Recognizing Community Curriculum as Quality Education

• In Event: Education for Whom and for What? Reconceptualizing Educational Inequality in Urbanizing China

Abstract

This paper discusses how experiences and the lives in China’s migrant communities shape perspectives that their children bring to school and places special emphasis on the discussion of what kinds of schooling is worthwhile for migrant children. This ethnography reveals the challenges and rewards of constructing school curriculum that fit the needs and interests of the communities that are yet entered the mainstream discourse. Thus, it speaks directly to the need for involvement of publics to be educated in addressing what is worthwhile for children from underserved communities.

The author pays close attention to collective efforts of parents and teachers working in migrant communities for the education of migrant children. Previous studies have addressed the power of ordinary people coming together to create change in their communities to reverse serious educational problems (Anyon, 2005; Apple, 2006; Binder, 2002) and historical accounts of describing the challenges and rewards of community organizing (Payne & Strickland, 2008; Reese, 2002; Siddle-Walker, 1996). This study builds on the work in examining the dynamics of schooling for migrant children in China. The reflective analyses of social relations and detailed accounts of structures of inequality provide spaces for a politics of recognition and redistribution that has been denied to migrant workers and their families for over three decades. These struggles are particularly true for those who have moblized for the schooling of migrant children in complex and uncertain social and political environments.

The paper focuses on the mobilization of resources in the development of this collective action. In addition to extensive archival research on population migration and state responses to changing educational needs over the past thirty years, the study was conducted in five different migrant communities in and around Beijing. As part of this research, ethnographic methods were used to complete a longditudinal, multi-sited study, including in-depth interviews and participant observations at homes, schools, and community sites with migrant children, their parents and teachers. By documenting the history of migrant children schools and sharing the stories of migrant families, this study recognizes the collective efforts of parents and teachers in the migrant communities and works towards ensuring that the children of migrant workers receive quality education.

As a former teacher in migrant children schools and now a researcher who examine schooling and community organization regarding the education for migrant children, I further highlight the complexities or nuances of situations of migrant communities, and that categories for considering suzhi, or “quality education”, would need to be derived from the setting. To illustrate this, I will address how migrant children schools reflect the messages of unofficial/being outside more fully than do public schools, in view of the fact that an emerging movement of migrant schooling focused on providing for the emotional, cultural, and social rights of students and their community through collective action. Such analysis needed to expose inequities in class, gender, and power. And oftentimes, such exposure might be highly controversial, or even, dangerous for the marginalized communities.

Author

• Min Yu, Wayne State University