"Half The Sky" In Rural Education

The Citizen-managed teachers (teachers in rural citizen-managed or state-managed schools who do not receive the normal remuneration from the government) are a special community in the New Chinese Educational history of the20th century---they are farmers who teach in the classroom, but teachers work in the fields. Although they were payed very low and living a poor life, for decades they stick to their positions, which made an indelible contribution to the development of elementary education in rural China. As an important part of Citizen-managed teachers, female Citizen-managed teachers bear a heavier burden of work and life under difficult conditions compared with male Citizen-managed teachers. The contradiction of multiple identities is particularly prominent for female Citizen-managed teachers. As wives and mothers, women bear more and heavier family responsibilities in family, which undoubtedly makes female Citizen-managed teachers taste more ups and downs in their career than the male ones.By utilizing oral history and literature materials, this research takes seven ordinary Citizen-managed teachers’professional careers and individual life as a clue explore and record their private experiences, feelings, and voices in the history. By analyzing data in female’s perspective, this study seeks to investigate the female Citizen-managed teachers’decent lives as teachers and highlight the existence and value of their individual lives from the standpoint of women.This paper altogether has four parts:In this paper, the first part is to define the main concept, followed by the importance and feasibility of the study based on the commentary of the existing literature, and focus on the introduction of seven Citizen-managed teachers’cases.By using literature research and oral history, the second part of the paper briefly introduces the development history of Citizen-managed teachers in the20th century, with the clue of the policy that facilitated the generation and development of Citizen-managed teachers.The third part of the paper focuses on each female Citizen-managed teacher’s individual oral information. Interspersed with the corresponding policies and regulations on Citizen-managed teachers, this part sketched out a complete career development picture of female Citizen-managed teacher with the clue of the time of their career. Through Citizen-managed teachers’individual language, the third chapter begins to show a different experience of female Citizen-managed teachers and male ones. Then the third chapter emphatically describes how the female Citizen-managed teachers to make difficult trade-offs and tangled choices under the multiple roles and contradictions. Lastly the third chapter explores why the Citizen-managed teachers had to face different situations in the national policy of solving the problem of Citizen-managed teachers.The fourth part is the last part of the thesis. On the basis of concluding characteristics and fully affirming the historical contribution of Citizen-managed teachers, this part emphasizes their role of female Citizen-managed teachers as an important and special part of Citizen-managed teachers---they propped up "half the sky" of20th century rural elementary education with their skinny hands.