A Study On Governmemt Function In Community Education And Its Real-Life Pattern

In the course of a period of over two decades, community education in China has achieved some developments. Nevertheless, many problems still exist as regards government's involvement in community education. The absence of a clear defining of government functions, the imperfect administration systems that call for further rectifications and improvements, the irregular and imbalanced distribution of promotional efforts and initiatives, all these issues point to a fact that there is still a long way to go before the objective of creating a learning society can be realized. In this paper, the author points out the existing problems after conducting an analysis on the status quo of the government's role in community education administration, then taking developed countries and regions'experience in community education promotion as reference, the author puts forward the views on the positioning of government function in community education and real-life pattern of such functions, so as to offer some references for public administration decision-makers.After the preface, the paper comprises of four chapters:In the first chapter, the author conducts an analysis on the relations between community education and government administration. Community education is a sort of educational activities that is supported by educational resources within a certain geographical area, conducted for the purposes of enhancing the comprehensive cultural competence and life quality of the whole body of community members, and serves the social-economic development of the community. Community education has four characteristics, i.e. it is conducive to the establishment and development of communities; it involves all members of the communities, it lasts for the entire residence period of community residents and it is comprehensive in terms of its contents; it belongs to the category of unofficial education; it is a major channel in realizing the objective of learning communities and life-long education and the establishment of a learning society. Started in mid 1980s, community education in China experienced mainly three phases of development, i.e. emergence, exploration and boom. What is more, the author in this chapter summarizes the five major functions of community education and argues for the importance of government administration of community education, especially in terms of its impact on five aspects in establishing a harmonious society, which further demonstrates the necessity of government administration of community education.Chapter two is a main part of the paper, in which the author analyzes the current status of government administration of community education and the problems that exist. The author points out that the government has five functions in community education, i.e. the orientation-setting function, the legislative function, the publicizing function, the coordinating function and the guarantee function. The author holds that government administration of community education is mainly confronted with four key issues at present: 1. the current administration systems call for improvement. This issue is mainly reflected in the absence of diversified administration systems, the irregularity and imbalance of developments, the loosening of administration systems and the lack of sustainable development potential. 2. Government administration of community education lacks legislative support not only in that a basic statute is absent, but also the existing rules and regulations lack implementation force; 3. Government administration of community education lacks accommodating policies and measures. This issue is mainly reflected in the lack of encouraging policies, the low profile of in media, the inadequacy of human resources that call for reinforcing and the inadequacy of policies as regards resource integration. 4. Explorations shall be made in social funded operations.In the third chapter, the author makes a comparison between the U.S., Japan and Taiwan in terms of government administration of community education between and comes to three main conclusions: 1. Community education is prevalently highlighted by governments of economically developed countries and regions; 2. Prosperous development of community education is dependent on government's promotion of community education within the legal framework; 3. Community education shall be carried out not only according to the specific situations of the state but also be above the actual social-economic development level of the state.Chapter four is also a main part of the paper, in which the author puts forward his views on the problems on the real-life pattern of government functions in community education and the basic approaches in solving the existing problems. The author holds that government shall make efforts in four aspects to improve and strengthen the promotion of community education in the new era: 1. phase in innovative community education systems and mechanisms according to the specific situations of different places; 2. carry out legislative efforts and establish a legal system for community education; 3. draw up measures and policies to improve the policy environment of community education; 4. explore diversified social investment operations, set up a government procurement system.