Good Intentions Gone Awry: Education Policy and Paradox of Consequences in Rural Ethnic China

• In Event: 18.017 - The Unintended Consequences of Historical "Best Practices" in "Post-Truth" Times: A National and International Perspective

Abstract

The interest in evidence-based research often gives rise to a technocratic model of education that focuses on “what works” -- the correlation between educational means and outcomes -- yet ignores the more difficult questions of how things came to be the way they are and how the paradigm of our inquiry and the quest for data-driven results can limit our vision of what counts as problems, evidence, and findings. Education is a deeply cultural, social, and political practice interwoven with the larger structure of the society and the remnant of modernity. A cookbook approach to “best practices” risks dismissing the “controversial” aspects of schooling that cannot be neatly accounted for in a “what works” model of knowledge/policy production.

This paper provides a situated critique of how evidence-based, “best practices”-oriented research can perpetuate a self-fulfilling prophesy at the expense of deeper understanding of educational problems. I structure the paper along two analytical steps. First, I explore the sociology of unintended consequences through Max Weber and his contemporary critic Mohamed Cherkaoui. The idea that there is no direct correlation between individual behaviors and their collective effects on social structure illustrates the paradox of consequences of human actions. In the sociopolitical sphere, cases of unintended consequences abound. The tough-on-crime policy in the United States has resulted in an alarming increase in the number of arrests, sentences, and incarceration among low-income African Americans. Similarly, disproportionate numbers of racial minorities are warehoused into low-level curriculum and special education classes in urban schools, making special education a punitive space, a far cry from the original intent of providing individualized services to pupils in need. That social programs ostensibly designed to meet human needs produce unexpected, even ruinous results sheds light on the fraught relations between intentions and outcomes.

In the second part of the paper, I draw from an ethnographic study in rural ethnic communities of Southwest China to illustrate how best intentions at providing free compulsory education go awry, and how the controversial policy both fails and succeeds in producing its intended outcome - a “successful failure.” The alarming dropout rates among China’s impoverished rural minority populations present a stark contrast to the success story of Chinese education featured in the global media. I take a close look at the paradox of consequences when compulsory attendance legislation, in the larger context of rural development and audit culture, not only fails to reverse the high attrition rates but also becomes part of the problem it is charged to address. It reinforces a vicious cycle of silencing the complex struggles of local actors in fabricated facts and bureaucratic machineries.

The paper argues that by focusing on “best practices” and “what works” we often neglect the ways in which questions are posed and the ways in which assemblages of forces generate the topic or phenomenon in the first place. A research design that takes into account unintended consequences is necessary for understanding persistent social inequalities and cultivating a meaningful and culturally sustaining education.

Author

• Jinting Wu, University at Buffalo - SUNY