The Comparison of “Differentiation” in Working with “Disadvantaged Children” - Two Case Studies from the US and China

• In Event: When Beings Encounter: The Multiplicities of Peace

Proposal

In both the US and China, there is a shared concern about children who need support. In the US, since 1964, a federally funded program called Head Start has been directly working with poor children classified as “disadvantaged children.” In China, since 1980, education policies have focused on students from rural areas (农村儿童Nong cun er tong), who were considered in need of help both culturally and economically. This concept of “Disadvantaged Children” has also been adopted from the US, translating to “处境不利儿童Chu jing bu li er tong.” Since then, research on both sides has centered on how education can better serve these “disadvantaged children.”
However, this research has found that despite the shared concern, there are different ways of approaching how “differentiation” has been applied through the policies supporting “disadvantaged children.” This study uses two cases to illustrate different reasons for “Differentiation.” The first case is Project Head Start from the United States. This article reviewed the critical studies on how Project Head Start is a process of “differentiation” that fabricates “disadvantaged children” as the “otherness”. The second case is rural education reforms in China. In responding to the “deficiency reasoning”, this research shows how education policy studies in China demonstrate and justify “differentiation” between “City and Rural” areas as reasonable, given the Chinese socioeconomic situation. This research aims to show, firstly, how comparison is both possible and impossible. Secondly, it reveals how each approach to working with “disadvantaged children” reflects two different systems of reasoning about the concept of “Self-Other.”
Drawing on Thomas Popkewitz’s theorization of “Indigenous Foreigner” and “Traveling Libraries”(Popkewitz, 2019), this research shows how the model of “differentiation” in Project Head Start has traveled to the education policy of China to work with localized “disadvantaged children”. This research uses discourse analysis (Foucault, 2013) to analyze Project Head Start Performance Standards(1998; 2016; 1985; 1975) and China’s policy on rural education, especially three documents, which are Decision on several issues concerning the universalization of primary education (1980), Opinions on further strengthening the consolidation and improvement of “two basics” work in rural areas(2004), and National development plan for children in poverty-stricken areas 2014–2020 (2014).
This study challenges the taken-for-granted neutrality of “differentiation” by showing it as a discursive and political process rather than a purely pedagogical response to need. In the U.S., “disadvantage” becomes tied to the fabrication of an “otherness” that reinforces cultural hierarchies, while in China, it is justified through the socioeconomic and geographic divide between rural and urban populations. This comparative lens expands theories of Self–Other relations in education, showing how educational equity is entangled with national narratives of development and modernization.

Authors

• zhaohai zhou

• Xue Yin, University of Wisconsin Madison