children are enrolled in primary schools for several years, after which they drop out and turn to mosques for religious education for a short period, followed by their becoming migrant workers. Hence, the education paradox in these Muslim communities is the inconsistency between the government policy and parental perspectives on schools and religious education.

Author

• Yanbi Hong, Southeast University