Rural education in China, 1957-1973: the impact of an interpretation of Marxist educational philosophy on a rural education system

Abstract

The provision of education for rural populations is a world-wide problem, but in particular a problem of the developing countries Terms such as "under-developed countries", "developing countries", "pre-developed countries" or "emergent countries", are, in fact, different terms used to denote the group of countries outside industrialized nations. According to the United Nations classification, countries in this category are those in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, tropical South America, Asia (other than Japan and Asiatic U.S.S.R.), and the Pacific Islands. (See: Adam Curle, The Role of Education in Developing Societtes, p.4.) The term, "developing countries", in this study is restricted to indicating the level of industrialization of the country, without any inference to the social, cultural or political situation of the country concerned, in order to avoid the difficulties involved in defining "development" when all these factors are taken into account. See discussion on definitions of "development" in Dudley Seers, The Meaning of Development; Gunnar Myrdal, Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions, pp.3-10; Keith Buchanan, The Southeast Asian World, pp.21-24. because these countries usually have an agricultural economy, with little industry, a vast, under-developed rural area and often only one or two over-populated commercial cities. The main problems facing the developing countries in the provision of a system of rural education are:- 1 Education has to be brought to a large, illiterate or little-educated population in the rural sector. In comparison to the cities, rural people usually receive less education, and in the developing countries, the disparity in education between rural and urban population is usually much greater than in the industrialized nations. A UNESCO report states that "80% of the Asian population which lives in rural areas has been educationally deprived in relation to the urban population, however rapidly education may have been advancing in general". UNESCO Regional Office for Education in Asia, Bulletin, Vol. V, No. 1, September, 1970, p.1