8. Childhood, Formal Education, and Ideology in China, Then and Now

Recovering Childhood: Play, Pedagogy, and the Rise of Psychological Knowledge in Contemporary Urban China

“…A growing number of historical studies indicate that a notion of childhood as a stage of life distinguishable from adulthood had existed in China prior to the modern era (see Bai, 2005b;Hsiung, 2005;Kinney, 1995Kinney, , 2004Nylan, 2003;Wicks and Avril, 2002). A majority of scholars are also in agreement, however, that orthodox Confucian perspectives placed little value on the childhood stage itself, frequently discouraged aimless play and unrestrained activity even in the very young, and stressed that education should instill adult standards in children as early as possible, ideally from the age of seven or eight sui (six or seven years old by Western reckoning) (Bai, 2005a: 10;Dardess, 1991: 79;Hsiung, 2005: 119;Kinney, 1995: 12;Saari, 1990: 45;Wicks and Avril, 2002: 4).…”

“…It was only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that a modern conceptualization of childhood as a series of "normalized" developmental stages, and of children as a "unique type of persons" who require "playful, spontaneous" activities to maintain their "healthy growth," was first introduced to China from the West (see Anagnost, 1997;Fernsebner, 2003;Jones, 2002;Leung, 1995;Nylan, 2003). At a time of major national crisis and semicolonial occupation, leading May Fourth intellectuals regarded the proper rearing and development of China's young as a necessary condition for nation-building and modernization (Jones, 2002: 700;Farquhar, 1999: 30, 61;Pease, 1995: 287).…”

Parental Ethno theories of two groups of Chinese immigrants: a perspective from migration

“…Western notions of childhood, such as child-centeredness and increasing parental investment, have had an impact on parental ideology in contemporary China, although it would be one-sided to describe this as a result of Westernization (Stearns, 2006(Stearns, , 2005. For example, since the late 1970s, the one-child policy has generated ideologies of childcenteredness and increasing parental investment strategies in its own right (Nylan, 2003). Especially in urban centres, children from single-child families have become the centre of the family and have been characterized as 'little emperors (or princesses)', who can have anything in the household and claim family members' attention anytime they want (Feng, 2000).…”