The Concept Of Educational Equality In China(1840-2007)

Educational equality has been the main melody of the education reform all over the world since 1990s. Not only the developed countries but also the developing countries emphasize educational equality and make it the baisic principle of their eduction reforms. The Tenth Five Year Plan National Education, issued by Chinese government in 2001, clearly put forward insisting the priciples of equality and justice and paying more attention to the education of the disadvantaged people. Overall, educational equality and justice have been the key words of China's education reform.If the education reform, which aims at realizing the equality and justice of the education, can be implemented successfully and achieve the predicted results is not only affected by the objective socio-economical condition but also relevant to people's understanding about the educational equality.Educational equality, the core value of the modern educaiton, was firstly presented in accordance with the appearance of the modern education and its value was of more and more significance with the development of the modern education. Modern education and its equalty and justice conception was originally generated from the West, and its conceptions such as focusing on human and people's right as core, law as the guarantee, public education system as the base, have been mature in the enlightment campain of the 18^th centuty. After the First World War, the education right transferred from negative rights to positive rights which need the guarantee of the country. The equality of educational opportunity changed from the equal entrance opportunity in primary education to equality of education entrance opportunity in the secndary education. After the World War II, western equality conceptions made a new progress under the stimulation of democratization tide and the motivation of the international organization such as the UN. The equal educaiton process was dressed during the 50's to 60's of the 20^th century. From the late 60's, people's attention was converted to equal education results, the output of the education process. And people also think that compensation should be provided to the disadvantaged group if we want to realize the equal education.In the second half of the 19^th century, China was forced by the western invader to start its journey of modernization. Meanwhile, modern education system and the concept of educational equality, rooted on the western big production and industrialization, was brought into China. As a later-generated and outside-source modern country, China's edcuational equality conception was slowly melt into the world under the conflicts between Chinese and Western culture. Through analysing the development course of educaitonal equality conception in China, this paper tries to reveal that what western elements was absorbed by Chinese people, what kinds of reform was happened and why those decisions was chosen.This research was developed following two lines. In the vertical line, there are five phrases: the period from the Late Qing Dynasty and the Early Republic of China, the period during the 4^th May campaign, the time of 30's and 40's of 20^th century, the period after 1949, the phrase after China's reform and openning up to the world; For the lateral line, this rsearch was put under the affection of the West and analyzes the concept of each phrase and reveal its foundamental features.Through studing and annotating the masterpieces of the thinkers and educationists in recent one hundred years and the education regulations, education systems and statistic data in different periods, the auther reaches conslusions as below:The later 19^th century to 4^th May compaign, the main concept is the equality of education right; equality of education opportunity is popular from 20's in 20^th century to 90's; after late 90's, the equality of education process and results was discussed; as entering into 21th century, the equality of process and equality of results are both the common concept. Although, in the 4^th May the equality of education right was common thought of the elite intellects, it still hadn't been the value support for the later education popularization and the promotion of equality of education opportunity. The education popularization in recent one hundred years dominately was based on elements such as the exist of the country, intests of the social classes and economy development and so on, but it never considered the equality of education opportunity from the angle of rights and human. After the late 90's of 20^th century, people regularly realized that education is the basic human right which needs the guarantee from the government, the end of the education is right the human and the realization of equal education opportunity needs the state-run education and completely free education.The author holds the view that there are many factors which affects the Chinese educational equality concept. They are the relationship with the West, the extent of the acknowledge of the Chinese people about the western culture, China's society conditon, the cultural tradition and outlook of value and the difference of social system and ideology.Refering to the realization of equality of educational opportunity, the thinkers argues that the education popularization needs depending on the mass, adopting non-formal, non-standard, even non-systematized forms and finally provides the mass the education which is really good for people's life, which affected by some elements such as the ancient administration and pragmatism, primary education operated by the folk power and the flexible education operation tradition.