GoverningSuzhiand Curriculum Reform in Rural Ethnic China: Viewpoints From the Miao and Dong Communities in Qiandongnan

Abstract

This article examines the uptake of suzhi-roughly glossed as "quality"-in China's recent curriculum reform called suzhi jiaoyu (Education for Quality) in the rural ethnic context of Qiandongnan. It engages with three layers of analysis. First is a brief etymological overview of suzhi to map out its cultural politics in contemporary China. Agamben's theorization of People/people is invoked to elucidate how the keyword embeds the differentiation of bodies and the fabrication of the "others" through a civilizing mission. Second, the article surveys the genealogy of suzhi ideas-practices as the historical project of making the ideal personhood. It examines how suzhi's entanglement in Chinese historiography constitutes the moving target for the formation of educational subjects. Third, the article draws from my ethnographic research in southwest China to investigate suzhi's enactment in compulsory schooling and current curriculum reform. It provides nuanced empirical accounts to illuminate how suzhi/quality is understood, contested, and reappropriated in everyday pedagogical practices; how the bifurcated front-and backstage maneuvering in two village schools trouble the salvationary overtone of the suzhi-oriented curriculum reform. The lens of performativity is harnessed to move beyond the "loose coupling" theory and suggest undecidable interstices in the production of pedagogical subjectivity. Furthermore, this section explores how suzhi jiaoyu sits in a jarring relationship with indigenous cosmology to produce epistemic dissonance and disenchantment towards schooling. The article concludes with a call for provincializing the "universal" notion of quality and for a productive aporia in thinking about the limit-points of schooling.The national strength and stamina of economic development more and more depend on the suzhi of the laborers. -Deng, XiaopingEducation is fundamental to the comprehensive formation of national strength, increasingly measured by suzhi of workers and the development of talented human bs_bs_banner

Educational discipline, ritual governing, and Chinese exemplary society: Why China’s curriculum reform remains a difficult task

“…In the bestselling book Education for Quality in the US ( ), author Huang Quanyu contrasts the ''outdated'' Chinese education and its emphasis on respect for authority with the American pedagogies that allow children to develop individuality, confidence and creativity (Woronov, 2007). Furthermore, rituals held as the a priori condition for Confucian knowing are criticized as prescriptive, authoritarian and contradictory to the constructivist ideal of learning through student-centered experience (Dello-Iacovo, 2009;Wu, 2012).…”

“…The teacher is like a conductor who stands in front of the classroom, explains, monitors, and summarizes activities, and engages the students to mimic her/him and the book in an orderly manner. Even though criticized in the recent curriculum reform that orients towards constructivism (Wu, 2012), this ritual still rings true in many Chinese classrooms today. Historically, such teacher-student relation is not conceived as authoritarian, however, but seen in an affective light where filiality and mutual caring is exercised and where proper roles of each party are reinforced.…”

“…In particular, the suzhi curriculum reform is primarily concerned with the shift from teacher-centered to studentcentered, authoritarian to participatory pedagogical modes (Wu, 2012). Curriculum reform advocates question the non-democratic principle of learning through imitating models (whether they are one's teachers or cultural icons) and argue for learner autonomy, selfdiscovery, and student-based instruction to cultivate well-rounded talents.…”

“…The concept of suzhi is roughly translated as human quality that calibrates one's physical, social, cultural, intellectual, and moral values and capacities (Wu, 2012;Woronov, 2009). A general consensus among the Chinese is that ''such a thing as suzhi exists, that its level is too low in the Chinese population, that the collective suzhi of individuals produces the suzhi of the nation as a whole, and that raising the suzhi of children is a particularly important step'' (Woronov, 2009: 568).…”

Empire at the margins: Compulsory mobility, hierarchical imaginary, and education in China's ethnic borderland

“…According to Jinting Wu (2012a: 626), in China, '[e]ducation becomes a "solution" of underdevelopment, especially of the peripheral regions', because it is believed that by improving the suzhi or 'quality' (Wu, 2012b;Woronov, 2008;Fong, 2007) of its population through education, not only would the country's economic competitiveness increase, the many social problems believed to stem from people's lack of education would also be eradicated. Thus, as China refocused its energies on economic development since the 1980s, a number of laws and policies have been instituted in order to raise the educational levels of the nation as a whole.…”