| The issue of young girls'education has been the focus in China since 1980s, and has become the priority one in the 8th 5-year and the 15th 5-year national educational science project and international organizations. During these periods a series of special researches have been carried on, such as the young girls'education research program approved by the Planned Project office in Ministry of Education, the young girls'education research program patronized by the international organizations, and subsidized programs for young girls. In recent years, with the government's increasing investment in elementary education and the implementation of free and compulsory education in China, the problem of young girls'education has been alleviated, and the interest in this research has also declined. In fact, in the poor areas in west China there are still students dropping out of schools every year, and to a certain extent, the education status of the young girls differs from the boys, especially when there are chances of going to middle school and senior middle school.The author has chosen as case studies some research programs, which represent different types of special researches in the education of young girls. By interviewing the project consultants, project manager, project participants (staff from Education Science Research Institute in Gansu province, staff from the Department of Education in the counties, the principals and teachers from Experimental Schools), the author offers a general idea about the application, implementation, effectiveness, influence, and evaluation of the young girls'education research program. Together with a literature review of the studies in young girls'education in 13 years from 1994 to 2006, the author gives a comprehensive consideration of the findings, characteristics and direction of the related researches, expecting that the conclusions of research in young girls'education can provide a new vision for the education and research workers to reflect on the past 20 years of China's course of development of education researches.By a careful examination of the course of the past 20-year young girls'education researches, we find that the special researches in young girls'education tend to be desolate, but this does not mean that the young girls'education problems have been solved, instead, the problems in a deeper level can not be thoroughly settled. The young girls'education researches have been expanded in the form of projects and experiments, and to a great extent, they depend on the project funds either from government or organizations. The funds, together with the attention and support from the leadership, have resulted in a rapid development of young girls'education in individual areas and projects pilot sites. But the fatal weakness of this kind of"foreign aid"mode is that it works only in a small area, and its good development situation is usually unsustainable. Once the project is finished, and the researchers leave, no one would pay more attention to the real situation in the projects pilot sites. When the research findings are shelved, the project manager will focus on another research. The excessive dependence on the project manager has shown that we are in need of research teams with division of collaboration and understanding. Furthermore, the project measures designed according to the purpose of the studies, which only aims at young girls'enrollment rate, can not have an impact on the young girls'inner world. The young girls can not feel from the bottom of their hearts that it is necessary and a happy thing to go to school, thus the young girls'education would encounter the problems of"dropping out of school easily, while admission is difficult".Even the implementation of the 9-year free and compulsory education can not offer solutions to the problems in the deeper level about the current young girls'education. For example, the reform of the education system in our country is a slow and hard one, and the elementary education in the rural areas can not attract those countryside children who see no hope of being admitted to the university, in addition, the courses in school only describe a strange world, which the countryside children can not"learn to make use of"; in the poor families and those mobile families, when the parents need help, the young girls are often chosen as supplementary labor; the Muslim families do not permit the older girls to receive education together with boys in the same school. When there are not enough girls schools and women teachers, many Muslim families would let the young girl's students in the senior grades of primary school interrupt their studies. All these problems will exist for a long time, but the education researchers are in the position of"weak solution". In the past 20 years, many researches in our country have been carried on in the form of projects, and the advantage is that they can focus on the problems needed to be addressed urgently in both theory and practice, and concentrate manpower and material resources in a short period of time so as to solve the problems. But there are also many disadvantages: the research can not go deep and further; the excessive dependence on the project manager, and there are no stable research teams; there is little communication and discussions between the relevant organizations, which has resulted in the waste of research resources; the hot issues in education are chased and the researches are cyclical; the education theoretical research achievements come apart with the reality, but the massive involvement of western education theories can not help, and finally they are given up because they can not be used to explain and solve the practical education problems in our country.The education research calls for those researchers who have a sense of social responsibility, are not afraid of hardship, and not left out in the cold, away from impetuous and exaggeration. They can devote themselves to education, pursuing truth in education, and promote social development.
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