Remapping Rural-Urban Divide in Chinese Education Studies: The New Implications of Suzhi

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

Abstract

Rapid urbanization over the past three decades has significantly changed the landscape of China. In 1980, only 19% of the population was urban. By 2012, urban residents have outnumbered rural residents. It is projected to reach 65% of urbanization by 2030. This paper aims to unpack the complexities involved in the rapid urbanization process in China and how that has impacted the way education researchers should examine rural children and rural education. Specifically, by highlighting the evolving meanings of suzhi (quality) and its use in various contexts regarding various groups of children--urban, rural or migrant, and by various stakeholders--students, teachers or parents, the paper argues for a paradigm shift beyond the urban-rural dualism as we reposition rural and migrant children’s education in today’s China.

This paper draws upon the author’s longitudinal research of rural education in Shaanxi Province in Northwest between 2005 and 2012 and in Zhejiang Province on the East Coast from 2015-2019. The paper also includes studies conducted with migrant children in Zhejiang. The author highlights interesting findings collected via photovoice method (Wang et al, 1996) which shifts the “power” of defining research questions to children by allowing them to frame, record, and evaluate how they understood their lives at home, at school, and in society through their own photos and interviews based on that. The paper situates how rural students’, being left-behind or migrant children, and their teachers’ (re)interpretations and uses of suzhi in the context of rapid urbanization and in various locations in or in between the city and the countryside, and how that sometimes supports and sometimes challenges the rural-urban dualism imbedded in the discussion about suzhi in the literature so far.

“Suzhi”, originally used to describe an individual’s level of educational achievement (Woronov, 2008), encompasses multiple meanings in China. It is often associated with traits like creativity, innovation, knowledge vision, and pro-social skills, which are to the advantage of urban students (Kipnis, 2001). Yan also argued suzhi and its associated traits representing modernity and urbanity, more specifically, “formal education, civility, discipline, initiative, cosmopolitanism” (2008, 94), are constructed as missing from rural citizens.

This paper further explores how suzhi means different things for different group of children in both formal discourse such as curriculum, and information discourse--what parents, teachers and students value and practice. For example, data collected from interviews with teachers and photovoice with students demonstrated how suzhi was referenced to explain discrepancy of academic performance, family support, and character buildings between migrant and rural children, or between rural and urban children. Rapid urbanization allows the development of multiple narratives of suzhi, rurality, and urbanity, which is further complicated by rapid social stratifications and has impacted the way children, parents and teachers redefine the purposes of schooling and their future positions in the society.

The paper enriches theories on suzhi in today’s China and suggests a new paradigm to remap the way Chinese education and society organizes itself beyond the rural-urban line.

Author

• Jingjing Lou, Beloit College