Studying The Contradiction Between National And Municipal Educational Policy Through The Lens Of Socialism With Chinese Characteristics: Shanghai Experimental School

This paper reviews and analyzes Chinese Communist Party political theory in an attempt to explain a contradiction between national educational policy and municipal level practice as revealed by a case study on the Shanghai Experimental School,a primary and secondary public school in Shanghai.More specifically,this paper reviews Socialism with Chinese characteristics as established by Mao Zedong and expanded upon by Deng Xiaoping,Jiang Zemin,and Hu Jintao to better understand the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission allowing the Shanghai Experimental School to engage in school choice practices while national policy forbids it.Currently in China,educational equality is the guiding national principle of educational administration.The principle of educational justice can be cited as a priority in the communique of the 6th conference of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 2006,and was further stressed as a guiding principle in educational management by Secretary Hu Jintao's report to the subsequent 17th Congress of the CPC(Zhang 2011).Emphasizing the principle of justice in education was a track to the left after two generations of Chinese Communist Party leaders encouraged decentralization and the liberalization of market forces,starting with Deng Xiaoping's reforms in 1979 and continuing further with Jiang Zemin's administration.Mao Zedong might have categorized Hu Jintao's national policy move to the left as a corrective measure addressing the principal aspect of the contradiction between equality and choice in education,which had become sharpened by anarchic market forces.The scope of the paper,due to events still unfolding,does not cover the administration of Xi Jinping.However as mentioned,the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Education allows the Shanghai Experimental School to legally exist in contradiction to national policy,and this paper attempts to make sense of this contradiction primarily by reviewing political theory of the Chinese Communist Party,otherwise known as Socialism with Chinese characteristics.The paper also looks at the dual leadership roles dialectically shared between central and local government,as defined by the constitution of the People's Republic of China and guided by Party theory and national policy.The hypothesis I will reach in the end is that reviewing Party theory informs a China-centric understanding of contradiction,which in turn allows a positive interpretation of the relationship between national and local government as rational,non-antagonistic,harmonious and intentional.As it applies to education,juxtaposing Party theory to practice on both the national and local level provides a clearer picture of the People's Republic of China's development model.In conducting a historical analysis of Party theory,the paper also tangentially concludes that in theory the Party has not,as many argue,left the socialist road.It is also the opinion of the author that the dialectical or 'dual leadership' relation between the central and local government maximizes the opportunity for leveraging innovations discovered through praxis.And finally,the author sees great potential in the development model for education as exemplified by the Shanghai municipal government.