Chinese civic education being globalised

The world has become increasingly interdependent with the ongoing trend of globalization. Preparation for citizenship obviously needs to extend beyond students' national boundary, such as understanding the impact of citizenship behaviours in one region upon the other parts of the world, and the promotion of peace and justice across nations.

Civic education has regained momentum over the past one to two decades when more and more governments in various jurisdictions are awakened by a greater need for allegiance, responsible behaviours, and participation from their citizens.

Asian Education and Development Studies, 2015

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to analyse the major development of global citizenship education (GCE) as part of Hong Kong’s secondary school curriculum guidelines, which reveals how it has developed from, first, asking students to understand their responsibilities as citizens to now challenging injustice and inequality in the world. Hong Kong’s curriculum guidelines started to teach GCE as a result of the last civic education guideline issued just before the return of sovereignty to China in 1997. Through documentary analysis, this paper examines how GCE has developed against the backdrop of globalization in Hong Kong’s various secondary school curriculum guidelines.Design/methodology/approach– This study used documentary analysis to examine the developments in the teaching of GCE via Hong Kong’s official secondary school curriculum guidelines. It has studied the aims, knowledge and concepts that are related to GCE by coding the GCE literature and categorizing the findings f...

2018

This paper reviews the developments and challenges of civic education in Hong Kong SAR, China, from 1997 to 2017. Civic education started to introduce rights and responsibilities in the mid-1980s, when the British colonial era entered a transition period. Just before the resumption of Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, nationalistic calls were made for civic education to prepare Hong Kong students to participate in national life after 1997 and to introduce them to rights awareness and democratic ideals to involve them in a democratic return to China. However, entering the 2000s, the need for a holistic educational reform surfaced with new imperatives, such as enhancing students’ ability to use information technology and to read to learn, and moral and civic education was considered a key learning task. Civic education themes, such as national identity and global citizenship, emerged in this educational reform era in the early 2000s, against a background of a series of educa...

Handbook of Research on Education for Participative Citizenship and Global Prosperity, 2018

This chapter aims to analyze the "Chinese way" of citizenship education as a meeting place between the historical lessons of Confucianism, Marxist-Leninist socialist ideology, and newer concepts of global citizenship. Furthermore, this project seeks to understand how the model of education for "global" citizenship fits within the established system of ideological and moral education. To this end, research was carried out at three different levels. Firstly, a review of the most recent and "global" literature on education for citizenship was conducted. Secondly, public government documents were studied and compared, in particular, those from the Ministry of Education and the Association for Higher Education, which is supervised by the Chinese communist party and its General Secretary, President Xi Jinping. Thirdly, surveys were conducted to gauge the degree of involvement of students in their own citizenship education at high school and university level. Finally, a field study was conducted at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangdong province (Zhuhai campus).

2013

In the case of China, political education has been viewed as fundamental to the socialisation of young people into the core doctrines of the People's Republic since its foundation. Yet it must now address a generation of young people experiencing capitalist individualism, alongside paternalistic collectivism. In Citizenship Education in China: Preparing Citizens for the "Chinese Century", Kerry Kennedy brings together mainland Chinese scholars who do not normally publish in English with those from Hong Kong and the West to provide a compendious overview of the state of the field. The volume begins with two contrasting entries. Fairbrother presents a story of remarkable continuity in the Chinese state's concern with the people's moral education. Good governance in China has meant stability and social order, and this is maintained by a paternalistic state. Imperial Confucianism established an ideological orthodoxy that ever since has seen the Chinese state intervene to instil in people the values and legitimacy of a system of political-cultural paternalistic governance and the system of duties, obligations, and mores that this lays down. This 'rule by morality' continues to be seen in state directives on strengthening and improving 'political, ideological, moral, patriotic, and legal education' (p.25). Conversely, Xu argues that what has come to be understood as civic education was a response to the threat from the West in the early modern period, and the desire to forge a national character that could resist Western domination. In effect, it was part of a process of modernisation and nation-building that meant incorporating Western concepts of 'the people', 'the nation' and 'the citizen'. Modern state sponsored civic education particularly developed during the May 4 th Movement and the rise of a forthright and distinctive Chinese nationalism. For Xu, the modern period has meant a transformation from subjects to citizens, yet drawing on national cultural traditions to foster a distinctive Chinese civic personality (p. 39). Qin outlines a comprehensive programme for civic education reform in China drawing on tradition, ideological education and the practices of other countries. This is a conservative agenda focused on 'developing civic qualities, and shaping modern citizens who have virtues and are aware of their responsibilities and obligations' (p.51). Its central tenets are national socialist unity, civilised behaviour, Chinese culture and servicing society. Nevertheless Qin rejects 'traditional force-feeding pedagogy' in favour of more heuristic approaches that can connect with pupils. This seems particularly pertinent considering that by the time they are in college and universities, according to Jiang and Xu, students have disengaged from political and ideological education. While Qin wishes to distinguish civic education from political and ideological education, Jiang and Xu argue that these differences are meaningless as the curriculum has been dominated by the latter. Their aim is to recover the independence of moral education 'with a focus on practice and connecting to the daily

Handbook of Research on Education for Participative Citizenship and Global Prosperity, 2019

This chapter aims to analyze the “Chinese way” of citizenship education as a meeting place between the historical lessons of Confucianism, Marxist-Leninist socialist ideology, and newer concepts of global citizenship. Furthermore, this project seeks to understand how the model of education for “global” citizenship fits within the established system of ideological and moral education. To this end, research was carried out at three different levels. Firstly, a review of the most recent and “global” literature on education for citizenship was conducted. Secondly, public government documents were studied and compared, in particular, those from the Ministry of Education and the Association for Higher Education, which is supervised by the Chinese communist party and its General Secretary, President Xi Jinping. Thirdly, surveys were conducted to gauge the degree of involvement of students in their own citizenship education at high school and university level. Finally, a field study was con...

Taiwan journal of democracy, 2015

This essay addresses a research vacuum in comparative political studies by comparing the evolution and current status of citizenship education in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Each of the three Chinese-speaking societies represents a different stage of development and democratization in global politics. What do middle-school students socialized in these societies think about democracy, citizenship, and minority rights in the early part of the twenty-first century? What elements separate and unite them? After providing an overview of the major shifts in the paradigms of contemporary citizenship education in the respective societies, the essay employs both primary and secondary survey data associated with a leading survey on international civic and citizenship education to provide empirical answers to the research questions.

Asian Education and Development Studies , 2016

Purpose – Hong Kong is a case that demonstrates the distinctively multi-dimensional nature of citizenship within and in relation to a given nation. The purposes of this paper are to: first, discuss Hong Kongers’ unique identity and the influence of political, historical and economic factors on them in order to show the value of challenging the “national citizenship” approach as a dominant discourse in the intended curriculum of Hong Kong citizenship education; second, analyze the efforts of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to foster a stronger sense of Chinese national identity in Hong Kong students; and third, evaluate the appropriateness of this nationalistic approach by examining its compatibility with and coherence to in relation to the implemented and attained curriculum. Design/methodology/approach – This study analyzes existing scholarly discussions on the PRC’s emphasis on Chinese national identity in citizenship education and negative perceptions held by teachers and students regarding the approach and presentation of their actual teaching and learning practices for citizenship education with empirical data. Findings – This paper illuminates the mismatch found between the intended curriculum and the implemented and attained curriculum in terms of the viewpoints of good citizens. Originality/value – The notion of “cultural citizenship” is suggested as an alternative approach to developing the curriculum of Hong Kong citizenship education. This paper will be of interest to those curriculum scholars, educational authorities and teachers who are interested in developing and implementing the curriculum of citizenship education.