Globalization, Changing Demographics, and Educational Challenges in East Asia (Research in Sociology of Education)

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RESEARCH IN SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION Series Editor: Emily Hannum Recent Volumes Volume 10:

Research in Sociology of Education and Socialization – Edited by Aaron M. Pallas

Volume 11:

Research in Sociology of Education and Socialization – Edited by Aaron M. Pallas Research in Sociology of Education and Socialization – Edited by Aaron M. Pallas Schooling and School Capital in Diverse Communities – Edited by Bruce Fuller and Emily Hannum

Volume 12: Volume 13:

Volume 14:

Volume 15:

Volume 16:

Inequality across Societies: Families, Schools and Persisting Stratification – Edited by David Baker, Bruce Fuller, Emily Hannum and Regina Werum Children’s Lives and Schooling across Societies – Edited by Bruce Fuller and Emily Hannum Strong States, Weak Schools: The Benefits and Dilemmas of Centralized Accountability – Edited by Bruce Fuller, Melissa K. Henne and Emily Hannum

RESEARCH IN SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION VOLUME 17

GLOBALIZATION, CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS, AND EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGES IN EAST ASIA EDITED BY

EMILY HANNUM University of Pennsylvania, USA

HYUNJOON PARK University of Pennsylvania, USA

YUKO GOTO BUTLER University of Pennsylvania, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

Emerald Group Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2010 Copyright r 2010 Emerald Group Publishing Limited Reprints and permission service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the text, illustrations or advertisements. The opinions expressed in these chapters are not necessarily those of the Editor or the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-84950-976-3 ISSN: 1479-3539 (Series)

Awarded in recognition of Emerald’s production department’s adherence to quality systems and processes when preparing scholarly journals for print

CONTENTS LIST OF CONT RI BUTORS ED ITORS ' I TRODUCTION: EMERG ING I SSUES FOR EDUCATIONA L RESEARC H IN EAST AS I A Emily Hal1lllllll . f/yUlljOOIl Park alld Yllk o GOIO Blliler

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PA RT I: GLOBALI Z AT ION AN D ED UCAT I ONAL RESPONSE IN JA PAN THE TW ISTED. UN I NTENDED IM PA CTS OF G LO BA LI ZATIO 0 JAPANESE ED UCATIO Takehiko Kariy l/ (II/(/ JerelllY Rapp/e)'e

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ED UCATIO AL REFORM , A CADEM IC I TENS ITY, AND EDUCA TIONA L OPPORTUNITY IN JAPAN Christopher Bjork

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PA RT II: CU RRI CU L A R INNOV ATION AN D T H E EVOLUT IO N O F INEQ A LiTY IN CHINA STATE· SPONSORED K NOWLEDGE FOR T H E GLOBAL AGE : GLOBAL AND T RAD IT IONAL VALUES IN T H E CH INESE LA GUAGE ARTS CURRI CULUM Tallj a Canlu" Sargelll alld Xi(J() Yang CHA GES IN ED UCATIONA L INEQU ALITY IN CH I NA. 1990 200 5: EVIDENCE FROM TH E POPU LA T IO CENSUS DATA X;ClOglllIg IVII alld 2/1110/1; Zhang v

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,;

CONTENTS

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PART Ill : EDUCATIONAL DlS PARITlES AN D L TI CULT URA L Eo veA TlON PO LICY IN KO REA

EDUCATI ONAL I NEQUA LITY I N SOUTH KORE A: T HE WIDEN ING SOCIOECONOM IC GAP IN STU DENT ACHI EVEMENT Soo-fong Byull lind KYlIllg-kellll Kim

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POLI CY NOTE: D I VE RSI FI CATIO N OF T H E STUDENT POPULATI ON AND M U LTICU LTU RAL EDUCATI ONAL POLIC I ES IN KOREA YOlIlIg(/a/ Clio

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PA RT I V: M IG RATI ON AND ED UCATI ON IN T H E CITY-8TATfS 0 1-" EAST ASI A T H E EDUCAT IONA L PROGRESS OF MA IN LA ND C HI NESE IMM IGRANT ST UD ENTS IN HO NG KONG Suet-ling POllg and Willg Kwong Tsallg

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POSTSECONDARY EDUCAT IONAL EXPANS ION AND SOCIAL INT EGRATION IN HONG KONG David Post

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' DOW NED ' AND STUC K IN SINGA POR E: LOWER/ MIDDLE C LA SS SOUT H KOREA WILD GEESE (KIROGl) C HILDREN IN SINGAPO RE Jee/l1111 Kim

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Christopher Bjork

Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA

Yuko Goto Butler

Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA

Soo-yong Byun

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Youngdal Cho

Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Emily Hannum

Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA

Takehiko Kariya

University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Jeehun Kim

Sogang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Kyung-keun Kim

Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Hyunjoon Park

Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA

Suet-ling Pong

The Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA

David Post

The Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA

Jeremy Rappleye

University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Tanja Carmel Sargent

Rutgers Graduate School of Education, NJ, USA

Wing Kwong Tsang

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, PRC vii

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Xiaogang Wu

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, PRC

Xiao Yang

Shanxi Teachers University, Shanxi, PRC

Zhuoni Zhang

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, PRC

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION: EMERGING ISSUES FOR EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH IN EAST ASIA Emily Hannum, Hyunjoon Park and Yuko Goto Butler BACKGROUND In recent years, scholars, policy makers, and the popular press have hailed East Asian nations for their impressive educational performance. In China, dramatic expansions in education coincided with a period of dramatic growth in the youth population, setting the stage for a period of unprecedented economic growth (Fang & Wang, 2005; Hannum, Behrman, Wang, & Liu, 2008). Educational expansion in Korea during the past few decades has been remarkable, to the point that now Korea has the highest rate of college graduation in the world among young adult cohorts (Park, 2007). Korea and Japan have achieved some of the highest scores and lowest levels of inequality in comparative tests of achievement, although Japan has fallen in the rankings in recent years (OECD, 2008). The citystates of Hong Kong and Singapore commonly perform well in comparative tests, with Singapore’s curriculum for math, in particular, singled out by some scholars and policy makers in the West as a model for emulation Globalization, Changing Demographics, and Educational Challenges in East Asia Research in Sociology of Education, Volume 17, 1–14 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3539/doi:10.1108/S1479-3539(2010)0000017003

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(Ginsburg, Leinwand, Anstrom, & Pollack, 2005). The effectiveness of primary and secondary education in East Asia is also reflected in the competitiveness of these students in global higher educational admissions. For example, in the United States, the most frequent destination for international postsecondary educational migration, China, Korea, and Japan alone account for 29.5% of total international student enrollment (Institute of International Education, 2009). Although intense global scrutiny has focused on sources of achievement in East Asian educational systems, much less popular attention has been paid to the question of how the challenges that confront many educational systems around the world are playing out in East Asia. For various reasons, three related issues – diversity, global competitiveness, and equity – lie at the center of many recent policy debates in East Asia. These issues are commonly experienced across the region, although the forms they take and the specific shapes of policy debate they stimulate are rooted in the particular socio-historical trajectories of each nation. In some cases, these issues are enduring staples of domestic policy discourse, whereas in others, they are newly emerging, in the context of new economic inequalities and increased flows of people, money and information across borders, within and beyond the region. Of course, social scientists and educational researchers, including many of the eminent scholars whose work appears in this volume, have investigated issues of equity, diversity, and global competitiveness in East Asian nations. However, much past research in East Asian education interprets findings through a national lens – as a function of domestic policy, culture, and social realities. With the occasional exception of comparisons of Japan and Korea (e.g., Brinton & Lee, 2001; Park, forthcoming), there has been surprisingly little cross-fertilization among scholars of education working in different East Asian nations, and little research cataloging commonalities and disparities in educational policies and outcomes within East Asia. This situation is unfortunate, as there are important parallels across the region in economic, demographic, and curricular trends, and in the evolving nature of inequality. This volume of Research in Sociology of Education is the first of its kind to adopt a regional perspective on globalization and education. The volume brings together scholars of and from different nations of East Asia, including policy analysts and empirical researchers operating in interpretive and quantitative research traditions. The volume is organized geographically and includes pieces about educational policy and educational inequalities in Japan, China, Korea, and the city-states of Hong Kong and

Editors’ Introduction

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Singapore. Thematically, the volume investigates student diversification and associated policy initiatives, government efforts to promote global competitiveness, and students and families crossing borders. Chapters encompass various methods and approaches, including analyses of policy, field methods, analyses of large-scale survey and census data, and textbook content analysis. Here, we synthesize some of the main themes connecting the chapters.

DIVERSIFICATION OF STUDENT POPULATIONS Certain parallels exist in the economic, social, and demographic shifts shaping the populations coming into East Asian school systems. Rising inequality in recent decades has dramatically diversified the socioeconomic status of the student population in many East Asian countries. As China, once considered highly egalitarian, has opened to the outside world, rising inequality has accompanied unprecedented economic expansion and the emergence of classes of people with both the desire and the capacity to invest like never before in children’s education (Cao, Wang, & Wang, 2009; Fong, 2004). Although Japan has also long been viewed as a relatively egalitarian country, income inequality has worsened since the mid-1980s, to the point that inequality has reached a moderately high level. Unlike the case of China, rising inequality has emerged in the context of economic stagnation (OECD, 2008; Tachibanaki, 2005). Following decades of economic expansion, Korea has also seen sharp increases in economic inequality in recent years, especially after the economic crisis in late 1997 (Lee, 2002). Globalization, economic integration, and rapidly aging ultra-low-fertility populations have created the demand and mechanisms for an infusion of formal and informal labor migrants, across international borders into Korea and Japan (Cho, Kariya, and Rappleye, this volume); across an increasingly porous but still institutionalized urban–rural divide into urban China (e.g., de Brauw & Giles, 2008); and from China into Hong Kong (Pong and Tsang, this volume). Indeed, educational policy discourse in Hong Kong refers explicitly to the need to be able to attract migrants, given the aging structure of the Hong Kong population (Post, this volume). Labor migration has created significant numbers of minority and ethnically mixed families in Korea and Japan and has heightened the visibility of urban– rural disparities in China. Beyond labor migration, educational migration is moving families – mainly mothers and children – across borders, as well, as Jeehun Kim illustrates in this volume in his study of educational migrants to

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Singapore. Although Hong Kong and Singapore have long traditions of migration, Korea and Japan are relatively new hosts to international students in their school systems.

POLICY ADAPTATIONS TO GLOBALIZATION This volume points to two key ways that policy makers across East Asia are adapting to globalization: adapting content and teaching styles to the needs of diversifying student populations and addressing perceived skill requirements of a global information economy. This volume contains examples of policy adaptations to both aspects of globalization.

Adapting to Migration and Diversification of Student Populations In Korea, rapid economic growth and rising inequality, migration, and the increasing diversity of family types present new challenges for Korean schools accustomed to dealing with relatively homogeneous populations (Cho, this volume). In one of the first articles of its kind in English, Cho provides a policy note on Korea in which he outlines the numerous challenges faced by what he calls ‘‘multicultural students’’ – children of international-marriage couples, children of foreign workers, and children who are North Korean defectors (or who are born in South Korea to parents who are North Korean defectors). Such students are entering Korean schools in rising numbers. Summarizing his own empirical work and that by others, much of it in Korean, Cho discusses the home and school issues facing students from these backgrounds and highlights the complexity of developing multicultural policies in a national setting in which cultural and ethnic unity have been an enduring hallmark of national identity. As is the case with migrant and minority students elsewhere in the world, the problems of multicultural students in Korea are as varied as the backgrounds of the students themselves and occur at the intersection of a number of dimensions of identity, including culture and language, but also legal status and poverty. Some migrant children in Korea are, in some sense, ethnically Korean – North Korean defectors or members of the Korean ethnic minority in China. These students face dialect differences but not linguistic barriers, and they often face barriers of poverty. Students from international-marriage families can face linguistic and cultural differences,


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whereas those who are the children of undocumented workers may face enrollment barriers associated with their legal status. Cho points out that nation of origin can also play a role in shaping identity and experience with the school system, as students from poorer nations may face stigma, and students who are phenotypically similar to Koreans may be able to ‘‘pass.’’ In Korea, both the policy makers and the research community are just beginning to think systematically about how to conceptualize a newly diverse student population, and how increasingly complex identities of students interface with the structure of the Korean educational system. The problems of multicultural children are serious. Enrollment rates among children of defectors are much lower than their native-born counterparts. For example, high school enrollment rates among the former group are an amazingly low 10.4%, compared to 91.0% in the general population (Cho, this volume, p. 190). Moreover, Cho reports that many children of undocumented workers simply do not attend school at all, for fear of discovery of their non-legal status. Diversification in Korea has also emerged in terms of economic inequality. Kim and Byun (this volume) note that increasing income inequality, particularly since the economic crisis of 1997, has called attention to the problem of growing educational inequality. Although recent research has been directed mostly at understanding the socioeconomic gap in academic achievement, few studies have empirically examined how this gap has changed over time during the past decade in South Korea. Using nationally representative data for the most recent three cohorts (1999, 2003, and 2007) of eighth grade South Korean students from the Third International Math and Science Survey (TIMSS), this study examines trends in the relationship between socioeconomic background and student achievement and shows that the influence of socioeconomic background on student achievement has increased during the past decade. Kim and Byun attribute the new high levels of inequality to both the widening income gap and the recent educational transformations away from standardization and toward school choice and tracking – reforms linked to the desire for choices and freedom for families. Diversification and inequality are also critical issues in Japan. Since changes were made in Japan’s Immigration Law in 1990, the number of non-Japanese-speaking students in Japanese schools has grown rapidly. In Japan, questions about how to provide equal opportunities and educational supports to linguistic minority students have become a pressing concern. Like the case in Korea, reliable statistics on children of foreign-born

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workers are difficult to come by. Kariya and Rappleye (this volume, p. 26) cite work by Sakuma (2006) estimating that just 51% of foreign-born high school are enrolled, as compared with nearly 97% among non-foreign born, Japanese students (Sakuma, 2006). Kariya and Rappleye also summarize research showing that foreign students are more likely to have lower academic achievement; lower enrollment ratios in senior high schools and universities; and linguistic difficulties in attaining reading fluency for educational tasks. Yet, Kariya and Rappleye point out that in Japan, social inclusion in education has not come to underpin educational policy. They argue that this lack of focus on inclusion is a function of ‘‘imagined’’ aspects of globalization obscuring focus on ‘‘real’’ aspects. In their framework, real aspects of globalization are defined as ‘‘changes that are occurring as the result of the acceleration and intensification of cross-national flows in commodities and people, transformations in the nature and logic of global capital (and its concomitant impacts in domestic labor markets), breakthroughs in communications technology and so on’’ (pp. 21–22). ‘‘Imagined’’ aspects of globalization are defined as ‘‘discursive responses that do not necessarily correlate with concrete (‘real’) domestic change but those that are presentedyas such, perhaps because they are intentionally utilizing the rhetoric of ‘globalization’ to push through reforms they prefer or shift attention away from issues they would wish to ignore’’ (Steiner-Khamsi, 2000), cited by Kariya and Rappleye (this volume, p. 22). In China, much of the diversification of the student population has been economic, although internal migration plays a role. As compulsory education has been made free, and rapid expansions in access have occurred, concerns with inequality have shifted away from a focus on guaranteeing access to basic education, to quality of education received and to costs and supply constraints associated with post-compulsory education. Little research exists about achievement disparities, although parents are highly cognizant of the performance of students and schools on high-stakes tests such as the high school and college entrance examinations. There are now marked disparities in educational expenditures across schools and regions, just as massive increases in income inequality have created huge socioeconomic diversity within the school-aged population (Hannum et al., 2008). Although some retrenchment has occurred in the form of recentralization and tuition remission at the compulsory stages, ability to pay now means choices for families of wealthier children. At the same time, many school systems in China struggle to provide reasonable access to a high-quality experience for the rural poor.

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Wu and Zhang illuminate recent trends in inequality of access and attainment in China, in the context of these changes. They examine trends in school enrollment and transitions to senior high school and college for selected young cohorts since the 1990s, based on analyses of sample data from population censuses in 1990 and 2000 and the mini-census in 2005. They focus on educational inequality based on gender and household registration system (urban or rural residence status or hukou). Results show a substantial increase in educational opportunities over time at all levels. In particular, women have gained relatively more, such that gender inequality has decreased over time, and the gap in college enrollments was even reversed to favor women in 2005. However, rural–urban inequality grew in the 1990s. Educational expansion has mainly benefited females and urban residents. The Wu and Zhang chapter does not explicitly address migration. However, the rising importance of residence status in educational inequality reflects larger urban–rural inequalities that set the stage for labor and educational migration, like the cross-border migration considered elsewhere in this volume. Even within rural areas, fieldwork suggests that relocating for better educational opportunities is a common strategy for rural families (Kong, 2008). More visibly, increasing numbers of rural children are entering urban schools as part of family labor migration (e.g., see Chen & Liang, 2007). Because of China’s household registration system, rural children in urban China have, in the past, lacked the papers to possess full legal access to urban school systems (Chen & Liang, 2007). As policies have adapted to accommodate these students, they remain susceptible to problems of stigma associated with rural and impoverished origins, and to dialect, if not language, differences. Although these migrants and their children do not cross international borders to reach Chinese cities, many of the issues they face have parallels in the experiences of cross-border migrants into Korea and Japan.

Policies for Global Competitiveness In the case of Japan, Kariya and Rappleye argue that the very ‘‘real’’ challenge to the school system of migration has been obscured by a focus on ‘‘imagined’’ challenges, including, prominently, the need for deregulation, flexibility, and promoting creativity. This ‘‘imagined’’ challenge is driving policy debates in Japan and elsewhere in East Asia. Reforms in Japan have also sought to promote an individualized and flexible curriculum (see Kariya and Rappleye, and Bjork, this volume). Moreover, as part of the

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current administration’s decentralization policy, local governments have been granted substantial autonomy in developing their own curricula (Bjork, this volume). This trend, in turn, has created significant diversity in school policies and financing among local governments within Japan. Both Kariya and Rappleye and Bjork focus on a 2002 educational policy in Japan known as ‘‘relaxed education (yutori kyoiku).’’ ‘‘Relaxed education’’ in Japan was introduced to help students to develop new types of academic abilities including ‘‘student initiative, independence, critical thinking, creativity, and the ability to investigate topics of interest to the students’’ (p. 91, note 3), all of which are considered essential qualifications 21st-century economic competitiveness. The policy was also supposed to release the students from pressure for their academic studies and give substantial autonomy to local agencies such as schools and teachers. Both chapters about relaxed education policy in Japan offer critical perspectives about its likely social impact. Using ethnographic methods to explore perceptions among various stakeholders at elementary and junior high schools in a rural area, Bjork uncovers the complexity of policy implementation at the local level. Different educational agents such as teachers, students, and parents had different perceptions of the goals and effectiveness of the policy. Most importantly, the study illustrates powerfully that the policy helped high-achievers with high academic aspirations, whereas lower-achievers were left further behind, contributing to wider gaps in achievement among students. Bjork’s finding of wider achievement gaps is consistent with findings reported by Kariya and Rappleye (this volume) that ‘‘relaxed education’’ increased the number of students who did not study outside of school and that students from disadvantaged families stopped studying at a higher rate than those from advantaged families, resulting in expanding inequality in education. In Kariya and Rappleye’s framework, the ‘‘real’’ effects of globalization in Japan reduced opportunities for disadvantaged youth to become full-time workers through local, relatively low-skilled manufacturing jobs. Yet, the ‘‘imagined’’ response to globalization, namely a ‘‘relaxation’’ of the curriculum and pedagogical approach intended to promote creativity, further reduced these youths’ incentives to work hard, with clearly measurable negative impacts on academic achievement levels. Thus, Kariya and Rappleye (this volume, pp. 51–52) write, ynot only were there fewer outlets and clear pathways for these youth to find full-time, stable employment, but they became even more heavily disadvantaged because they lacked a strong set of basic skills in traditional, core subjects. Therefore, the ‘‘imagined’’ response to globalization at the national policy


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level led to a curricular and pedagogical change that in reality ushered in increased social stratification and inequality in educational achievement. Similar to the 2002 reforms in Japan, major curricular reforms in China occurred in 2001, designed to allow for more local content, more interactivity, and more tailoring to student needs (Sargent, 2009). In part, these changes aim to promote interactive learning styles deemed suited to the needs of a global information economy (see Sargent and Xiao, this volume); they also seek to enhance engagement by adapting more content to local needs and interests. Sargent’s earlier work in Gansu Province indicates that these reforms have had an impact on student experiences and teacher behaviors in the classrooms (Sargent, 2005), although studies of the consequences of new curriculum reforms for inequality have yet to emerge. The Sargent and Xiao piece in this volume, however, focuses on questions of curricular content: the mix of traditional and global values in textbooks. Sargent and Xiao analyze the contents of three Chinese language arts textbooks to see how the mix of traditional Chinese values and global values are laid out in textbooks in one language arts text published before the reform and two published after the reform. They found a fair amount of stability in the materials: despite a slight increase in contents concerning global citizenship, sustained emphasis on the traditional Chinese cultural values were prevalent in the language arts textbooks. These findings remind us that political rhetoric does not always translate cleanly to significant changes in curricular content. Finally, Post’s paper on Hong Kong presents an extended case study of how policy making has followed the vicissitudes of global interconnectedness and globalization, in a setting where government policy could be made centrally, and was largely unaffected by grassroots pressures. Post highlights the global roots of major educational initiatives. In 1978, accelerating expansion of compulsory schooling to the first nine years of school was a consequence of trade pressures from the European Economic Community, concerned about competition from child labor in Hong Kong’s textile industry. Massive expansions in higher education followed concerns about outmigration of professionals following the 1982 Sino-British Accord and Tiananmen in 1989, as concerns about the handover to China loomed, as well as the concerns about the relocation of Hong Kong’s manufacturing base to southern China in the 1980s. In 2000, Tung Chee Wah, Hong Kong’s first post-handover Chief Executive, proposed a self-supporting short-course or associate degree sector that would enable a further 40% of Hong Kong’s youth to pursue their educations (Post, this volume, pp. 237–238). This decision was made in light of mounting unemployment among the young as

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Hong Kong faced an increasingly competitive environment in relation to other Asian centers of technology and service, especially Singapore and Shanghai. In 2007, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Donald Tsang used the prospect of demographic change and global competitiveness for migrants explicitly as a rationale for educational expansion, as he promised to ‘‘continue to raise the quality of education and upgrade our human capital, encourage more outstanding non-local students to study in Hong Kong and work here after graduation, and attract more talents to Hong Kong with a view to optimising our demographic structure’’ (Post, this volume, p. 239).

STUDENTS AND FAMILIES CROSSING BORDERS Another set of papers in this volume addresses the experiences of students and families crossing borders for education, often in search of global competitiveness at the micro level. Jeehun Kim’s chapter addresses class and international migration in globalizing East Asia, through the experiences of so-called kirogi (wild geese) families. Kirogi families are those in which mothers migrate with children to English-speaking countries, in the past, mainly the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, for the educational benefit of children. The practice is evolving rapidly. Once confined to the upper classes, it is now seen across the socioeconomic spectrum, as poorer families seek to assure a competitive future for their children in a setting where global cultural capital and English are deemed critical for educational success. Related to the socioeconomic diversification of the kirogi phenomenon, migrants are now traveling to new destinations that involve lower costs to families, including Singapore, the Philippines, India, and South Africa. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Singapore, Kim argues that the Korean state’s emphasis on international competitiveness and parental aspirations for social mobility led many families to settle abroad to acquire foreign language credentials. Singapore is an emerging destination due to the relatively low cost; due to the relatively short geographic and cultural distance from Korea; and due to the possibility of learning not only English but also Chinese, a language of emerging global importance. Relatively few detailed studies of the kirogi phenomenon exist, and those that do tend to treat the phenomenon as an elite one. This piece is the first to highlight the mechanisms by which experiences of migration, an important element of globalization, are shaped by class position. In his piece, Kim illuminates the challenging experiences of the less-wealthy in Singapore, and

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the down-sides of their experience – being forced to move down grades and getting stuck in vocational or less-rigorous educational tracks mean that many migrants are finding themselves moving on a pathway that is unlikely to facilitate either upward mobility or reintegration into the Korean system. Immigrant children’s educational assimilation is also an enduring concern of policymakers in the former British colony of Hong Kong, which has received regular immigration from mainland China. In this volume, Pong and Tsang address migration across the border from China to Hong Kong. This chapter is one of the first to investigate closely the academic progress of mainland Chinese immigrant students in Hong Kong’s junior secondary schools. The authors focus on Form 1 (7th grade) to Form 3 (9th grade) and analyze a dataset called the Medium of Instruction Longitudinal Survey (MOILS), which tracks a cohort of junior secondary students in 1999–2000 from a representative sample of all Hong Kong secondary schools. Unlike the difficult circumstances outlined by Kim for children from Korea in Singapore, Pong and Tsang find that mainland students start out in Form 1 at a higher level of achievement than do native Hong Kong students in all academic subjects except the English language. Migrants attain greater subsequent achievement gains than do native students in most subjects. Even though they do not catch up with native students in the English language, they narrow the nativity gap over time. Mainland students’ high performance cannot be explained by their socioeconomic background, which tends to be lower than native students, or by the schools they attend, which tend to be poor and low-achieving. Of course, the Hong Kong and Singapore case studies adopt different methodologies and are not directly comparable. However, the contrast between the picture that emerges of a relatively favorable educational experience for low socioeconomic status mainland migrant students in the Hong Kong system, and the challenges faced by middle and lower socioeconomic status Korean migrants in Singapore, is suggestive of the need for additional theorizing of the migration experiences of children and youth in East Asia.

DISCUSSION Collectively, the chapters in this volume attest to important parallels in the ways that student populations are changing across East Asia, and in the challenges that these changes bring to educational systems. Inequality is rising in many East Asian nations, and migration is playing an increasingly

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important role in educational policy and inequality in these nations. Just as wealth and opportunity in China’s cities, combined with population aging, incentivize domestic labor migration, wealth and low fertility in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong have created new space for cross-border labor migration, and the children of migrants are not always faring well in host country educational systems. In China, Japan, and Korea, migrant children’s education is a problem to be addressed, but in the case of Hong Kong, children of migrants from the mainland are faring relatively well, and the need to attract cross-border educational migrants has been emphasized as a rationale for educational improvement in recent years. Singapore is already competing well for educational migrants from the region: the combination of distance and capacity to offer English and Chinese language instruction has driven a demand for educational migration to that nation. In many of the nations of East Asia, rising migration is coinciding with rising economic inequality, such that policy makers are struggling to conceptualize new forms of diversity in both socioeconomic and ethnic terms. At the same time, policy makers are attempting to reform educational systems to support national positions in the global economy. There are striking commonalities in curricular discourses, around efforts to promote global competitiveness through flexibility and creativity. Beyond some commonalities in diversification and efforts to promote global competitiveness, this volume also speaks to the socio-cultural rootedness – and path-dependence – of forms of inequality and discourse about inequality. In Japan and Korea, the highly standardized and egalitarian recent past casts into sharp relief current levels of educational inequality, which might be viewed elsewhere as moderate. National narratives of cultural and ethnic unity in both nations have meant that the stark educational barriers that evidently facing children of migrants have been difficult to recognize as serious problems, and thus difficult to address. In China, one of the most persistent forms of inequality – that across the urban–rural divide – is a stratifier that has endured for centuries, and one that has also set the stage for massive domestic migration that brings forth some, but not all, of the educational issues facing migrant children in cities elsewhere in the region. This volume also offers critical perspectives on the effectiveness of some reforms, and on possible stratifying consequences of some of the reforms undertaken in the name of globalization. In China, evidence of an infusion of global content to curriculum is mixed. In Japan and Korea, some of the reforms intended to enhance creativity and flexibility may have raised social disparities in achievement.

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Overall, the studies presented here suggest that the East Asian region offers an exciting site within which to investigate the diffusion of similar educational trends and ideas across nations that share a common cultural heritage, but differ dramatically in recent socio-historical trajectories. Recent developments in the region offer an opportunity to road test and refine Western theories about globalization and education, and about immigrant adaptation. It is hoped that the theories, empirical studies, and frameworks contained here may serve as a foundation for additional studies that can help East Asia to become a core site for global learning about approaches to educational diversification and for theory-building about educational policy and inequality.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As always, we thank the Research in Sociology of Education editorial board for timely and helpful reviews for this volume. We also acknowledge the expert advice of external reviewers for this volume: Nancy Abelmann, Peter Cave, Jae-Eun Chae, Grace Kao, Misook Kim, Desiree Baolian Qin, Keita Takayama, Tony Tam, Edward Vickers, Raymond Wong, and Yuping Zhang. We also acknowledge conference funding in support of this volume from the Association for Asian Studies Northeast Asia Council, and the University of Pennsylvania Center for East Asian Studies, Research Foundation, Department of Sociology, and Graduate School of Education.

REFERENCES Brinton, M. C., & Lee, S. (2001). Women’s education and the labor market in Japan and South Korea. In: M. C. Brinton (Ed.), Women’s working lives in East Asia (pp. 125–150). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Cao, S., Wang, X., & Wang, G. (2009). Lessons learned from China’s fall into the poverty trap. Journal of Policy Modeling, 31(2), 298–307. Chen, Y., & Liang, Z. (2007). Educational attainment among migrant children: The forgotten story of urbanization in China. In: E. Hannum & A. Park (Eds), Education and reform in China (pp. 117–132). Routledge: London and New York. de Brauw, A., & Giles, J. (2008). April 2008-last update, Rural to urban migration in China: How do migrant-sending communities benefit? Available at http://proxy.library.upenn. edu:5360/YB1JKML6M0. Retrieved on August 22, 2008. Fang, C., & Wang, D. (2005). Demographic transition: Implications for growth. In: R. Garnaut & L. Song (Eds), The China boom and its discontents. Canberra: ANU E Press and Asia Pacific Press.

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Fong, V. L. (2004). Only hope: Coming of age under China’s one-child policy. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Ginsburg, A., Leinwand, S., Anstrom, T., & Pollack, E. (2005). What the United States can learn from Singapore’s world-class mathematics system (and what Singapore can learn from the United States): An explanatory study. Washington, DC: American Institutes for Research. Hannum, E., Behrman, J., Wang, M., & Liu, J. (2008). Education in the reform era. In: L. Brandt & T. G. Rawski (Eds), China’s great economic transformation (pp. 215–249). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Institute of International Education. (2009). Atlas of student mobility: Country profiles (Homepage of Institute of International Education) (Online). Available at http:// www.atlas.iienetwork.org/?p ¼ 48027. Retrieved on December 14, 2009. Kong, P. (2008). In their own words: Rural parents’ strategies to support children’s education. Paper presented at the Workshop on Poverty, Education and Health in Rural China, Oxford, UK, December 14–17. Lee, J. (2002). The financial crisis and economic inequality in Korea. Korea Journal, 42(1), 178–203. OECD, (Ed.) (2008). Growing unequal? Income distribution and poverty in OECD countries. Paris: OECD. Park, H. (2007). Inequality of educational opportunity in Korea by gender, socio-economic background, and family structure. International Journal of Human Rights, 11(1), 179–197. Park, H. (forthcoming). Japanese and Korean high schools and students in comparative perspective. In: J. Dronkers (Ed.), Quality and inequality of education: A cross-national attempt to unravel it. Springer Press, Berlin. Sakuma, T. (2006). Gaikokujin no Kodomo no Fushugaku (Non-attendance to school of foreign children). Tokyo: Keiso Shobo. Sargent, T. (2005). Institutionalizing educational ideologies: Organizational control of classroom instruction in China. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Department of Sociology. Sargent, T. C. (2009). Revolutionizing ritual interaction: Constructing the Chinese renaissance of the 21st century. Modern China, 35, 632–661. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2000). Transferring education, displacing reforms. In: J. Schriewer (Ed.), Discourse formation in comparative education (pp. 110–132). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Tachibanaki, T. (2005). Confronting income inequality in Japan: A comparative analysis of causes, consequences, and reform. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.

PART 1 GLOBALIZATION AND EDUCA TlONAL RESPONSE IN JAPAN

THE TWISTED, UNINTENDED IMPACTS OF GLOBALIZATION ON JAPANESE EDUCATION Takehiko Kariya and Jeremy Rappleye INTRODUCTION: JAPAN IN THE WORLD, JAPAN IN AN ERA OF GLOBALIZATION Japan has long occupied a unique place in East Asia and continues to do so in an era of increased global interconnectivity. Beginning with the Meiji Restoration (1868), it became the first in the region to make a decisive, sustained, and highly successful attempt to ‘‘modernize’’ its political, economic, and social structures, thereby largely avoiding Western domination. This particular historical trajectory built directly on social foundations laid during the prolonged closure of the Tokugawa period and largely allowed Japan free reign to craft its own version of modernity, educational and otherwise. One result of this conscious, directed process of ‘‘catch-up’’ was an impressive ‘‘compression’’ of the transition to modernity – a phenomenon that had stretched out over hundreds of years in most Western countries – to little more than a half century (Kariya, 2010); a feat unmatched by any country in the first half of the twentieth century. Following the devastation of the Second World War, Japan redoubled its efforts to ‘‘catch-up’’ and through a combination of high birth rates following the war, exportdriven economic growth leading to an explosion of manufacturing jobs, a Globalization, Changing Demographics, and Educational Challenges in East Asia Research in Sociology of Education, Volume 17, 17–63 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3539/doi:10.1108/S1479-3539(2010)0000017004

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TAKEHIKO KARIYA AND JEREMY RAPPLEYE

commitment to egalitarian growth and full employment, and the creation of an educational meritocracy that meticulously selected the country’s best and brightest, the country quickly moved up the value-added chain until, by the early 1980s, the Japanese economy was globally dominant (Katz, 1998; Okita, 1992). As such, by the 1980s, Japan became unique, first, in being the only country in the region whose social conditions facilitated genuine comparison with the ‘‘advanced’’ countries of the West and, second, a model for ‘‘modernization’’ that other countries in the region could emulate, first the four Asian Tigers and then (although rarely explicitly) China in the post-Mao ‘‘Reform and Opening’’ period (Rappleye, 2007; Kojima, 2000). Had the Japanese economy not abruptly ground to a halt in the early 1990s, Japan may well have continued to be a major point of reference for ways to cope successfully with the challenges posed in a new era of ‘‘globalization.’’ Yet, when the implosion of stock and land prices in 1990 burst the economic bubble producing a (now) a two-decade long recession, we find that Japan’s uniqueness endures, but now primarily in a new, more negative light: The country serves as a means of imagining what perils the myriad phenomena of ‘‘globalization’’ may well pose for the East Asian economies, political systems, and societies. Economically, Japan reveals how the relentless pursuit of reducing capital costs combined with rising domestic incomes (and thus labor costs) can lead to the sudden, drastic decline in manufacturing jobs (‘‘outsourcing’’) that once formed the backbone of its export-led growth. It shows how – for all but a handful of domestic companies finding ways to flourish in global markets (e.g., Toyota, Sony) – ‘‘globalization’’ means not so much new opportunities, but the shuddering of factories and production facilities that made possible the full employment growth paradigm and steadily rising standards of living that was the hallmark of the 1960s and 1970s (Bruce, 2010). Politically, the recent trials of Japan show that simple ‘‘GNPism’’ – growth as ideology – that once helped minimize political divisions and foster consensus unravels as a shift in the power base between rural and urban constituencies, a proliferating number of interests, and social stratification spark new political alliances (the dramatic, unprecedented rejection of the LDP at the polls in 2009 being a case in point) (Hook & Hasegawa, 2001; Curtis, 1999). Socially, the country sends a warning to the region of the very real problem – what Kingston (2001) calls in Japan the ‘‘demographic time-bomb’’ – posed by the ‘‘graying’’ of society two to three generations after increased living standards and health conditions contributed to a sudden ‘‘boom’’ in birth rates. Japan also shows how a phenomenon common to all affluent societies – a low birth rate and the concomitant need to open up to foreign

Impacts of Globalization on Japanese Education

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nationals – can emerge as particular troublesome for East Asian societies given their lack of significant experience with foreign immigration, rigid social and legal frameworks, and still largely unresolved and highly contested issues of history and national identity. In short, it is the very success of Japan in the 1980s and its subsequent troubles thereafter that allow us to look at it as both unique and a harbinger of issues wrought by globalization that other East Asian societies – still enjoying the ‘‘benefits’’ in the form of high growth and copious foreign investment – may one day come to experience in the not so distant future. While the immediate focus of this chapter is the impact of globalization on Japanese education, it is against this wider backdrop that we seek to present and portray Japan here. Yet, we argue that a singular focus on the tangible, ‘‘real’’ effects of globalization sketched above is – at best – only half of the story of globalization in/on Japanese education. Inevitably contested politically, education reform in Japan explicitly designed to respond to this ‘‘new era’’ also involves political discourses that – to a greater and lesser extent – are linked to these ‘‘real’’ changes. It is, we argue, the totality of these discoursal or ‘‘imagined’’ responses overlaid on the structural or ‘‘real’’ changes that move us closest to understanding globalization’s effects on Japanese education. That is, we seek – filling out the brief sketch of recent change outlined above – to account for the near simultaneous processes of challenge and response; the interplay and mismatch of the ‘‘real’’ and ‘‘imagined’’ that we argue has led to largely unintended, twisted, and clearly detrimental effects to the quality (and equality) of/in Japanese education. We thus see Japan as exemplary – in a cautionary sense – for other East Asian educational contexts, not only for getting a better sense of what ‘‘real’’ challenges globalization is likely to create in the coming decades but also in the sense of showing how ‘‘imagined’’ political response can create and contribute to the negative educational effects of ‘‘globalization.’’

‘‘GLOBALIZATION’’ AND ITS (UNINTENDED) EFFECTS ON EDUCATION: SOME THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL LENSES With little space to devote to an extended review of the proliferation of theories, concepts, and literature emerging over the past decade, our starting point for understanding the effects of ‘‘globalization’’ in the Japanese educational context is the ambiguity of the key term itself. We find that all

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too often in the current literature, ‘‘globalization’’ is used to describe educational change without first offering clear definitions, let alone lucid conceptual models to help us better understand the interrelationship between educational reform and the myriad phenomena denoted by the singular term ‘‘globalization.’’ Here then we concur with Dale and Robertson (2002, p. 10) who write that ‘‘Globalization’’ is too broad and too ambiguous a term to be used unproblematically in determining the effects on national education systems of the structures and processes, institutions and practices, that it connotes. Globalization is not a homogeneous force, nor is it consistent in effects on education, either within or between countries. Rather, it is y an extremely complex process, whose most important feature is that it operates at many different levels with a range of different effects y

We note that instead of being offered insights into the totality of ‘‘extremely complex process’’ of globalization, we are, instead, frequently given glimpses of but a single dimension – economic, social, political, cultural, and so on. One of the major causes of this fractured view would seem to be the continued inertia of disciplinary-based research. Quite naturally, economists tend to write about the educational effects of globalization (Levin & Belfield, 2006; Becker, 2002), sociologist focus on the social effects (Lauder, Brown, Dillabough, & Halsey, 2006), anthropologists concern themselves with its cultural dimensions (Appadurai, 1996), and so on. This fractured approach is more often than not true of research on education as well, despite the fact that no single disciplinary perspective is adequate to understand the myriad phenomena denoted by the similarly singular, though deceptively complex phenomenon of ‘‘education.’’ What we find to be the result of this fractured view is that current understandings of globalization often have more to do with the approach and theories scholars bring to the analysis at the outset – what Schriewer (2003) points to as ‘‘the theory dependency of our observations on, and of the resultant knowledge of, phenomena and processes of globalization’’ – rather than offer a more nuanced understanding of the totality of ‘‘globalization’’ in particular national contexts. Based on this critique, our point of departure is to prioritize a more holistic view of the multiple economic, social, political, and cultural effects and domestic trajectories spawned by globalization. We argue that it is the simultaneity of change, in particular, across all of these domains, that marks globalization as a distinct phenomenon. Here then, we second contributions by comparative sociologists such as Dale (1999, p. 15) who see ‘‘the necessity of breaking down the gross concept of globalization along a range of dimensions if its nature and consequences are to be adequately understood.’’ Yet, we also seek to advance a position rarely found in the current literature:


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a belief that simply ‘‘breaking down’’ globalization is not enough. We instead emphasize the necessity of – having pieced out the multiple reverberations of globalization in a particular national context – to then put them back together to locate not only the symbiosis and synergies but also the ruptures, conflicts, tensions, and – most central to this chapter – the unseen consequences that result; aspects of recent change that are rendered invisible if the component parts of ‘‘globalization’’ are simply cordoned off by disciplinary-based research and examined in isolation. This leads us to adopt an approach that is congruent with Schriewer’s (2003, p. 273, italics added) observation of ‘‘globalization’’ when he states that instead of a single story of change: What seems to predominate, instead, is the simultaneity of contrary currents – of internationalization and indigenisation; supra-national integration, and international diversification; or the global spread of standardized educational models (regardless of different societal settings) and the surprising diversity of sociocultural interrelationship networks (in spite of the universalist assumptions of grand theories) – which are connected to each other as challenge and response, as large scale socio-economic processes and these processes unintended consequences.

Through such a lens, the analytical approach becomes one of first pulling apart ‘‘globalization’’ in a particular national context then putting it back together so that we can see how, where, and why ‘‘challenge and response’’ develop dialectically and – we suggest more worrisome – how and why ‘‘challenge’’ does not always align with ‘‘response.’’ This is ultimately what produces globalization’s twisted, unintended consequences in particular national contexts. To aid us in such an approach and to relate the complexities of what has been happening in Japan specifically, we find it useful in conveying our argument to pursue two additional conceptual directions offered in the recent literature. The first is an attempt by an influential group of theorists to clearly distinguish between the actual impact of myriad global changes on national education systems and the mere rhetorical use of globalization (or related terms such as ‘‘internationalization’’) to reframe – and thus legitimate – contentious social and political issues. ‘‘Evolutionary process have, in other words,’’ again warns Schriewer (2003, p. 273), ‘‘to be distinguished from the semantic construction’’ of the globalization phenomenon. Steiner-Khamsi (2004) renders the same idea even more relevant for educational researchers when she challenges us to explicitly consider to what degree ‘‘globalization in education’’ is ‘‘real’’ and to what degree it is simply ‘‘imagined.’’ The evolutionary or ‘‘real’’ aspects of globalization might be defined as those changes that are occurring as the result of the acceleration and intensification of cross-national flows in commodities and people, transformations in the

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nature and logic of global capital (and its concomitant impacts in domestic labor markets), breakthroughs in communications technology, and so on. Semantic or ‘‘imagined’’ aspects of globalization are, on the contrary, those discursive responses that do not necessarily correlate with concrete (‘‘real’’) domestic change but those that are presented (by, say, political actors, the media, scholars, influential policy lobbies, and so on) as such, perhaps because they are intentionally utilizing the rhetoric of ‘‘globalization’’ to push through reforms they prefer and shift attention away from issues they would wish to ignore (Steiner-Khamsi, 2000). Although it is often difficult to clearly demarcate these gradual ‘‘wider world shifts’’ (‘‘real’’) from mere rhetorical framing (‘‘imagined’’) (Rappleye, 2006), such a research agenda would appear to be one of the most promising means of inching current research toward increased conceptual and analytical clarity on the great puzzle of the educational effects of ‘‘globalization.’’ In fact, what one quickly finds when adopting such an approach is that here too is simultaneity: the ‘‘real’’ and ‘‘imagined’’ effects of globalization on education co-exist, intertwine, and develop dialectically in each national context. In our analysis of the Japanese context, we thus attempt not only to concretely show this simultaneity, but go a step beyond the current literature by showing how the disconnect between the ‘‘real’’ and ‘‘imagined’’ effects of globalization on education often creates unintended and unforeseen consequences in education and society. A second conceptual direction that we find useful in demarcating and understanding the logic of ‘‘real’’ and ‘‘imagined’’ effects in the case of Japan is in the work of Cowen (1997, 2000, 2003) who makes an appeal for greater attention paid to what he terms permiology, immunology, and a rethink of the concept of ‘‘border.’’ He suggests that global change has rendered the traditional concept of ‘‘border’’ – a carefully regulated legal boundary between territorial States – largely obsolete. Now ‘‘borders’’ have become a ‘‘rather more interesting and flexible concept’’ that must be contemplated and analyzed in their multiple dimensions – economic, political, social, cultural, and so on. Careful regulation across all these dimensions in the past has given way to select opening of particular borders, as in, say, the opening of a State’s economic-education border through WTO agreements (GATS) and OECD cooperation (peer policy reviews) often juxtaposed against calculated policies of political and cultural closure. One example Cowen (1997, p. 78) offers from the East Asia in particular helps demonstrate the conceptualization of multiple borders with greater clarity: The tension between, say, Mao’s and Chiang Kai-Shek’s definitions of their respective national and political agendas is an illustration y thus from the Deng period, Taiwanese


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inward investment in South China is acceptable; but not Taiwan’s political messages. The message of cultural closure is enforced right down to refusing direct flights for travellers between the two countries.

While China clearly represents an extreme example of selective opening, the vision of a nation in which multiple ‘‘borders’’ exist – some of which are open even while others remain firmly sealed – has helped us to think more lucidly about what influences have been able to flow ‘‘into’’ Japan and which are unable to penetrate, which ideas, people, messages, and so on tend to flow ‘‘out’’ of Japan, and which are locked within. It is the study of the various dimensions of border permeability that Cowen coins the term permiology and – its opposite – the analysis of a particular national context’s resistance – or immunity – to particular flows that he creates the term immunology. Unlike the People’s Republic, Japan has little desire or need to deploy the considerable political surveillance apparatus necessary to patrol its political borders, but it does have its own immunities – as this chapter will show – through various, often highly complex configurations of language, culture, historical inertia, approaches to immigration, and so on. We thus seek to use the terms permeable and immune to help us to envisage the unique contextual factors that define and produce the Japanese response to the challenges of globalization. This allows us to put together economic, political, and social analyses in a meaningful way, while at the same time thinking critically about the configurations of structures, actors, power, and so on that determine the degree of external flows. That is, the contribution we seek is to achieve greater clarity on what global influences permeate which ‘‘borders’’ and which influences have triggered an immune response in Japan. Ours is an attempt to also account for which of these influences are ‘‘real’’ and which are ‘‘imagined’’ but even more importantly to illustrate how the gaps between the permeable and the immune, as well as the ‘‘real’’ and ‘‘imagined’’ have produced multiple, twisted outcomes and several unintended consequences. Piecing out the various dimensions of globalization – ‘‘real’’ and ‘‘imagined’’ and permeable and immune – allows us to then put it all back together to envisage ‘‘globalization’’ in Japan as it is experienced: in its totality. The chapter is organized in line with this general vision. In the next section, we attempt to illustrate the ‘‘real’’ effects of globalization and some of the – largely economic – permeabilities that have intertwined with domestic realities to transform various aspects of Japanese society, labor markets, realities of youth, and – thus – education. That is followed by a look at the more ‘‘imagined’’ responses that the processes of globalization have spawned in the Japanese context: three dominant political discourses about what changes are

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necessary to meet the challenges posed by the ‘‘new era.’’ Our next move is to show how these direct, ‘‘real’’ influences have either been ignored or rendered obscure by the more ‘‘imagined’’ effects and how this simultaneity has produced a host of unintended consequences including expanding inequalities, increased educational and occupational disadvantages for those students from lower class backgrounds, and obstacles for foreign immigrants to make meaningful contributions to Japanese economic and social dynamism. We conclude with some general reflections on what the Japanese case illustrates about the still ambiguous relationship between globalization and education elsewhere and also return to the issue of Japan’s unique position in the region discussed at the outset.

LOCATING GLOBALIZATION’S ‘‘REAL’’ EFFECTS ON/IN JAPANESE EDUCATION Globalization has ‘‘real’’ and visible impacts on education in several domains. One is the changing student composition of Japanese schools brought about by increasing numbers of immigrants’ or foreign workers’ children, who carry different sociocultural backgrounds into Japanese classrooms. Another domain is the scope of occupational careers and future prospects for school/ university graduates, a form of ‘‘real’’ impacts created by the socioeconomic changes in Japanese society wrought by globalization (although one that is clearly indirect and therefore more difficult to recognize and analyze). In terms of the first of these ‘‘real’’ impacts, Japan stands out as having a much smaller relative influence from immigration than other advanced societies. Unlike most other OECD countries, Japan has only a negligible number of immigrants and foreign workers, to say nothing of the much smaller number of these immigrant children in its schools. However, that number has been rising rapidly since the early 1990s, as shown clearly in a recent Ministry of Justice report on foreign immigration (Fig. 1). Among the working population, foreign workers account for a mere 1% in Japan, while they account for 8.9% in Germany, 6.0% in France, and 3.8% in United Kingdom (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare [MHLW], 2002). Among 15-year-old students, the population of who are foreign-born or who have foreign-born parents accounts for more than 10% in Germany, France, and Sweden, but in Japan that figure is far below 1% (OECD, 2007). Other countries with a significant number of foreign-born children in schools are thus far more likely to see the ‘‘real’’ challenges caused by this student diversity in the form of debates about ‘‘social exclusion’’ and cultural


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Fig. 1. Changes in the Number of Registered Foreign Nationals and Its Percentage of the Total Japanese Population (Excerpt from Ministry of Justice, 2006 Immigration Control in Recent Years, p. 27).

clashes in schools (recent controversy over religious symbols in schools in France being a case in point). The large presence of ‘‘foreigners’’ also requires those governments to propose and implement educational policies to solve those ‘‘problems’’ and others created by increasing labor-cumhuman transnational flows. Largely as a result, educational policy discourses in those nations are often highly attuned to the necessity of provision of multicultural-multilingual education. Due to those ‘‘real’’ and visible impacts of globalization, ‘‘social inclusion’’ in education has often been a major point within educational debates and thus come to underpin educational policy in those countries (Gillborn, 1999, 2008; Sayer & Vanderhoeven, 2000). In stark contrast to those nations however, in Japan’s policy debates, social inclusion is rarely argued or infrequently targeted as an important agenda for aligning the system to respond to the effects of globalization. This does not, however, mean that children of foreign workers have no problems in school. Researchers have shown that foreign students are more likely to have lower academic achievements and lower enrollment ratio in senior high schools and universities (Shimizu, 2006; Sakuma, 2006). Shimizu (2006) reports that while in daily conversation, the Japanese skills of foreign students seemingly appear adequate, their ability to learn in Japanese with its requirements to read Chinese ideograms and be relatively fluent in a

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variety of English loan words (katakana) is actually quite low. Partially as a result, given that official statistics are not kept (which is itself rather telling), Sakuma (2006) works to estimate enrollment rates for the foreign-born cohort of high school students. He suggests that just 51% of foreign-born students are enrolled as compared with nearly 97% among non-foreignborn, Japanese students. In other words, successful attainment of a high school diploma, which is today the most basic of educational credentials in Japan, is something that about half of all foreign youth are unable to attain. Despite this fact, those problems rarely come to occupy a central place in education policy debates. In terms of the second of the ‘‘real’’ globalization effects of education raised above (i.e., the impacts derived from rapid change in the industrial and occupational structure), which is both directly and indirectly linked to economic globalization, the effects in Japan have been quantitatively different from other advanced countries as well. ‘‘Japanese employment customs’’ and distinctive features of the Japanese school-to-work-transition paradigm that mediated the impacts of economic globalization in the 1980s underwent rapid and drastic change during the 1990s. As a result, the occupational careers for school graduates experienced a related recalibration. Due to such shifts, the uncertainty about what students do in school and what they stand to gain from it in their future life increased dramatically. That is, rapid and substantial changes in the occupational structure made it difficult for high school students to clearly equate their hard work and performance in school with prospective gains in their future life. Their extreme hard work and motivation in school – features of the Japanese system that figure largely in the Western academic literature – declined as a result, and an increasing number of students seemed to lack diligence and possess the strong work ethic for school-related matters that previous generations had shown. This trend was especially pronounced among disadvantaged youth. The resulting ‘‘incentive divide’’ where benefits of diligent study was maintained among those of relatively higher social class backgrounds and rapidly declined among those of relatively lower class social backgrounds (Kariya, 2010, 2001; Kariya & Rosenbaum, 2003) – something discussed in more detail later in the chapter – thus came to become one aspect of the ‘‘real’’ impacts of economic globalization. During the 1990s, rapid global economic integration had additional impacts of a large magnitude on Japanese economy and society. Economists assert that both through transferring factories to other – mostly neighboring low wage East and South-east Asian – countries (‘outsourcing’), on the one hand, and a great shift to service industries, on the other, resulted in a


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dramatic reduction in the share of those employed in manufacturing during the 1990s (Rebick, 2005). While 1,568,000 employees were hired in manufacturing in 1992, the number reduced to 1,222,000 in 2002. This equates to nearly a 22% loss over a single decade. In contrast, the number of employees hired in service industries increased from 1,481,000 to 1,804,000 over the same period (ibid.). Importantly, this shift was accompanied with another structural changes in employment, that is, increasing ‘‘irregular’’ or ‘‘non-standard’’ jobs such as part-time (arubaito), dispatched (ha-ken), and contract employment (keiyaku). Coinciding with the long economic slump during the 1990s (often referred to within Japan as simply ‘‘the lost decade’’), the economic pressures generated by globalization contributed to the rapid erosion of the stability and longevity of employment in Japan – one of the legacies of Japan’s postwar ‘‘miracle’’ regeneration. This, in turn, lead directly to a rapid increase in non-standard employment, a strategy seen as way of competing more effectively with other nations under an international economic environment dominated by fluid competition, uncertainty, and the demands of mobile multinational corporations and transnational capital. Table 1 summarizes the number of non-standard employees in service and sales industries as compared with manufacturing from 2003 to 2006. Although the number of non-standard employment increased in manufacturing as well, those in service and sales industries outnumbered growth in other sectors. The structural shift to service industries and the concomitant increase in less secure jobs obviously occurred in other advanced countries as well as those nations grappled with the uncertainties of the new global economic paradigm. Nevertheless, the impacts of that rapid shift had more significant impacts on education in Japan than in other nations, because of the country’s distinct historical economic trajectory. In terms of education, the impacts were translated into drastic changes in the occupational career options open to school graduates due to the breakdown of the distinct nature of former employment customs-triggered, if not caused by, economic globalization. Indeed, the following two unique features of Japanese employment customs give shape to the ‘‘real’’ impacts on education caused by the changes in the industrial and occupational structural make-up described above: (a) the tradition of protecting middle-aged employees under the unique Japanese ‘‘life-long’’ employment paradigm (Genda, 2005; Rebick, 2005), and (b) smooth school-to-work transitions, through which most of new school graduates obtained jobs even before they graduated founded upon trusted, extended relationships between schools and employers (Rosenbaum & Kariya, 1989; Okano, 1995; Brinton, 2000).

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Table 1. Total

Numbers of Standard and Non-Standard Employees in Different Industries. Manufacturing

Construction Transport Wholesale and Retail Trade

Eating and Drinking Places, Accommodations

Medical, Health Care and Welfare

382 372 385 388

344 336 316 311

230 232 217 223

514 497 500 493

90 86 89 82

318 338 343 355

265 312 335 377

74 63 68 70

64 64 64 67

372 381 398 392

156 158 163 155

142 151 165 175

21.5% 18.8% 21.5% 22.5%

27.8% 27.6% 29.5% 30.0%

69.4% 83.9% 87.0% 97.2%

72.4% 76.7% 79.6% 79.5%

173.3% 183.7% 183.1% 189.0%

44.7% 44.7% 48.1% 49.3%

Notes: The number of employees are in ten thousands. Due to the changes in the way of categorization of industries, the number of employees is not comparable to those before 2002. Source: Annual Report of Labour Force Survey (each year).


Standard employees 2003 3,444 810 2004 3,410 789 2005 3,374 760 2006 3,411 792 Non-standard employees 2003 1,504 217 2004 1,564 213 2005 1,633 211 2006 1,677 207 % of Non-standard employees 2003 30.4% 26.8% 2004 31.4% 27.0% 2005 32.6% 27.8% 2006 33.0% 26.1%

Service


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When the industrial and occupational structural changes occurred, to protect employment for middle-aged workers in companies, Japanese employers drastically reduced the number of new recruits, especially those selected from among recent school graduates (Genda, 2005). Unlike in other countries, most – especially top – employers previously relied on recruitment of new employees from soon-to-be school/university graduates, who had no fulltime work experience before graduation. This was called in Japanese the shinki ikkatsu saiyo or the ‘‘mass graduate recruitment’’ system where companies would hire its yearly quota of new employees all at once (literally, ‘‘in bulk’’) from among the ranks of those in their final year of university. However, facing the long-term recessions during the 1990s and early 2000s, those same employers elected to reduce their uptake of young new recruits, rather than lay off middle-aged employees as a result of the traditional customs and commitments made under the ‘‘life-long’’ employment system. Largely as a result, the number of jobs available to high school graduates diminished rapidly from 3.08 jobs for per individual job seeker in 1992 to just 0.50 in 2003. Although the ratio went up again to 1.31 during the late 2000s, the quality of those employment opportunities changed as well, most prominently in the deteriorating security and longevity of available positions. Fig. 2 shows just how rapidly and significantly the percentages of nonstandard employees within the workforce increased during 1990s and early 2000s. Especially for those aged 15–24, the number more than doubled. Those radical changes in employment for youth were highly detrimental for the careers prospects for work-bound high school students in particular. The percentages of those out of all high school graduates, who had no jobs, no education, or no training increased from less than 6% in the 1980s to 12% in 2002. Under the distinctive features of the Japanese school to work transition system, until roughly the 1980s, only a negligible number of work-bound students had had difficulties in finding full-time jobs upon graduation. However, during the 1900s and the early 2000s, as Japan’s economic recession wore on, the great shift to service industries progressed, and the deregulation (liberalization) of employment laws occurred – all of which were directly and indirectly linked to aspects of economic globalization (Bruce, 2010; Mouer & Kawanishi, 2005) – both the quantity and the quality of jobs available for new school graduates underwent a profound change. Shifts in the manufacturing sector in particular had perhaps the biggest impact on the occupational career options of high school graduates. Full-time, regular manufacturing jobs, especially those in large firms, for a long time provided young male high school graduates with stable career trajectories with a clearly defined, progressive wage and seniority structure,

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60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Total

15 to 24 years old

35 to 44 years old

Fig. 2.

25 to 34 years old

15 to 24 years old Excl. attending school

Trend of Non-Standard Workers by Age. Source: Annual Report of Labour Force Survey.

a range of fringe benefits, and protection and, thus, security in employment (Mouer & Kawanishi, 2005). It was this system that allowed these men to become familial breadwinners in the future. Juxtaposed with smooth school to work transition procedures at the time, provision of those stable occupational career trajectories gave clarity and credence to the relationship between what students did in school and what they would acquire or gain in future, because, as previous, extended research by one of the current authors has shown (Kariya, 1991; Rosenbaum & Kariya, 1989), placement into good jobs was highly correlated with what students did in school and students were aware and highly sensitive to that ‘‘fact of life.’’ Middle-aged workers in manufacturing in the 1990s continued to enjoy the same stable life course experienced by most Japanese workers in the 1960s through 1980s. Yet, somewhat ironically, to preserve those middle-age workers’ interests in the very different economic context of the 1990s, the younger generations began to lose those same benefits and protections. This evolutionary trend has now been sanctioned in policy, when in 2003, the Japanese government deregulated its employment policies to permit companies to engage in non-standard employment practices in hopes of adjusting to rapid changes in the now globalized economy, moves it had previously prohibited. This naturally led to a sudden increase and codification of employment trends – even in the manufacturing section – that had been developing quietly since the bubble burst, namely, the recruitment and hiring of workers outside of the traditional lifetime employment and benefit paradigm. Such a sudden loss of good entry-level jobs means that most of


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work-bound high school graduates now have difficulties in obtaining ‘‘lifelong’’ employment. As a clear result of collision of the long history of labor market practices described above and the sudden increase in non-standard employment, the Japanese labor market came to lack smooth pathways for non-standard workers seeking to transfer to more secured ‘‘standard’’ jobs. It became increasingly difficult for economically, socially, and educationally disadvantaged youth in particular to make such a transition. Having once ‘‘fallen’’ into the unsecure, fluid secondary labor market, it has proven to be difficult for these youth to climb up to the secure, better paid, primary labor market. In contrast to many other advanced societies, the gap between the two labor markets is much larger in Japan because of the aforementioned distinctive features of its traditional employment practices. That is, the differences between being a full employee (seishain) and a non-standard employee was much more than one might imagine based only on a comparison of wages and benefits alone; the guarantee of lifetime employment and gradual pay increases meant that full employee status brought a much higher return. Yet, it was those coveted full employee status jobs that were the hardest hit by the economic shifts wrought by globalization in the 1990s. As certainty in the prospects for their future declined, the more the ambiguity increased among students seeking to find a clear articulation between what they did in school and what they could expect of and in the future. Japanese students have long been regarded as diligent and hardworking and perennially achieved higher scores in international testing like SIMSS and TIMSS throughout the 1990s, partly as a result of the clear associations between their efforts in school and their rewards in future life. Yet, once such a clear picture began to blur, two effects became apparent. One was a decline in the number of hours students spent studying. This phenomenon played largely in the ‘‘achievement crisis debate’’ discussed in the next section. Another effect was the deepening of the aforementioned ‘‘incentive divide.’’ That is, as shown by Kariya and Rosenbaum (2003), high school students from lower SES families came to lose commitment and motivations to school work, resulting in a widening in the gap between low and high SES students. Moreover, the gap of academic achievements of both elementary and middle school students between those from families with fewer cultural resources and those with richer cultural resources expanded during the 1990s (Kariya & Shimizu, 2004). In other words, those whose families assisted or modeled the positive effects of obtaining an education excelled, while those with few positive examples of the incentives of education became increasingly difficult to motivate (Kariya, 2010). Here then, the ambiguity wrought by globalization’s effects on the traditional school to work

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transition pathways linked directly to and exacerbated class differentials in motivations for learning and thus educational achievement. Another aspect of educational change also produced difficulties among students seeking a clear articulation between their schoolwork and future careers: the increasing ease with which students could gain entrance to universities. To avoid disadvantages in the labor market associated with holding only a high school diploma, an increasing number of secondary school graduates elected to advance to higher education during the 1990s and 2000s. However, given the rapid decline in the 18-year-old population, the quotas for new university/college students outnumbered even this increasing number of applicants (in other words, there were more places in tertiary education available than students to fill those seats, even though the percentage of students advancing to higher education increased). Thus, entrance to colleges and universities, especially to less prestigious private colleges, was getting easier year-on-year in the 1990s and is now decidedly far easier than any time during the 1980s. This is reflected, for example, in the dramatic change in the ratio of the number of applicants admitted to colleges/ universities. The ratio was 51.7% in 1990, 60.5 in 1995, 77.8% in 2000, and 81.8% in 2005. The impact of this is clearly substantial in terms of obscuring the clear incentives for students to work hard in school. Indeed, entrance examinations were once regarded as a powerful engine driving college-bound high school students to work hard and give careful consideration to their future career. Yet, by the late 1990s, Japan’s infamous ‘‘exam hell’’ had all but disappeared, except for a limited number of secondary students seeking admission to a few of the most prestigious institutions. In this way, the powerful, clearly articulated pipeline of examination success leading to secure, lifetime employment slowed down rapidly, and it thus became substantially difficult for students to maintain motivation to study. These changes were clearly the results of the ‘‘real’’ impacts of globalization on Japanese education. Economic forces, such as pressures on wage competition with other countries necessitating in a reduction in the cost of labor, and its concomitant demand for more flexible workforce arrangements leading to the increase of non-standard employment, are areas in which Japanese society has become permeable to ‘‘external’’ trends and changes occurring along its economic borders. However, Japan still exhibits a great unease in opening its political borders to welcome more immigrants and allow more foreign workers to take up jobs that would allow a similar reduction in wages domestically. As a result, Japan has few visible ‘‘problems’’ in schools or on its streets with more immigrant children and the issue has thus largely failed to reach the political mainstream and thus elicit a policy response.


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Anticipating points we develop more fully later in the chapter, much less pressures from immigrants as a visible force of globalization make the ‘‘real’’ impacts of economic globalization on education appear rather vague, less immediate, and more detached from their causes – a particular feature of the immunity of Japanese society to the challenges of globalization that makes it distinct from other advanced countries, but quite similar to other countries in the region itself. Accordingly, despite the fact that more disadvantaged youths have become ‘‘at risk’’ in contemporary Japan, the concepts of ‘‘social exclusion’’ – a term frequently arising to describe the impacts of globalization in educational discourses in policy debates in other advanced countries – is rarely raised within Japanese educational reform discourses. This gap between the ‘‘real’’ issues in Japanese schools and the educational policy discourses in Japan is something we now turn to develop. More than just negligent policy discussions, the current debates over policy continue to ignore the ‘‘real’’ and permeable impacts of globalization and instead direct educational policy toward the effects it ‘‘imagines.’’ This results in the hastening of some of the most detrimental effects of ‘‘real’’ globalization: a further expanding of inequalities in and around Japanese education; unintended, detrimental effects we raise explicitly later in the chapter.

LOCATING GLOBALIZATION’S ‘‘IMAGINED’’ EFFECTS IN/ON JAPANESE EDUCATION In Japan as elsewhere, overlaid on the ‘‘real’’ effects of globalization highlighted above, is a layer of political discourse concerning the challenges and changes of this ‘‘new era.’’ This layer of constructed response is often linked – to at least some degree – to aspects of ‘‘real’’ change, but the process of making sense of or formulating that response emerges, almost without exception, as highly selective: It quickly gets wrapped up in competing political agendas, preexisting policy problematiques, and dramas of power that are always at play in national debates on education (Rappleye, 2006). The result is a highly selective view of change. Unlike the case with the ‘‘real’’ effects, this layer of ‘‘imagined’’ response is much less amenable to straightforward macrosocial empirical analysis. It instead necessitates a focus on politics, power, and privileged positionalities at play in successfully ‘‘framing’’ of change and – thus – the concomitant policy response (Ball, 2006). When undertaking such an analysis, we find that heightened interaction with the ‘‘global’’ over the past two decades has been ‘‘imagined’’ or

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‘‘framed’’ rather consistently around the following five themes in Japan, helping us to locate and explain the particular policy responses that have ensued: Importance of liberalization, deregulation: A belief in the need to shed the highly regulated, uniform system in which power is centralized in Tokyo; seen as a prerequisite to making the system more flexible and dynamic to keep pace with fluidity, diversity and change of a ‘‘new era.’’ Need for creativity vs. fostering academic abilities: An on-going, incisive debate pitting antagonistic ‘‘frames’’ of what Japan needs more of to compete and excel ‘‘globally’’ – increased creativity and ‘‘room’’ for children to develop their individual capabilities or a set of strong, basic skills and core knowledge and competencies. Bolstering the Japanese identity: The strong push in some quarters to ‘‘imagine’’ globalization as necessitating a solidifying what it means to be Japanese, a cultivation of an appreciation for history and traditions of the country, and – based on this – a careful, guided processes of understanding Japan’s place in the world. Need to internationalize tertiary education: A consistent ‘‘imagining’’ of the need to overhaul Japanese universities to make them ‘‘world class’’ attract a much larger number of foreign students and scholars and create tighter, more productive linkages with industry to make tertiary institutions engines of innovation and market leading research. Reform of English language instruction: A discourse about the necessity of cultivating a far greater level of English language abilities among the general population as English becomes the ‘‘lingua franca’’ of an emergent ‘‘international society.’’ Given a combination of space limitations, our specific interest in developments in compulsory education, and the relative merit for revealing the twisted and unintended consequences of globalization that we hope to highlight, in what follows, we focus exclusively on the first three ‘‘imagined’’ responses listed above.1 To establish and analyze these dominant themes, we use a combination of policy reports from the Central Council on Education (the highest official educational policy advisory council in the country) and the three major ‘‘special’’ education reform councils of the past two decades – the Ad Hoc Council on Education (AHCE) (1984–1987), the National Commission on Education Reform (NCER) (2000–2001), and the Education Rebuilding Council (ERC) (2006–2007). We note with interest that the term ‘‘globalization’’ has only emerged in the discourse on educational reform


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relatively recently, but that the ‘‘external’’ has been consistently understood and ‘‘framed’’ in similar ways over the past two decades through utilizing terms such as ‘‘education in the 21st century,’’ ‘‘education for a new era,’’ and ‘‘internationalization’’ (all dominant phrases in the 1980s and 1990s). In this section then, we are interested in tracing the consistent rhetorical ‘‘framing’’ of the challenges posed by ‘‘globalization’’ – broadly conceived – and the ways that it has laid the foundation for particular policy directions. The goal is to show how (a) these ‘‘imagined’’ effects have developed and gained momentum, (b) the particular understandings of these terms in the Japanese context, and (c) the concrete policies they have helped give rise to. Although it is rarely possible to clearly separate the domestic and international drivers of policy change, we prioritize – in line with our interest in locating the effects of globalization – the ‘‘international’’ dimension.

From the Importance of Liberalization, Deregulation to New Public Management Style Structural Policy Reforms Recognizable as least as early as the inauguration of the AHCE (1984– 1987), one clear feature of the reform discourse has been the importance of liberalizing and deregulating the education system. At a time when the rest of the world began to contemplate the notion of ‘‘Japan as Number One’’ (Vogel, 1979), within Japan itself, there was a feeling in some quarters – soon picked up in the mainstream political discourse – that the period of ‘‘catching up with the West’’ was nearing an end. Then Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone later explains that a major reason for his decision to launch the first ‘‘special’’ council on education reform was because the dominant policy goals of Japan from the end of WWII to the late 1970s had been ‘‘to put economic issues above all other policy and invest every effort in economic rehabilitation and to catch up with the West. [However] when these targets were more or less achieved, the necessity for new targets, and a new national plan or strategy, became clear’’ (Nakasone, 2002, p. 12). Within this ‘‘frame,’’ the postwar status quo of a highly centralized system carefully regulated by technocrats in the Ministry of Education came to be viewed not as an means of the most efficient means of ‘‘catch-up,’’ a way to ensure equality or a necessity for carefully aligning educational outputs with manpower requirements of the rapidly expanding economy, but instead as an overly standardized system that stifled the spirit of innovation, local diversity, and individual creativity. The verdict of an informal advisory group that Nakasone commenced in the run-up the

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AHCE was indeed decisive, arguing that, ‘‘It is imperative that we move toward a new emphasis on reduced regulation (kisei kanwa) in order to achieve the activation of education in Japan’’ (cited in Schoppa, 1991, p. 69). In line with this, the ACHE made a strong appeal for junanka (flexibility) and jiyuka (liberalization) with pointed recommendations that all tended toward liberalization and deregulation of the system: an end to the uniform 6-3-3 school track, loosening of a standardized school curriculum, introduction of more individualized teaching methods, abolishing rigid school catchment zones, empowering of local boards of education, official recognition of the role of the private sector (cram schools), and greater ‘‘school choice.’’ Although the implementation of many of these reforms stalled due to opposition from the Ministry (Schoppa, 1991), the framing of the issues and momentum created by the AHCE clearly propelled this discourse through to the 1990s and beyond. In April 1995, the Central Council on Education (CCE) began an extended, three-year deliberation on reforms later published in two reports entitled Towards a Model of Japanese Education for the 21st Century (1996, 1997). These reports – although focused mainly on aspects of pedagogy (something discussed in greater detail below) – continued to operate within the AHCE ‘‘frame’’ in issuing a call for increased ‘‘flexibility’’ and ‘‘diversification’’ in the upper secondary sector in particular. Another series of CCE reports issued a year later in 1998 were even more specific in promoting the idea of ‘‘administrative reform,’’ ‘‘deregulation,’’ and ‘‘decentralization.’’ Although domestic political developments outside the education sector in part helped fuel these reforms (a National Committee for the Promotion of Decentralization inaugurated in 1996, an intra-bureaucratic scramble for declining budget outlays, and increasing, widespread impatience with Japan’s stagnant economy stand out), global policy trends also came to buttress the domestic discourse of liberalization. Nitta (2008) contends that the ‘‘globally salient’’ New Public Management (NPM) philosophy became an attractive tool in the late 1990s – at least rhetorically – for Japanese reformers working within the confines of a decadelong discourse about the failures of an over-centralized system. He finds that, ‘‘searching for answers, Ministry of Education bureaucrats turned to foreign policy examples y NPM structural reform strategies, such as accountability, evaluation, flexibility, and decentralization, provided a promising theory of action to deal with economic worries and persistent educational problems’’ (Nitta, 2008, p. 114). That is, Japanese reformers were ‘‘imagining’’ a similitude between the problematique of the NPM – for example, inefficient State sector, the need to cut government expenditures, the concomitant push


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for accountability and evaluation, and a belief in the dynamism of the private sector – based on a discourse launched by the AHCE a decade before. In many ways, the culmination of this discourse was the Trinity Reform (Sanmi Ittai Kakaku) (2003–2004) initiated by the crusading, charismatic Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Koizumi’s sought to reduce national subsidies to local governments by offering local governments increased control over tax revenues, thereby slashing ballooning budget deficits at the center and unleashing local initiative, diversification, and innovation in the localities. This subsidy-for-tax swap had perhaps the most profound impact on education because education was the major central government outlay to prefectures and municipalities (primarily in the form of teachers’ salaries, as discussed in detail later in the chapter). The dramatic result was that over one-third of the budget controlled by the Ministry of Education was effectively decentralized (some 850 billion yen per year) (Nitta, 2008). Although MOE bureaucrats at times matched public appeals (something unprecedented in Japan) with attempts at closed door political maneuvering to try to stymie the reforms, the momentum of a two-decade-long discourse on the (supposed) inefficiencies of a centralized, regulated education system proved too much to roll back. Facing the inevitable, the CCE was forced to negotiate with Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) educational policy specialists, responding in Fall 2005 with perhaps the most significant and substantive education reform policy of entire postwar era, aptly titled Redesigning Compulsory Education in a New Era. Beginning with a rather solemn nod to the global context that it ‘‘imagined’’ – ‘‘we live in an age of change, an age of confusion, an age of intense international competition. In such an age y the role of compulsory education is all the more vital’’ (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology [MEXT], 2005, p. 1) – then clearly laid out the new policy framework, a vision of striking similarity with the core principles of NPM, as shown in an excerpt in Fig. 3. Here, the AHCE themes of decentralization and deregulation (‘‘municipalities and schools take charge of the process’’) are clearly realized in substantive policy, together with new accountability measures such as the Nationwide Assessment of Academic Ability. Nor was this the only policy effect of note: nearly 400 municipalities (close to 20% nationwide) were experimenting, piloting, or had introduced school choice plans (Nitta, 2008). Clearly then, a discourse promoting the importance of liberalization that ‘‘imagined’’ the future of Japanese education in a ‘‘new era’’ must be counted as one of the major responses of Japan to globalization; a discourse that overlaid, though did not necessarily accurately reflect the ‘‘real’’ effects

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Fig. 3.

Excerpt from Official English Translation of Redesigning Compulsory Education in a New Era (MEXT, 2005, p. 1).

of globalization, but that nonetheless propelled the substantive policy shifts of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

From ‘‘Exam Hell’’ to Yutori to ‘‘Pisa-Shock’’ (and Back Again?) A second major theme of the reform discourse of the past two decades that is arguably a direct response to the challenges posed by globalization is the seemingly endless debates over whether Japan lacks creativity and individuality or is – alternatively – better served by more ‘‘traditional’’ pedagogical approaches. It is also here that we begin to glimpse how twisted, transient, and contradictory the impact of the ‘‘external’’ can be even within domestic policy debates. As with the themes of liberalization and deregulation, the ACHE is a readily identifiable starting point for a powerful discourse concerning the need to foster greater creativity and promote individual thought and selfexpression. In the first of its four reports released in June 1985, the AHCE suggested that one of the key tasks of the Council was to ‘‘suggest the future direction of education with a view to helping to create a society with creativity


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and vitality relevant to the twenty-first century’’ and that among the Council’s eight ‘‘Basic Concepts for Reform’’ the ‘‘cultivation of creativity, thinking ability, and power of expression’’ was among the most important (AHCE, 1985, p. 299). The notion that the Japanese system was failing to produce creativity and turn out students who lacked an intrinsic willingness to learn derived, in large part, from the obvious effects of the uniformity of curriculum and rigors of learning under conditions of extreme exam competition of the 1970s and 1980s (‘‘exam hell’’). It also grew out of long-standing antagonisms between leftist teachers represented by the Japan Teacher’s Union and liberal academics fearing a return to excessive state control of education that they held to be a major factor contributing to the rise militarism and the march to WWII. However, the discourse was also, in part, a response derived from concerns by Japanese employers that without creative thinkers, engineers, and designers, Japanese companies could never emerge from the role of importing, improving, and exporting Western technology – an industrial strategy that had served Japan well in the postwar period but was increasing difficult as the country emerged as a major economic power in its own right. Indeed, the major difference between the long-standing calls from the ‘‘left’’ for individuality over state-mandated curriculum and the more forceful, mainstream push in that direction in the official policy discourse from the 1980s was arguably that for the first time Japanese employers were raising similar calls. A major association representing the Japanese business community – the Japan Committee for Economic Development (Keizai Doyukai) (JCED) – released, for example, an influential report at the outset of the AHCE entitled A Proposition from Businessmen for Educational Reform: In Pursuit of Creativity, Diversity, and Internationality (1984), which asserted that creativity should be ranked as the most desirable qualification [among students today] y The development of diversity, the opposite of uniformity, is hoped for in many areas of society. A combination of human resources each having a variety of unique characteristics is the source of strength for enterprise, assuring flexibility in dealing with an uncertain future y Although Japanese products are diffused throughout the world and Japanese factories are increasingly being set up in foreign countries, Japan’s closed system can still be strongly seen in various fields of society such as education. (Japan Committee for Economic Development [JCED], 1984, p. 35)

In other words, the push for creativity in the official discourse was a result of the ‘‘imagining’’ – in some influential quarters – that Japan’s global economic position was closely linked to the fostering of creativity and the opening up of choice and diverse learning experiences.

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When the ‘‘bubble burst’’ in the early 1990s and economic growth ground to a halt, the notion that the lack of creativity and self-expression was a source of the malaise only grew stronger. It is little wonder then that when the CCE undertook its first major review of policy in the 1990s, the ensuing reports and recommended policies – the aforementioned Towards a Model of Japanese Education for the 21st Century (1996, 1997) these themes were among the most dominant. The following ‘‘framing’’ of the problems is characteristic: in the post-war period Japan strove for economic growth and pursued material abundance. As a result of people’s untiring efforts, today material abundance has been achieved, but conversely, people have lost ‘room to grow’ y in Japanese society homogeneity and peer-group conscious y are as strong as ever, but in recent years, people have come to desire a rich sense of humanity and self-realization based on a variety of values y [Now] the need for our country to contribute to international society and open up new frontiers for itself has grown, and the cultivation of originality and creativity and the development of individual’s varied talents has become an extremely important topic in education. (Central Council on Education [CCE], 1997, p. 8)

To rectify this lack of ‘‘room to grow,’’ the CCE proposed a dramatic policy shift centered on ‘‘‘zest for living’ (ikiru chikara) amid education for ‘room to grow’ ( yutori kyoiku)’’. Overall, this new approach became known as the ‘‘new perspective on academic ability’’ (atarashii gakuryokukan) – a phrase that became a central part of the education reform discourse of the 1990s in its own right. ‘‘Zest for living’’ – according to the CCE’s (1997) policy paper – was envisaged as those policies promoting students ‘‘ability to identify problems for oneself, learn for oneself, make independent judgments and action and solve problems well’’ (CCE, 1997, p. 11). The fundamental premise was the importance of developing students’ self-learning competencies for critical discovery and problem-solving skills to replace the older, ‘‘traditional’’ paradigm of teacher-centered education. This was to be realized through classes that focused on experiential learning and would allow students to autonomously define their own problems and projects. Building on ‘‘life studies’’ (seikatsuka) classes first introduced in elementary schools nationwide in 1989 which were designed to foster children’s intellectual growth by calling upon their own experiences, interests, and thus motivation, the reforms proposed in 1998 would open space during regular school hours for a new general studies class (sogo tekina gakushu) that would permit teachers and students to develop their own curriculum with no prescribed textbook and little oversight from Tokyo. The second keyword of the report – ‘‘room to grow’’ or yutori kyoiku – was closely intertwined with this. It envisaged allowing children to view ‘‘actual experiences and exchanges with people as learning material, and through a process of trial and error, discover


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their interests in a process that must be referred to as the budding of individuality’’ (ibid.) To achieve this yutori, the CCE recommended sweeping revisions of the New Course of Study (announced in 1998, coming into effect 2002): the reduction of curricular content by 30%, the full realization of a five-day school week (a proposal originally put forth during AHCE), and an increased number of electives on offer in secondary schools (for further details and insightful analysis on how this policy shift was actually understood within schools, see also the chapter by Bjork, in this volume). Almost immediately, however, the announcement of a drastic policy shift to embrace this ‘‘new perception on academic achievement’’ sparked a major response from conservative critics and fired an ‘‘achievement crisis debate’’ (gakuryoku teika ronso) that would engulf the policy discourse on education for the better part of the next seven years (Tsuneyoshi, 2004a). Beginning with works with highly sensationalized titles such as ‘‘College Students Who Can’t Solve Fractions’’ (Nishimura, Tose, & Okabe, 1999), ‘‘College Students Who Cannot Solve Decimal Equations’ (Nishimura, Tose, & Okabe, 2000), and ‘‘The Intelligence of College Students Continues to Decline’’ (Nishimura, Tose, & Okabe, 2001), these critics argued that the recent proposals would exacerbate what was already a deep decline in the quality of Japanese education Others looked abroad to make the case against the implementation of yutori kyoiku, suggesting again that permeability at the level of discourse is quite often an epiphenomenon of domestic policy problematiques: conservative critics sought to first import ‘‘A Nation at Risk’’ crisis discourse from the United States (Takayama, 2007), then – when that fizzled – embarked on a much more elaborate project of (selectively) ‘‘learning from the Thatcher reforms’’ (Rappleye, 2008; Takayama & Apple, 2008). To defend itself against the conservative onslaught, the Ministry of Education deployed Terawaki Ken, section chief for education policy and major advocate of the yutori reforms. Terawaki helped the Ministry hold its ground, tirelessly championing the same discourse of creativity and individuality that first the AHCE, then the CCE had ‘‘imagined’’ over the past two decades arguing, in his own 2008 account of the events of the time, that ‘‘to increase the time of study and return – via a national achievement test – to an exclusive view of education for cognitive achievement is to go against the times. In a globalizing world, we have to think carefully rethink what is really demanded of our children’’ (Terawaki, 2008, p. 11). In the end, this thinking predominated and thus the ‘‘Nation at Risk’’ imagined by conservatives was not enough to force the MOE to rethink the ‘‘more creative’’ New Course of Study before it was implemented nationwide in 2002. What came next, however, did arguably provide the momentum to transform conservative critiques into actual policy revisions: the ‘‘shock’’ of

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the 2003 PISA results. Traditionally, a stellar performer in international student achievement tests (IEA, TIMSS), the ‘‘decline’’ of Japan in the 2003 PISA rankings (released 2004) had a major impact on ministry policy. Terawaki, who was still actively championing yutori policies at the time, relates that despite strong showings in the 2000 PISA test and the fact that Japan’s statistical ‘‘drop’’ in all areas except reading was negligible, ‘‘if we look at the Ministry’s response to the 2003 results, it is possible to say that it had a major impact on yutori education’’ (Terawaki, 2008, pp. 74–75). He goes on to say that the fact that people thought – the mere perception – that Ministry ‘‘policy had brought about the decline was extremely damaging for the revised New Course of Study’’ (ibid.). Terawaki relates that those leading the charge on the decline of achievement and the negative tone of nearly all types of mass media outlets became increasingly obvious, confirming recent analysis by Takayama (2008a). It was at that time, he goes on to relate, ‘‘that the Ministry of Education felt compelled to contemplate reviving a nationwide survey on academic ability, something that had been discontinued 43 years before’’ (Terawaki, 2008, p. 75). This nationwide survey became the National Assessment of Academic Ability (NAAA) that began in 2007 and became another key tributary of the substantive policy reform plan – Redesigning Compulsory Education (2005) – discussed above (see Fig. 3). Indeed, the 2003 PISA results continued to reverberate for many years, driving at least one major Japanese mission of policymakers to visit the OECD (2005) and another to Finland (2006) to try to understand the reason for Japan’s (supposed) slide. It would also lead to the increase of the curricular content by 10% proposed by the ERC in 2007 – an act that amounted to the symbolic end of yutori kyo¯iku. What we find particularly fascinating in this discussion then is how an ‘‘imagining’’ of developments outside of Japan came to be used first to push the notion of creativity, individuality, and ‘‘room to grow,’’ then how it later came to be employed to help repeal those very same policy reforms. This reveals both how twisted and dynamic the effects of ‘‘globalization’’ are when one seeks to understand the phenomenon at the level of rhetoric and discourse, but also how diverse the ‘‘imagining’’ of the challenges of globalization can be among various domestic political actors.

From Bolstering a Japanese Identity to the Revision of the FLE A third major discourse identifiable from the outset of ‘‘imagining’’ Japanese education in a ‘‘globalizing’’ world is arguably one of the most


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counter-intuitive and complex: the appeal to bolster a Japanese identity and foster a positive or ‘‘healthy’’ nationalism. While it would be wrong to suggest that this discourse reflects widespread social attitudes, it has nonetheless been extremely influential in the highest levels of policy – especially on the three special reform councils – since the mid-1980s. It is a policy response that ‘‘imagines’’ the strengthening of pride and appreciation for the nation through education as a necessity for Japan to ‘‘globalize’’ and contribute to the international community. The AHCE’s third and fourth reports released in April and August 1987, respectively, would articulate rather well the most salient points of a discourse that would come to feature largely in discussions of education reform in the ensuing 20 years: Japanese people must objectively perceive the position of Japan in the international community. To cope with this position, they must have pride in Japan’s culture – in other words, what has made Japan what it is today – and in the implications of this culture for all mankind. (AHCE, 1987a, p. 318) From now on Japanese must have a deep understanding, respect and affection for Japanese culture as well as be tolerant toward other cultures y It must be understood that a good world citizen is a good Japanese [citizen], and our education system must teach people love for the country and a firm sense of the uniqueness of Japanese culture as well as deepen the knowledge of culture and traditions of all foreign countries. (AHCE, 1987b, p. 329)

From this perspective, at the very outset ‘‘internationalization’’ (kokusaika) – a buzzword in education reform for the past two decades (Goodman, 2007; Kubota, 2002) – had less to do with Japan’s relations with the outside world and more to do with solidifying a core Japanese national identity. In an extended analysis of the term within the AHCE proceedings, Roesgaard (1998), for example, concludes that the ‘‘fear of being swallowed up by an unidentified ‘international community’ apparently was one of the factors prompting NCER to emphasize Japanese culture and history in the context of internationalization’’ (p. 207) with the result being that ‘‘the domestication of internationalisation and its relation to nationalism has made the term ‘internationalisation’ one of dubious meaning’’ (p. 225). She also points out that some Japanese scholars at the time delivered a far harsher appraisal using a play on words, commenting that the ‘‘NCER’s [AHCE] internationalisaion is not kokusaika but kokusuika (ultranationalism)’’ (ibid., p. 202). Such an appraisal may not have been far off, as Prime Minister Nakasone who launched the AHCE was a known social conservative who, in writing in 1987 to bolster support for the work of the AHCE, stated that, ‘‘It is important that we unite in peace and culture around the Emperor, that we contribute

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culturally, politically, and economically to the rest of the world y a nationalism that endeavors to foster self-identity in this sense is a completely justifiable nationalism. And we must teach this through education’’ (Nakasone, 1987, pp. 13–14). Certainly not all ‘‘internationalization’’ was infused with this social conservative-cum-nationalist design, as policies resulting from the AHCE included plans to ‘‘embrace’’ the world by attracting 100,000 foreign students to Japanese universities and ambitions to put a native English speaker in every public school in the country (what later became the wellknown ‘‘JET program’’). However, the initial AHCE ‘‘framing’’ of the issues continued to live on, even when ‘‘diluted’’ with a more genuine spirit of internationalism, until by the mid to late 1990s, this conservative rhetoric clearly began to be revived as Japanese policymakers groped for a solution to the decade-long recession and the social rifts it began to make explicit. In August 1999, for example, displaying the Japanese flag (Hinomaru) and playing the national anthem (Kimigayo, literally ‘‘Your Majesty’s Reign,’’ a paean to the Emperor) at official school functions was legalized (something that had been banned during the postwar Occupation). Then, in 2000, another special education reform council was launched – the NCER – that extended the discourse a step further by stating in its final report that, it is necessary to think how to foster Japanese people living in a new age where science and technology y and globalization are progressing. Under such conditions, it is also necessary to develop and give a great deal of respect for our traditions, culture, and other elements to be handed down to the Japanese in future generations from the viewpoint of contributing generally to mankind with possessing an awareness and an identity as a Japanese person. It is necessary to reform the education system from the above two points and also to consider the Fundamental Law of Education. (National Commission on Education Reform [NCER], 2000, p. 20, italics added)

The revision of the Fundamental Law of Education (FLE) appropriate for a ‘‘new age’’ was, according to this report, a necessity for ‘‘internationalization.’’ What is fascinating in terms of conceptualizing the complexities of globalization is that while utilizing the rhetoric of ‘‘internationalization,’’ the response was more a reflection of long-standing political agendas and an effort to seal off – boost the immunity of the Japanese context – to similar processes of cultural change and a hybridization of identities being experienced the world over. Although the NCER – like AHCE – faced stiff resistance by the Ministry to proposed revisions to the FLE and efforts to infuse the curriculum and textbooks with greater nationalism, the discourse continued to thrive in the mainstream education and political debates. Finally, just over five years after


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the NCER, with newly elected Prime Minister Shinzo¯ Abe’s launch of the ERC (2006–2007), this discourse would finally find its way into substantive policy. Abe, working together with many of those who had been influential in the formation of the NCER, worked behind the scenes in the final years of the Kozumi administration (April 2001–September 2006) to capitalize on the momentum of the recent structural education reforms – Redesigning Education for a New Era (2005) – to infuse it with the ‘‘healthy nationalism’’ envisaged as early as Nakasone’s AHCE. To make the case for reform, Abe and other influential LDP leaders paid a visit to England in October 2004 to ‘‘learn from the Thatcher reforms’’ paying particular attention to ways that Thatcher (a) reformed ‘‘masochistic’’ history textbooks to ‘‘re-infuse’’ the youth with an appreciation for national traditions and history and (b) politically engineered the historic 1988 Education Reform Act (which Abe and others saw as holding lessons for how they might successfully revise the contentious FLE) (Rappleye, 2009). Here again, we see a highly selective opening to the ‘‘world’’; permeability conditioned by and subordinate to internal policy discourses and influences from abroad ‘‘framed’’ according to domestic political proclivities. Although the details of the closed-door deals that led to the successful revision of the FLE in December 2006 are obscure (see Takayama, 2008b for some insightful general analysis), the revisions themselves clearly reveal the success of those seeking to transform this discourse into actual policy. The revised FLE, for example, states in Goals and Principles of Education, Article III, 5 that education would now be expected to ‘‘foster an attitude that respects tradition and culture and love of the national homeland that fostered them, an attitude that respects other nations and contributes to peace and development of the international community.’’ Based on this and other revisions, the ERC set to work over the next year to align the system with this general vision, suggesting substantive revisions in areas such as textbooks, curriculum, moral education, and teacher training. Thus, rather than ‘‘imagining,’’ say, what changes Japanese society would need to undergo to transform itself into a place to welcome immigrants or attract the best and brightest students and scholars worldwide, the discourse on educational reform has been largely dominated by a belief in the need to strengthen Japanese identity and love of country. Operating under the surface usage of the term ‘‘internationalization,’’ we find not the anticipated permeability but an immune response along Japan’s cultural-cum-political borders. To briefly sum up then, we argue that together these three responses – liberalization, creativity vs. core academic abilities, and bolstering a

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Japanese identity – make up Japan’s ‘‘imagined’’ educational response to globalization. These encompass economic and finance issues, approaches to pedagogy and academic achievement, and cultural and politics. Recognition of these ‘‘imaginings’’ gives us some sense of the totality of responses that the challenges of globalization can elicit. Our next move is to now explicitly overlay the ‘‘imagined’’ discourses cum policies spawned by ‘‘globalization’’ discussed in this section onto the ‘‘real’’ effects discussed in the previous section to bring the unintended, twisted effects of the considerable disconnect implicitly hinted at here into fuller relief.

GLOBALIZATION’S TWISTED, UNINTENDED IMPACTS ON JAPANESE EDUCATION As we have discussed, three major education reforms trends have progressed as reactions to globalization’s ‘‘imagined’’ effects: liberalization and deregulation reforms, curriculum and pedagogy reforms aimed at fostering creativity, and bolstering ‘‘the’’ Japanese identity. In this section, we now seek to examine how the policies founded on ‘‘imagined’’ globalization have not simply ignored the ‘‘real’’ effects of globalization raised earlier in the chapter, but how this disconnect has exacerbating both the quality and the inequality of/in Japanese education. In effect, we seek to illuminate some of the largely unforeseen consequences of the overlay of the ‘‘imagined’’ effects on ‘‘real’’ change. The Unintended Effects of Deregulation and Decentralization of Education Beginning in 1952 with the enactment of the ‘‘State Subsidies Law for Compulsory Education,’’ the central government has been legally required to pay one half of all teachers’ salaries and other allowances nationwide. A subsequent law, ‘‘Class Size and School Staff Standards Act,’’ enacted in 1958, mandated how each prefecture would calculate the number of staff it would need and thus the central government subsidy. With the maximum capacity of each classroom (currently) set at 40 students, prefectures would, up until the Koizumi reforms of 2004, annually calculate – utilizing the numbers of students and schools, with some additional considerations given to the geographical allocations of schools and special needs – the number of staff needed. Next, applying a nationally standardized pay scale as


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reference, expenditures for personnel cost in compulsory education could be calculated. Based on this calculation, the final step of the process was submission of the figure and subsequent payment of a major subsidy by the central government equivalent to roughly half of the calculated amount to each prefecture, a figure then met with a matching payment by the prefecture to pay teachers salaries and other educational-related allowances. Using this procedure, per capita costs for compulsory education among prefectures differed greatly. In 2004, in the prefecture that spent the most on education, Kochi (a rural prefecture in the south west of the country far from any major urban, economic center), yearly outlays just for teaching staff salaries and other related allowance for each enrolled child was roughly 865,000 yen (about USD $8,000). This contrasts greatly with outlays in the prefecture that spent the least per student in the country, Saitama (a prefecture adjoining Tokyo to the north), where the yearly outlay was about 470,000 yen (roughly USD $4,000). In other words, the costs per child of education were roughly 1.8 times greater for Kochi than Saitama. Kochi was and still is one of the poorest prefectures in terms of its local government budget and average household resources. It also has to maintain many schools enrolling declining numbers of students in distant, rural, and mountainous areas. On the contrary, Saitama is located near Tokyo and is a relatively wealthy prefecture with a highly developed transportation system, dense urban populations, and a plethora of employment opportunities available in nearby Tokyo. It was these differences that necessitated that the central government had to invest almost two times more to educate a child in Kochi as compared with a child in Saitama to achieve a comparable level of provision. In a sense, this postwar system of centralized system of budged allocation to elementary schools thus functioned as a ‘‘progressive’’ distribution of educational resources that worked to equalize compulsory educational conditions across vastly different geographic, economic, and social contexts nationwide, contributing greatly to equality in Japanese education. However, as discussed above, this centralized system had been severely criticized since the early 1980s in some highly influential corners in the mainstream political discourses as a major liability in an era of ‘‘globalization.’’ The result of this was that in 2004 – as also detailed previously – the government decided on a plan (the ‘‘Trinity Reform’’) to transfer tax-collecting authority worth three trillion yen to local governments and cut the same amount of subsidies to offset the revenue loss. Policy makers, primarily those at the local government level, agreed to such a plan

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because they envisaged the reform would increase their autonomy and discretionary power in the use of the local budget. Prefectural and local authorities seemed to have expected that, in the context of the rapid decline in the number of school-age children, they would be able to cut down on the total cost of compulsory education, leaving them free to move the money ‘‘saved’’ to other priority areas. In other words, these prefectural and local leaders (who emerged as major, vigorous backers of Koizumi’s ‘‘Trinity Reform’’) thus envisaged that their discretion of power over local budget would increase, if tax-collecting authority was transferred over to them. However, subsequent research has suggested that they made a gross miscalculation. Kariya, Doi, and Seno (2005) have shown that not only will personnel expenditures for compulsory education increase in most prefectures over the next decade, but also that in poorer prefectures, these increases would be the greatest despite the declining number of school children. The mechanisms of how this works has been explained as follows. Presently, the age distribution among Japanese teachers in compulsory education is heavily imbalanced. Reflecting the rapid expansion of education in the 1960s and 1970s and the general aging of Japanese society, the majority of teachers nationwide tend to be nearing the end of their careers. A massive number of these senior teachers (currently over 50 years old) will retire after having enjoying increases in their salaries year-on-year for the next decade or so. In the Japanese public employment system under which teachers are classified, it is extremely hard to dismiss these relatively ‘‘expensive’’ teachers due to life-long employment customs, regardless of even drastic declines in student enrollment. Therefore, with retirement benefits paid through annual local budgets, in addition to the increasing yearly salaries for those teachers, the result is the incremental expansion in human resources costs throughout at least the next decade. More importantly, the amount of incremental cost per student will increase at differing rates according to prefecture. Such differences will give rise to unequal pressures on local governments’ budgets in different prefectures at different times. The different age distributions of teachers and student populations in Japan’s 47 prefectures are what create this differential phenomenon. Taking these age distributions and predicted future student numbers in each prefecture into consideration, Kariya (2008, 2009) has predicted future personnel expenditures for compulsory education for all 47 prefectures until 2018, then used these figures to calculate the changes in correlation coefficients between the year 2001 and 2018 utilizing indicators of financial power (see Kariya, 2008 for further details).


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That research reveals positive correlations until 2010, but after that time, negative correlations appear with these negative correlations progressively increasing thereafter. That is, that research result clarifies that for the next several years, financially wealthier prefectures will face greater increases for personnel cost for compulsory education than financially poorer prefectures. However, from 2011 onward, this tendency will be reversed. At that time, poorer prefectures will need more money to maintain the same quality of compulsory education as compared to those wealthier prefectures. This will happen because financially richer prefectures hired many more teachers during 1970s because of the vast increase in school-age children at the time due to geographical migrations from rural, agricultural areas to urban industrial centers. However, the hiring increase in the poor prefectures only came during the 1980s when the so-called second baby boom generation (the children of the original, immediate postwar boom generation) reached school attendance age. Thus, in the ‘‘richer’’ prefectures, those teachers are retiring earlier (1990s and 2000s), while in the ‘‘poorer’’ prefectures, a similar wave of mass retirement will occur beginning around 2010. The result is that although ‘‘poorer’’ prefectures will continue to enjoy some budget ‘‘surplus’’ as a result of the reforms for the next two to three years, soon the costs of compulsory education in these ‘‘poorer’’ areas will increase rapidly in line with the retirements of school personnel. As discussed in the previous section, educational policy debates in Japanese education have centered on the fostering of progressively higher cognitive skills among students, either through measures aimed at boosting creativity or raising basic skills. The demands created by the ‘‘knowledgebased economy’’ imagined by policymakers – although it has elicited a different response (yutori vs. ‘‘basic skills’’) – holds as a point of commonality the need for schools to provide and develop better learning environments, centered on more skilled and competent teachers. Yet, almost paradoxically and largely unforeseen, a simultaneous discourse ‘‘imagining’’ globalization as necessitating deregulation and decentralization found its way into concrete policy in the ‘‘Trinity Reform’’ of the 2004 and have – if projections are correct – led to impacts that are clearly detrimental to the former goals of improving learning environments: a decreasing educational budget in many prefectures and a ‘‘regressive’’ distribution of national outlays for education. It is here that we see how the simultaneity of differences in the way that globalization is ‘‘imagined’’ overlays on largely unforeseen ‘‘real’’ social and economic changes can result in often rather twisted and unintended consequences detrimental to both educational quality and equality, despite its intent to do quite the opposite.

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Curriculum and Pedagogical Reforms for Creativity and ‘‘Room to Grow’’ (yutori kyo¯iku) As discussed above, beginning with the AHCE deliberations in the mid-1980s, the national policy discourse became infused with the idea that Japan had finally ‘‘caught up’’ with Western industrialized societies, and therefore, the education system should shift its emphasis from simply rote learning and cramming knowledge to more creative and independent learning approaches. ‘‘Creativity’’ (so¯zo¯sei) and ‘‘individuality’’ (kosei) became the keywords in the reform discourse from that point forward, gathering momentum throughout the 1990s. Closely related to this, the AHCE proposal that the former heavy social emphasis placed on academic credentials – gakureki-shakai (the academic credential society) – should be replaced by a system that afforded more chances for individuals to develop their unique potential throughout their lives, in school and beyond, and be judged as such by society. Thus, creativity, individuality, and preparing the way for an individual to continue learning even after years his or her years in formal schooling came to be seen as necessary for Japan to survive in the context of a new knowledge-based global economy in which ‘‘inspiration’’ and not ‘‘perspiration’’ would prevail (Krugman, 1994) – variations on cliche´s now commonly found worldwide when ‘‘imagining’’ globalization’s effects on education. One of the more famous reform slogans from this period thus became shido¯ yori shien wo (‘‘from guidance to support’’), signifying both a new student–teacher relationship as well as new pedagogical goals and styles to reach that goal. Given more freedom or ‘‘room to grow,’’ students were now being expected to become more independent (supposed), an integral character trait for ‘‘21st century Japanese’’ to excel in a globalizing world. However, despite this lofty political discourse and the rather drastic break from the status quo that it catalyzed, one of the obvious defects in the reform vision was that the government failed to provide schools and teachers with the resources necessary to realize its ambitious policy vision. To be successful in such more individualized learning as planned, class size in Japanese schools were far too big at 40 students per class. Despite the policy discourse, the government did not increase the education budget to foster such a learning environment in schools. Furthermore, teachers were not given enough time and opportunities to develop new styles of teaching or practice new pedagogical approaches, nor afforded training in areas such as classroom management and lesson design that would now become crucial components of their necessary skill set (see Bjork, 2009 and Bjork’s contribution to this volume for further details and analysis). Obviously, the


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reforms were too idealistic and out of touch with the actual situation in classrooms – another clear example of ‘‘imagined’’ policies disconnected with ‘‘realities’’ in on the ground. Largely as a result of this, the dismal outcomes of the reforms extended far beyond mere missteps in implementation when the plan went into effect in 2002. Most relevant among these outcomes for our discussion here is that the ‘‘relaxed’’ demands in the new curricula actually increased the number of students who did not study outside of school (for details, see Kariya, 2010). Moreover, students from disadvantaged families stopped studying at a higher rate than those from advantaged families, resulting in expanding inequality in education, as a result of encouraging less effort both inside and outside of school (Kariya & Shimizu, 2004). Thus, as a result of the ‘‘loosening’’ of the curricula, which had, throughout the entire postwar period, functioned as a means of mediating the effects of students’ differing class backgrounds, what emerged were inequalities in academic achievement closely reflecting socioeconomic family background (Kariya, 2008, 2010; Mimiduka, 2007). In the new ‘‘integrated learning classes,’’ differences in family environment also emerged in distinct student attitudes toward the new pedagogical approach: Those from higher socioeconomic class backgrounds maintained a commitment to academic achievement and responded while those from lower sociocultural backgrounds tended to see little point in studying and distanced themselves from school achievement. All of these effects were different dimensions of the aforementioned ‘‘incentive divide.’’ Here, the detrimental effect of the overlay of the ‘‘imagined’’ and ‘‘real’’ effects of globalization perhaps comes into the fullest relief. While the ‘‘real’’ effects of globalization catalyzed a great reduction in the chances for disadvantaged (geographically, socioeconomically, etc.) youth to become full-time workers through the previous routes of an abundance of relatively low skilled manufacturing jobs in local areas, the ‘‘imagined’’ response to globalization leading to a ‘‘relaxation’’ of the curriculum and pedagogical approach further reduced their incentive to work hard with clearly measurable negative impacts on their academic achievement levels. That is, not only were there fewer outlets and clear pathways for these youth to find full-time, stable employment, but they became even more heavily disadvantaged because they lacked a strong set of basic skills in traditional, core subjects (math, science, and reading). Moreover, they failed to take full advantage of the newly introduced ‘‘integrated learning classes’’ that held out the idea that what these students needed to excel in the globalizing world was simply more creativity and autonomy. Therefore, the ‘‘imagined’’ response to globalization at the national policy level led to a curricular and

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pedagogical change that in reality ushered in increased social stratification and inequality in educational achievement. Constructed policy responses only compounded the effects wrought by actual challenges posed by globalization. Those least capable of responding and taking advantage of the new educational reforms were precisely the socioeconomically disadvantaged section of society that would bear the major brunt of the dislocation and social caused by ‘‘real’’ effects of globalization, the closing down of low wage, low skill manufacturing jobs. These ‘‘real’’ trends pushed them into the newly opened non-standard, secondary employment sector of unsecure part-time and contract labor mentioned previously, where – with few basic skills – they would have little prospects to find secure, full-time employment. Thus, the ‘‘imagined’’ effects of globalization clearly only served to exacerbate, rather than mediate, the ‘‘real’’ effects of globalization for the section of the population most directly effected.

Unintended Consequences of Bolstering National Identity through ‘‘Internationalization’’ As discussed in the previous section as well, special reform councils since the 1980s have consistently stressed the need for education to contribute to a bolstering of national identity, with concrete polices spanning from ‘‘adjustments’’ to the moral education curriculum to rewriting aspects of the FLE and subsequent attempts to align textbooks and curriculum accordingly. As reiterated most recently by the ERC (2006–2007), such policies are premised on the supposed homogeneity of Japanese society and a shared vision of the past and the future. ‘‘Internationalization’’ as understood in Japan ‘‘imagines’’ a world in which the unique virtues and traditions of Japan are – at best-diluted and forgotten among the younger generation, or – at worst – displaced by foreign cultures and cease to exist any longer, necessitating a need to actively, consciously instill a ‘‘love of country’’ and tradition through education. While the debates about this are complex and often highly charged, what is perhaps most interesting is the fact that such an approach, when overlaid on the ‘‘real’’ effects of globalization on Japanese society, also arguably produces several twisted, detrimental effects on Japanese education, although ones that are to date only just beginning to become clear. The influx of foreign workers, although still minimal as compared with other advanced countries of Europe and North America, has naturally led to an increase in numbers of foreign-born children in Japanese schools (Willis &


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Murphy-Shigematsu, 2007). In 2008, there were an estimated 19,504 students who needed ‘‘special’’ education in the form of Japanese language training at the primary level, with an additional 7,576 at the middle school level. Out of more than 10 million of total number of students in Japanese elementary and middle schools, the number of foreign students and those who need special language education looks negligible. However, as the ‘‘real’’ challenge of lowering the cost of labor continue to elicit a somewhat begrudging opening of Japanese legal borders to foreign workers-cum-immigrants, these figures are projected to rise even further in coming years. In fact, a high-profile United Nations Population Division report issued in 2000 strongly urged Japan to accept 600,000 new immigrants per annum from 2005 to 2050 to maintain its working age population at 1995 levels (United Nations Population Division [UNPD], 2000). Such a plan would lead to a total of 17 million foreigners by 2050. With projections of the Japanese population shrinking to 100 million by 2050, this would put the number of ‘‘foreigners’’ in Japan at close to 17%, bringing it in line with the current foreign-born residents’ levels of 20% of Australia and 18% of America. Although such an ambitious ‘‘population replacement’’ plan is unlikely to be met for various reasons, not least because of stiff resistance from the same political quarters as those launching the ‘‘internationalization’’-cum-nationalist discourse, clearly Japan looks set to face a substantial increase in enrollments by foreign-born students in coming decades. Yet even today, we can glimpse the unintended, detrimental effects of the overlay of this ‘‘real’’ change and ‘‘imagined’’ political response. Currently, there are 4,562 schools that enroll at least one of these foreign-born students, with some 1,293 schools enrolling more than 20 of these students needing ‘‘remedial’’ Japanese language instruction. Under current arrangements, the central and local governments together bear the cost of hiring these additional language instructors. However, as part of the decentralization and liberalization policies discussed above, from 2006, the localities had to bear the major share of hiring these additional teachers. Largely as a result, as of the time of writing, only some 985 teachers have been assigned for the 4,562 schools in need of such support (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology [MEXT], 2009). For those schools that cannot hire these special language teachers, regular teachers are assigned to teach the foreign-born, non-native speakers. When coupled with classrooms of 40 students that is the norm nationwide, these regular teachers – untrained in issues facing foreign-born students struggling with language and culture issues – inevitably contribute to what is a de-facto policy of ‘‘assimilation’’ and a sink-or-swim approach buttressed by the

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‘‘imagined’’ political discourse of the need for a greater appreciation of ‘‘Japanese-ness’’ and Japanese customs.2 The result is a largely uncounted number of students who simply drop out to take jobs in low skilled, low paying jobs as the curriculum becomes more difficult and the language demands increasingly taxing at the secondary level. Another result is the proliferation of native language, private schools where students also often fail to acquire the skills and knowledge customarily expected of their Japanese peers, not the least of which is proficiency in the Japanese language. Without at least a high school diploma and low levels of Japanese language ability, the chances for these foreignborn youth to find stable, secure, and well-paid employment are severely limited. Much like the Japanese of a similar lower social class background, these immigrants often experience the ‘‘real’’ impacts of global economic competition most acutely (an estimated 50,000–60,000 Brazilian workers alone are reported to have left Japan when the financial crisis of 2007–2008 led to sudden layoffs) but are least equipped – in terms of education – to rise above such an existence on the ‘‘at-risk’’ social margins. So long as government policy continues to ‘‘imagine’’ the need for an appreciation of ‘‘Japanese-ness’’ and a focus on ways to manage Japan’s increased interconnectivity with people from abroad through its particular framing of ‘‘internationalization,’’ the challenges of accommodating these students do not hit the political mainstream and thus have little chance of eliciting an appropriate policy response. Despite appeals for a ‘‘multicultural’’ society in many corners of academia and civil society, the framing of globalization as necessitating a bolstering of Japanese identity through ‘‘internationalization’’ has clearly been dominant, leading to a contradictory, twisted situation in which ‘‘internationalization’’ (as a symbol for the Japanese identity project) only exacerbates the educational realities of a steadily increasing number of international residents within Japan’s borders.

TOWARDS A CONCLUSION: REFLECTIONS OF THE FUTURE OF JAPANESE EDUCATION – THE NEED TO CLOSE THE GAP BETWEEN THE ‘‘REAL’’ AND ‘‘IMAGINED’’ In this chapter, we have attempted to show several of the myriad impacts of globalization on Japanese education. We argued that globalization in Japan – as probably in much of the world – is best analyzed in terms of its


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‘‘real’’ and ‘‘imagined’’ effects, implicitly showing how such effects catalyze change in the social, economic, political, and cultural contexts in which education policy and practice is situated. Yet, rather than stop at simply ‘‘breaking down’’ globalization in/on Japanese education along these dimensions, we attempted to advance current analysis one step further by revealing how, when policies designed to respond to globalization’s ‘‘imagined’’ impacts are overlaid on the ‘‘real’’ effects, there emerges a distinct disconnect that has been detrimental to the quality and equality of/in Japanese education. We worked to demonstrate that such approach is indeed one of the most promising means of understanding globalization in Japan its totality and elucidating how the simultaneity of ‘‘real’’ and ‘‘imagined,’’ political and social, economic and cultural, and so on overlap and interweave in unintended, twisted ways that have – at least in the Japanese context – served mainly to hasten educational decline. In coming years, Japan will continue to search for ways to respond educationally to the ‘‘real’’ challenges posed by globalization – the transition to a post-industrial economic structure as manufacturing jobs move to other parts of Asia, the need to nurture companies, institutions, and skills who excel in an increasingly competitive global market, and the influx of immigrants needed to cope with the ‘‘graying’’ of Japanese society to name just a few. Inevitably, the coming years will also see intensified efforts to ‘‘imagine’’ where Japan fits into a globalizing world, educationally and otherwise. These ‘‘imagined’’ responses will be contingent both upon accurate information about what ‘‘real’’ changes are underway in the Japanese economy and society and upon the domestic political and social context that catalyzes such ‘‘imagined’’ response. Here, scholars have an important role to play – as we have attempted to do here – by continuing to show the twisted, detrimental effects that the substantial gap between the ‘‘real’’ and ‘‘imagined’’ produces. Put another way, the realities of Japanese education looks set to continue to change according to economic ‘‘permeability’’ that are largely beyond the reach and control of the national government. However, the ‘‘immunities’’ that emerge (e.g., nationalism cum ‘‘internationalization’’) and ‘‘imagined’’ policy responses out of step with realities in classrooms (e.g., beliefs that ‘‘relaxing’’ the curriculum would spark creativity despite the fact that students were already studying much less) are man-made. As such, they are subject to considerable revision and reconsideration. If such revisions are made in ways that take into account the ‘‘real’’ changes underfoot and carefully contemplate the future of Japanese society, the future of Japanese educational quality and equality may indeed be bright. Yet, if the substantial disconnect between ‘‘real’’ and ‘‘imagined,’’ between economic ‘‘permeability’’ and

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political and cultural ‘‘immunity,’’ then the prospects for a revamped Japanese education remain bleak. We also seek to submit in conclusion that although the impacts of globalization on education in Japan can be broadly understood within a framework of ‘‘real’’ and ‘‘imagined,’’ ‘‘permeabilities,’’ and ‘‘immunities,’’ the Japanese context must also be appreciated for the ways that these dimensions are highly unique. To raise but one prominent example, when compared to other advanced societies such as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, the ‘‘immunity’’ of the Japanese context to discourses and concerns over ‘‘social inclusion’’ sparked by globalization in those societies immediately stands out. That is, in societies of Europe and North America where large percentages of ‘‘foreign’’ immigrants exist, the tensions between the economic challenges posed by globalization (i.e., a stratification and reduction in highpaid jobs) and the influx of immigrants is quite often clear-cut. The ‘‘zerosum’’ game between immigrants and non-immigrants as they compete for a static or declining number of socioeconomic resources leads to salient tensions that almost without fail spill out into the political discourse on education. As good jobs are ‘‘lost’’ and political battles over the appropriate allocation of resources between, say, wealthy and poor school districts intensifies, issues of social inclusion quickly emerge in local, then national debates and thus issues of social exclusion/inclusion become a major consideration in policy formulation. As a result, the high visibility of the clash in interests mitigates ‘‘immunities’’ that may emerge because reactions based on ‘‘tradition’’ and the culturally ‘‘immutable’’ are likely to come under severe criticism in the current age of diversity, inclusion, and distaste for ‘‘official,’’ monolithic, and immovable narratives of national history and culture. Yet, in rather clear contrast to that situation, in Japan, the visibility of such overt interest clashes between social advantage/disadvantage and inclusion/ exclusion is markedly lower, if not non-existent for several unique reasons. The first reason for this is because the very success of the postwar paradigm of full employment and equal growth distribution brought the vast majority of Japanese into the middle class (or at least a perception of it) causing a ‘‘classbased’’ perspective to fall out of political and educational debates (Kariya, 2010). The second reason is that currently with such a small number of immigrants, such a push-pull between social and economic disadvantage is unlikely to become linked to issues of race, ethnicity, or immigrant status in the policy discourse. Third, there is much less direct competition for jobs in Japan as a result of the rapid decline in the Japanese population and the fact that immigrants have largely been relegated to the least attractive jobs (called the three Ks in Japanese – kitanai, kiken, and kusai, literally the dirty,


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dangerous, and disgusting) thus minimizing direct competition with nonimmigrants. The point is that – here combining these three points – the issue of social inclusion/exclusion itself fails to emerge in the Japanese context because of a combination of its particular historical trajectory, the lack of immigration-cum-nationality/racial ‘‘frame’’ to understand such issues, and the lack of a clear-cut ‘‘zero-sum’’ competition for resources. This uniqueness is clearly manifest in, say, the difference between the Japanese and the German responses to the last two PISA results. That is, the Japanese ‘‘PISA shock’’ of 2004 that – as vigorous as it was – remained almost exclusively confined within older polarized debates between yutori vs. cramming education, while in Germany which experienced its own profound ‘‘PISA shock’’ in 2000, the debate it spawned almost immediately included discussion of the fact that ‘‘in no other European OCED country was the correlation between social class and educational achievement by pupils as high as in Germany’’ leading to a breaking of the ‘‘great taboo’’ of serious discussion of the relationship between immigrants, social inclusion, and the selective structure of German lower secondary education (Gruber, 2006, p. 203). In other words, Japan’s unique historical circumstance and social configurations are the major factors contributing to the ‘‘immunity’’ of the Japanese political and educational discourse to global concerns of social inclusion/exclusion; a formation forming a rigid political-cultural ‘‘border’’ inside which the twisted internationalization-as-nationalism discourse is thus able to continue to live on and even to thrive. As mentioned at the outset of the chapter, Japan occupies a particular position in the East Asian region. Given its historical trajectory, size, and economic structure, it is still the only country in the region that enables robust comparisons with other advanced (primarily Western) countries. We have shown that from this perspective, Japan is distinct from those countries in several important ways, most prominently in a preoccupation with issues of ‘‘creativity’’ and continued low levels of immigration that tend to sideline discourses of social inclusion and pose real problems for welcoming foreignborn students into Japanese schools. At the same time, Japan also facilitates comparison with other countries in the region – Korea, Taiwan, and China – that have experiences or are currently in the midst of population booms, a proliferation of manufacturing jobs, mass rural to urban migration, a lack of foreign immigration, and concerted attempts to move up the value-added change through education and skill development. Rather than see Japan as an outlier in the region, we thus find it more useful to see it as a national context that allows us to anticipate some of the very ‘‘real’’ problems that globalization poses for countries in the region that have followed – to greater

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and lesser degrees – a Japanese-style paradigm of ‘‘compressed’’ economic and social development. Yet, we submit that such problems need not inevitably lead to educational decline so long as a significant gap between the ‘‘real,’’ evolutionary effects of globalization and the ‘‘imagined,’’ rhetorical impacts does not develop to the point to which twisted, unintended outcomes emerge to the detriment of one of the region’s greatest strengths: strong, equitable national education systems.

NOTES 1. Readers interested in English-language work on globalization and higher education might begin with Yonezawa (2003), Eades, Goodman, and Hada (2005), and Tsuruta (2003). For connections between globalization and reform of English language teaching and learning, see Bulter and Iino (2005), Aspinall (2003), and Kubota (2002). 2. It is important to point out that our discussion focuses exclusively on what is often termed in Japan ‘‘newcomer’’ immigrants: those from places such as Brazil, China, Peru, and the Philippines that have composed the major influx of immigrants since the 1980s. The term ‘‘newcomer’’ itself implicitly raises the issues of previous waves of immigrants, primarily Koreans (zai-nichi kankokujin) who have arguably faced similar linguistic, cultural, and resource barriers to full integration into Japanese society for well over a century, if not much longer. The obscuring of such barriers by a vigorous ‘‘nationalist’’-cum-de-facto assimilationalist policy discourse that now faces ‘‘newcomers’’ has long been encountered by these ‘‘oldcomers,’’ as well as by indigenous groups such as burakumin (‘‘outcastes’’ during the Edo period) and Ainu (native inhabitants of the northernmost island of Japan). While we do not wish to lessen or obscure the importance struggles of the ‘‘oldcomers’’ or indigenous minority groups, our focus here is primarily upon ‘‘newcomers’’ because those are the groups whose arrival is most explicitly linked to the effects of ‘‘globalization’’ that is the specific focus of this chapter (for further details on ‘‘newcomers’’ as they related to previous waves of immigration and recent educational issues, see Tsuneyoshi, 2004b).

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EDUCATIONAL REFORM, ACADEMIC INTENSITY, AND EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY IN JAPAN Christopher Bjork ABSTRACT In response to this criticism of the schools that had been building for decades, in 2002, the Japanese Ministry of Education (MOE) enacted a collection of initiatives that aimed to better equip students to face the realities of rapidly shifting social, economic, and political conditions. Ministry officials hoped that the reforms, which were labeled the ‘‘relaxed education’’ policies, would induce substantial changes in the way education is organized and delivered across the country. Government reports emphasized that the prevalence of problems experienced by Japanese youths necessitated reforms that could reduce the pressures experienced by their students and enhance their interest in learning. This ethnographic study analyzes the translation and implementation of the relaxed education policies in a sample of Japanese elementary and junior high schools. The analysis provided highlights the tensions experienced by education stakeholders as they attempt to reconcile their ideals about education with more immediate concerns about what will bring students success in a competitive academic marketplace. Globalization, Changing Demographics, and Educational Challenges in East Asia Research in Sociology of Education, Volume 17, 65–96 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3539/doi:10.1108/S1479-3539(2010)0000017005

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CHRISTOPHER BJORK

Particular attention is devoted to the issue of equity, and how the relaxed education programs are affecting the learning opportunities and performance of different groups of students.

INTRODUCTION During the 1980s and 1990s, the Japanese education system attracted considerable attention from foreign observers’ intent on deepening their understanding of the country’s culture and economy (LeTendre, 1995). Foreign scholars who studied Japanese schools during this period thoroughly scrutinized a wide range of educational topics, from the techniques used to teach violin (Peak, 1998) to the politics of the teachers’ unions (Ota, 1989; Thurston, 1973). Although analyses occasionally highlighted troubling aspects of the system, such as bullying and ‘‘examination hell’’ (Frost, 1991; Hurst, 1984), those perspectives tended to be overshadowed by more complimentary reports. Educational research suggested that Japanese schools had indeed provided a strong foundation for economic progress. Attention to the growth of the whole child (Lewis, 1995; Peak, 1991), a demanding curriculum that all students were expected to master (Cummings, 1980, 1982; Stevenson & Stigler, 1992), and a teaching culture that treated its members as knowledgeable professionals (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999) had all helped to create individuals prepared to make positive contributions to their communities and workplaces. The nation’s celebrated economic progress may have raised the standard of living for many Japanese families, but the infusion of wealth also produced societal changes that complicated the mission of the public schools. At the same time that outside scholars were extolling Japanese approaches to teaching and learning, internal debates about the education system’s goals and effects thundered (Cave, 2001; Fujita, 2000; Tsuneyoshi, 2001). A chorus of voices, amplified by the mass media, questioned the ability of the postwar school model to respond to the shifting needs of Japanese children. Critics asserted that the heavy emphasis on entrance examinations and memorization of factual information were interfering with student development of the skills they needed to live fulfilling and productive lives (Inamura & Saito, 1995; Morita & Kiyonaga, 1996; Tsukada, 1991). Bullying, school refusal, and suicide were all presented as by-products of the intense pressure placed on students to succeed on those tests. Scholars also drew attention to the experiences of students who lack access to the resources and opportunities

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offered to their more privileged peers. According to Tsuneyoshi (2001, p. 113), ‘‘it has become difficult to maintain the belief that treating everyone the same is identical to equality. It is starting to seem like not everyone benefits equally from the same benefits and treatments.’’ In response to this criticism of the schools that had been building since the 1970s, the Ministry of Education (MOE)1 endorsed a collection of initiatives that aimed to better equip students to face the realities of rapidly shifting social, economic, and political conditions. Because these policies were crafted in response to diverse concerns about the school system expressed by multiple constituencies, an ambitious set of objectives anchored the plans for change. Ministry officials hoped that the reforms, which were labeled the ‘‘relaxed education’’ policies ( yutori kyoiku),2 would induce substantial changes in the way education is organized and delivered in Japan. Following the lead of many nation-states in the region, the MOE expressed its commitment to decentralizing authority over the curriculum. Schools and teachers were given unprecedented authority to shape curricular content to fit the unique characteristics of their schools and communities (Bjork, 2009). Revisions to the curriculum were also presented as a solution to perceived weaknesses in Japanese students’ academic and social skills (Cave, 2001; MEXT, 2002). The MOE emphasized that the prevalence of problems experienced by Japanese youths necessitated reforms that could reduce the pressures experienced by their students and to enhance their interest in learning. In addition, yutori kyoiku initiatives were designed to promote ‘‘new academic abilities’’ (shin gakuryokukan)3 required for success in contemporary society (Tsuneyoshi, 2004). Of particular concern to the MOE were the ‘‘considerable numbers of who do not feel they can understand school lessons’’ (MEXT, 2002, p. 20). To better meet the needs of low achieving students, teachers were encouraged to implement ‘‘lessons that are easy to understand’’ (MEXT, 2002, p. 27). Adoption of the relaxed education policies provoked vociferous debates about the direction of the public school system (Bjork & Tsuneyoshi, 2005; Tsuneyoshi, 2004). Although reports that put forth strong opinions about the relaxed education reform agenda were widespread, research that scrutinized the actual effects of those policies on school practice has been scarce. Assessments of yutori kyoiku have tended to put forth ideological arguments or to present macro-level data that ignore local contexts for reform. It is remarkably difficult to ascertain how schools, students, or teachers have been affected by the curricular changes introduced in 2002. Has the introduction of the reforms reduced pressure on students, as they were designed to do? Are teachers following exhortations to experiment with

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innovative instructional methods? How are students responding to changes that have been introduced in their schools? Most reports on the relaxed education movement do not address these questions. In this article, I present the findings of research on the effects of the relaxed education reforms that I conducted between 2003 and 2006. Focusing on ground-level responses to the Ministry’s reform agenda, I highlight the tensions experienced by education stakeholders as they attempt to reconcile their ideals about the education with more immediate concerns about what will bring students success in a competitive academic marketplace. Particular attention is devoted to the issue of equity and how relaxed education programs are affecting the learning opportunities and performance of different groups of students. MOE reports published in conjunction with the introduction of yutori kyoiku advise schools to devote more attention to the individual needs and interests of students. My analysis of the relaxed education reforms suggests that Japanese teachers are indeed designing more student-centered learning. However, rather than cultivate widespread commitment to learning, as forecast by the MOE, introduction of the relaxed education policies has provided benefits to pupils with a history of academic success – but has heightened rather than relieved the academic pressure experienced by low achieving students.

THE HISTORICAL TRAJECTORY OF CHANGE Although most of the relaxed education policies were adopted in 2002, the momentum that led to their adoption had been building over a long period. Beginning in the 1970s, the Japanese government published a series of reports advocating reform of the nation’s schools. Responding to criticism that the uniformity and rigidity of the Japanese education system was preventing its students from acquiring the skills and attitudes necessary to succeed in an increasingly interconnected world, these documents asserted that practices that had served the nation well during its reconstruction after World War II needed to be modified. In 1971, the Japanese government invited the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to evaluate its education system. In its subsequent report, the OECD suggested that Japanese schools needed to pay more attention to ‘‘the development of students’ personalities through a more relaxed and less pressured scheme of education’’ (OECD, 1971). In the same year, the Central Council for Education (Chuo Kyoiku Shingikai, or Chukyoshin) (CCE)4 authored a set of recommendations that promoted many of the


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goals currently being touted by the MOE: a more relaxed curriculum, increased emphasis on internationalization and personal expression, and experimentation with instructional methodology (Central Council for Education, 1971). Lacking widespread political support and a coherent structure, the reforms proposed by the Council failed to have a lasting impact in the schools (Azuma, 2002; Schoppa, 1991). However, the CCE report created a framework for reform that shaped educational decision-making in the years that followed. A collection of studies published in the 1980s and 1990s underlined the importance of creating schools that were more flexible and inspiring (Cave, 2007, pp. 14–19). Prime Minister Nakasone’s formation of the Ad Hoc Council on Education (Rinji Kyoiku Shingi-kai, or Rinkyoshin), also known as the National Council on Educational Reform (NCER), in 1984 ‘‘was a logical culmination to a lengthy period of concern in Japan over a set of widely perceived educational problems and the future prospects for Japanese education’’ (Beauchamp, 1991, p. 27). The Council disseminated numerous newsletters and submitted four reports to Nakasone that outlined a series of actions to be taken to promote independence and individuality in the schools (Okano & Tsuchiya, 1999, p. 210). Several of the recommendations articulated in the reports were realized in later years; these included the expansion of elective subjects at the high school level, the establishment of combined junior-senior high schools, and the introduction of the five-day school week (Fujita, 1999, 2000; Okano & Tsuchiya, 1999). The Ministry also stressed the need to ‘‘promote various and relaxed measures as much as possible in the educational system’’ (Ministry of Education [MOE], 1997, p. 1). Plans to implement the ideas articulated in the reports published by the CCE in 1996 and 1997 continued to gain support over the next few years. In 1998, the group approved a set of revisions to the national Course of Study that would be introduced nationwide in 2002. According to Cave, these changes ‘‘represented the most radical overhaul of the school curriculum since its inception in the late 1950s’’ (Cave, 2007, p. 19). First, the school week in all public schools was cut to five days – classes were no longer offered on Saturdays.5 A related change reduced curricular standards: the volume of material that teachers were to cover was reduced significantly. That reduction required schools to cut the total number of instructional hours in several core subjects (see Table 1). Ideally, trimming the national curriculum would enable teachers to spend more time cultivating students’ creativity and critical thinking skills. Third, the number of hours in the secondary school schedule allocated to elective courses expanded.

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Table 1.

CHRISTOPHER BJORK

Curriculum Reduction in Total Annual Instructional Hours. First Grade

Subject: Mathematics 1977 136 hours 1998 114 hours Subject: Reading 1977 272 hours 1998 272 hours (Integrated Studies)

Second Grade

Third Grade

Fourth Grade

Fifth Grade

Sixth Grade

175 155

175 150

175 150

175 150

175 150

280 280

280 235 105

280 235 105

210 180 110

210 175 110

Source: Japanese Ministry of Education, Technology, and Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, National Course of Study (1977 and 1998).

Schools were encouraged to offer students more choices to study material that interested them. Finally, a new subject, the Integrated Studies (IS) period, was added to the curriculum. According to MOE guidelines, IS lessons should be driven by student-generated questions and encourage pupils to think and work independently (see Cave, 2007, p. 195 for more detail about the stated goals of IS). To guide the relaxed education policies, the MOE published an overarching statement of purpose for reform, titled ‘‘The Rainbow Plan,’’ which drew from the reports authored by the CCE and the National Council for Educational Reform (MEXT, 2002). This plan identified seven ‘‘priority strategies’’ for educational change: Improve students’ basic scholastic proficiency in ‘‘easy-to-understand classes’’ Foster open and warm-hearted Japanese through participation in community and various programs Improve the learning environment to one which is enjoyable and free of worries Promote the creation of schools trusted by parents and communities Train teachers as ‘‘education professionals’’ Promote the establishment of universities of international standard Establish a new educational vision for the new century and improve the foundations of education (MEXT, 2002, p. 7) While reform proposals, such as The Seven Priority Strategies, did not articulate a distinct proposal centered on instructional practice, running through most of the government documents published in support of the


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relaxed education reforms were statements about the need to modify pedagogy to fit the goals of the newly adopted policies. The MOE called attention to ‘‘the importance of developing students’ self-learning competences for critical discovery and problem-solving skills to replace the older, ‘traditional’ paradigm of teacher-centered education’’ (see chapter by Kariya & Rappleye, p. 40, in this volume). Among the methodologies suggested were hands-on activities, problem-solving exercises, project-based instruction, and activities that required students to use technology. Responding to concerns that Japanese schools placed ‘‘too much emphasis on conformity’’ (MEXT, 2002, p. 7), the Ministry exhorted teachers to design lessons that promoted a ‘‘zest for living’’ (ikiru chikara).6 To compensate for flagging support for education in the home, teachers were urged to create lessons that would boost student enthusiasm for learning. Although this shift in pedagogical practices would benefit all pupils, particular emphasis was placed on the advantages they would offer to low achieving and disconnected youth (Tsuneyoshi, 2004). Another notable feature of the prescriptions for change was an emphasis on meeting students’ unique academic and social needs. In one report, the Ministry proclaimed that, ‘‘We, the Monbusho, aim at advancing the education that emphasizes to give high respect for each child’s individuality and that encourages to cultivate rich humanity and creativity’’ (MOE, 1997, p. 1). Another declared that, ‘‘It is important to promote individualization and diversification in a way that enhances abilities by offering diversified education tailored to each individual as much as possible’’ (MEXT, 2002, p. 7). This support for individualization was conspicuous, given the historical emphasis on equity in the classroom, and longstanding resistance from the Japanese Teachers’ Union to proposals that represented a threat to that tenet. Expanding the breadth of electives available to secondary school students was submitted as one means of shaping the curriculum to fit students’ individual needs. A more controversial recommendation from the MOE endorsed the idea of grouping students according to ability.

EVIDENCE OF GROWING INEQUALITY The relaxed education reforms, which had been proposed in various forms several times over the past 40 years, appeared to have finally generated the momentum necessary to lever fundamental changes in the Japanese education system. Yet, before the relaxed education policies were enacted, they generated widespread criticism. Reform proposals provoked a backlash

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from individuals and groups protective of a system that had made impressive advances during the postwar years. As Azuma notes, there was ‘‘a strong public feeling that Japan needs warm and humane schools that better attend to the psychological and interpersonal problems of individual students. On the other hand, industry worries that making the schools ‘tender’ may compromise academic excellence’’ (Azuma, 2002, p. 6). One common theme to criticism of the relaxed education policies was a belief that the MOE’s reform agenda constituted a threat to academic standards. Several observers asserted that reductions to the Course of Study (especially in the areas of math and Japanese language) would prevent students at all levels of the system from acquiring the basic academic skills they need to succeed in school and in work (Ohmori, 2000; Sakakibara, 2001). More extreme opponents of reform asserted that reduced pressure on education represented a threat to a successful system and would cause the intellectual level of the nation’s citizenry to plummet. Condemnation of the relaxed education reforms became even more vehement after international test score data (from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) indicated that academic achievement among Japanese students had declined, relative to their peers in other countries, over the previous decade. This information emboldened critics calling for an end to relaxed education. The furor over declining test scores overshadowed careful consideration of the impact that the reforms had brought about in schools. Debates about the direction of the education system, however, were rarely grounded in careful analysis of the test scores or the actual impact of relaxed education reforms on school activity. As Takayama (2007, p. 424) has observed, ‘‘the crisis was constructed through the reductive interpretation and selective appropriation of international league tables’’ and served ‘‘to arouse an emotional, rather than analytic response in people, making the public fearful of the ‘crisis’’’ (Takayama, 2007, p. 427). Although reports on the relaxed education reforms often veered toward the sensationalist, a handful of studies that carefully assess changes in students’ attitudes toward school and academic performance add valuable insights into the challenges that Japanese schools currently face (Kariya, 2000, 2002; Nomi, 2006, 2007; Park, 2008). This scholarship problematizes simplistic depictions of the state of education that pervade debates about the education ‘‘crisis.’’ It also raises some intriguing questions about equity and access to education in Japan. Kariya (2000, 2002), Nomi (2006, 2007), and Park (2008) all scrutinized Japanese students’ performance on international achievement tests (TIMSS and PISA) over the past decade in attempt to gain a more complete


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understanding of what is occurring below the surface of debates about the state of the Japanese education system. These researchers – working independently – disaggregated tests score data and looked for patterns in performance among high, middle, and low achieving students. All three scholars noted that mean test scores and rankings of countries obscured contrasting movement among test takers: Although middle and low achieving students registered steep declines in scores, the scores earned by high achievers remained fairly constant over time. In other words, ‘‘What we see is a hollowing out of the middle levels, with a shift of students form the middle range to the lower range’’ (Nomi, 2006, p. 2). Park (2008) drew similar conclusions. Comparing test score data from the 2000, 2003, and 2006 versions of PISA,7 he observed that the performance of Japanese 15-year-olds showed continual declines over the six-year period, especially in the area of literacy.8 Park also determined that the scores earned by Japanese students in the top 20th percentile actually increased in 2006. Analysis of score distributions for the science and mathematics portions of the test revealed similar patterns: Steep declines among low achieving students, contrasted with slight increases in the performance among top students, over the course of the three versions of PISA tests administered in 2000, 2003, and 2006: ‘‘The findings from this study clearly illustrate that the recent decline of Japanese students’ achievement is primarily the decline among students who are located at the bottom of distribution’’ (Park, 2008, p. 13). In addition to analyzing test score data, Kariya and his colleagues examined trends in students’ attitudes toward school. Kariya, Shimizu, Shimizu, and Morota (2002) replicated a survey originally administered to 1,375 second-year high school students living in Osaka in 1979 and found that students’ interest in and commitment to their studies dropped between 1979 and 1997, when the follow-up study was conducted. Data from this survey underscored links between mothers’ educational background and their children’s attitudes toward school (see Table 2). Furthermore, the motivational divide between students with university-educated mothers and those whose mothers had earned only a secondary diploma expanded substantially since the original study was conducted. As Kariya and Rappeleye state, ‘‘students whose families assisted or modeled the positive effects of obtaining an education excelled, while those with few positive examples of the incentives of education became increasingly difficult to motivate’’ (p. 31, in this volume) in Japan’s post-boom years. Together, these studies add important, previously overlooked perspectives on educational reform and academic achievement in Japan. First, they

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Table 2.

Student Opinions about Studying. 1979

1997

‘‘What I learn in class sometimes makes me want to know more about something.’’ University-educated mother 65.9% 57.8% Middle school–educated mother 56.4% 37.0% Difference 9.5% 20.8% I think I need to study to meet the expectations of my teachers and parents University-educated mother 71.8% Middle school–educated mother 64.2% Difference 7.6%

57.2% 40.7% 17.5%

I think it’s enough not to fail University-educated mother Middle school–educated mother Difference

29.4% 55.6% 26.5%

27.1% 33.8% 6.7%

Source: Kariya (2000).

indicate that high achieving students in Japan continue to perform quite well, relative to their peers in other countries. Low achieving students, in contrast, have shown steady declines in academic performance and are primarily responsible for Japan’s lowered rankings on international league tables. Second, this scholarship draws attention to links between socioeconomic status and widening gaps in student achievement and attitudes toward school. For a society that has long emphasized its egalitarian nature, this evidence is significant. Yet, statistical analyses of test score data provide limited insights into changes in student performance in schools. According to Kariya (2002, pp. 11–12), ‘‘Just looking at whether academic performance has fallen is no help in improving education. Only by combining this with research into students’ daily lives and study patterns and taking into account of changes in these areas is it possible to conduct analysis that contributes to educational reform.’’ The study of students’ attitudes about learning that Kariya and his colleagues conducted enhances our understanding of Japanese youths’ attachments to school – but does not consider the critical factors of classroom practice and school culture; the conclusions presented are based on self-reported questionnaire data collected from high school students. Research that documents how changes to the curriculum and new prescriptions for instructional practice are influencing everyday activity in the schools remains elusive.


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THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON POLICY IMPLEMENTATION Few reports on recent changes in the schools have closely examined the effects of those policies on decision-making or instructional practice in schools. Instead, assessments of yutori kyoiku tend to assume that schoolbased actors are faithfully implementing policy directives; most analyses offer positivistic conclusions that obscure the complexity of the policy translation process (Tsuneyoshi, 2004). This is not surprising, given the powerful influence that rational choice models have historically exerted on governmental decision-making (Diamond, 2007; Spillane et al., 2002). However, framing analysis of educational reform efforts in this way can yield reductionist descriptions of reform ventures that do not accurately capture the impact of those initiatives (Rhoten, 2000). Policy implementation is rarely a linear process; instead, the individuals relied on to implement reform initiatives modify those policies in response to factors such as intra-organizational relations, commitment, capacity, and institutional complexity (McLaughlin, 1987, p. 172). As McLaughlin (1987, p. 174) has observed, at each point in this process, ‘‘a policy is transformed as individuals interpret and respond to it. What is actually delivered or provided under the aegis of a policy depends finally on the individual at the end of the line, ‘street level bureaucrat.’’’ Neo-institutional theorists also emphasize the decoupled nature of policy environments and classroom activity – and the resulting autonomy provided to individuals involved in the process of policy implementation (Coburn, 2004; Rowan, 1990). Analyses that examine reform initiatives in an ‘‘embedded context’’ can therefore provide more nuanced and thorough understandings of those change efforts than studies framed by rational choice models of organizational behavior (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001). These perspectives accentuate the benefits of treating ‘‘policy as a complex social practice, an ongoing process of normative cultural production constituted by diverse actors across diverse social and institutional contexts’’ (Sutton & Levinson, 2001, p. 1). Researchers have found that educational ethnography, which aims to produce ‘‘rich, descriptive data about the contexts, activities, and beliefs’’ held by members of learning communities (Goetz & LeCompte, 1984, p. 17), can create a valuable bridge between the micro and the macro levels of educational policy implementation (Levinson, Cade, Padawer, & Elvir, 2002; Stritikus & Wiese, 2006; Walford, 2001). Emphasis on meaning making at the school level is also consonant with the notion of policy analysis situated in embedded contexts advocated by

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McLaughlin and Talbert (2001). According to Stritikus and Wiese (2006, p. 1109), ‘‘Ethnographic examinations of the policy-to-practice connection show the actual constraints and contradictions faced by ground-level practitioners and thus allows us to move beyond seeing practice in simplistic terms.’’ Walford (2001, p. 3) underscores this idea, noting that, ‘‘Looking at the positive results of policy change in isolation may lead to totally incorrect evaluations of its overall efficacy, but ethnography ensures that the wider context is examined and the effects of any change are observed within the whole culture of the school or classroom.’’ The dearth of research documenting the actual implementation of yutori kyoiku policies is partially responsible for widespread misunderstanding about the repercussions of the 2002 curriculum. Scholarship that carefully examines implementation of the reform plans at the school level can enhance understanding of the specific conditions that support or impede the MOE’s efforts to reduce pressure in the schools. It can also reveal how the MOE’s plans for change are affecting different members of school communities. Finally, ethnographic research on Japan’s relaxed education reforms can provide a valuable tool for examining the numerous policies with similar goals that have been enacted in other Asian countries in recent years (Bjork, 2009) and developing theories about the role that local context and culture exert on the shaping of those policies.

DATA COLLECTION The data I report on this article was collected in two stages, over a four-year period. In 2003, I spent three months in Japan interviewing education stakeholders about their views on the relaxed education reforms. During that period, I traveled around the country and spoke with 40 teachers and administrators working in eight prefectures, as well as MOE employees stationed in Tokyo. I visited schools located in urban centers as well as schools located in rural areas that rarely attract the attention of researchers. The interviews I conducted followed a semi-structured interview protocol that allowed for easy comparison. During that initial stage of fieldwork, I documented the opinions about yutori kyoiku expressed by various stakeholders and identified issues that demanded more rigorous investigation. Two years later, I returned to Japan and spent a full year studying the impact of the relaxed education policies on a sample of elementary and junior high schools located in Niigata prefecture. First, I conducted a pilot study in two elementary schools in a rural part of the prefecture, observing


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classes, interviewing teachers, and fine-tuning data collection instruments. Over the course of that three-week period, I developed a set of questions that guided my succeeding fieldwork. Next, I conducted an in-depth ethnographic study of implementation of the relaxed education policies in six schools (three elementary and three junior high schools) located in or outside a medium sized city in Niigata Prefecture.9 My sample of schools was assembled using what has been called ‘‘criterion-based selection’’ (Goetz & LeCompte, 1984) or ‘‘purposive sampling’’ (Patton, 1980). I sought to conduct fieldwork in schools that differed in terms of academic reputation as well as socioeconomic conditions of the communities in which they were situated. In addition, using the organizational frames shared with me by informants during my pilot study, I created a sample that included schools located ‘‘in the mountains, in the city, and near the sea.’’10 Because I was intrigued by the trajectory of students’ experiences as they traveled through the school system, I selected pairs of elementary and junior high school that served the same community. Studying two schools located in a single neighborhood, I decided, would allow me to compare educational practices employed in elementary and secondary schools and to examine children’s responses to shifting expectations and instructional approaches as they advanced through the system. I spent between two and three months at each school, immersing myself in daily activities on these campuses. Acting as a participant observer, I adhered to the criteria for ethnographic research identified by Massey and Walford (Massey & Walford, 1998; Walford, 2002).11 Inside the schools, I employed comprehensive selection strategies, interviewing all teachers and administrators at each site and observing each homeroom on multiple occasions. I conducted 307 formal observations of lessons at the six institutions (162 in the elementary schools and 145 in the junior high schools) and interviewed a total of 80 teachers, 16 administrators, and 3 school counselors over the course of the year.12 Conversations with students were less structured, but no less frequent: Each school day, I chatted with students about their studies and interests. Those discussions usually took place before school, after school, at lunchtime, or during club activity meeting times. In addition, I administered questionnaires to students, parents, and educators,13 analyzed school documents, and attended special events, such as in-service seminars, lesson study workshops, sports festivals, PTA meetings, and staff parties (enkai). This amalgamation of multiple sources of data served as the foundation for the analysis provided in this article. An open coding approach to grounded theory (Glaser, 1992; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) in which theories ‘‘related to a particular setting

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were developed through inductive and deductive analysis of qualitative data’’ (Stevens, 2007, p. 318) was used to analyze the data.

UNCERTAINTY ABOUT REFORM In the schools that I studied, response to changes implemented in support of the MOE’s plans for relaxed education has been mixed. Most interviewees expressed ambiguous feelings about the changes they had observed. In addition, as was true of the research conducted by Kariya, Nomi, and Park, broad trends in the data masked important differences in performance and attitude within the groups studied. While there was consensus among informants about the ideals that should guide the education system, that apparent cohesion broke down when they discussed the application of those ideals to their immediate school communities. The vast majority of adults I interviewed believed that recent changes in Japanese society have complicated the lives of contemporary youth. Informants frequently compared the attitudes and abilities of today’s student population with those of previous generations, and in virtually all such comparisons, the current student population was judged inferior to its predecessors. Both educators and parents felt that children today lack the initiative and persistence necessary for them to make the most of the educational opportunities provided to them. Interviewees reflected that while children in previous generations spent a great deal of time playing outdoors with their peers, students today spend long periods inside, disconnected from other children. The prevalence of solitary activity (such as watching television or playing computer games) has produced a plethora of children whose weak interpersonal skills impede their social and intellectual development. For these reasons, a large majority of informants concurred with the overarching goals of the relaxed education reforms, as the following quotations indicate: Mrs. Kumashiro ( junior high school art teacher): Integrated Studies provides children with skills and experiences they can use in their lives. In the past, children had those types of life skills, but not children today. IS helps children recover those abilities that are now lacking. Before, it was common for students to have those kinds of life skills, but that is not true anymore. IS fills those gaps in the students’ experiences and abilities. Mr. Takashima (elementary school curriculum coordinator): Today’s kids want to study, but their communication and presentation skills are weak. IS classes can help with that. Many different skills are covered in IS lessons. Students look into things that interest them and make presentations about what they learn.


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The educators I interviewed clearly understood the goals of the relaxed education reforms and the MOE’s expectations of how schools should alter their practices to support those policies. Teachers were generally sympathetic to the idea that schools should promote what have been termed ‘‘new abilities’’ (shingakuryoku) designed to encourage students to ‘‘identify problems for oneself, think for oneself, make independent judgments and actions and solve problems well’’ (Tsuneyoshi, 2004, p. 10). However, their support for reform was undercut by the possibility that adhering to MEXT guidelines for relaxed education could undermine student mastery of basic academic skills. Teachers’ opinions about the merits of the relaxed education reforms varied significantly, depending on the level at which they taught. Elementary teachers were more open to the possible long-term benefits of relaxed education programs, such as IS, and implemented MOE plans more faithfully than secondary teachers. One teacher stated that, ‘‘Integrated Studies does not have a long history. In IS, I need to be open to many new ideas, to know many things. I have to get excited about the subject or I cannot do a good job teaching it. I need to have the attitude that it is a special event, like a festival.’’ Another explained that, ‘‘each school has some experience now, successes and failures, and we are gradually starting to feel more positive about IS.’’ Elementary teachers’ openness to change can be partially explained by the comparatively minor changes required of them as they implemented relaxed education policies. While changes in the Course of Study have pressed educators working at this level to modify the contents of their lessons, introduction of the relaxed education policies has not necessitated significant changes in the methods they use to convey concepts to children. As scholars such as Lewis (1995) and Sato (1991) have observed, studentcentered learning and interdisciplinary study have long been standard features of elementary school classrooms in Japan. Elementary instructors’ experience with the pedagogical methods advocated by the MOE in conjunction with the relaxed education reforms made it easier for them to overcome any difficulties that confronted them as they enacted the Ministry’s plans for change. Junior high school teachers, in contrast, expressed more serious reservations about the changes they were asked to make – and were more likely to resist pressure to reform. ‘‘I think elementary school teachers are very enthusiastic about IS,’’ one junior high school teacher told me, ‘‘but it’s more difficult for us. There’s so much pressure to develop the academic abilities of our students.’’ Despite assurances from the MOE that embracing its reform agenda would provide students with a strong foundation and

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concomitantly augment their interest in school, secondary teachers had trouble fully supporting instructional activities if they were not convinced that those activities would bolster their students’ performance on entrance examinations. In addition, even when instructors did see the merits of modifying the curriculum, they were sometimes intimidated by challenges associated with the pedagogies they were encouraged to utilize. Junior high school teachers tended to view themselves as subject specialists rather than generalists. Shifting to problem-based, interdisciplinary pedagogy proved disruptive to many.

CLASSROOM IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 2002 CURRICULUM Instructors’ comments as well as their behavior often indicated that they did not believe that IS or elective course offerings required the same level of investment as the other subjects they taught. As one principal observed, ‘‘Yes, the contents of the Course of Study have changed y but I think the changes have made things more difficult for students and teachers. The teachers have less material to cover, but they aren’t sure how to deal with the changes. They have become rudderless, shifting from one direction to another. They can cover the material in the new Course of Study, but they also want to raise students’ academic abilities, which creates pressure and work for them.’’ In the sections below, I describe how teachers developed strategies for following guidelines for IS and electives without reducing the attention they devoted to other sections of the curriculum. Integrated Studies Although all of the educators I spoke with alluded to tensions between the goals of yutori kyoiku and their practical application, elementary school teachers generally set aside any concerns they may have had about the wisdom of the relaxed education reforms and followed the MOE’s plans for IS.14 In most of the classrooms I observed, they skillfully facilitated lessons in which all members of the class participated actively. Teachers usually organized students into small, heterogeneous groups and closely monitored children as they invested the research topics they had selected. Instructors reported that most students were enthused about the investigations they conducted and had begun to develop the skills and attitudes that IS was


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designed to cultivate. For example, students were learning to execute projects independently, to communicate the results of their work orally and in writing, and to make connections across disciplinary boundaries. ‘‘With Integrated Studies,’’ reflected a fifth-grade teacher, ‘‘the students are always interested in what we are doing, what we will do next. With IS, they don’t forget their materials. There are always things they are interested in investigating. The energy level in the class is totally different.’’ IS also made it possible for students whom might not have excelled in regular academic subjects to receive positive feedback for their efforts. As one teacher reported, In my class, students researched lizards and when they gave their oral presentations they showed what they had learned. When they were talking in front of everyone they not only solidified their own knowledge, but also received praise from their peers. After being told, ‘You are the lizard king!’ the student might become more motivated to do even more research, to work harder.

Elementary teachers did experience difficulties as they implemented the IS curriculum, but the positive results they observed in the classroom spurred most instructors to approach IS with a sense of optimism. Distanced from the high school entrance examination, instructors could follow the spirit of the reform without worrying about the links between the lessons they delivered and the student performance on standardized tests. Implementation of the IS curriculum at the junior high school level differed from approaches employed in the elementary schools in several key respects. Teachers typically presented a broad theme to students, directed them to pick a more specific topic within that theme to investigate, and established a set of project deadlines. Occasionally, I observed a teacher working closely with individual students who needed assistance with their investigations. More commonly, a teacher or group of teachers began an IS period by making some general announcements about the research projects, then returned to the faculty room to complete other tasks. The following excerpt from my fieldnotes describes an IS meeting for third-year junior high school students who were investigating potential careers: 1:50 All third grade students meet in the computer room. Mrs. Kato is in charge. The head teacher, a student teacher, and the school nurse stand behind her. Mrs. Kato writes the following information on the board:

11/4 (today): 11/4: 11/18:

Use the entire period to work on your worksheets. Start preparing for your interviews at local businesses Contact workplaces Discuss manners for visits

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CHRISTOPHER BJORK Mrs. Kato holds up pages that someone left behind last time and announces to the group: ‘‘Be more careful about their use of paper. Visits to workplaces are coming up soon. We will only meet three more times before then. I want you to work really hard on finishing your worksheets and your interview preparation today. Last time, I noticed that many of you seem to be falling behind. If you haven’t decided what you are going to write about yet, you better adjust your pace. We don’t have time to chat today. Any questions?’’ After pausing for several seconds but not receiving any questions, Mrs. Kato circulates through the room and quickly checks how students are doing. The other adults in the room follow her lead. Mrs. Kato stops beside one boy, who does not appear to be working and asks him what he is supposed to be doing. The boy does not respond. Mrs. Kato asks him what he is going to do next. Again, he does not answer. Mrs. Kato tells him to look for the information he needs on the computer. She checks in with one more student, then leaves the computer lab. 2:05 All of the adults have left the room. Some students begin to work on the computers, looking up websites and taking notes. Others chat with their friends. I notice that three boys appear to be sleeping.

This episode is notable for a number of reasons. First, it captures the hands-off approach to IS taken by the vast majority of secondary teachers I observed. Rather than work alongside students to address the specific difficulties they were experiencing, Mrs. Kato made vague suggestions and directed students to find solutions to problems on their own. This approach allowed teachers to devote a time officially set aside for IS to work on tasks that they considered more pressing. Many of the educators I interviewed were quite open about their use of IS instructional hours. A junior high school music teacher, for instance, explained to me that, ‘‘It’s very difficult for me, and other teachers, to prepare to teach IS because it is so different form what we usually teach. We spend long hours getting ready for our regular classes. If schools did an excellent job teaching IS, it could have positive results, but I don’t think that happens very often.’’ The explanations that teachers gave for not investing more time in IS indicated that the multiple demands on their time required them to ration their hours at school and that new subjects introduced to support the relaxed education were not considered a priority. Instructors were willing to follow MOE guidelines – but not at the expense of the core academic subjects. Second, both teachers and students expected the other party to accept primary responsibility for IS projects. When pupils struggled to complete an assignment, Mrs. Kato, like many instructors I observed, responded with prompts that redirected responsibility back to the students; when offered vague direction about how to proceed, pupils tended to continue to wait for more concrete assistance from a teacher. As a result of this deflection of


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responsibility from both sides, low achieving students frequently entered an ongoing cycle of inactivity. Third, in the junior high schools I observed, students worked individually, rather than in groups. It was assumed that they were capable of planning and carrying out their research projects without extensive support from adults. As a result of the emphasis on individual activity, the benefits derived from IS investigations varied markedly among students – and were heavily dependent on the research skills and motivation the pupil brought to the task. Because students did not receive numeric grades in IS or elective courses, as they did in core academic subjects, and because material covered in IS lessons was not included on high school entrance examinations, the pressure placed on pupils to invest in this course was minimal. The students who took IS assignments seriously tended to display initiative in all aspects of their education – the model students.

Elective Courses Elective courses (sentaku no jugyo) also lacked the solid foundation of support necessary to produce the outcomes forecast by the MOE. As a result, the learning activities organized by the schools I studied may have followed curricular guidelines at a surface level, but few teachers committed to the spirit of the reform. At all three of the junior high schools in my sample, students could select from a menu of elective offerings. Those courses were organized into groups. For example, at one school, students could choose one elective from each of the two groups (see Table 3). Although all the above subjects also appeared in the regular curriculum, elective versions of the courses were designed to explore concept in greater depth, through hands-on activities that students would find more stimulating than more textbook-centered lessons. The structure of the elective courses I observed varied noticeably, depending on the goals and personality of Table 3.

Sample Elective Course Offerings.

Group A (Entrance Exam–Related)

Group B (Non-Exam–Related)

Japanese language Social studies Mathematics Science English

Music Art Physical education Technology Home economics

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the instructor. At the beginning of the semester, for instance, a math teacher explained to her second-year students that, ‘‘We will focus on reviewing concepts introduced in regular math classes and on test preparation. We will do lots of drills and problem-solving practice, go over strategies for approaching different types of problems y This is a class for people who would like to be challenged.’’ At the same school, another teacher assigned the students in her Japanese language elective to create photo albums that would provide an introduction to the school to visitors; students spent most of their time walking around the school taking pictures and writing descriptions of those photographs. As was true of IS, most of the teachers I observed treated elective courses as an unwelcome burden on their time. Interviews with individuals responsible for teaching electives classes revealed a tension between their general beliefs about electives and their experiences teaching those courses. Logistical as well as philosophical considerations made it difficult for teachers to commit to elective courses. The MOE emphasized that elective offerings should be tailored to fit the interests and academic needs of students at a particular school; rather than publish textbooks for IS or elective subjects, teachers were expected to create original materials for their students. This approach created additional burdens for teachers who already felt overworked. Not only did most instructors place a higher priority on academic subjects, preparation for those subjects was less demanding because (1) textbooks for academic subjects provided a valuable organizational foundation, and (2) most educators could draw from previous experience teaching those subjects. With electives, they were responsible for building that foundation from the bottom-up. When students did not respond positively to the lessons they had designed, teachers often began to question the wisdom of devoting instructional hours to courses that they regarded as ancillary to the core curriculum. One junior high school science teacher I observed, Mr. Takahashi, was conflicted about the value of teaching electives: ‘‘The idea of electives is good–that students interested in a particular topic can study them in more depth,’’ he explained to me. ‘‘But what usually happens is that the time is not taken seriously and kids just fool around. I think it would be better to use the time for regular subject instruction. Electives are not a good use of time. Also, they require a lot of preparation on the part of the teachers.’’ Another teacher observed, ‘‘Some kids get a lot out of these classes–the ones interested in the subject– but others do the minimum of work and then play.’’ When their plans for the expanded electives curriculum did not produce their desired results, two of the three junior high schools in my sample modified their programs. At one institution, the faculty discarded its menu


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of elective choices in favor of an approach, called ‘‘worksheet studies’’ ( printo gakushu). Teachers no longer delivered the elective curriculum through hands-on activities; instead, they distributed worksheets that reviewed concepts covered previously in the regular curriculum. At a second junior high school, teachers used time ostensibly set aside for electives to offer additional mathematics, Japanese, and English classes. Although the curriculum was not altered on paper, the elective program effectively ceased to exist. At these two schools, I did interview individuals who expressed displeasure with the changes to the electives curriculum. For example, one veteran teacher remarked that, ‘‘I don’t like this new system. It doesn’t follow the spirit of the program because kids don’t get to pick their elective subjects.’’ Dissonant voices, however, were in the minority. The vast majority of educators I interviewed felt that the modifications were justified. As one instructor commented, ‘‘Although the school will still offer a subject called ‘electives,’ the school–not the students–will decide how the time will be used. That time will be used for the regular curriculum. It’s a creative way to get around the rules. I think it will be a good change.’’ The idea of enlivening the curriculum through the introduction of courses that interested students may have appealed to teachers when discussed abstractly, but their opinions often changed after they began to implement the new curriculum.

STUDENT RESPONSES TO CURRICULAR CHANGE Students’ opinions about the new curriculum provide another perspective on the 2002 curricular reforms. As Table 4 indicates, IS received high marks in Table 4.

Student Rankings of Their Favorite Subjects.

Elementary School

Rank

Junior High School

Physical education Art Integrated studies Music Science Math Social studies Japanese language

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Physical education Art Science Music Integrated studies Social studies Englisha Japanese language Math

a

English is not yet a required subject in most elementary schools.

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student rankings of their favorite subjects. When asked to explain what it was about IS that appealed to them, pupils related that they valued opportunities to select the topics they would study, the freedom to venture beyond the borders of their classroom in search of information, and the more relaxed study environment. ‘‘I like IS because I like working on my own and I can focus on things that interest me,’’ a junior high school student told me that. Another attraction of IS was its uniqueness: the subject represented a clear break from the more traditional components of the school day. The projects that students completed were more open-ended and less demanding than assignments for their academic subjects. In addition, mastery of the material covered in IS was not formally tested. Instead, students were most commonly asked to put together oral presentations of their projects, which allowed them to use technology to communicate what they had learned. While most students expressed positive comments IS, some did not appreciate the autonomy delivered to them by IS instructors. One junior high pupil preferred other subjects to IS, ‘‘because looking up all of the information by myself is hard.’’ In reflecting on elective courses as well, students drew contrasts between regular academic lessons and sentaku no jugyo. Most of the adolescents I interviewed found elective lessons were more relaxing and enjoyable than more traditional learning activities. The observations shared with me by a group of third-grade pupils, as they conducted an experiment that taught them how to create chemicals reactions to make lollipops, captured this sentiment: Question: Student 1: Student 2: Question: Student 3: Student 2: Student 4: Student 1: Student 4:

What do you think about this course? I like it. It’s fun. Why did you decide to take this elective? Because I thought we would get to do experiments. Because I am interested in science. I don’t really like or dislike science, but I wanted to do experiments. I like it better than regular science courses because of the activities. And we don’t have to take tests.

The generally positive reviews of elective courses, however, obscured critical differences in the way that sub-groups of students responded to the instructional opportunities provided to them. Pupils may have enjoyed elective offerings, but that did not mean that they worked hard in those courses or develop the ‘‘new academic abilities’’ referred to in MOE policy reports. Pupils may have preferred making lollipops to more


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textbook-centered lessons, but did the activity strengthen their understanding of scientific concepts? Did it create the impetus to apply themselves to their studies? Comments made by students as well as instructors suggested not. Students were aware that the grades they earned in elective courses (and IS) carried little weight in the high school admissions process – or displayed little concern with their academic standing. The absence of meaningful consequences for poor performance in these subjects reduced the pressure placed on students – but it also undercut the sense of responsibility they felt to invest in those courses. The primary impetus for investing in elective coursework was individual initiative, which a significant percentage of junior high school students seemed to lack. As one might predict, pupils who were determined to gain admission to competitive high schools capitalized on class time to augment their mastery of the concepts covered; individuals who lacked a track record of academic success exerted minimal effort. In all of the lessons that I observed, there was a strong correlation between student performance in electives and in core academic subjects. Weak students may have been attracted to the less intense structure of elective lessons, but the factors that fed into their satisfaction with electives also help to explain their less than stellar performance in those courses. Rarely did I observe students with a history of academic difficulties apply themselves to elective lessons. As a result, students with ambitious academic aspirations moved further ahead of their classmates who lacked such commitment to learning. Very few teachers attempted to alter this pattern.

THE ROLE OF THE FAMILY IN A RELAXED EDUCATION SYSTEM Parent reactions to the relaxed education reforms also were shaped by the realities of the entrance examination system. My interviews confirm observations made by scholars of Japanese education in recent years that portray parents as strategic consumers of educational services (Goodman, 2003; Hood, 2003). As the following comments illustrate, parents may have agreed with the goals of relaxed education, but they also had reservations about how the new curriculum would affect their children’s educational opportunities: Mrs. Tanaka (junior high school parent): I am all for relaxed education. Teaching is valuable, but a lot of pressure is also being placed on teachers. Kids have to learn more

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CHRISTOPHER BJORK kanji in less time. They have to study more at home. If they are going to teach yutori kyoku at school, they have to give more time at school. I want the five-day school week abolished and make it a six day school week to make Japan more competitive academically at the international level. Mr. Hirose (elementary school parent): Yutori kyoiku is not necessary. Kids don’t need more yutori y Teachers today are not strict enough. Their effort is poor. Integrated Studies is okay, but not for everyday. It’s just like playing. There must be a balance. Mrs. Tabuchi (elementary school parent): It is more important for kids to enjoy studying. Mr. Hirose: That’s true, but you can do that without yutori kyoiku y The 5-day work week sounds nice, but not if the curriculum is cut.

When forced to make decisions about their children’s education, parents’ idealism tended to give way to pragmatism and recognition that test preparation was more likely to bring rewards than student explorations of topics they found exciting; more immediate considerations related to high school admission trumped concerns about the personal growth or well-being of their sons and daughters. Interestingly, very few parents communicated their concerns directly to teachers or school administrators. Rather than sharing their criticism of relaxed education with the school, parents were more likely to take responsibility for filling perceived gaps between what their children learned in school and what they needed to know to gain acceptance into a desirable high school or university. In the schools I studied, introduction of the relaxed education reforms has nourished the shadow education system that has long functioned in tandem with the public schools (Baker & LeTendre, 2005; Rohlen, 1983). Parents worried about the academic preparedness of their children frequently enrolled their children in cram schools (juku) or hired private tutors to fill in perceived gaps in their education.15 In the city where I conducted my fieldwork, juku operators capitalized on public anxiety about declining academic skills. The manager of one of the largest juku in the area showed me brochures that underscored the necessity of supplementing daily instruction in the schools with private lessons in the evenings and on weekends to counter the diluted standards associated with the relaxed education movement. He also explained that, ‘‘Science and social studies are not affected by relaxed education y so we don’t focus on those skills here.’’ Of course, not all parents were in a position to provide additional instruction to their children. As one would expect, adults with higher levels of education and income were more likely to enroll their children in afterschool classes. As the mother of a junior high school student explained,


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I think Integrated Studies is a good chance for children, for students to study something new, but I don’t agree with the policy because reducing the curriculum means that families must support the curriculum at home. Some families can do that, but some cannot. Some families cannot afford to send their children to cram school, so it increases the gap y Some families are picking private schools because they don’t have to follow the Ministry curriculum.

Parents with concerns about their children’s academic competitiveness often enrolled them in private cram schools, but some relied on relatives living with them or nearby to serve as tutors for their children. Thus, parents who did not earn high salaries did sometimes have options other than the juku, but a strong commitment to their children’s education was required. Few of the children who struggled in school enjoyed such parental support. In this way, cuts to curriculum and instructional hours disproportionately affected students who already struggled academically. Lacking the extensive resources that many of their peers enjoyed or the motivation to succeed in the classroom, they were left to function on a more precarious academic foundation.

CONCLUSION In 2002, after much fanfare, the Japanese MOE introduced a set of education initiative designed to transform schools into more nurturing and inspiring sites for learning. Although a great deal has been written about the flexible education reforms, discussions about the advisability of those policies have rarely examined their effects on teaching and learning. The tendency to frame debates about yutori kyoiku globally, with little or not attention to local context, has led to reductionist assessments of the reforms. Seeking to focus attention on the implications of the reforms on actual activity in schools, I conducted an ethnographic study that documented the consequences and ‘‘lived realities of those involved in the implementation and reception of policy decisions’’ (Walford, 2001, p. 2) connected with the relaxed education movement. This study of local responses to revisions of the Course of Study underscores the conflicts experienced by teachers as they have attempted to implement plans for change in institutional contexts organized to support objectives that are not well aligned with the goals of yutori kyoiku. Moreover, it helps to explain why many education stakeholders have not made the most of the increased flexibility and independence that has been offered to them by the MOE. Decentralization of authority over the

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curriculum has enhanced teacher autonomy, but the educators I interviewed rarely capitalized on opportunities to assume leadership for relaxed education programs. MOE reports published in the years leading up to the adoption of the 2002 Course of Study emphasize the need for schools to shape learning activities to fit the unique characteristics of students. According to those documents, customizing learning through studentcentered lessons will augment pupil investment in learning. However, in the schools that I studied, initiatives intended to alleviate the stress experienced by pupils have provoked countervailing pressure to maintain long-established academic practices and standards, especially at the secondary level. The autonomy provided to teachers made it possible for them to support, resist, or modify policy directives, even within a vertically organized system directed by a central MOE. A majority of the instructors I interviewed remained unconvinced that modifications to the Course of Study would improve their students’ academic or professional prospects. As a result of that indecision, they displayed surface commitment to the curricular changes promulgated by the MOE. Tensions between the MOE’s plans for change and the locally rooted expectations about academic achievement left teachers hesitant to commit to relaxed education policies. Instead, they continued to concentrate on their core instructional responsibilities – and depended on pupils to accept ownership for learning activities introduced in support of yutori kyoiku. Such uncertainty created additional demands on students, many of whom were unprepared to accept more responsibility for their own learning. In junior high schools, the concept of individualization was usually translated as individual (student) responsibility. Pupils who lacked the ability or discipline to work independently – precisely the students targeted by the reforms – often struggled to meet teacher expectations in a less rigid environment that demanded increased self-initiative. That was especially true of students who did not enjoy strong support in the home. Those who lacked the resources or commitment to fill in the gaps between the slimmed down 2002 curriculum and the previous version fell further behind students whose parents made efforts to supplement their children’s formal education with additional lessons and activities. Commonalities between the quantitative studies that highlight bifurcation in the performance of Japanese students on international achievement tests (Kariya, 2000, 2002; Nomi, 2006, 2007; Park, 2008) and the evidence presented in this qualitative study underscore the increasingly powerful influence that socioeconomic status exerts on educational opportunity. They also call into question the long-accepted view that Japanese schools


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provide equal opportunities to all children. The data I collected over a five-year period indicate that implementation of the relaxed education reforms has not been smooth or consistent. Rather than create conditions in which all students can succeed, the relaxed education reforms have exacerbated gaps between high and low achieving pupils. Children have been provided new opportunities to act independently – and to succeed or fail on their own as well. These unintended consequences of educational reform should inform policy planning in Japan – and in other locations as well. Several ministries of education in the region recently adopted initiatives that resemble the flexible education policies (Bjork, 2009). Across Asia, teachers have been delegated responsibility for revising curricula so as to make learning less stressful and more stimulating. Yet, little research documenting the impact of those policies has been published; as is true in Japan, assessments of the reforms tend to be based on anecdotal evidence and media reports. Research that links reforms adopted by ministries of education to their translation at the school level can draw attention to the specific factors that support or impede change. As Kariya and Rappleye note in their contribution to this publication, ‘‘The more that scholars both produce work that reveals that gap [between real and imagined effects of reforms] and situates it in ways that are useful for national policymakers, the smaller the gap between the ‘real’ and ‘imagined’ is likely to become’’ (p. 33, in this volume). Particular attention should be focused on the implications of those policies on teachers and different sub-groups of students. Scholarship framed in this way can insert the experiences of students and teachers into analyses of educational reform that are often dominated by the interests of government officials and politicians.

NOTES 1. Beginning in 2001, the MOE self-identified as the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MEXT). Because this article examines developments in the education sector over a long period, and because readers who are not experts in Japanese education may be confused by the MEXT acronym, I will refer to the Ministry as the MOE throughout this article. 2. It is difficult to translate this phrase into English, for no direct equivalent exists. The words most commonly used to refer to yutori kyoiku are ‘‘relaxed education,’’ ‘‘reduced intensity education,’’ and ‘‘education that leaves room to grow.’’ 3. Examples of the ‘‘new abilities’’ supported by the MOE included student initiative, independence, critical thinking, creativity, and the ability to investigate topics of interest to the student.

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4. The first CCE met in 1949. Although its membership has changed on a number of occasions, the group has met in each decade since then ‘‘to prepare a report with recommendations about the framework of the national curriculum’’ (Azuma, 2002, p. 7). 5. This move was the culmination of a gradual transition to the shorter week. In 1992, one Saturday per week was designated as a vacation day; later, students were given two days off per month. Finally, in 2002, students no longer attended school on weekends. 6. This is another phrase that is challenging to translate into English. Although the MOE repeatedly employs the words ‘‘zest for living’’ as a substitute for ikiru chikara, this oversimplifies the connotations of the phrase. Ikiru chikara encompasses the wide array of attributes required to live comfortably and productively in contemporary society – including social, emotional, as well as cognitive qualities. 7. The content of the PISA tests differ from TIMSS in some aspects that are important to note, especially when comparing results from the two tests. The TIMSS tests were designed to assess trends in student mastery of mathematical and scientific concepts at different grade levels (fourth, eighth, and the final year of secondary school). In addition, surveys that explored the effects of home and school environments on academic performance were distributed to students, teachers, and school administrators. A video study of instructional practices in selected nations was also conducted. The PISA tests evaluate how well students can apply concepts learned in school to real life situations. Reading, mathematical, and scientific literacy are evaluated on these tests. The PISA tests are administered to students between the ages of 15 years 3 months and 16 years 2 months (because in most countries, students are nearing the completion of compulsory schooling at the age of 15). 8. Interestingly, over the same period, Korean students improved their performance, earning the highest average scores of all participating countries. 9. I chose to conduct this research outside of a major metropolitan area for a number of reasons. Much of the research on Japanese education published over the past 20 years is based on urban schools, which are often unique in terms of the students they serve, the challenges they face, and the strategies used to improve their instructional programs. I was motivated to produce scholarship that would add balance to scholarship focused on urban settings; to document conditions schools located in areas that are rarely profiled on national television or in the newspapers. Contexts for teaching and learning in rural areas such as Niigata are likely to differ from those in more urbanized locations. Distanced from Tokyo and Osaka, children in Niigata are shielded from many of the distractions and pressures experienced by urban youths. Their educational aspirations might be adjusted to fit the options available in proximity to their homes. It is quite unusual for a student living in the area where I conducted my fieldwork to apply to a top-ranked high school or university in Tokyo; instead, high achieving students tend to set their sights on a well-regarded institution within the prefecture. Finally, although all of the schools in my sample did include immigrant or mixed-race students, those numbers were small. Schools in Niigata are more diverse than they were 20 years ago, but have not been as directly affected by demographic change as Japan’s urban centers. 10. This phrase was used by several informants when they shared their thoughts about how to select schools that served different segments of the local population.


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11. Massey and Walford (1998) specify seven key elements that distinguish ethnography from other types of qualitative research: (1) the focus on the study of culture, (2) the use of multiple methods and thus the construction of diverse forms of data, (3) the direct involvement and long-term engagement, (4) the recognition that the researcher is the main research instrument, (5) the high status given to the accounts of participants and their understandings, (6) the engagement in a cycle of hypothesis and theory building, and (7) the focus on a particular case rather than on any attempts to generalize. 12. Of the 79 teachers interviewed, 30 were elementary educators and 50 taught at the junior high schools. These figures do not include several teachers I spoke with who were employed at institutions not included in my sample of six schools. 13. Teacher surveys were distributed to all instructors at the six schools. At schools with two or fewer homerooms per grade level, surveys were distributed to all students; at schools with more than two homerooms per grade level, two classes at each grade level were randomly selected to take the survey. 14. Electives are not taught at the elementary level. For that reason, my analysis of implementation of flexible education programs in the elementary schools will focus on the IS curriculum. 15. This follows a national trend: Tsuneyoshi (2004) found that attendance at cram schools has increased substantially since the MEXT adopted the flexible education policies.

REFERENCES Azuma, H. (2002). The development of the course of study and the structure of educational reform in Japan. In: G. DeCoker (Ed.), National standards and school reform in Japan and in the United States (pp. 5–18). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Baker, D. P., & LeTendre, G. K. (2005). National differences, global similarities: World culture and the future of schooling. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Beauchamp, E. (1991). The development of Japanese educational policy, 1945–1985. In: E. Beauchamp (Ed.), Windows on Japanese education (pp. 27–50). New York: Greenwood Press. Bjork, C. (2009). Local implementation of Japan’s integrated studies reform: A preliminary analysis of efforts to decentralize the curriculum. Comparative Education, 45(1), 23–44. Bjork, C., & Tsuneyoshi, R. (2005). Educational reform in Japan: Competing visions for the future. Phi Delta Kappan, 86(8), 619–626. Cave, P. (2001). Educational reform in Japan in the 1990s: ‘Individuality’ and other uncertainties. Comparative Education, 37(2), 173–191. Cave, P. (2007). Primary school in Japan: Self, individuality and learning in elementary education. Oxon, UK: Routledge. Central Council for Education. (1971). Basic policy for the overall expansion and improvement of education in the future. Tokyo: Ministry of Education. Coburn, C. E. (2004). Beyond decoupling: Rethinking the relationship between the institutional environment and the classroom. Sociology of Education, 77, 211–244.

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Sutton, M., & Levinson, B. (Eds). (2001). Policy as practice: Toward a comparative sociocultural analysis of educational policy. Westport, CT: Ablex. Takayama, K. (2007). A nation at risk crosses the pacific: Transnational borrowing of the U.S. crisis discourse in the debate on education reform in Japan. Comparative Education Review, 51(4), 423–446. Thurston, D. (1973). Teachers and politics in Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tsukada, M. (1991). The Yobiko life: A study of the legitimation process of social stratification in Japan. Berkeley, CA: The Institute of East Asian Studies. Tsuneyoshi, R. (2001). The Japanese model of schooling: Comparisons with the United States. New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer. Tsuneyoshi, R. (2004). The new Japanese educational reforms and the achievement ‘‘Crisis’’ debate. Journal of Education Policy, 18(2), 364–394. Walford, G. (Ed.) (2001). Ethnography and educational policy. Oxford: Elsevier Science. Walford, G. (2002). When policy moves fact, how long can ethnography take? In: B. Levinson, S. Cade, A. Padawer & A. Elvir (Eds), Ethnography and education: Policy across the Americas (pp. 23–38). Westport, CT: Praeger.

PART II CURRICULAR INNOVATION AND THE EVo.LUTlON OF INEQUALITY IN CHINA

STATE-SPONSORED KNOWLEDGE FOR THE GLOBAL AGE: GLOBAL AND TRADITIONAL VALUES IN THE CHINESE LANGUAGE ARTS CURRICULUM Tanja Carmel Sargent and Xiao Yang ABSTRACT Textbook content and curricula are artifacts that can serve as indicators of social contexts and societal values. In this chapter, we use qualitative and quantitative content analysis to examine the content of Chinese language arts textbooks for basic education during a period of curriculum reform in China at the start of the 21st century. Given the important role of the Chinese language arts in the socialization of students into official societal values, this study seeks to provide insight into the nature of the official world view in China and addresses the societal ambivalence between global vs. national/local and traditional knowledge vs. Western/ contemporary knowledge. We find that there is a slight increase in themes that reflect contemporary global concerns such as creativity and social justice. We also find that, in the face of the globalizing cultural influences of the new millennium, there is a sustained emphasis on the role of the Chinese language curriculum in the transmission of traditional Chinese Globalization, Changing Demographics, and Educational Challenges in East Asia Research in Sociology of Education, Volume 17, 99–121 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3539/doi:10.1108/S1479-3539(2010)0000017006

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cultural values and on the cultivation in Chinese students of an appreciation of their rich cultural traditions.

Textbook content and curricula are artifacts that can serve as indicators of social and political contexts. Scholars studying the content of Chinese textbook materials in the 1960s and 1970s have pointed out that textbooks, as a medium through which a centralized government disseminates a uniform message to all the nation’s schools, provide a picture of ‘‘what the government would like the content of childhood socialization to be’’ (Fairbrother, 2004; Kwong, 1985; Martin, 1975; Price, 1980). Taking textbook materials from different points in time as a set of data provides an opportunity to investigate the trends in the values and aspirations that Chinese society espouses. A dramatic historical example of textbooks indicating a shift in official knowledge and ideology is described in Kwong (1985). She analyzes curriculum content of Chinese language textbooks used in the early 1970s during the Cultural Revolution and compares these with content at the end of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s. She studies the changing nature of the ideological content and shows how the strongly anti-capitalist, prosocialist content of the early 1970s became more open and modulated in tone in the late 1970s. The period of Opening and Reform that followed the years of the Cultural Revolution was characterized by a further backlash against ideological extremes and emphasis on educational reform was on economic development, modernization, and industrialization, and this was reflected in policy language and textbook content as well (Fairbrother, 2004; Sargent, 2008). Moving on into the new millennium, Chinese educational policy has been increasingly influenced by globalized educational policy discourses that call for the cultivation of capacities that are perceived to be needed in the global knowledge economy. A new round of curriculum reforms for basic education in China, the so-called New Curriculum reforms, began experimental implementation in 2001 and full-scale national implementation in 2005. The curriculum reforms are considered to be some of the most ambitious and far reaching changes to schooling in China’s recent history (Shi & Liu, 2004). The reforms have called for an overhaul of the objectives, content, and structure of curricular materials, a transformation in educational philosophy, and a corresponding transformation in teaching practices (Dello-Iacovo, 2009; Ministry of Education, 2001; Sargent, 2009; Zhu, 2006). Educators are exhorted to make the ‘‘cultivation of a spirit of

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creativity and ability to apply knowledge in practice’’ the focus of their efforts (State Council, 1999). They are to ‘‘transform their educational conceptions;’’ ‘‘actively make use of heuristic and discussion based teaching methods; stimulate students’ ability to think independently and creatively;’’ ‘‘imbue students with an understanding of knowledge production and the process of knowledge development; cultivate students’ habits of scientific thinking;’’ their ‘‘capacities for collecting and managing information’’ and for acquiring new knowledge by themselves. Educators are to consider ways that they can enhance students’ ‘‘ability to analyze and solve problems, and the capacity to express themselves verbally and in writing’’ and their capacity for ‘‘harmonious cooperation and social engagement’’ (State Council, 1999, section 1, paragraph 4). Many of these capacities mentioned earlier depend on the teachers’ teaching conceptions and pedagogy. In this study, we examine the content of the Chinese language arts curriculum at the turn of the new millennium. There are two explicit sets of goals for the Chinese language arts curriculum: (1) the transmission of cultural knowledge and values, and political socialization and (2) training in the language skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. In the introduction to the new Chinese language arts curriculum standards, the socialization goals for the Chinese language arts curriculum are given even greater importance than the language skills goals (People’s Republic of China Ministry of Education, 2007). Table 1 presents a list of the overall goals of Chinese language arts New Curriculum standards for nine-year compulsory education. As can be seen from Table 1, socialization goals include the role of the language arts curriculum in cultivating patriotism, socialist moral values, immersion in traditional culture, respect for cultural diversity, creativity, habits of scientific thought, habits of life-long learning, appropriate tastes and interests, edification and inspiration, and the norms of polite daily interaction. The Chinese language arts curriculum is also mandated to cultivate both a strong Chinese identity and a respect for ‘‘cultural diversity and immersion in the excellent culture of all humankind’’ (Ministry of Education, 2007). In this chapter, we examine the role of the language arts curriculum in the transmission of both the Chinese cultural values and the values of global citizenship during the age of globalization. Scholars have argued that globalization impacts upon local cultures in two opposing ways (Stromquist & Monkman, 2000). On the one hand, scholars have pointed to the homogenizing effects of globalization on norms and values. On the other hand, scholars have argued that globalization has stimulated efforts to

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Table 1.

Overall Goals of the New Curriculum Standards for Chinese Language Arts.

1. Through the learning of language, cultivate patriotism, socialist moral values, a positive attitude toward life, the correct value orientation, cultural taste, and artistic appreciation. 2. An understanding of the width and depth of Chinese culture, immersion in the wisdom of traditional culture, as well as a concern for contemporary life, respect for cultural diversity, and immersion in the excellent culture of all humankind. 3. Cultivate a love for Chinese characters, confidence in the study of language and literature, and good habits. Master the basic skills for the learning of language arts. 4. Alongside the development of language skills, the development of thinking ability, imagination and creative potential. Gradually develop the ability to ‘‘search for truth from facts’’ and the scientific attitude of the love and respect for truth. Master the basic methods of scientific thought. 5. Ability to take an active role in inquiry and learn language through application and experience. 6. Learn Hanyu Pinyin. Ability to speak standard Chinese. Ability to recognize 3,500 Chinese characters. Ability to write characters neatly and with adequate speed. 7. Ability to read independently, to feel and experience the beauty of the content, through a rich collection of readings develop a healthy appreciation for language. Learn to use various reading methods. Gradually understand and appreciate literary works, acquire moral integrity and delightful edification, develop character, and enjoy a rich spiritual life. Ability to use reference books to facilitate the reading of classical Chinese works. After 9 years of compulsory education should have read over 4 million characters of extra curricular books. 8. Ability to clearly express oneself in an elegant way. Ability to write using conventional methods of expression to meet the needs of daily life. 9. Have the ability to communicate effectively in daily interactions of all kinds, learn to listen, express oneself and exchange ideas, learn the polite manners for social encounters, and cultivate a spirit of cooperation. 10. Learn how to use most frequently used language reference books. Acquire basic abilities in data gathering and management. Source: People’s Republic of China Ministry of Education (2007).

strengthen and develop local identities (Stromquist & Monkman, 2000). The global convergence of educational policy and practice has its origins at the beginnings of the modern age (Boli, Ramirez, & Meyer, 1985; Collins, 1977; Dale, 1999, 2000; Meyer, Ramirez, & Soysal, 1992; Meyer, Ramirez, Rubinson, & Boli-Bennett, 1977; Ramirez & Boli, 1987; Ramirez & Meyer, 1980; Ramirez & Ventresca, 1992). During an earlier era of modernization and industrialization, the central tension in educational development around the world was that between ‘‘modern’’ values and knowledge and traditional and indigenous knowledge and values (Inkeles & Smith, 1974). The latter were seen as hindrances to development and progress to be swept away with the great forward movement of civilization and society. In the era


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of globalization, the tensions between the global and the local, the modern/ post-modern and the traditional continue to play out on the global stage. Awareness of the moral bankruptcy of current paradigms of economic and societal development and their inherent dangers for the future of humanity press down upon social actors and formerly marginalized groups gradually become empowered to try to protect their traditional values and cultures even as they move into the global age. As education policy looks to the future of an increasingly technologically and economically interdependent world, there is also a deep ambivalence given the time-honored role that education and schooling plays in transmitting a society’s history, values, culture, and language to the next generation (Green, 1997). In ‘‘Jihad vs. McWorld,’’ Barber (1995) vividly documents the ambivalence of contemporary human culture toward the past and the future and toward the local and the global. He writes about the exacerbation of the contradictory tensions in processes of balkanization and ‘‘retribalization’’ occurring hand in hand with processes of commercial and technological interdependence. He also notes that these two sets of processes are paradoxically interdependent. The struggle between the traditional, the feudal and the Confucian, on the one hand, and the modern and the Western on the other, has been played out in education policy and reform throughout 20th century China. This struggle and the ongoing ambivalence that the Chinese populace has felt between the past and the future, the Chinese and the foreign has been presented by Suzanne Pepper (1996). She shows how this ambivalence is threaded through all the major movements in China of the 20th century from the Western influences that constituted part of the inspiration of the May 4 movement in the early 1900s and that sparked subsequent conservative backlashes against copying foreign models ‘‘mechanically.’’ In the extreme anti-capitalist, antiimperialist fervor of the Cultural Revolution, the ardent revolutionaries were simultaneously reverent toward the powerful foreign ideology of Marxism. The dilemma persists as China emerges as a global economic and political power and seeks to find a balance between learning from the outside and maintaining its own legacy of ‘‘excellent culture.’’ In the context of globalization, knowledge is becoming increasingly related to technical capital and is seen as the engine of economic growth and competitiveness. The re-envisioning of the purposes of education within this paradigm of the relationship between knowledge and economic development has lead to ideologies of educational purpose that have infiltrated the education policy goals of nations across the globe (Grubb & Lazerson, 2006). In the contemporary global policy environment, international

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organizations such the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank have played an important role in disseminating ideas that have lead to the reformulation of national educational purposes and governance structures (Fiala & Lanford, 1987; Grubb & Lazerson, 2006; Rizvi & Lingard, 2006). Among the ideas that are central to the global ‘‘educational gospel’’ (Grubb & Lazerson, 2006) are the notion of the knowledge revolution that requires the development of creativity, higher order thinking skills and the capacities for life-long learning, features deemed crucial to the enhancement of national economic productivity and competition. Policymakers from around the globe, including countries in Africa, the OECD member states and China (Riggan, 2008; Rizvi & Lingard, 2006; Sargent, 2006) have adopted these concepts from the global discourse as their own. In addition to goals for national economic development, educational policies around the globe have also been concerned about the goals of social justice, human rights, and education for individual development and wellbeing. These come in response to increasing educational stratification and inequality. Intergovernmental organizations have also been important disseminators of the value of education as a fundamental human right, and this has become a fixture in the norms governing contemporary world culture (Boli & Thomas, 1999; McNeely, 1995). McNeely (1995) argues that international organizations such as UNESCO are important disseminators of global norms such as the concept of world citizenship, education as a fundamental human right, and the importance of education in fighting discrimination. In the interstate competition for national prestige, a nation must be perceived as appropriately concerned with social justice, human rights, and equality to be accepted as a member in good standing of the world community. In recent official discourse in China, the slogan ‘‘putting people first’’ ( yi ren wei ben) has emerged as a new development model (‘‘China’s ‘putting people first’ development model: Commentary,’’ 2004). Hu Jintao’s signature doctrine is the concept of the ‘‘harmonious society’’ where the ‘‘five balanced aspects’’ are achieved: ‘‘balancing urban and rural development, balancing development among regions, balancing economic and social development, balancing development of man and nature, and balancing domestic development and opening wider to the outside world’’ (‘‘China’s ‘putting people first’ development model: Commentary,’’ 2004). The government also recently released an important official document entitled the ‘‘National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009–2010)’’ (Information Office of the State Council, 2009), which elaborates on the details of the ‘‘person-centered’’


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policy language and outlines the government’s priorities for the protection of the rights of its citizens including various concrete measures to guarantee the right to an education. Beginning in the late 1990s, educators in China have begun to call for a more humanistic, student-centered approach to education that puts human welfare, dignity, and empowerment at the center instead of calling for the sacrifice of the needs of the individual for the society (Huang, 2004; Zhong, Cui, & Zhang, 2001). In this chapter, we consider recent trends in the values that are evident in the content of the Chinese language arts textbooks. Our central research questions are: What is the relative importance given in the content of the Chinese language arts curriculum for basic education to cultivating global citizens as compared with the goal of cultivating a strong Chinese identity and transmitting Chinese cultural knowledge and values? How has the implementation of the New Curriculum materials affected the relative importance of these goals?

DATA AND METHODS Riffe, Lacy, and Fico (2005) point out that content analysis is a useful means to study the relationship between contextual factors, such as social, political, economic, and cultural conditions, and communication content. Furthermore, they point out that communication content is, in turn, the antecedent of individual, social, or cultural effects. Michael Apple (1979) describes the ideological influences of the content and structure of school curricula. A change in curricular content indicates shifting versions of official knowledge that children are exposed to in schools, which can have implications for the attitudes, beliefs, and, ultimately, behaviors of these individuals as they grow up and take on their roles in society or act to reform societal structures. In this chapter, we examine the values taught in the Chinese language arts curriculum across three versions of the textbooks from before and after the implementation of curriculum reform. We use both quantitative content analysis and qualitative content analysis in our investigation. Content analysis can be defined as a ‘‘systematic and replicable examination of symbols of communication, which have been assigned numeric values according to valid measurement rules and the analysis of relationships involving those values using statistical methods, to describe the communications, draw inferences about its meaning, or infer from the communication to its context, both of production and consumption’’ (Riffe et al., 2005, p. 25).

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Textbooks lend themselves very well to the systematic sampling procedures and selection of units of analysis that are required by rigorous content analysis.

Sampling Before the ‘‘New Curriculum’’ reforms, only one publishing house was authorized to produce textbook materials, the People’s Education Press (PEP). After the implementation of the New Curriculum reforms, one of the important reforms was the decentralization of textbook production (Dello-Iacovo, 2009; Ministry of Education, 2001; Zhou, 2008). Publishing houses from around the nation were able to produce textbooks that were designed in accordance with the New Curriculum standards. In 2006, over 10 publishing houses were approved to produce curriculum materials for Chinese language arts in primary and middle schools (Ministry of Education, 2005; Wang, 2009). These included PEP, Jiangsu Education Press (JEP), Beijing Normal University Press, Language and Literature Press, Educational Sciences Press, and others (Ministry of Education, 2005). Textbooks that are produced need to be approved by a committee under the Ministry of Education in charge of textbook review, the National School Textbook Examination Commission (Wang, 2009). The decision about the choice of which textbooks to use in the schools is made at the provincial and county levels. We analyze the textbooks for Chinese language arts for grades 1–9 (primary and middle school levels) from the following textbook versions: 1. Curriculum materials used before the ‘‘New Curriculum’’ reforms produced by PEP (2001). 2. New Curriculum materials produced by PEP (2003). 3. New Curriculum materials produced by JEP (2004). The PEP and the JEP versions of the Chinese language arts curriculum were among the first to be approved as New Curriculum materials and are both in widespread use around the nation. The PEP in Beijing is the publishing house directly under auspices of the Ministry of Education, and until the year 2000, it had been the sole producer of textbooks for basic education across the nation since 1950 (People’s Education Press, 2007). The PEP continues to be an important organization in China’s education system. The PEP textbooks continue to enjoy widespread use in all the provinces across China, and the PEP also continues to be heavily involved in curriculum research and the development of the national curriculum


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standards (People’s Education Press, 2007). The JEP version is also used extensively in counties across the nation. According to the JEP website, by 2003, 28 provinces and 700 experimental districts across the nation were using the JEP materials for at least one of their subjects (Jiangsu Education Press, 2009). Furthermore, the JEP version offers an interesting example for comparison with the PEP version as it is produced in a different geographic and cultural context far removed from the central policy making in Beijing. Jiangsu is a province on the prosperous eastern seaboard close to Shanghai. We take the lesson as our unit of analysis. Lessons were each given a unique identifier and listed according to textbook version, grade level, volume, and lesson number thus allowing for a systematic random sample to be drawn. The sampling universe consisted of 1,441 lessons. A random sample was selected by starting with a computer-generated random number 3 for a starting point and, using a sampling distance of 4, counting every fourth lesson from the starting sample lesson. This resulted in a sample size of 359 lessons that was representative of the Chinese language curriculum for grades 1 through 9 in the PEP ‘‘old’’ curriculum, PEP ‘‘new’’ curriculum, and JEP ‘‘new’’ curriculum.

Coding Each lesson was systematically coded using codes that emerged from the analysis of the textbooks, that were suggested by the New Curriculum standards (Table 1), that came from the theoretical literature on the effects of globalization on education (Boli & Thomas, 1997; Fiala & Lanford, 1987; Grubb & Lazerson, 2006; McNeely, 1995; Stromquist & Monkman, 2000) and considering the trends toward the incorporation of more humanistic values in education in China (Huang, 2004; Zhong et al., 2001). A list of variables used in the analysis is shown in Table 2. Reliability of coding was strengthened by devising clear definitions regarding coding categories and the agreement of both authors (coders) on the coding of each lesson. Statistical data analysis consists of descriptive analyses and cross-tabulations that test for significant differences using chi-square tests. Texts were coded for whether or not there was any evidence that they reflected values for the strengthening of Chinese identity and for the values of global citizenship. In addition, one variable, ‘‘Value content of the text,’’ is mutually exclusive and exhaustive and endeavors to capture the main value content of the text. It is possible for one lesson to be coded for both cultivating Chinese identity and fostering values for global citizenship.

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Table 2.

Variables Used in Analysis.

Variable Name Lesson ID Curriculum version

Grade level Volume Lesson text is about cultivating Chinese identity Lesson text works to foster values for global citizenship Lesson text is in classical Chinese Lesson content is about traditional culture Lesson content is about the ‘‘revolutionary culture’’ Great literary work from 20th century China Foreign story Scientific content Beauty of nature Social justice Sacrifice – laying down one’s life for nation or family Creativity Moral relationships

Lesson content is about moral values and how to be a person Moral values taught in the lesson

Variable Attributes 11103–39217 1. People’s Education Press (PEP) – old (2001) 2. PEP – new (2003) 3. Jiangsu Educational Press (JEP) – new (2004) 1–9 1–2 0. No 1. Yes 0. No 1. Yes 0. Vernacular 1. Classical Chinese 0. No 1. Yes 0. No 1. Yes 0. No 1. Yes 0. No 1. Yes 0. No 1. Yes 0. No 1. Yes 0. No 1. Yes 0. No 1. Yes 0. No 1. Yes 1. Relationship to self 2. Relationship to others 3. Relationship to society 4. Relationship to nature 0. No 1. Yes 1. Perseverance, diligence, hard work 2. Honesty, integrity, simplicity 3. Physical and psychological health 4. Learning how to learn 5. Creativity 6. Family relationships, parents love 7. Friendship, kindness, love 8. Service, social responsibility

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Table 2. (Continued ) Variable Name

Variable Attributes 9. Cooperation 10. Missing hometown 11. Traditional customs 12. Peace, valuing diversity, multiculturalism 13. Patriotism, collectivism, revolutionary culture 14. Science 15. Love of nature and beauty 16. Environmental awareness

For example, a text about Deng Jiaxian, an important nuclear physicist in China, would be coded for containing science content (PEP old and new versions, grade 8, volume 2, lesson 20) but coded for patriotism as being the main value content of the lesson. One of our indicators of ‘‘fostering global citizenship’’ is ‘‘the lesson has scientific content,’’ and one of our indicators for ‘‘cultivating Chinese identity’’ is ‘‘patriotism.’’ This example illustrates the overlap between values for cultivating a Chinese identity and values for global citizenship. The following variables and variable attributes were used to operationalize the main concepts in our study – fostering of Chinese identity and cultivation of values of global citizenship: 1. Fostering of Chinese identity: lesson text is in classical Chinese; lesson content is about traditional culture; lesson content is about revolutionary culture; sacrifice for nation; text consists of excerpts of the work of 20thcentury great Chinese authors. The main moral value content taught in lesson was also considered: perseverance/diligence/hard work; honesty/ integrity/simplicity; family and filial piety; traditional customs/missing home; patriotism; and love of nature. 2. Cultivation of global citizenship: international content, science, creativity, and social justice. The following attributes for the variable coding the main moral value content taught in the lesson were also considered: environmental awareness, peace/valuing diversity/multiculturalism, creativity, social responsibility, social justice, learning how to learn, physical/ mental health, cooperation, and science. Qualitative content analysis is employed to present illustrations of the various themes that were chosen for quantitative coding to provide a richer picture of the content of the Chinese language arts curriculum.

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RESULTS Our analysis of the textbooks shows that the two goals of cultivating a strong Chinese identity and fostering global citizenship are simultaneously present (Fig. 1). On average across all three versions of the textbooks, 69% of lessons are aimed at cultivating a strong sense of Chinese identity and 57% foster the values of global citizenship. Fig. 1 shows the differences across the three textbook versions on these variables. Interestingly, although there is an increase in the newer versions of the textbook in the

80

70

Percentage of texts

60

50

40

30

20

10

0 Text reflects values of strong Chinese identity PEP (2001)

Text reflects values of global citizenship PEP (2003)

JEP (2004)

Fig. 1. Percentage of Texts that Focus on Cultivating Strong Chinese Identity and Percentage of Texts that Contain Values of Global Citizenship across Three Versions of the Chinese Language Arts Textbooks for Grades 1–9.


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proportion of lessons aimed at cultivating a strong Chinese identity, this difference is not statistically significant [PEP-old, 63%; PEP-new, 79%; JEP-new, 75%, w2 (2, N ¼ 359) ¼ 3.64, po.162]. There is, however, a statistically significant difference across the three texts in terms of emphasis placed in the textbooks on the values of global citizenship. This is not a simple difference between old and new curriculum versions of the textbooks. The new PEP version of the texts pays markedly greater attention to international themes and to the qualities of global citizenship as measured by our indicators than the old PEP. However, the new JEP has even less emphasis on globalized themes than the old PEP textbooks [PEP-old, 54%; PEP-new, 70%; JEP-new, 44%, w2 (2, N ¼ 359) ¼ 15.63, po.000].

Cultivating a Strong Chinese Identity With regard to specific items that operationalize the concept of cultivating Chinese identity, on average, content coded as transmitting traditional culture accounted for approximately one quarter of the Chinese language arts curriculum decreasing slightly from PEP-old version (27.5%) to PEP-new version (24.3%), but increasing in JEP-new version (28.7%) (Fig. 2). Traditional cultural content consists of history stories and the poems and prose of famous classical poets and authors. It can be presented in ancient Chinese characters or in the vernacular. Although the number of ancient poems and lyrics, using classical Chinese, decreased from 19% in the old PEP to 15% in the new PEP and JEP versions, the proportion of ancient prose using classical Chinese has increased slightly (PEP-old, 1.67%; PEP-new, 5.34%; JEP-new, 4.63%) (Table 3). An additional 11% of the textbooks on average are devoted to familiarizing students with the great literary works by Chinese authors of the 20th century such as Lu Xun, Bing Xin, Guo Muoruo, and Zhi Ziqin. Add to this 6% of texts related to China’s ‘‘revolutionary traditions’’ and over one-third of the texts are aimed at developing ‘‘an understanding of the width and depth of Chinese culture’’ and ‘‘immersion in traditional culture.’’ There are no statistically significant differences across the three versions of the textbooks on any of these various items. Further variables that were used to operationalize our concept of ‘‘cultivating Chinese identity’’ included patriotism, texts with content about ‘‘how to be a person’’ (zenme zuo ren), and texts that focus on the love of

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TANJA CARMEL SARGENT AND XIAO YANG 70 PEP (2001) PEP (2003) JEP (2004)

60

60 58

58

Percent of lessons

50

40 31

30

29

28 24

24 21

20

18 15

17 13 11

10

9

8 6 5

2 0 0

0 Classical Traditional Revolutionary 20th Chinese culture culture century Chinese literature

Sacrifice life for country

How to be Beauty of nature a person

Characteristics of lessons across three versions of the Chinese language arts textbooks

Fig. 2. Coding Distributions across Three Versions of the Chinese Language Arts Textbook for Items that Measure the Concept ‘‘Cultivating Chinese Identity.’’

natural beauty. In our original conceptualization, texts on the topic of science were considered to be focused on the cultivation of globally competitive citizens, but the following example shows how a text with a science theme can also be used to cultivate pride, patriotism, and a sense of duty to the nation. The lesson is in both the old version of the PEP edition and the new PEP version. It is studied in the second grade of middle school, volume 2, lesson 20. It is from a story written by Yang Zhenning, who came to the United States in 1946 to pursue doctoral studies at the University of Chicago and who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1957. He writes about his classmate, Deng Jiaxian, who chose to return to China after receiving his PhD at Purdue University in the United States. Deng Jiaxian became an important leader in the development of nuclear physics in China. He developed the atomic and hydrogen bomb for China. At the end of Yang Zhenning’s tribute to his classmate, he writes: ‘‘August 16, 1971 I left

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Table 3. Coding Frequencies for Lesson Characteristics across Three Versions of the Chinese Language Arts Textbooks for Nine Year Compulsory Education: People’s Education Press (2001) before Reforms, and the New Curriculum Standards Versions of the People’s Education Press (2003) and Jiangsu Education Press (2004) Textbooks. Textbook Version

Cultivating Chinese identity Text uses classical Chinese Traditional culture Revolutionary culture Great literary works from 20th century China Sacrifice – laying down one’s life for nation Moral values and how to be a person The beauty of nature Fostering global citizenship International content Scientific content Social justice Creativity

PEP old

PEP new

JEP new

Total

Total N ¼ 120

Total N ¼ 131

Total N ¼ 108

Total N ¼ 359

N (%)

N (%)

N (%)

N (%)

22 (18.33) 33 (27.5) 9 (7.5) 11 (9.17) 2 (1.67)

20 (15.27) 18 (16.67) 32 (24.43) 31 (28.7) 8 (6.11) 5 (4.63) 15 (11.45) 14 (12.96) 0 (0.0)

0 (0.0)

69 (57.5) 25 (20.83)

79 (60.31) 63 (58.33) 31 (23.66) 33 (30.56)

16 (13.3) 26 (21.67) 2 (1.67) 7 (5.83)

34 23 16 26

60 (16.71) 96 (26.74) 22 (6.13) 40 (11.14) 2 (0.56) 211 (58.77) 89 (24.79)

(26.0) 20 (18.5) 59 (19.5) (17.56) 18 (16.67) 67 (18.66) (12.21) 3 (2.78) 21 (5.85) (19.85) 5 (4.63) 38 (10.58)

po0.05. po0.01. po0.001.

Shanghai preparing to return to the US. Some leaders in the city invited me to dinner. While eating, someone brought me a letter from Deng Jiaxian. In the letter he wrote that he had found out that with the exception of help from the Soviets prior to 1959, China had not had any help from any foreign nation in achieving the development of their nuclear program. This very short letter had a very deep effect on my emotions and even moved me to tears. Ever since then I asked myself why I had such a strong reaction. Was it because I was proud of my nation? Or was it because I was proud of Jiaxian? I am not sure.’’

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Moral education has been an important component of Chinese education for centuries, and the Chinese language arts curriculum continues to be an important vehicle for moral education. In all versions of the texts approximately 60% of the texts were coded as being lessons in ‘‘how to be a person’’ (zenme zuo ren). An interesting finding was the significant proportion of texts in the books that are about the love of natural beauty. Twenty-one percent of the texts in the old PEP version were coded for this variable, 24% in the new PEP version and over 30% of the texts in the JEP version were thus coded. An example of this from the JEP version of the textbooks is in a text that teaches a classical poem about a person enjoying the autumn scenery. Classic texts such as these teach students the traditional Chinese value of the harmony between humanity and nature. In this text, as with almost all classical texts, deep emotions are expressed through the metaphors of nature and the expression of the love and union with natural beauty. It is almost dark, but he does not want to go home yet because he is enjoying the redness of the leaves so much that he feels that these are even more beautiful than the spring flowers. The tops of the mountains are gradually being illuminated by the setting sun, the fluffy white clouds are surrounding the mountain tops, it is possible to see some small home on the top of the mountains (JEP grade 3, volume 2, lesson 3). These classic poems about nature instill a love of traditional Chinese culture and of nature in students.

Cultivating Global Citizens Statistically significant differences for specific items operationalizing the concept of fostering global citizenship were found for the variables for ‘‘text contains international content,’’ ‘‘creativity,’’ and ‘‘social justice’’ (Fig. 3). International content increased from the ‘‘old’’ curriculum version to the two ‘‘new’’ curriculum versions [PEP-old, 13%; PEP-new, 26%; JEP-new, 19%, w2 (2, N ¼ 359) ¼ 6.45, po.040]. For example, an exposure to famous foreign literary works makes up a substantial percent of the textbook content. Twenty-one percent of the new PEP version of the textbooks is devoted to foreign literary works from around the world including Russia, the United States, India, Japan, Africa, and England. This is compared to only 12.5% in the old PEP version and 16% in the new JEP version. Changes in the emphasis on creativity did not follow clearly along the divide between the ‘‘old’’ curriculum and the ‘‘new’’ curriculum. Twenty-six

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State-Sponsored Knowledge for the Global Age 30 PEP (2001) PEP (2003) JEP (2004)

26 25

Percent of lessons

22 20

20

19 18 17

15 13 12 10 6 5

5 3 2 0 International content

Scientific content

Social justice

Creativity

Characteristics of lessons across three versions of the Chinese language arts textbooks

Fig. 3. Coding Distributions across Three Versions of the Chinese Language Arts Textbook for Items that Measure the Concept ‘‘Fostering Global Citizenship.’’

percent of the lesson texts in the new PEP version were coded as having a central value theme of creativity as compared with only 7% in the old version of the PEP textbooks. However, only 5% of the new JEP sample lessons were coded as ‘‘yes’’ for having creativity as an important goal of the lesson [w2 (2, N ¼ 359) ¼ 18.78, po.000]. One of the stories from the new PEP version that was coded for creativity was entitled ‘‘There is more than one road that leads to the square.’’ In this story a father takes his daughter to visit Rome. They climb to the top of a church overlooking the square. As they look out over the landscape, the father says to his daughter ‘‘Do you see how all the roads lead to the square? Life is the same. If you find that the road you are taking is blocked and cannot take you to your destination, try another road and see if that one will work.’’ The daughter remembered her father’s words throughout her life. She had a dream of becoming a fashion

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designer. On her path to achieving this dream, she faced many obstacles but overcame each of them creatively. When she grew up, she became a very successful fashion designer and had a busy and hectic schedule. On one occasion, she was unable to get all the clothes completed in time for the deadline for an exhibition she was to participate in. Rather than cancel her appearance at this important exhibition, she decided that for those garments that were already completed she would show them as completed garments, and for those garments that were not yet completed she would display them as they were. The exhibition was quite a success. People who attended it thought it was so interesting to see the garments at various stages of development (PEP new version, grade 5, volume 1, lesson 14). Another set of values that have become norms in contemporary global culture are the values of diversity, social justice, and multiculturalism. We also find a statistically significant difference across the versions between those texts that we coded as reflecting the value of social justice. Again the substantial increase on this variable is seen only in the new PEP version. Although only 2% of the old version of the PEP lessons were coded as having relevance for the value of social justice, 12% of the lessons in the new version of the PEP and only 3% of the JEP version were thus coded [w2 (2, N ¼ 359) ¼ 15.3, po.000]. An example of one of the lessons coded for social justice is entitled ‘‘Two entries in my diary.’’ June 1, Friday: ‘‘Last night I had a dream. I dreamed that I was wearing the dress that is hanging in the shop window. It is a white dress with frills on the hem. I wore the dress to school and all my classmates looked at me with admiration. Today is my birthday. Mother was surely going to buy that dress for me. Mother got home from work carrying a big parcel of things. I tore open the package excitedly. Inside I found two pink dresses, two red book bags, and two sets of children’s encyclopedias but I did not find the white dress I was wishing for. Mother divided the gifts into two portions. One portion she gave to me and she told me that the other portion was for Aying. Who is Aying? Where is she? Mother knew so well that I liked that dress but she still didn’t buy it for me. How unfair she was.’’ July 22, Sunday: ‘‘Aying came to my house yesterday. Aying comes from a Miao family in the mountains of Guizhou. She told me that mother sent money regularly to support her schooling otherwise she would have had to drop out long ago. She also said that the clothes she was wearing and the transportation costs were all given by my mother. Aying was very hard working. She helped mother to do the chores, and she worked very


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hard at her studies. She was always reading books and asking questions. Last night I had another dream. I dreamed mother took me to buy that dress. I didn’t let mother buy it for me. I asked her to please save the money so that we could buy lots of books. In my dream I went with Aying together to the Miao village in the mountains and we saw so many Miao girls. I took the books out of my bag and gave them to them. They were so happy they surrounded me and started dancing’’ (New PEP, grade 2, volume 1, lesson 2)

CONCLUSION The New Curriculum standards for the Chinese language arts curriculum for basic education call for ‘‘An understanding of the width and depth of Chinese culture, immersion in the wisdom of traditional culture, as well as a concern for contemporary life, respect for cultural diversity, and immersion in the excellent culture of all humankind’’ (Ministry of Education, 2007). In the context of globalization, education in contemporary China has two important goals: to connect citizens to the nation and also to enable them to be competitive in the global knowledge economy. Across all three versions of the Chinese language arts textbooks that we have analyzed in this chapter, there is sustained attention to content that cultivates a strong Chinese identity but significant differences across the three versions with respect to themes that we took as indicators of fostering global citizenship. The new version of the PEP Chinese language arts curriculum had a greater proportion of lessons containing foreign content and pays significantly greater attention to the themes of creativity and social justice than either the old version of the PEP texts or the new JEP version. It may be that, due to the direct association between the PEP and the Ministry of Education, there is a tighter relationship between the policy goals and aims of the New Curriculum reforms and the content contained in the new PEP version of the textbook. The marked difference between the content in the two New Curriculum textbooks provides evidence of the greater decentralization and decoupling between policy and practice since the policy of ‘‘one curriculum many textbooks’’ (Dello-Iacovo, 2009). It may also be evidence in support of the argument that the new materials are disorderly and lack cohesion, systematization and a tight alignment with the assessment and examination system (Dello-Iacovo, 2009). Concern with curricular quality is an issue that the Ministry of Education is currently

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dealing with (Ministry of Education, 2009). It could also reflect an underlying ambivalence about the purpose of the Chinese language arts curriculum in Chinese society. Curriculum specialists designing textbook materials for one publishing house may tend toward the opinion that the Chinese language arts curriculum should expose students to the cultures of the world and fall in line with the goals of globalized education, whereas those at another publishing house may have a greater tendency toward the notion that the main purpose of the Chinese language arts curriculum is to instill Chinese cultural values and foster a strong Chinese identity. In this chapter, we have examined curricular content at its face value as contained in the textbooks. In gauging the extent to which language arts education in China is in line with the goals of raising the competitiveness and efficiency of China’s future citizens by fostering students’ creativity, self-expression, thinking abilities, imagination, initiative, and independence, it is necessary to observe the teachers teaching and the students learning to examine the ways in which textbooks are being used in the classroom. Furthermore, the reform of the structure of the school curriculum may be even more important than the reform of the content of the textbooks for specific subjects. For example, the New Curriculum reforms place emphasis on greater integration across the overall curriculum such as integrated subjects such as Science and Society and in the new emphasis on links between the curriculum and the society such as with the introduction of the Social Practice class (zonghe shijian huodong) that includes training in the use of technology, community service, and inquiry learning (Dello-Iacovo, 2009; Ministry of Education, 2001). As China’s position in the global environment shifts, there are important demographic changes within the nation as well. There is increasing stratification in the experiences of Chinese young people depending on whether they reside in the economic, political, and cultural centers of the nation or in the remote rural and minority culture areas. Internal migration also affects the schooling of my young Chinese citizens. Many questions about the structure and content of the curriculum remain to be answered. Will a greater variation in the content of curricular materials lead to an exacerbation of stratification among the diverse groups of Chinese youth? The decentralization of the curricular materials was in part an effort to enable greater relevance of curriculum materials to local and regional differences. Even as sustained attention has been given to cultivating a strong national Chinese identity and to instilling globalized values, to what extent are local identities being supported and expressed? Do any of the New Curriculum materials suit the needs and interests of children in


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the rural parts of the nation? As revisions of the structure and content of the curriculum for various subjects continue, these kinds of questions will need careful attention and investigation.

REFERENCES Apple, M. (1979). Ideology and curriculum. London; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Barber, B. (1995). Jihad vs. McWorld. New York: Times Books. Boli, J., Ramirez, F., & Meyer, J. W. (1985). Explaining the origins and expansion of mass education. Comparative Education Review, 29, 145–170. Boli, J., & Thomas, G. (1997). World culture in the world polity: A century of international non-governmental organization. American Sociological Review, 62(2), 171–190. Boli, J., & Thomas, G. (1999). INGOs and the organization of world culture. In: J. Boli & G. Thomas (Eds), Constructing world culture: International nongovernmental organizations since 1875. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Collins, R. (1977). Some comparative principles of educational stratification. Havard Educational Review, 47(1), 1–27. Dale, R. (1999). Specifying globalization effects on national policy: A focus on the mechanisms. Journal of Education Policy, 14(1), 1–17. Dale, R. (2000). Globalization and education: Demonstrating a ‘‘Common World Educational Culture’’ or locating a ‘‘Globally Structured Educational Agenda’’? Educational Theory, 50(4), 427–448. Dello-Iacovo, B. (2009). Curriculum reform and ‘‘Quality Education’’ in China: An overview. International Journal of Educational Development, 29, 241–249. Fairbrother, G. P. (2004). Citizenship education in a divided China, 1949–1195. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 24(1), 29–42. Fiala, R., & Lanford, A. G. (1987). Educational ideology and the world educational revolution, 1950–1970. Comparative Education Review, 31(3), 315–332. Green, A. (1997). Education, globalization and the nation state. Basingstoke: MacMillan. Grubb, W. N., & Lazerson, M. (2006). The globalization of rhetoric and practice: The education gospel and vocationalism. In: H. Lauder, P. Brown, J.-A. Dillabough & A. H. Halsey (Eds), Education, globalizaton and social change (pp. 295–308). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Huang, F. (2004). Curriculum reform in contemporary China: Seven goals and six strategies. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36(1), 101–115. Information Office of the State Council. (2009). National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009–2010). Beijing. Inkeles, A., & Smith, D. (1974). Becoming modern. London: Heinemann Education Books. Jiangsu Education Press. (2009). Make a mighty effort to construct the three bases, serve education and create the future – An introduction to Jiangsu Educational Press (Da li jianshe sange jidi fuwu jiaoyu chuangzao weilai – Jiangsu jiaoyu chuban she jianjie) [Website]. Jiangsu Education Press. Available at http://www.1088.com.cn/JIANJI/ index.htm. Retrieved on November 19, 2009. Kwong, J. (1985). Changing political culture and changing curriculum: An analysis of language textbooks in the People’s Republic of China. Comparative Education, 21(2), 197–208.

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Riggan, J. (2008). Nationalizing the global-local ‘‘divide’’: Transnational teaching, globalized policy and nation-building in Eritrea. Paper presented at the Comparative and International Education Society, New York City. Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2006). Globalization and the changing nature of OECD’s educational work. In: A. H. Halsey (Ed.), Education, globalization and social change (pp. 247–261). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sargent, T. (2006). Ideologies of educational purpose for the 21st century: The ‘‘New Curriculum’’ reform policy in China. Unpublished manuscript, New Brunswick, NJ. Sargent, T. (2009). Revolutionizing ritual interaction in the classroom: Constructing the Chinese renaissance of the 21st century. Modern China, 35(6), 662–691. Sargent, T. C. (2008). The making of the high quality citizen: Changing visions in Chinese education policy. Paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA. Shi, O., & Liu, L. (2004). Kecheng gaige zhong de ruogan wenti (Problems in Curriculum Reform). Guangzhou: Guangdong Educational Press. State Council. (1999). Decisions of the State Council regarding the deepening of education reform through the promotion of quality education at all levels (Guowuyuan guanyu shenhua jiaoyu gaige quanmian tuijin suzhi jiaoyu de jueding) [Website]. Available at http://www.edu.cn/ 20011114/3009834.shtml Stromquist, N., & Monkman, K. (2000). Defining globalization and assessing its implications on knowledge and education. In: N. Stromquist & K. Monkman (Eds), Globalization and education: Integration and contestation across cultures. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Wang, D. (2009). Math and Science Curriculum Reform in China [Website presentation]. Asia Society Education Programs. Available at http://www.slideshare.net/internationaled/ math-and-science-curriculum-reform#stats-bottom. Retrieved on November 18, 2009. Zhong, Q., Cui, Y., & Zhang, H. (2001). Wei liao zhonghua minzu de fuxing, wei liao mei wei xuesheng de fazhan (For the renaissance of the Chinese people, for the development of each individual student). Shanghai: East China Normal University Press. Zhou, W. (2008). Educational publishing in China: Status quo, problems and counter measures. Publishing Research Quarterly, 24(1), 32–39. Zhu, X. (2006). Moral education and values education in curriculum reform in China. Frontiers of Education in China, 2006(2), 191–200.

CHANGES IN EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY IN CHINA, 1990–2005: EVIDENCE FROM THE POPULATION CENSUS DATA Xiaogang Wu and Zhuoni Zhang ABSTRACT This chapter examines the trend in school enrollment and transitions to senior high school and to college in China for selected young cohorts since the 1990s, based on the analyses of the sample data from population censuses in 1990 and 2000 and the mini-census in 2005. We pay particular attention to educational inequality based on gender and the household registration system (hukou) in the context of educational expansion. Results show a substantial increase in educational opportunities over time at all levels. In particular, women have gained relatively more; gender inequality has decreased over time, and the gap in college enrollments was even reversed to favor women in 2005. However, rural–urban inequality was enlarged in the 1990s. The educational expansion has mainly benefited females and urban residents.

Globalization, Changing Demographics, and Educational Challenges in East Asia Research in Sociology of Education, Volume 17, 123–152 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3539/doi:10.1108/S1479-3539(2010)0000017007

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XIAOGANG WU AND ZHUONI ZHANG

INTRODUCTION Scholars have long recognized the central role of the nation-state in shaping the provision of educational opportunities and determining the structure of the educational system. Although the impact of the state on education is relatively weak in most developing countries that have limited economic and organizational resources (Buchmann & Hannum, 2001), major shifts in educational policies in China have dramatically altered individuals’ life chances in the Maoist era since the 1950s (Deng & Treiman, 1997; Zhou, Moen, & Tuma, 1998). The economic reform and open-up to the outside world since 1978 has gradually relaxed the state control of the economy and led to the emergence of labor markets. In the course of rapid economic development and market reform, returns to human capital (education) increased, particularly in the private sector (Nee, 1989, 1996). For instance, the earnings return to education in 1988 was approximately 3%, and it jumped to approximately 10% in 2003 (Liu, 2006). Education has become an increasingly important factor in determining individuals’ socioeconomic attainment and enhancing the nation’s competitiveness in the global economy. Accompanied with the rapid economic development is the question of how to restructure the educational system and provide more access to educational opportunities, as sustainable economic growth demands skilled labor (Hannum, Park, & Cheng, 2007; Murphy, 2004). Indeed, the commencement of the reform era was marked by the complete dismantling of the educational policies adopted during the Cultural Revolution, which severely condemned the system of evaluating student performance by examinations (Tsui, 1997; Wang, 2002). On the contrary, economic growth afforded more resources for educational development and school expansion. In 1980, the Chinese government set the target of universalizing primary education by the end of the 1980s and the implementation of nine-year compulsory education in the 1990s (Tsui, 1997). In 1985, the Decision on the Reform of the Education Structure was launched, followed by the 1986 Compulsory Education Law. With the increase in educational resources, these goals were largely achieved by the mid-1990s. As Table 1 shows, the school enrollment rate (age 6–15) had already reached over 98% by the mid-1990s. The rate of transition to junior high school, given the completion of primary school education, after an initial decline in the mid-1980s, also reached over 90% in 1995 and 98.4% in 2005. In contrast, the expansion of senior high school education beyond the compulsory levels was quite slow until recently, and the expansion

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Changes in Educational Inequality in China, 1990–2005

Table 1.

Educational Expansion in China, 1978–2005.

Year

Enrollment Rate (%)

Transition to Junior High School (%)

Transition to Senior High (Academic and Vocational) School (%)

Transition to College (%)

1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

95.5 93.0 93.9 93.0 93.2 94.0 95.3 96.0 96.4 97.2 97.2 97.4 97.8 97.8 97.2 97.7 98.4 98.5 98.8 98.9 98.9 99.1 99.1 98.3 98.6 98.7 98.9 99.2

87.7 82.8 75.9 68.3 66.2 67.3 66.2 68.4 69.5 69.1 70.4 71.5 74.6 75.7 79.7 81.8 86.6 90.8 92.6 93.7 94.3 94.4 94.9 95.5 97.0 97.9 98.1 98.4

40.9 40.0 45.9 31.5 32.3 35.5 38.4 41.7 40.6 39.1 38.0 38.3 40.6 42.6 43.4 44.1 46.4 48.3 48.8 44.3 50.7 50.0 51.1 52.9 58.3 60.2 62.9 69.7

5.89 3.84 4.56 5.74 10.1 16.6 25.0 31.5 25.5 25.0 26.7 24.5 27.3 28.7 34.9 43.3 46.7 49.9 51.0 48.6 46.1 63.8 73.2 78.8 83.5 83.4 82.5 76.3

Sources: Comprehensive statistical data and materials on 50 years of New China, Beijing: China Statistics Publishing House. The data from 1998 onward are from http://www.stats.gov. cn/tjsj/ndsj/

was not at a pace comparable to that of higher education (Liu, 2004; Min, 2007). As plotted in Fig. 1, the expansion of education did not follow a typical sequence from primary, secondary and then to tertiary levels. The Chinese government decided to expand higher education in 1999 before senior high school education grew substantially. As shown in Table 1, in 1999, only about half of junior high school graduates could continue on senior high

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100

Percentage

80

60

40

enrollment rate transition to junior hs transition to senior high school transition to college

20

0 1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

Year

Fig. 1.

Educational Expansion and School Transition in China, 1978–2005 (Table 1).

school (including both academic and vocational tracks), whereas 63.8% of senior high school graduates could enter college, jumping from 46.1% in 1998. In 2002, 58.3% of junior high school graduates could proceed to senior high school, whereas 83.5% of senior high school graduates could attend college. This atypical way of expansion may have important implications for educational inequality in the course of China’s educational expansion since the late 1990s. Although issues related to education inequalities have been widely discussed by the media and concerned the public in recent years, most existing studies are focused on basic education in the early reform period or in rural areas (Tsui, 1997; Hannum, 1999; Adams & Hannum, 2005; Wu, 2007). Literature on educational attainment based on cohort analysis of retrospective survey data, on the contrary, could barely capture a young generation who have been most affected by recent policy changes in the 1990s (Deng & Treiman, 1997; Liu, 2004; Wu, 2007; Zhou et al., 1998). As far as we know, no national survey data are available on the young cohorts who completed their primary and secondary education in the period when China proceeded deeply into marketization and educational reform.


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Analysis of those who completed tertiary education was even more limited due to the small sample size. The aggregated tables from the Ministry of Education (e.g., Table 1) would not allow the detailed analyses of inequality in access to educational opportunities among different social groups. In this chapter, we analyze a sample of micro-data from Chinese population censuses and mini-census to document the trends of educational attainment and school transition in China’s late reform period. We focus on changing inequality in education beyond the compulsory levels, that is, in senior high school and college education, along the gender and rural–urban lines that characterize the socio-economic disparities in China.1 In the following, we first review the existing studies of gender and regional/rural–urban educational inequality in China; we then document the historical trend in educational attainment in China from 1990 to 2005. Finally, based on the multivariate analysis, we show the changing inequality in transition to senior high school and college and discuss the implications for our empirical findings.

GENDER AND RURAL–URBAN EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY IN CHINA In the second half of the 20th century, China has been undergoing dramatic economic and social changes. Shortly after the communist party took the power in 1949, the Chinese government initiated ambitious industrialization programs in the early 1950s. Numerous studies in sociology, demography, and economics have examined the trend in educational inequality in China since the 1950s up to the early reform period, in a framework of both economic development and socialist state intervention, with special attention to gender and regional inequality. Under the influence of the Confucian patriarchal culture, Chinese families typically favor boys over girls in allocating educational resources and opportunities for a long history (Bauer, Wang, Riley, & Zhao, 1992). Rural–urban disparities in education have also long existed in China as in other developing countries (Buchmann & Hannum, 2001). According to modernization theory, educational inequalities are expected to decline with industrialization and economic growth, because economic development demands for more skilled labor and leads to both educational expansion and labor migration from rural to urban areas, from which those from disadvantaged groups (e.g., women and people from rural background) are likely to benefit (Boudon, 1974; Treiman, 1970).

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Such trends to a large extent have been altered by the shifts of government educational policies in socialist China. Although the socialist state in general promotes gender equality (Zhou et al., 1998), Chinese women’s relative educational position varied by the extent to which government policy shifts between egalitarianism and economic growth (Hannum & Xie, 1994). Moreover, under the state-led industrialization program, the government designated a distinctive pattern of spatial hierarchy in resource allocation, with large cities in the top and villages in the bottom (Knight & Song, 1996; Zhou et al., 1998). In particular, the rural–urban disparities in educational attainment, institutionalized by the hukou system, have also been subject to political changes and vacillations in educational policies, which attempt to strike a balance between social and economic goals (Hannum, 1999). This policy dilemma common to developing nations continued to haunt the educational agenda in the post-Mao era. In the past three decades, China’s success in liberalizing its planned economy and experiencing a high rate of economic growth has not only created a large demand for more talented personnel but also helped spread the ideology of liberalism with economic efficiency dominating the discussions of educational reform. For instance, the higher education expansion in the later 1990s was mainly driven by economic considerations when the Chinese government attempted to find an effective means to boost domestic consumption after the Asian financial crisis.2 As the Chinese public interest in education has always been high, with the generation under one-child policy (those born after 1979) about to enter college, families would be even more willing and able to pay for their only child’s education than before (Murphy, 2004). Indeed, as education becomes increasingly globalized, more Chinese families now send their children oversea for education to avoid the high pressure on college admission exams.3 The enrollment expansion would not only meet the public demand for higher education interests but also postpone the employment of high school graduates and alleviate the employment pressure on the labor market (Li, 2003). Nevertheless, equity issues arise when the allocation of educational opportunities is increasingly tied to family economic resources, especially in the context of sharp increase in income inequality in China since the 1990s. Chinese have long believed the role of education in creating a meritocratic society, where the talented is allowed to thrive irrespective of social origins. Although many scholars believe that rising inequality would not be a serious concern as long as those who lag behind were provided opportunities for mobility (e.g., Li, 2002; Zhang, 2008), access to educational opportunities may be even more unequally distributed among different social groups.


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Trends in Gender and Regional Inequality in Basic Education Most existing studies on gender and regional differentials in school enrollment and transition are limited on basic education in China up to the early reform period. Despite the government policy promoting gender egalitarianism, the educational gap between men and women still persisted since the Mao’s era and even was enlarged to some extent in the early reform period (Hannum & Xie, 1994; Hannum, 2005). The trend was mainly driven by the changing difference in school enrollment between boys and girls, which are more responsive to household economic circumstances, especially in rural areas. Hannum’s analysis (2005) demonstrated an interaction effect between rural poverty and gender inequality in school enrollments in the 1980s. In urban areas, on the contrary, the gender gap in enrollment in primary and secondary school decreased over time, with primary school education almost universalized in the early 1980s (Bauer et al., 1992; Connelly & Zheng, 2007a; Lavely, Xiao, Li, & Freedman, 1990). In this light, the further implementation of nine-year compulsory education in (rural) China in the 1990s would reduce both gender gap and rural–urban gap in enrollment, and benefit rural girls in particular. Although the rural–urban inequality in education exists in many developing countries (Buchmann & Hannum, 2001), it has been institutionalized by the household registration (hukou) system that has created a fundamental social divide in contemporary China since 1955. Hukou status is assigned at birth on the basis of the mother’s registration status (Chan & Zhang, 1999). Those whose mothers have urban status automatically acquire urban status themselves, whereas those whose mothers have rural status must compete for urban status, in which higher education is the most important criterion for selection (Wu & Treiman, 2004). Therefore, registration (hukou) status does not need to be identical to residential locale. People with rural hukou status could and can live in cities, as have increasingly large numbers of rural migrants beginning in the early 1980s. Table 2 presents the percentage distribution of national population by residence type and hukou status in China from 1982 to 2005. In 1982, when the economic reform just started, over 92% ( ¼ 74.8/81.0) of rural hukou holders resided in rural areas, whereas approximately 77% ( ¼ 14.6/ 19.0) of urban hukou holders indeed resided in cities. As of 2005, the hukou system has lost much of its effectiveness in restricting rural–urban migrations: only 71% ( ¼ 52.5/73.9) of rural hukou holders still lived in villages, whereas the rest 29% ( ¼ 21.4/73.9) resided in urban areas and were often referred as ‘‘rural migrants’’ or ‘‘floating population.’’ On the

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Table 2.

Rural–Urban Residence and Hukou Status in China, 1982–2005.

Residence (De Facto)

Hukou Status (De Jure) (%) Rural

Urban

Total

1982 Rural Urban Total

74.8 6.2 81.0

4.4 14.6 19.0

79.2 20.8 100.0


64.1 15.5 79.5

2.5 18.3 20.5

66.2 33.7 100.0


60.2 15.0 75.2

3.0 21.9 24.8

63.2 36.8 100.0


52.5 21.4 73.9

1.9 24.2 26.1

54.4 45.6 100.0

Sources: Micro-data of China Population Censuses 1982, 1990, 2000 and Mini-census 2005.

contrary, approximately 93% ( ¼ 24.2/26.1) of urban hukou holders lived in cities and towns in 2005, although the percentage they account for the de facto urban population has declined from 70% ( ¼ 14.6/20.8) in 1982 to 53% ( ¼ 24.2/45.6) in 2005 because of increasing rural migration into urban areas (Liang & Ma, 2004). Despite the great easiness in spatial migration, the hukou change from rural to urban status remains restrictive and selective. As Table 2 shows, although the de facto urban population has increased from 20.8% in 1982 to 45.6% in 2005, the de jure urban population (with urban hukou) increased only slightly, from 19.0% in 1982 to 26.1% in 2005. The hukou continues to be used as the main criterion for social exclusion of rural de jure residents.4 Recent studies have documented the discriminations faced by rural migrants in cities without local urban hukou (Solinger, 1999), rural migrant children’s limited access to educational opportunities (Liang & Chen, 2007), and the impact of hukou on income inequality (Liu, 2005), educational attainment (Wu & Treiman, 2004), and occupational mobility (Wu & Treiman, 2007).


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Certainly, regional differentials in social economic development and resources spending on education cannot be entirely captured by rural–urban disparities. Casual observation suggests that inter-provincial and intraprovincial gaps in educational attainment and school enrollment are large, especially for rural areas (Tsui, 1997; Wu & Ma, 2004). Although there is no doubt that the central government intended to promote educational opportunities for all its citizens, the fiscal reform in education in the early 1990s exacerbated the situation. In the context of the decentralization of public finances in China since the early 1980s, the responsibility of funding primary and secondary education was shifted to local governments who had a strong incentive to invest in projects that could quickly reap profits and generate tax revenues, resulting in a low priority for investment in education (Adams & Hannum, 2005; Li, Park, & Wang, 2007; Tsang, 1996; Tsang & Ding, 2005). The uneven regional economic development further differentiated local governments’ capacity in funding education. In many poor and rural areas, local governments could hardly raise sufficient revenue to cover teachers’ salaries, not to mention other non-instructive costs. In contrast, local governments in developed areas could mobilize significantly more resources, both government and non-government, for education (Tsang & Ding, 2005). This has resulted in the substantial disparities in per-student educational expenditure across regions5 and a huge variation in school attendance rate, even as of 2000. For example, among 2,870 counties and urban districts, the enrollment rate ranges from 69.5% (Nimu county of Tibet) to 100% among those children aged between 6 and 15 years old (the national average is 94.6%) (also see Connelly & Zheng, 2007b).6 The educational expansion, led by the Chinese Government’s effort to implement the universal nine-year compulsory education, together with the exacerbating income inequality since the 1990s, has revived scholars’ interests in how these changes affect educational inequality in China. On the basis of the analysis of the population census data in 1990 and 2000, Connelly and Zheng (2007b) show that place of residence (rural vs. urban) continues to be among the most important factors explaining school enrollment and graduation patterns, but the gap has narrowed over the 10-year period. The gender gap between rural boys and rural girls has also been substantially reduced during the same period. On the basis of the same data source, Wu (2007) matched school-age children to their parents and examined the effects of family background on their school enrollment and continuation in the 1990s. Results show that children of rural hukou status and disadvantaged socioeconomic background gained relatively more

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opportunities at junior high school level, as a result of the substantial expansion of basic education in the decade.

Changes in Access to Senior High School Education and Beyond in the 1990s Beyond the compulsory education level, evidence suggests that inequality has increased, nevertheless. The educational expansion in China took place in an unusual way in the 1990s. The government decided to expand higher education substantially, with tuition charges, before allowing sufficient growth of senior high school. As shown in Table 3, the number of tertiary institutions increased by 67% [ ¼ (17921075)/1075] within the 15 years period from 1990 to 2005; more dramatic growth are the number of students enrolled, jumping from approximately 2 million to more than 15 million, albeit with large regional variations. On the contrary, more universal access to basic education has created a bottleneck for continuing on senior high school. Thus, the competition and selection are more severe in transition to senior high school than in transition to colleges. Who have benefited from the expansion of tertiary education is contingent upon who would be able to continue on and complete senior high school education. Inequalities in access to senior high school and beyond are thus crucial to understanding changing educational and social stratification in contemporary China. In the 1990s when China proceeded deeply into marketization, to accommodate the increasing number of enrollments and increasing educational costs, high schools, and colleges have been allowed to charge tuitions and other fees (Min, 2007). Educational affordability has also become one of the greatest public concerns. Economic considerations significantly affect the decision to continue schooling (Kahn & Yardley, 2004). Connelly and Zheng’s analysis (2007b) suggests a growing ruralurban gap in attending senior high school, due to the improvement in urban areas outpacing those in rural areas. Wu’s (2007) multivariate analysis confirms that the ruralurban (hukou) gap in the likelihood of transition to senior high school level was enlarged, and the effect of their father’s socioeconomic status increased – even after taking into account of regional variations in economic development. There are some anecdotal reports on the decline in the number of student enrollments from disadvantaged family backgrounds at several elite universities (Liu, 2004; Min, 2007; Yang, 2006). Children of

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Table 3.

Regional Distribution of Tertiary Institutions and Enrollment in China, 1990–2005. Tertiary Schools (Units)

National Beijing Tianjin Hebei Shanxi Inner Mongolia Liaoning Jilin Heilongjiang Shanghai Jiangsu Zhejiang Anhui Fujian Jiangxi Shandong Henan Hubei Hunan Guangdong Guangxi Hainan Chongqing Sichuan Guizhou Yunnan Xizang Shaanxi Gansu Qinghai Ningxia Xinjiang

Total Enrollment (Persons)

1990

2000

2005

1990

2000

2005

1,075

1,041

1,792

2,062,695

5,560,900

15,617,767

67 22 50 26 19 62 42 42 50 70 37 37 36 30 49 47 58 47 45 23 4 – 60 24 26 3 47 18 7 6 21

58 21 51 24 18 64 34 35 37 69 35 42 28 32 47 52 54 52 52 30 5 22 42 23 24 4 39 18 7 6 16

77 41 86 59 33 76 44 62 58 114 68 81 53 67 99 83 85 93 102 51 15 35 68 34 44 4 72 33 11 13 30

139,914 51,039 76,018 51,309 32,175 123,314 72,806 79,908 121,251 146,894 60,327 32,448 55,624 56,608 105,822 80,372 130,355 88,210 95,929 37,762 7,652 – 141,007 26,970 43,525 2,025 95,417 32,805 6,202 7,992 31,015

280,282 119,117 252,571 125,023 71,868 307,931 181,019 210,146 226,798 451,844 192,371 191,824 137,859 148,589 325,317 273,404 357,728 265,849 306,019 123,729 19,193 126,279 245,648 79,833 95,893 5,475 244,723 82,577 13,485 17,463 81,043

548,270 331,553 774,006 407,036 230,902 659,351 407,262 540,867 442,620 1,159,795 651,307 589,075 406,996 646,086 1,171,284 851,864 1,012,665 754,859 874,686 338,261 69,984 333,563 775,436 206,754 254,687 18,979 666,943 229,459 32,753 48,650 181,814

Sources: China Statistical Yearbook 1991, 2001, 2006.

managers and professionals are more likely than their counterparts from other backgrounds to get into college now than before (Li, 2006a, 2006b). Despite the heated discussions on the inequality in access to senior high schools and colleges among scholars, policy makers, and the public, few

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quantitative analyses have been conducted to systematically document the trends of stratification, especially in higher education. This is mainly due to the lack of large-scale data. In this chapter, we analyze the sample data from Chinese population censuses in 1990 and 2000 and the mini-census in 2005 to partly address the issues.7 We pay particular attention to gender and hukou status in determining access to educational opportunities in China since 1990.

DATA AND VARIABLES Data The decennial census is a unique tool studying social changes, because it provides a rich set of data for the detailed analysis of social and demographic groups. For the most part, the census employs a constant set of measures for each decade, thereby avoiding the problem of confusing changes in the population in the way that the population is measured (Mare, 1995). The 1990 Chinese census data includes two variables on education: educational level and enrollment status, which can be combined, together with age/cohort information, to define whether a person of a certain age group is enrolled in school or not. Although the questions on education in the 2000 census and 2005 mini-census are slightly modified, the variables are basically comparable to those in 1990.8 The unusually large sample size would afford us detailed analysis by certain subgroups. Most part of the following analyses is restricted to those aged between 13 and 22 in respective years, roughly equivalent to those at school from junior high school to college. Because there is no information about the particular grade/level that a student is attending, we approximate age 13–15, age 16–18, and age 19–22 the typical ages when respondents attend junior high school, senior high school, and college, respectively. We also approximate the school enrollment and transition rate at specific levels by referring to respondents’ age. For the transition to junior high school, it is defined as those aged between 13 and 15 still enrolled in school divided by those of the same age group who have completed primary school education (i.e., those in junior high school and those who completed primary school but were not enrolled in school). Similarly, for the transition to senior high school (i.e., continuing school after compulsory education), it is defined as those aged between 16 and 18 still enrolled in senior high school (including vocational high school) divided by those of the same age group


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who have completed junior high school education, namely, those who are currently in senior high school plus those who have completed junior high school but are currently not in school. For the transition to college, it is defined as those aged between 19 and 22 still enrolled in college divided by those of the same age group who have completed senior high school education or equivalent.

Variables The dependent variables are the enrollment status (age 13–22) and school transition of the young cohorts at certain ages, which is coded as a dummy variable (yes ¼ 1). We focus on enrollment in senior high school and college and on the transitions from junior high school to senior high school and from senior high school to college. From 1990 to 2005, the Chinese school system remained largely the same. The main independent variables in the following analysis include gender and current hukou status. Gender is coded as a dummy variable (female ¼ 1) and so is current hukou status (rural ¼ 1). Current residential locale does not need to be identical to hukou status, and it may have independent effect, as shown in Table 2. We code residence into a dummy variable as well (rural ¼ 1) and include it as the control variable in the multivariate analysis. Although family background, measured by father’s occupation, education, and mother’s education, is of great interests, the census data do not allow the matching of children to their parents for those who attend senior high school and beyond, because most college students would have moved out of their parents’ homes to live in school dormitories where their universities are located. Because admission to college involves both change of hukou status, we believe that it is not appropriate to use current hukou status as the independent variable. In both 1990 and 2000 censuses, however, respondents were asked their residence locale five years ago if they have migrated, based on which we can approximate residence before they were admitted into colleges (when they were at 15–17 years old at high school); if the respondents have never moved, we replace their original residence with their current residence. Since the 2005 mini-census data do not contain information on respondents’ original residence, we use their current residence locale where their hukou was registered. The hukou regulations for college students are more flexible in 2005 than before; students can choose whether they want to transfer hukou to the place where their schools are located.

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We name the variable as ‘‘residence origin,’’ which is coded to a dummy variable (rural ¼ 1). To capture regional variations in socioeconomic development and educational stratification (Wu & Ma, 2004), all 31 province-level jurisdictions in China conventionally have been grouped into three regions based on their levels of economic development: 1 ¼ East, 2 ¼ Middle, and 3 ¼ West. The eastern region includes Liaoning, Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, and Hainan. The middle region covers Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Henan, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, and Guangxi and the rest of the provinces belong to the western region. There exist great disparities in the level of economic and social development as well as education among the three geographical regions (Connelly & Zheng, 2007a, 2007b; National Bureau of Statistics, 2003).

DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS Trends in Educational Attainment Fig. 2 plots the average years of schooling by birth year for those aged 15 or older and have completed education, separated by gender and hukou status, using the sample data from the mini-census in 2005. Over time, we observe a significant increase in schooling across birth cohorts for both men and women in rural and urban China. Moreover, gender gaps have decreased, and the decrease took place earlier in urban than in rural areas. For the post-1980 cohort of urban residents, men and women indeed have achieved parity in the average years of schooling. The rural–urban educational gap persists, except for the youngest cohorts born after mid-1980s. There are two reasons. First, educational attainment indeed leads to the change of hukou from rural to urban status, particularly for those able to attend colleges (Wu & Treiman, 2004). Second, most urban youth of the age are still enrolled in school thus are not included in the analysis here. When they complete education, the overall gap for this cohort may be as large as that for the older cohorts. Notwithstanding cohort variations are usually employed to approximate the impact of historical events in the studies on educational attainment (e.g., Hannum & Xie, 1994; Deng & Treiman, 1997; Lu & Treiman, 2008), this may not be applied to younger cohorts who received education because their years staying in school tend to be much longer than the older cohorts. As the central interest of this chapter is the changing educational inequality in the

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Changes in Educational Inequality in China, 1990–2005 13 12 11

Years of Schooling

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1930 1934 1938 1942 1946 1950 1954 1958 1962 1966 1970 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 Birth Year urban male

Fig. 2.

Birth Year urban female

rural male

rural female

Average Years of Schooling by Birth Year in China, 2005. Source: China population mini-census data, 2005.

context of educational expansion in late reform-era China, in the following, we select three young cohorts (age 20–24, 25–29, and 30–34) in each wave of censuses/mini-census and inspect the changing gender and rural–urban gaps in both schooling completed and the levels of education attained. Results are presented in Table 4. As the first row of Table 4 shows, the average years of schooling increase over the years for all three age groups. For instance, people who aged between 20–24 in 1990, 2000, and 2005 have respectively received 7.8, 9.2, and 9.6 years of schooling on average. Because these groups are not overlapped with each other (in other words, those aged 20–24 in 1990 are not the same group as those aged 20–24 in 2000 and 2005), the growth in schooling can be attributed to the temporal effect rather than the age effect. The latter can be observed by comparing the years of schooling between those aged 20–24 in 1990 and those aged in 30–34 in 2000 (7.8 vs. 8.6 years). The trends in gender and rural–urban inequalities become more evident in the inter-censual analyses. The gender gap is reduced substantially from 1990 to 2000 for all three age groups. To take the youngest group as an example, men tend to have higher years of schooling than women by 1 year

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Table 4.

Educational Attainment of Young Cohorts in China, 1990–2005 (by Gender and Hukou Status). Age 20–24 1990

2000

Average years of schooling Overall 7.8 9.2 Gender Male 8.3 9.3 Female 7.3 9.0 Hukou Urban 10.4 11.6 Rural 7.2 8.4 Junior high school Overall Junior HS Senior HS College Male Junior HS Senior HS College Female Junior HS Senior HS College Urban hukou Junior HS Senior HS College Rural hukou Junior HS Senior HS College

Age 25–29

Age 30–34

2005

1990

2000

2005

1990

2000

2005

9.6

8.5

8.9

9.6

7.8

8.6

9.1

9.7 9.5

9.1 7.8

9.2 8.7

9.9 9.4

8.6 6.8

9.0 8.2

9.4 8.7

12.3 8.7

11.0 7.7

11.7 7.9

12.4 8.4

10.4 6.8

11.3 7.7

11.9 7.8

and beyond (percentage) 50.4 13.6 1.7

57.0 20.7 5.1

58.2 19.0 10.6

48.3 25.1 3.7

53.5 15.7 7.8

52.1 18.6 14.1

40.6 27.8 2.5

52.3 12.9 6.4

52.2 15.2 11.2

53.7 14.7 1.9

59.2 21.0 5.0

58.7 20.6 10.1

50.9 26.9 4.5

55.9 16.6 8.4

52.5 19.8 14.8

44.0 29.1 3.2

55.6 14.3 7.3

53.6 16.4 12.4

46.8 12.4 1.4

54.9 20.4 5.1

57.7 17.6 11.1

45.3 23.0 2.7

51.0 14.7 7.2

51.7 17.5 13.5

35.9 26.0 1.6

48.7 11.4 5.4

50.8 14.0 10.1

48.4 40.1 7.4

27.3 52.6 18.3

24.6 37.2 36.5

37.4 47.4 12.3

32.5 39.5 25.6

24.9 34.3 38.9

39.3 47.0 7.4

39.0 34.0 23.2

31.8 32.5 32.6

51.0 6.3 0.1

67.3 9.8 0.5

69.5 12.9 1.9

52.8 16.0 0.1

62.1 6.0 0.5

65.7 10.7 1.7

41.2 18.3 0.1

57.1 5.2 0.2

62.2 6.6 0.7

in 1990, 0.3 years in 2000, and 0.2 years in 2005. The disparities in schooling between population of urban and rural hukou status remain largely constant, by more than 3 years of schooling. This gap, however, may be overestimated and thus should be interpreted cautiously, as the classification is based on the respondent’s current hukou status, and people from rural hukou origins could have changed their status by receiving higher education (Wu & Treiman, 2004).

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The temporal change in the average years of schooling may not reflect the structural changes in schooling people have achieved. In the lower panel of Table 4, we present percentage distribution of educational levels: junior high school, senior high school (including both academic and vocational), and college (including both three-year college and four-year university or above). We see a dramatic increase from 1990 to 2000 in junior high school graduates, particularly for women and for those of rural hukou, and also a significant growth in college graduates from 2000 to 2005. The pattern is quite consistent with the educational policy shifts in China since the 1990s.

School Enrollment and Transitions The census data also allow us to conduct analysis on school enrollments and transitions for those who are currently receiving education. In Table 5, we compute school enrollment rates for those aged from 13–22, divide into three subgroups: 13–15, 16–18, and 19–22, the typical ages for students enrolled in junior high school, senior high school, and college, respectively. We also compute the rates by gender and hukou status. As shown in the table, the overall enrollment rates decline with age but increase over years. For example, in 1990, 68.6% of those aged 13–15 were in school, compared to 27.2% of those aged 16–18 and 6.8% of those aged 19–22; on the contrary, for those who aged 19–22, the enrollment rate was 6.8% in 1990, Table 5.

School Enrollment Rate in China, 1990–2005 (by Gender and Hukou Status). Ages 13–15

Overall Gender Male Female Hukou status Urban Rural

Ages 16–18

Ages 19–22

1990

2000

2005

1990

2000

2005

1990

2000

2005

0.686

0.876

0.912

0.272

0.465

0.579

0.068

0.143

0.197

0.750 0.618

0.893 0.857

0.914 0.910

0.310 0.233

0.481 0.448

0.592 0.564

0.084 0.052

0.160 0.126

0.217 0.179

0.900 0.649

0.962 0.857

0.960 0.900

0.590 0.209

0.805 0.349

0.816 0.510

0.223 0.030

0.379 0.047

0.435 0.112

Notes: Enrollment rate is defined as the total enrollment at specific level of schools at typical age divided by all people in the age group (13–15 for junior high school, 16–18 for senior high school and 19–22 for college).

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14.3% in 2000 and 19.7% in 2005. This trend is also true for both men and women and for people of rural and urban status. In Table 6, for each year, we calculate the rate of transition to junior high school given the completion of primary school for those aged between 13 and 15, the rate of transition to senior high school given the completion of junior high school for those aged between 16 and 18, and the rate of transition to college given the completion of senior high school (including vocational school) for those aged between 19 and 22. The rate of transition to junior high school in all three years match the government statistics quite closely, as shown in Table 1 (75.8% vs. 74.6% in 1990, 93.3% vs. 94.9% in 2000, and 96.7% vs. 98.4% in 2005). Beyond the compulsory education, the rate of school advancement is lower than that reported in government statistics (33.4% vs. 40.6% in 1990, and 49.1% vs. 51.1% in 2000, and 60.3% vs. 69.7 % in 2005). The discrepancy may be because our rates were constructed based on age, rather than the actual level of school one was attending; there is also a relatively larger variation in age among those who attend school beyond the compulsory level. As expected, the transition rates decline across school levels but increase over year. In 2000 and 2005, the rate of transition to junior high school given the completion of primary school education is over 90%, suggesting the implementation of the nine years of compulsory education is largely achieved in the 1990s. Meanwhile, the rate of transition to senior high school increased from 33.4% in 1990 to 49.1% in 2000, and 60.3% in 2005; the rate of transition to college increase from 26.7% in 1990 to 38.4% in 2000 and to 52.4% in 2005. Noticeably, gender gap in school transition decreases, and in 2005, women are indeed more likely to get into college

Table 6. The Rates of Transition to Junior High School, Senior High School, and College in China 1990–2005 (by Gender and Hukou Status).

Overall Gender Male Female Hukou status Urban Rural

To Junior High School

To Senior High Schools

To College

1990

2000

2005

1990

2000

2005

1990 2000 2005

75.8

93.3

96.7

33.4

49.1

60.3

26.7

38.4

52.4

80.8 70.4

94.9 91.6

97.0 96.3

33.8 32.9

49.5 48.7

61.8 58.8

28.7 24.1

40.2 36.4

50.5 54.2

96.7 70.1

99.0 91.7

99.2 96.0

63.2 18.5

88.0 30.1

88.3 49.2

– –

– –

– –


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than men, a trend that have already been observed in other developed countries. We did not include the rates of transition to college by current hukou status, as an admission to college usually leads to conversion of hukou to urban status for those who came from rural background and the transfer of their hukou registration to their schools, which are mostly located in cities.

TRENDS IN GENDER AND RURAL–URBAN EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY: MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS Because almost all children were able to attend junior high school in China, in the following analyses, we examine the determinants of the likelihood to transition to school beyond the compulsory level, namely, to senior high school and to college in 1990, 2000, and 2005. Again, we focus on gender and rural–urban inequalities, and their interaction effect, controlling for residence type and region. Table 7 presents the results from binary logistic regression predicting the likelihood of transition to senior high school for those aged 16–18 in respective years, given the completion of junior high school. Models 1a, 2a, and 3a are additive models, with gender and hukou as the key independent variables and residence type and region as control variables, whereas Models 1b, 2b, and 3b include interaction terms between gender and hukou status. Not surprisingly, we observe significant difference in the likelihood of transition to senior high school between men and women and between rural and urban hukou holders in all years. For example, women’s net odds of successful transition to senior high school after completing junior high school are only 82% ( ¼ e0.193) of men’s in 1990, 79% ( ¼ e0.236) in 2000 and 87% ( ¼ e0.139) in 2005. There is a clear rural–urban (hukou) distinction in the likelihood of making such transition. It is particularly difficult in 2000, probably due to the expansion of the compulsory education in the mid-1990s that created a bottleneck for advancement to senior high school. The net odds of making such transition for rural children are only 16.8% ( ¼ e1.784) of those for children in cities in 1990, and decrease to 10% ( ¼ e2.281) in 2000, and slightly increase to 14% (e1.933) in 2005. Two sample t-tests of the coefficients in separate equations show that all differences are statistically significant ( po.001).

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Table 7.


Binary Logit Model Predicting the Likelihood of Transition to Senior High School in China, 1990–2005. 1990

2000

2005

Model 1a Model 1b Model 2a Model 2b Model 3a Model 3b Female Rural hukou Female rural hukou

0.193 (0.029) 1.784 (0.036)

Current rural 0.417 residence (0.036) Region [East (omitted)] Middle 0.176 (0.032) West 0.045 (0.040) Constant 0.758 (0.032) Observations Pseudo R2

0.160

0.020 (0.043) 1.640 (0.045) 0.315 (0.058)

0.236 0.321 (0.023) (0.052) 2.281 1.934 (0.032) (0.041) 0.701 (0.058)

0.139 0.056 (0.039) (0.103) 1.933 1.822 (0.060) (0.080) 0.227 (0.111)

0.423 1.055 1.060 0.272 0.273 (0.036) (0.026) (0.026) (0.043) (0.043) 0.178 (0.032) 0.050 (0.040) 0.675 (0.035)

27,828 0.161

0.070 (0.026) 0.177 (0.034) 2.230 (0.032) 0.263

0.077 0.194 0.193 (0.026) (0.046) (0.046) 0.170 0.250 0.249 (0.034) (0.050) (0.050) 1.952 2.008 1.913 (0.037) (0.058) (0.073)

44,133 0.265

0.113

12,922 0.113

Notes: Standard errors in parentheses.

po0.001. po0.01. po0.05.

Moreover, in Models 1b, 2b, and 3b, we include the interaction terms between gender and hukou status. Results show that rural females are particularly disadvantaged in the likelihood of making the transition to senior high schools, compared to their urban counterparts. However, the gender gap has decreased in 2005. Table 8 presents the results from binary logistic regression predicting the likelihood of transition to college for those aged 19–22 in respective years. As we have mentioned earlier, we use the respondents’ residence five years ago in 1990 and 2000 to examine rural–urban disparities in transition to college. As the 2005 mini-census does not contain a comparable measure of respondents’ residence origin, we use current residence locale where their hukou was registered. The rural–urban gap in 2005 thus may be overestimated to some extent and the results are presented here only for reference.

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Table 8.

Binary Logit Model Predicting the Likelihood of Transition to College in China, 1990–2005. 1990 Model 1

0.256 (0.041) Original rural residence 0.371 (0.042) Female rural origin Female

Region [East (omitted)] Middle 0.657 (0.044) West 0.683 (0.059) Constant 0.430 (0.036) Observations Pseudo R2

0.026

2000

Model 1a

Model 2

0.085 (0.049) 0.178 (0.052) 0.558 (0.091)

0.190 (0.029) 0.459 (0.031)

0.061 0.136 (0.036) (0.055) 0.293 1.118 (0.041) (0.083) 0.369 (0.062)

0.122 (0.060) 1.168 (0.115) 0.102 (0.161)

0.666 (0.045) 0.689 (0.059) 0.503 (0.038)

0.080 (0.033) 0.280 (0.041) 0.286 (0.027)

0.079 0.169 (0.033) (0.071) 0.281 0.141 (0.041) (0.085) 0.350 0.139 (0.030) (0.045)

0.169 (0.071) 0.141 (0.085) 0.146 (0.046)

13,237 0.029

0.011

Model 2a

2005

19,932 0.013

Model 3

0.027

Model 3a

5,444 0.027

Notes: Standard errors in parentheses.

po.001. po0.01. po0.05.

The patterns are quite similar to those previously observed for the transition to senior high school. In 1990 and 2000, females are much less likely to enter into colleges than males, and those from rural areas are much less likely to enter college than people from urban areas. However, as of 2005, women’s disadvantages have disappeared and indeed they have become to enjoy a slightly better chance in entering college, holding constant of the others. Given the completion of senior high school education, women’s odds of entering college are 14.5% (¼ e0.136) higher than men’s, and the difference is statistically significant ( po.05). Moreover, the interaction between gender and their residence origin indicates that rural females are particularly disadvantaged in 1990 and 2000. To supplement the analysis of the transition to college, we take advantage of an even larger sample of census to provide descriptive analysis of students currently enrolled in colleges. In Table 9, we present the percentage distributions of gender, province of origin and residence origin five years ago (for 1990 and 2000 only) in China and in the three municipalities

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Table 9.

Profiles of College Students Enrolled in China and Selected Cities, 1990–2005. All Colleges

Four-Year College Only

1990

2000

2005

1990

2000

2005

Overall Female Within-province origin Original rural residence

35.1 79.4 34.8

44.7 79.0 35.4

51.1 85.6 –

32.6 68.2 37.8

40.5 68.8 33.2

49.7 78.6

Beijing Female Within-province origin Original rural residence

35.7 21.5 15.4

45.9 45.4 15.4

43.8 66.2 –

38.5 19.2 21.4

43.2 38.2 14.8

38.9 61.0 –

Tianjin Female Within-province origin Original rural residence

42.5 16.2 35.4

49.1 63.7 17.1

52.7 66.3 –

41.4 14.6 36.4

45.0 51.6 18.5

51.7 58.7 –

Shanghai Female Within-province origin Original rural residence

27.1 48.9 6.1

48.3 68.3 14.1

52.7 89.5 –

25.3 48.4 6.6

44.0 56.5 16.1

52.3 89.0 –

(Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai): the left three columns are for all college students, whereas the right three columns are for four-year college students only. Again, no information on the change of hukou status is available in the data. Consistent with results in the preceding analyses, female college students increase from 35.1% in 1990 to 44.7% in 2000. In 2005, they account for 51.1% of all students enrolled in colleges, and 49.7% of all students enrolled in four-year universities. In Beijing, where more tertiary institutions are recruited nationwide, females represent 43.8% of all college students and 38.9% of university students in 2005; in Tianjin and Shanghai, females supersede males even among university students. Although the rapid marketization of education and withdrawal of the state as the public goods provider may account for the increasingly unequal access to the enlarged educational pie, the long-existing structural problems in access to educational resources (e.g., good-quality senior high schools) and school admission policies, which are urban and regionally biased, could also be the reasons. Most good-quality or elite high schools are located in


145

cities, which are barely accessible to rural students (who need to hold local urban hukou status). The impact of social origins on school continuation may be mediated by regional factors through such schooling and admission processes (Wan, 2006). For instance, analyses of student archival data from Peking University from 1950 to 2003 show that students’ social origins are the most diverse among those from coastal provinces such as Jiangsu and Zhenjiang provinces, and the least diverse among those from western provinces. In particular, more rural students in Jiangsu Province were able to make into this elite university is associated with the spread of the key-point (zhong dian) high school to counties and towns in the province since the 1980s, which were more accessible to rural students within the county (Campbell et al., 2009). It is not surprising that most tertiary institutions are located in cities and in developed regions, as shown in Table 3. However, tertiary school admission quotas are set based on provinces in favor of those from large cities, especially Beijing and Shanghai, where most national elite universities are located. For example, among the 1,748 admission quota in 2004 from Peking University, China’s most prestigious university, 308 were assigned to Beijing (approximately 80 thousand students who take the entrance examination), 94 were assigned to Jiangsu (400 thousand students ) and 94 were assigned to Zhejiang (300 thousand students), followed by Sichuan and Hubei. Hence, it would be much more competitive to get into Peking University for those from outside of Beijing. The odds for a student in Beijing to be admitted to Peking University are 30 times larger than a student from Jiangsu Province. Indeed, in 2003, students applying from Jiangsu need to score at least 636, whereas students applying from Beijing need only 590 on liberal arts track and 600 on science track (Campbell et al., 2009). Issues on the geographic ‘‘discrimination’’ in tertiary school admission have been even brought up to the National People’s Congress in recent years (Wan, 2006). Although rooted in socialist redistributive hierarchy dated back to the 1950s (Zhou et al., 1998), the provincial admission quota system persisted in the process of enrollment expansion and institutional reform. Higher education was decentralized by increasing the decision-making power of individual institutions, provincial and local governments, along with the dramatic change in the education financing. Chinese higher education institutions, mostly concentrated in large cities and developed provinces, now increasingly rely on provincial or local governments for their revenues and other sources. In return, the enrollment increases would favor local students.

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As Table 9 shows, among all students enrolled in colleges, 79.4% from the same province where the college is located in 1990, 79.0% from the same province in 2000, and 85.6% in 2005. This is also true for students in fouryear universities. In particular, although only 21.5% college students in Beijing were originally from Beijing, the number rose to 45.4% in 2000 and to 66.2% in 2005; in Tianjin, the percentage of students from Tianjin increased from 16.2% in 1990 to 63.7% in 2000 and 66.3% in 2005. In Shanghai, the figure rose from 48.9% in 1990 to 68.9% in 2000 and 89.5% in 2005. The decline of college students from rural backgrounds has been widely discussed by the public and concerned the top leadership in China. Our data show that rural students represent about one-third of all college students in both 1990 and 2000; however, the percentages among university students declined from 37.8% to 33.2% in the decades. The decline is particularly prominent in provincial-level municipalities. For example, the figure changes from 21.4% to 14.8% in Beijing and from 36.4 % to 18.5% in Tianjin over the decade. In Shanghai, the share has increased, but even in 2000, only 16.1% university students in Shanghai come from rural origins. These figures can be contrast to the fact that, of the Chinese national population, 66.2% reside in rural areas in 1990 and 63.2% in 2000 (Table 2). Hence, the expansion of higher education in the 1990s in China mainly benefits females and people from urban areas (particularly large cities), gender gaps were reduced but the rural–urban relative gaps are enlarged.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS To summarize, this study examined the trend in educational stratification during China’s economic reforms since the 1990 to date. On the basis of the samples of the population census data for 1990 and 2000, and mini-census data for 2005, we analyze the changing gender inequality and rural–urban inequality in educational attainment, school enrollment, and transition from junior high school to senior high school and from senior high school to college over the period of 15 years. Results show a substantial expansion of educational opportunities from 1990 to 2005. Children of rural hukou status, especially girls, have gained more opportunities at junior high school level as a result of nationwide successful implementation in the nine-year compulsory education. However, the more equitable access to basic education also created a bottleneck for continuing on senior high school beyond the compulsory level. During


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the decade, the rural–urban gap in the likelihood of transition to senior high school was enlarged, particularly for females in 2000. For transition to college, evidence also shows that rural–urban gaps increase, but gender gaps decline over time. In 2005, women indeed enjoy advantages in attending college. Analyses of students enrolled in colleges suggest that the expanding opportunities in higher education are increasingly taken by women, students from urban areas, particularly from large cities. Our results on the trend in gender inequality in education confirm what have been observed in other countries, that is, the trends in educational stratification favoring women (Buchmann & DiPrete, 2006; Hout & DiPrete, 2006). Yet the persisting and even increasing rural–urban gap suggests that the educational opportunities continued to be shaped by the social structure inherited from China’s socialist past. The economic development and increasing population movement within the country has not dissolved the fundamental social divide between rural and urban China. Throughout the process of school expansion and educational reform, the Chinese state plays a strong role in educational policy formation, as clearly evidenced by the government decision to drastically increase tertiary enrollments since 1998 (Wan, 2006). Although there were many other social, demographic, and global forces driving the policy changes, the economic consideration dominated the discussions in the literature on educational reform, with little serious concerns about the equity issues (Hayhoe, 1995). As many Chinese economists put it, the expansion, in the short run, would boost China’s domestic consumption suffered from the Asian financial crisis in 1997, and in the long run, would also help to reduce the gap between China and western countries and to enhance China’s competitive advantages in increasingly globalized and integrated economies. As a matter of fact, Chinese government has started several initiatives to build programs of academic excellence since the 1990s. Project 211 aims to strengthen research infrastructure in approximately 100 selected universities and the target areas as a national priority in the 21st century, whereas Project 985 identifies the best universities in China with substantial funding support to enhance their international competitiveness (Wu, 2009b). Although the anticipated effect of higher education expansion on either domestic consumption or economic growth remains to be empirically investigated, education equity has increasingly become an important issue as an unintended consequence. Who would benefit from the increased opportunities? The unconventional pace of educational expansion suggests that these opportunities are available only to those who are able to complete

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senior high school education, to which rural students are clearly disadvantaged in access. The cost-sharing system, coupled with rising income inequality in the country, would further enlarge the gap among students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Within the higher education system, students from families with more social, economic, and cultural resources are squeezing out students from disadvantaged families in national elite universities. Such a stratification process within the tertiary institutions may lead to increasing economic inequality after they complete education and enter labor markets (Min, 2007; Yang, 2006). Hence, effective measures in terms of both financial resources and quality of primary and secondary education need to be taken to address the equity issues arising from the educational expansion and to ensure the key role of education in the Chinese meritocratic stratification system.

NOTES 1. Although ethnicity (Han vs. minority) is certainly another dimension of educational inequality in China (Hannum, 2002), we leave this topic for a separate investigation. 2. The first and foremost advocate of this policy is Tang Min, then an economist of the Asian Development Bank, who predicted that doubling the higher education enrollments within three years would increase domestic consumption by about 100 billion RMB yuan (Wan, 2006). 3. According to the Ministry of Education of China, in the year of 2003, 109,200 of 117,300 students and scholars studying abroad were self-funded. Statistics also show that young people studying abroad under age 22 have increased at an annual rate of 40% from 2000 to 2003, especially in countries such as Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Singapore (Tao, Berci, & He, 2003). 4. It is in the interest of local city government authorities to implement such social exclusions and maintain a pool of flexible labor force for economic development without commitment of access to welfare, benefits, and opportunities they had to urban permanent residents. Chinese rural migrants in the urban economy serve a similar role as do those illegal immigrants in western developed countries (Wu, 2009a). 5. Among the 2,070 Chinese counties and county-level cities (containing rural population) in 2000, the educational expenditure per capita in 2000 ranges from 3.4 RMB yuan to 1,474 RMB yuan, with an average of 164 RMB yuan and standard deviation of 94 RMB yuan (1 RMB yuanE0.128 USD) (Ministry of Education and National Bureau of Statistics, 2001). 6. City/county-level enrollment rates are computed by the author based on 0.9% of the 2000 census micro-data. Results are available upon requests.


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7. They represent 1m national population in 1990 (N ¼ 1,156,187) and 2000 (N ¼ 1,311,872) and 0.25m of the national population in 2005 (N ¼ 329,413). 8. Educational questions differed slightly in 1990 and 2000 censuses. For example, illiteracy/semi-illiteracy was a category of the educational attainment variable, whereas illiteracy was asked as a separate question in 2000. This discrepancy suggests that results for educational attainment for the same cohort in 1990 and 2000 may not be directly comparable. This chapter mainly deals with school enrollment rather than educational attainment for the relatively young cohorts, who are extremely unlikely to fall in the group of illiteracy/semi-illiteracy (see Hannum, 2005, p. 290). Because the 2005 mini-census does not make distinction between senior academic high school and vocational school, as the 1990 and 2000 censuses do, to make the definition consistent over time, we collapse the two subcategories into one in the census data.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors acknowledge the financial support from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (HKUST6424/05H) and a post-doctoral fellowship from the US National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation. We thank Miss Gloria He for her research assistance.

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PART III EDUCATIONAL DISPARITIES AND MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION POLICY IN KOREA

EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY IN SOUTH KOREA: THE WIDENING SOCIOECONOMIC GAP IN STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT Soo-yong Byun and Kyung-keun Kim ABSTRACT Increasing income inequality particularly since the economic crisis of 1997 has called attention to the issue of growing educational inequality in South Korea. Although much recent research has been directed at understanding the socioeconomic gap in academic achievement, few studies have empirically examined how this gap has changed over time during the past decade in South Korea. Using nationally representative data for the most recent three cohorts (1999, 2003, and 2007) of eighth-grade South Korean students from Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), this study examines trends in the relationship between socioeconomic background and student achievement. The eighth-grade TIMSS data demonstrate that the influence of socioeconomic background on student achievement has increased over time during the past decade, offering evidence of growing educational inequality in South Korea. Various factors may contribute to higher educational inequality, including the widening income gap and recent educational transformations geared toward school choice and tracking. Globalization, Changing Demographics, and Educational Challenges in East Asia Research in Sociology of Education, Volume 17, 155–182 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3539/doi:10.1108/S1479-3539(2010)0000017008

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INTRODUCTION Over the half century from 1950 to 2000, the Republic of Korea (hereafter South Korea) has achieved remarkable economic and educational development. From an economic perspective, it has achieved rapid economic growth, with per capita income rising from under US$100 in the 1950s to more than US$16,000 in 2000 (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2009). From an educational perspective, it has experienced dramatic expansion, with the participation rate of young people in secondary education rising from approximately 20% in 1945 to almost 100% in 2000 (Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology [MEST], 2009a). In this process of dramatic economic and educational transformation, many South Koreans have benefited significantly from the expansion of educational opportunities. As a result, the majority of South Koreans believe that they and their children will achieve upward mobility through education if they work hard (Seth, 2002). However, increasingly, this meritocratic belief has been threatened by the emerging inequality in income distribution, particularly since the economic crisis of 1997. Increasing social polarization has called attention to the issue of growing educational inequality in academic achievement among South Korean children (Kim, 2005). Although much recent research in the sociology of education in South Korea has been directed at understanding the socioeconomic gap in academic achievement, few studies have empirically examined how this gap has changed over time during the past decade. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to investigate the issue of the growing educational inequality in South Korea during the past decade. One useful way of assessing inequalities in learning opportunities is to examine the extent to which socioeconomic background relates to students and their school performance (OECD, 2007; Willms, 2003a, 2003b, 2006). If student and school performance were to strongly depend on socioeconomic background, large inequalities in the distribution of learning opportunities might remain. In contrast, if students and schools were to perform well irrespective of socioeconomic background, learning opportunities might be more equally distributed. Employing this analytic strategy, we examine the trends in the relationship between socioeconomic background and student achievement in South Korea in the past 10 years, using nationally representative data for the most recent three cohorts (i.e., 1999, 2003, and 2007) of eighth-grade South Korean students from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) database.

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The international TIMSS database is especially useful for our study because it allows us to compare the observed trends in the relationship between socioeconomic background and student achievement in South Korea to those of other world regions, including the United States. The U.S. case is particularly interesting because its recent educational efforts such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) have focused on boosting student achievement of low performing, poor, and minority students (Loveless, Parkas, & Duffett, 2008). This effort contrasts with South Korea’s recent educational reforms focusing on raising student achievement of highachieving students in the name of promoting excellence (Kim, Cho, Na, Cha, & Gim, 2004; Kim, Lee, & Cheong, 2008; Ministry of Education [MOE], 2004). Therefore, although this study aims to inform South Korean policymakers and scholars about educational inequality, findings can also inform U.S. educational researchers and policymakers, as well as those worldwide. It is important to note that this study does not examine the causal link between specific educational reform strategies (e.g., tracking) and the widening socioeconomic gap in student achievement. Rather, we aim to offer empirical evidence on the growing educational inequality in South Korea. The next section provides a brief description of recent socioeconomic and educational changes in South Korea and discusses their implications for the growing educational inequality. Next, we describe the methodologies of this study. We then examine the changes in the estimated effects of socioeconomic background on student achievement over time by using the TIMSS data. Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion of the results.

BACKGROUND Recent Socioeconomic and Demographic Changes in South Korea Before 1997, South Korea had enjoyed a period of rapid gross domestic product (GDP) growth, which had increased by an average of 9% per annum between 1970 and 1996 (Fig. 1). From a comparative perspective, this growth is striking, given that, during the same period, the average annual GDP growth rate among OECD countries was only 2.4% (OECD, 2009). However, the Asian financial crisis in mid-1997 had disrupted the economy of South Korea. From 1997 to 1998, South Korea’s GDP marked its first negative growth of 5.8% since the 1960s. Although the South Korean economy has made a remarkable recovery since then, it has shown a

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Fig. 1.

Growth in GDP (1970–2007). Source: OECD (2009).

relatively slow rate of growth, with the average annual growth of approximately 7% between 1999 and 2007 (OECD, 2009). The impact of the economic crisis of 1997 in South Korea has gone beyond its economy. Since 1997, income inequality has been rising, as evidenced by several indicators. For example, the Gini coefficient, measuring the inequality of income and ranging from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (perfect inequality), rose from .30 in 1999 to .32 in 2007 (Park, 2008a). This trend indicates that wealth has been increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few. Indeed, the ratio of the average household income of the top 20% of the income distribution to that of the bottom 20% increased from 5.15 in 1999 to 6.12 in 2007 (Park, 2008a). Further, the number of nontraditional (single-parent) families has been increasing in the South Korean society over the past decade, reflecting the dramatic increase in divorce particularly since the late 1990s (Park, 2008b). Fig. 2 shows the recent trend in the crude divorce rate (CDR: the number of divorce per 1,000 population) from 1991 to 2008 in South Korea (Korea National Statistical Office [KNSO], 2009a). South Korea’s divorce rate rose from 1.1 in 1991 to 2.5 in 1999, and rose further to 3.4 in 2003. Although it has been decreasing over the past few years, South Korea’s divorce rate still remains relatively high in comparison to other countries. For example, in 2006, South Korea’s divorce rate was 2.5, whereas the corresponding rates


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Fig. 2. Crude Divorce Rates in South Korea (1991–2007), Japan (2001–2006), and Germany (2001–2006). Sources: For South Korea, KNSO (2009a); For Japan and Germany, UNSD (2008).

in Japan and Germany were 2.0 and 2.3, respectively (United Nations Statistics Division [UNSD], 2008). In addition to these transformations, another important demographic change in the past few decades is the dramatic decline in the fertility rate. Fig. 3 shows the recent trends in the total fertility rate of South Korea (Korea National Statistical Office [KNSO], 2009b). South Korea’s fertility rate declined sharply between the 1970s and the 1980s, showing a 66% drop from 4.5 in 1970 to 1.56 in 1989. It fell further to 1.25 in 2007. In fact, South Korea showed the second largest change in the total fertility rates between 1970–1975 and 2005–2010, following Mongolia (UN, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2007). Finally, the population of South Korea, once self-portrayed as an ethnically homogeneous nation, has been becoming more racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse as a result of a dramatic increase in immigration and international marriages. The number of migrant workers in South Korea has dramatically increased over the past two decades. Fig. 4 shows the growth in the number of migrant workers in South Korea from 1981 to 2008

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Fig. 3.

The Trends in the Total Fertile Rate of South Korea (1970–2007). Source: KNSO (2009b).

Fig. 4.

Growth of the Number of Immgrant Wokers in South Korea (1987–2008). Sources: Seol (2005) and Yoon (2008).


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(Seol, 2005; Yoon, 2008). In 1981, there were less than 10,000 migrant workers in South Korea; two decades later in 2008, there were more than 540,000 migrant workers. Likewise, international marriages have rapidly grown in South Korea particularly since the late 1990s. International marriages had accounted for only 3.2% of the total number of marriages in 1997; they constituted more than 10% of the total number of marriages a decade later (Yoon, 2008).

Recent Trends in South Korea’s Secondary Schooling Over the past three decades, educational opportunities have dramatically increased for South Korean children. Fig. 5 shows trends in entry rates into each level of education in South Korea from 1970 to 2007 (MEST, 2009a). In 1970, approximately 7 out of 10 primary and lower secondary school graduates had continued on to the next level of education. Beginning in 1985, however, almost all primary school graduates entered middle schools with the enactment of the free compulsory education law in 1984.

Fig. 5. Trends in Entry Rates (1970–2007). Note: Entry rate ¼ (entrants among the number of graduates/graduates) 100. Source: MEST (2009a). Statistics for primary and secondary education. Available at http://english.mest.go.kr/main.jsp? idx ¼ 0401020101

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Nonetheless, not all middle school graduates were able to continue on to upper secondary education until the early 2000s in part because lower secondary education did not become free nationwide until 2004, owing to limited public resources1 (Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology [MEST], 2009b). The growth of postsecondary education has been more dramatic in proportional terms than that of primary and secondary education over the recent decades. The advancement rate from upper secondary to postsecondary education was less than 30% in 1970, but it went up to more than 80% in 2005. In other words, these days, 8 out of 10 South Korean high school graduates go on to college. This dramatic expansion has resulted in a large gap in higher education attainment between the young and the old generations in South Korea. In fact, South Korea currently shows the largest generation gap in high educational attainment among OECD countries (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2008). In general, South Korean secondary education is organized along egalitarian educational policies (Kim & Lee, 2003). South Korea’s egalitarian approach to education can be best described by its randomized school assignment policy in which (with a few exceptions2) most secondary school students are assigned to schools within their residential areas by a random lottery system. Because this policy applies to both public and private schools, there has been little variation between the two sectors in terms of students’ academic abilities. In addition, because South Korean private schools are to a large extent subsidized and controlled by the government, there has been relatively little variation between private and public schools in terms of school resources and curriculum (Ministry of Education [MOE], 1998). However, since the mid-1990s when educational excellence emerged in South Korea as a key issue regarding national competitiveness in the global market, there has been an important shift from this egalitarian approach to the market-oriented one in South Korean secondary education. In particular, South Korea’s random school allocation policy in upper secondary education, known as the High School Equalization Policy3 (HSEP), has been heavily criticized as being a representative regulatory policy that would undermine excellence in education (Kim & Lee, 2003). The HSEP was first introduced in 1974 to address social and educational problems that were caused by the excessive competition to enter elite high schools (MOE, 1998). Before 1974, upper secondary education in South Korea was based on a national free competition system. Students were allowed to choose their schools, and individual high schools were allowed to select their students


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through their own entrance exams. In those days, a few elite high schools, most of which were public and located in large cities such as Seoul (the capital and the largest city) and Busan (the second largest city), selected only those students in the upper tier, leading to serious inequalities between the elite high schools and the remaining schools in terms of the academic ability of students, parental support, and the quality of teachers (MOE, 1998). The result was severe competition for students wanting to enter these elite high schools. The intensive competition in turn caused many educational problems, including a competition-oriented school climate, heavy workloads, and a cram-based, memorization approach to education (Park, 1988). Under these circumstances, the MOE proposed in 1972 the HSEP, where the main provisions were the elimination of the high school entrance exam and the introduction of random school assignment (MOE, 1998). The HSEP was first implemented in 1974 in Seoul and Busan, where educational and social problems that were caused by the intense competition had been the most severe. Since its introduction, the HSEP has been gradually expanded to many cities across the country.4 Advocates of the HSEP argued that the policy would promote the equality of opportunity because it would create schools that would be less polarized in terms of the ability of students, school resources, and the quality of teachers. However, critics of the HSEP argued that this random school assignment policy would deprive students and parents of their right to choose schools and restrict the operational autonomy of private schools, consistent with the arguments for school choice (Moe & Chubb, 1990). Furthermore, opponents claimed that the equalization policy would lead to a decline in student achievement, especially for high performing students, a phenomenon referred to as the ‘‘downward leveling effect’’. The opponents argued that this policy would result in a heterogeneous classroom setting in which both high achievers and low achievers would be mixed, resulting in difficulties for teachers with respect to individual differences in students’ academic abilities (Kim, Lee, Lee, & Lee, 2004). As the neoliberal alternatives supporting the idea of the introduction of market competition into the school system began to dominate the process of policy making in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, the combination of the market metaphor and criticism of the ‘‘downward leveling effect’’ became a more serious challenge to the HSEP. The result was a revision of the original HSEP. In 1996, limited school choice was permitted in Seoul by creating the so-called common catchment area schools, where students were allowed to apply to schools of their own choosing (MOE, 1998). In 2002, a limited

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number of private schools that meet certain criteria such as financial resources were allowed to be transformed into independent private schools with greater autonomy, including school choice. Most recently, a new type of high school was established. Referred to as autonomous private high schools, these schools had greater autonomy in terms of curricula and financial management (Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology [MEST], 2008). Although the randomized school assignment system has remained largely intact at the lower secondary level, the criticisms with respect to the heterogeneous (untracked) classroom setting have led to an increase in tracking (i.e., the separation of students by their abilities and sometimes by curricula) in the South Korean lower secondary schooling (MOE, 2004). Until recently, regardless of whether they are private or public, most South Korean middle schools had offered six 45-minute-long lessons a day5 and taught Korean language, English, math, social studies, and science as core subjects. In addition, regardless of their learning abilities, most middle school students were taught the same curricular content at the same pace and promoted at the same time from grade to grade with their same-age peers. In other words, neither ability grouping nor grade retention were common at the lower secondary level in South Korea until very recently, which contrasts the school system in Western societies such as the United States where ability grouping and grade retention have long been practiced (Hoffer, 1992; Jimerson, 2001). However, with the implementation of the 7th National Curriculum in 2000, which mainly aimed at curriculum differentiation, grouping practices have dramatically increased across the nation. The proportion of middle schools implementing tracking rose from approximately 5% in 2003 to 17% in 2004, and increased to more than 54% in 2008 (Kim et al., 2004, 2008). The following section discusses the impact of these recent demographic and educational changes on the growing educational inequality in the contemporary South Korean society.

Implications for Growing Educational Inequality in South Korea Recent socioeconomic and demographic transformations, including the widening income gap, a growing proportion of single-parent families, and a reduced number of offspring, have an important implication for achievement gap, given that studies investigating the sources of the unequal achievement in the South Korean context have identified a number of family background factors, including parental education, household income,


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family structure, family size, and parental involvement (Byun & Kim, 2008a, 2008b; Chang & Sohn, 2005; Kim, 2005, 2006; Park, Kim, & Byun, 2009), that are consistent with evidence from other countries such as the United States (Baker & Stevenson, 1986; Coleman et al., 1966; Lareau, 1987). The increasing diversity in South Korea’s population also has an implication for achievement gap. Although evidence from South Korea is limited because of insufficient data, prior research conducted elsewhere has suggested that the immigrant status of an individual is another source of unequal achievement (Kao, 2004; Kao & Turney, 2009; see Zhou, 1997 for a literature review). In the context of South Korean secondary education, the widening income gap is especially important because of its relationship with ‘‘shadow education’’ or supplementary private tutoring opportunities (Byun, 2009). In South Korea, high-stakes assessments play a crucial gatekeeper role to adolescents’ future educational and economic opportunities. Therefore, hundreds of thousands of South Korean youth have used various forms of shadow education, including cram schools (hagwon), to prepare for a series of the high-stakes exams. For example, almost 8 out of 10 students had participated in at least one or more forms of private tutoring in 2008 (Korea National Statistical Office [KNSO], 2009c). Because parents must pay for various types of shadow education for their children, children from low-income families are often disadvantaged because poor parents generally cannot afford the high cost of shadow education. Indeed, there has been a significant gap in shadow education opportunities between children from high- and low-income families. In 2008, 9 out of 10 students whose monthly average family income was more than 7,000,000 South Korean Won (KRW) (approximately 6,300 U.S. dollar) received at least one or more forms of private tutoring, whereas only 4 out of 10 students whose monthly average family income was less than 1,000,000 KRW (approximately 900 U.S. dollar) did so (KNSO, 2009c). The opportunity gap in shadow education between high-income and lowincome children is likely to lead to a gap in student achievement between the two groups. Recent studies (Byun, 2009; Byun & Kim, 2006) have provided some evidence supporting this notion. In their structural equation analyses of 12th-grade general high school students in South Korea, Byun and Kim (2006) found that although financial resources (measured by family income and other financial resources such as assets) did not have a significant direct effect on student achievement, they did have a significant indirect effect on student achievement through shadow education (which had a decisive effect on student achievement). Their finding suggests that a family’s financial resources play an important role in student achievement through the

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investment in shadow education. In short, the widening income gap may lead to a growing gap in shadow education opportunities, increasing achievement gap between high- and low-income students. Recent South Korean educational movements in the direction of expanding school choice and grouping practices have another important implication for the widening achievement gap between children from advantageous and disadvantageous backgrounds. Critics have argued that increasing school choice and grouping would lead to the greater socioeconomic polarization of students among schools and classes because disadvantaged students would more likely be placed in less desirable schools and classes (Brown, 1990; Gamoran, 1987). The result could be a reduction in educational benefits for disadvantaged students because of a decrease in contextual effects of heterogeneous schools and classrooms (i.e., where diverse students are mixed in terms of their family backgrounds and learning abilities) that favor disadvantaged students (Willms & Echols, 1993). Indeed, a good deal of research conducted in other countries has suggested that increasing school choice (Lee, Croninger, & Smith, 1994; Wells, 1993; Willms & Echols, 1993) and ability grouping (Alexander & McDill, 1976; Hoffer, 1992; Kerckhoff, 1986) would reduce student achievement among disadvantaged students. Although limited, emerging evidence from South Korea also has suggested that expanded school choice (Byun & Kim, 2009) and increased curriculum differentiation (Park, 2009) would have negative effects on student achievement, particularly for disadvantageous and lowachieving students. In fact, many empirical studies on the impact of South Korea’s randomized school assignment policy (i.e., the HSEP) have suggested that the government intervention in school assignment would not lead to a decline in student achievement, rejecting arguments for the downward leveling effect (Kang et al., 2005; Sung, 2002, 2004). In summary, along with its demographic changes, South Korea’s market-based educational transformation may contribute to a widening socioeconomic gap in student achievement by reducing educational benefits for students with a lower socioeconomic background. The following section presents the study methodology.

METHODOLOGY Data and Sample To examine the trends in the relationship between socioeconomic background and student achievement during the past decade, we used data from


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the international TIMSS database. TIMSS has been the source of one of the most extensive, large-scale international assessments of student achievement since 1995, with more than 60 countries around the world participating as of 2007 (Mullis, Martin, & Foy, 2008).TIMSS is conducted on a four-year cycle, measuring student performance in math and science among fourthand eighth-grade students. Because we are interested in how the influence of socioeconomic background on student achievement has changed over time since the financial crisis of 1997–1998 in South Korea, we restrict our analysis to the most recent three cycles (i.e., 1999, 2003, and 2007) of TIMSS. In addition, because there has been no fourth-grade TIMSS assessment in South Korea since 1995, we focus only on eighth-grade students. TIMSS employs a stratified sampling design in which each participating country randomly samples the schools to be tested; one class is randomly chosen for each of these schools, and all students within the randomly selected class are tested in both math and science, yielding a nationally representative sample of students for each country (Olson, Martin, & Mullis, 2008). In addition to math and science achievement scores, TIMSS offers a variety of information on the background of students, teachers, and school principals. Given the rigorous procedures taken to ensure high-quality sampling and testing in all countries and the standardized procedures to ensure comparability across countries, the TIMSS student performance and background data are comparable across countries and all TIMSS assessments (Mullis et al., 2008; Olson et al., 2008). As noted earlier, we included the U.S. data for comparison purposes because its school system has been known to have one of the highest levels of betweenschool differentiation. Further, the United States has been making efforts recently to reduce disparities between schools, offering an interesting contrast with South Korea’s recent educational reforms (Lee, 2001). The number of sampled schools that participated in the TIMSS test in South Korea was approximately 150 (except in 2003, where the number was 149). The sampling procedure yielded a sample size of 6,114, 5,309, and 4,240 South Korean students in 1999, 2003, and 2007, respectively. In the United States, the number of sampled schools varied across cohort groups, ranging from 182 in 1999 to 238 in 2007, with the sample size being 10,973 in 1999 and 7,377 in 2007.

Measures This study examines trends in the relationship between socioeconomic background and student achievement. Accordingly, the variables of interest

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are (1) socioeconomic background of students and (2) student achievement. Each variable was measured as follows. Socioeconomic Status TIMSS provides information that can be used as a proxy for family socioeconomic status (SES), including (1) father’s education, (2) mother’s education, (3) the number of books in the home, and (4) home educational resources. In each cycle, TIMSS measures these variables by using the same scale, with the exception of parental education. In 1999, TIMSS asked parental education in seven categories: (1) some primary school, (2) finished primary school, (3) finished some secondary school, (4) finished secondary school, (5) some vocational education, (6) some university, and (7) finished university. In 2003 and 2007, TIMSS measured parental education by using the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) of UNESCO, including (1) did not finish ISCED 1 (primary education), (2) ISECD 1, (3) ISCED 2 (lower secondary), (4) ISCED 3 (upper secondary), (5) ISCED 4 (non-tertiary postsecondary), (6) ISCED 5B (vocational tertiary), (7) ISCED 5A (theoretically oriented tertiary and postgraduate) first degree, and (8) beyond ISCED 5A. We recoded father’s and mother’s highest levels of education into estimated years of schooling (e.g., finished primary or ISECD 1 ¼ 6 and finished university or ISCED 5A ¼ 16). The number of books in the home was categorized as follows: (1) 1 ¼ 010, (2) 2 ¼ 1125, (3) 3 ¼ 26100, (4) 4 ¼ 101200, and (5) 5 ¼ more than 200 books. Finally, an index of home educational resources (i.e., the sum total) was constructed by using information on whether the respondent had the following items at home: (1) calculator, (2) computer, (3) student desk, and (4) dictionary. Using these four variables, we created an index of family SES to easily interpret the results, following the methods proposed by Willms (2003a, 2003b, 2006). The index was scaled to have a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one (i.e., standardized) for each cohort and country, not across cohorts and countries, to avoid capturing differences in this measure between cohort groups and countries. Missing values were substituted by the mean of each factor. Student Achievement TIMSS assesses students’ knowledge of a wide array of content dimensions in math and science. In this study, we restrict our analysis to math performance because math skills in lower secondary education represent an important foundation for future learning at the upper level of education as well as future opportunities for employment and income (Mullis et al., 2008).


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Math performance was measured by five plausible values of math achievement with a scale having an international mean of 500 and an international standard deviation of 100. Following the recommendations of TIMSS (e.g., Olson et al., 2008), the five values were simultaneously used to generate correct standard errors. Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics on student achievement and family background data for South Korea and the United States. The data were weighted by the sampling probabilities of each student to generate representative means and standard deviations for each cohort and country. With respect to the family background variable, two interesting trends emerged: The average years of both father’s and mother’s education among the South Korean eighth-grade TIMSS cohorts followed the expected trend of increasing schooling. For example, the average years of father’s education for South Korean students rose from 12.0 in 1999 to 13.3 in 2003 and14.14 in 2007, reflecting the educational expansion in South Korea. On the contrary, the trend of increasing parental education was less evident for the United States: The average years of father’s education was 12.2 in 1999 and 14.2 in 2003, and fell to 14.0 in 2007. Another interesting trend is the average number of books in students’ homes, which is another proxy for the educational and social background of the students’ families; the number had decreased over time in the United States, whereas that was not the case in South Korea.

Analytic Strategies To examine the trends in the relationship between SES and student achievement, we used a series of multilevel models, often referred to as hierarchical linear models (HLM). HLM was chosen over ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to address the nature of nested data in TIMSS (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). For the HLM analysis, we first estimated the fully unconditional model separately for each cohort and country, which contained only the dependent variable (i.e., math achievement) with no covariates. This unconditional model allowed us to partition the total variance in the dependent variable into the individual and between-school levels (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). Next, we estimated the model to investigate the relationship between family SES and student achievement, which was specified for each cohort group and country as follows: Level 1 model: ðMath achievementÞij ¼ b0j þ b1j ðSESÞij þ rij ,

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics for Variables Included in the HLM Analysis. South Korea 1999

Sample size Student School

6,114 150

Dependent variable Plausible value 1a Plausible value 2

a

Plausible value 3a

Plausible value 5a Independent variable SES variables Years of father’s educationa Years of mother’s educationa Number of booksa Index of home possessionsa Index of SESb

The second plausible value math provided by TIMSS The third plausible value math provided by TIMSS The fourth plausible value math provided by TIMSS The fifth plausible value math provided by TIMSS

Students reported their father’s highest level of education. Original responses were transformed into years of education (e.g., finished secondary school ¼ 9, finished university ¼ 16) Students reported their mother’s highest level of education. Original responses were transformed into years of education (e.g., finished secondary school ¼ 9, finished university ¼ 16) 1 ¼ 0–10, 2 ¼ 11–25, 3 ¼ 26–100, 4 ¼ 101–200, 5 ¼ more than 200 books Number of items that family had among (1) calculator, (2) computer, (3) student desk, and (4) dictionary A standardized composite of (1) father’s education, (2) mother’s education, (3) number of books, and (4) index of home possessions

5,309 149

United States 2007

4,240 150

1999

10,973 182

2003

8,912 231

2007

7,377 238

587.26 (78.83) 588.68 (79.30) 586.91 (80.38) 586.24 (79.25) 586.67 (79.75)

587.25 (83.00) 589.95 (84.29) 589.70 (84.42) 589.26 (84.32) 589.31 (83.28)

595.53 (91.50) 597.57 (91.83) 597.31 (92.82) 598.87 (92.15) 598.05 (92.10)

480.63 (87.56) 480.32 (87.24) 480.56 (87.42) 480.85 (87.12) 480.08 (87.25)

503.92 (78.91) 504.43 (80.60) 505.12 (80.67) 504.15 (80.44) 504.21 (79.38)

508.36 (75.74) 508.54 (76.94) 508.32 (77.42) 507.82 (77.30) 509.24 (76.31)

12.01 (3.59)

13.31 (3.05)

14.14 (2.94)

12.20 (3.36)

14.24 (3.83)

14.03 (3.76)

10.69 (3.59)

12.17 (2.76)

13.21 (2.64)

12.07 (3.30)

14.00 (3.83)

14.00 (3.73)

3.35 (1.19) 3.57 (0.62) 0.66

3.19 (1.28) 3.90 (0.37) 0.59

3.48 (1.24) 3.91 (0.35) 0.58

3.54 (1.26) 3.43 (0.73) 0.66

3.21 (1.33) 2.76 (0.54) 0.69

2.98 (1.33) 3.68 (0.68) 0.70

Note: Data were weighted for each cohort and country. Sources: TIMSS 1999, 2003, and 2007. a Numbers outside and in parentheses are means and standard deviations, respectively. b This variable is standardized (i.e., mean ¼ 0, standard errors ¼ 1) within each cohort and country. Numbers are Cronbach’s alpha coefficients.


Plausible value 4

a

The first plausible value math provided by TIMSS

2003

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Description

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where j refers to the schools and i refers to the students sampled from school j; b0j is the average math achievement in school j; b1 is the effect of family SES on math achievement in school j; and r1j B N (0, s2) is the variability of students within school j. The SES variable was centered on the grand mean. Level 2 model: b0j ¼ w00 þ u0j , where w00 is the grand mean of math achievement and u0jBN (0, t00) is the error term with t representing the variance between schools. Subsequent to the application of the recommendations of TIMSS (e.g., Olson et al., 2008), the final student weights (TOTWGT) supplied by TIMSS were used to correct for design effects after the normalization for each cohort group and country; this allowed the results to be generalized to the target population (i.e., Grade 8) in each cohort and country. The following section presents the results.

RESULTS Variance among Schools We first examine the extent to which the variance in student achievement is attributable to the school level across cohort groups. Table 2 presents the estimates of the between-school variance in math achievement for the 1999, 2003, and 2007 cohorts of TIMSS for South Korea and the United States. The results show an increase in the between-school variance between 1999 and 2007 for South Korea. In 1999, approximately 7% of the variance in math achievement was attributable to the school level. In 2007, the corresponding proportion was approximately 10%. The percent change Table 2.

Proportion of Variance between Schools in Math Achievement by Cohort Group and Country.

Cohort Group 1999 2003 2007 Note: Numbers are proportions. Sources: TIMSS 1999, 2003, and 2007.

South Korea

United States

6.8 9.0 9.5

38.7 38.5 34.5

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between 1999 and 2003 was more dramatic than that between 2003 and 2007. The proportion of the national variation in student performance attributable to the between-school variance increased by approximately 2%age points between 1999 and 2003 (6.8 to 9.0), whereas it increased by .5%age points between 2003 and 2007 (9.0 to 9.5). Contrasting trends emerged from the United States, which showed a gradual decrease in the between-school variance. In 1999, differences in student performance between schools accounted for approximately 39% of the total variance in math achievement in the United States. In 2007, the proportion of the between-school variance was approximately 35%, a decrease of 4%age points. Unlike South Korea, the percent change between 2003 and 2007 was more dramatic than that between 1999 and 2003 for the United States. The proportion of the national variation in the student performance attributable to the between-school variance decreased by .2%age points between 1999 and 2003 (38.7 to 38.5), whereas it dropped by 4%age points between 2003 and 2007 (38.5 to 34.5). Nonetheless, the variance among the U.S. schools remained considerably larger across the cohort groups in comparison to those in South Korea.

Trends in the Relationship between SES and Student Achievement Next, we examine to what extent the influence of family SES has changed since 1999, 2003, and 2007 in South Korea in comparison to that in the United States. We expected a greater impact of family SES on student achievement among the more recent cohort students (e.g., 2007) than among the earlier cohort students (e.g., 1999) in South Korea, given the socioeconomic and educational transformations that took place over the decade. Table 3 presents the changes in the relationship between socioeconomic background and the student performance in South Korea and the United States. The first two columns of Table 3 show the unadjusted and adjusted mean scores in math achievement across cohorts in South Korea and the United States. Looking at the changes in the unadjusted mean scores, we found that the average math scores tended to increase in South Korea as well as the United States, with the South Korean eighth-grade students outperforming their counterparts in the United States across cohorts. For example, in 1999, the average math score among the South Korean students was approximately 587, whereas the corresponding average score among the U.S. students was approximately 481, showing more than a 100-point difference

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Table 3. Trends in the Relationship between Socioeconomic Background and Math Performance in South Korea and the United States. Country/ Cohort Group

Unadjusted Mean Score

SES-Adjusted Mean Score

Strength of the Magnitude of the Impact Relationship of SES on Math between SES and Performancea Math Performance

SE

Mean score

SE

Percentage of Score point SE explained variance difference associated in math with one unit on the performance index of SES

South Korea 1999 586.7 2003 587.9 2007 596.1

2.2 2.7 3.0

587.7 589.0 597.3

1.8 2.0 2.3

13.4 17.2 16.8

25.9 29.3 32.0

1.2 1.3 1.4

United States 1999 481.3 2003 503.2 2007 508.1

4.6 4.0 3.1

479.9 503.2 507.3

4.0 3.4 2.7

10.0 14.0 13.0

17.2 18.2 17.9

1.1 1.1 1.1

Mean score

Note: Data were weighted for each cohort and country. Sources: TIMSS 1999, 2003, and 2007. a Multilevel regression of math performance on the SES, the slope is the multilevel regression coefficients for the SES.

between the two countries. However, the increases in the average performance among the students appeared to be more dramatic in the United States than in South Korea, resulting in relatively smaller differences in the math achievement between the two countries. In 2007, the average mean score among the South Korean students was approximately 596, whereas the corresponding mean score among the U.S. students was approximately 508, showing a 88-point difference. The third column of Table 3 shows the trends in the strength of the relationship between SES and math performance across cohort groups in South Korea and the United States. Results show that, although the relationship between SES and student achievement tended to be stronger among the recent cohorts (e.g., 2007) than among the earlier cohorts (e.g., 1999) in both South Korea and the United States, it tended to be stronger among the students in South Korea than among those in the United States across cohort groups. For example, in South Korea, the influence of SES explained approximately 13% of the variance in math performance in 1999,

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whereas it explained approximately 17% in 2003 and 2007. In the United States, the corresponding proportions were 10%, 14% and 13% in 1999, 2003, and 2007, respectively. The last column of Table 3 displays the changes in the magnitude of the impact of SES since 1999, 2003, and 2007 in South Korea and the United States. The results clearly show that the influence of SES on student achievement has increased over time in South Korea. In 1999, one standard deviation difference in the index of SES was associated with an average performance difference of approximately 25 score points. In 2003, it was associated with an average performance difference of approximately 29 score points. In 2007, an average score difference was 32 score points. This tendency was less evident for the United States. The corresponding average score differences remained in the range of 17–18 score points. The following section discusses these results.

DISCUSSION Education has long been seen as a powerful instrument of social mobility in South Korean society (Oh, 2000). In recent years, however, education has been increasingly recognized as playing a role in reproducing class conditions rather than promoting social mobility in contemporary South Korean society, with many South Korean scholars documenting the gap in student achievement among students with differing socioeconomic backgrounds (Byun, 2009; Byun & Kim, 2006, 2008a, 2008b; Chang & Sohn, 2005; Kim, 2005, 2006; Park et al., 2009). There have been growing concerns with regard to whether this socioeconomic gap will continue to widen in South Korea. However, little is known about whether achievement gap between children from advantageous and disadvantageous home backgrounds has indeed grown over time during the past decade, when income inequality began to rise and market-based educational alternatives also began to reshape South Korean secondary schooling. This study addresses this gap in empirical knowledge by investigating the trends between socioeconomic background and student achievement in South Korea, using data from the three most recent assessment cycles (i.e., 1999, 2003, and 2007) of TIMSS and comparing the results of South Korea with those of the United States. The TIMSS data revealed several contrasting trends between South Korea and the United States with respect to the variance in student achievement among schools and the relationship between socioeconomic


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background and student achievement. First, the between-school variance in student achievement has increased during the past decade in South Korea, whereas it has decreased over time in the United States. Yet, South Korea’s between-school variance has remained much smaller than that of the United States. Second, although South Korean students have consistently showed higher math performance than their counterparts in the United States, the extent to which socioeconomic background relates to student achievement has remained much stronger in South Korea than in the United States across different cohort groups. This finding is somewhat surprising, given that the United States has been known to produce relatively large performance differences between students of different backgrounds. However, prior research found similar evidence (Wo¨Xmann, 2000). Last, but not least, the influence of socioeconomic background on student achievement has increased over time during the past decade in South Korea, suggesting growing educational inequality. On the contrary, the impact of socioeconomic background has remained relatively stable across cohort groups in the United States. To facilitate a more meaningful interpretation, Fig. 6 graphically depicts the contrasting trends in the relationship between socioeconomic background and student achievement in South Korea and the United States. The level of the socioeconomic gradient line in Fig. 6 indicates the average math achievement score reached by those students having similar SES for each cohort and country (see column 2 of Table 3). The slope indicates the extent of the inequality in math performance attributable to SES and is measured in terms of the difference that one unit on the SES scale makes on the student performance in math (see column 4 of Table 3). Higher levels of the gradients indicate higher math performance (i.e., greater excellence), whereas steeper gradients indicate the greater impact of SES on student performance (i.e., greater inequality). Fig. 6 clearly shows that South Korean students outperformed their U.S. counterparts across cohort groups. Noteworthy is that the South Korean students at the bottom of the SES distribution performed as well as their U.S. counterparts at the top of the SES distribution, suggesting excellence in lower South Korean education in terms of relatively high performance in math. However, the steeper gradient line slope among the recent cohort students (i.e., 2007) in comparison to that among the earliest cohort students (i.e., 1999) in South Korea suggests a widening socioeconomic gap in student achievement. For the United States, the slope of the gradient line across cohort groups has remained relatively stable across different cohort students, showing a relatively less clear trend in the widening socioeconomic gap.

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Fig. 6. Trends in the Relationship between Socioeconomic Background and Student Achievement in South Korea and the United States. Sources: TIMSS 1999, 2003, and 2007.

Taking a closer look at Fig. 6 reveals another important trend. Although there has been a tendency toward improvement in average math performance between 1999 and 2007 in both South Korea and the United States, South Korea’s improvement appears to largely reflect the gains among the students from higher SES families (e.g., þ2 standard deviations above mean SES), whereas the United States’s improvement appears to equally reflect the gains across students of varying socioeconomic backgrounds. In fact, the average math performance of the South Korean students at the bottom of the SES distribution (e.g., 2 standard deviations below mean SES) appears to have worsened. The strong positive correlation between socioeconomic background and student achievement is consistent with a recent study that found a widening gap between highand low-achieving students in South Korea (Park, 2009). Together, the findings suggest that the trend of growing educational inequality is more evident in South Korea than in the United States. The contrasting trends between South Korea and the United States could be attributable to various differences between the two countries, reflecting


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the consequences of the different educational reform strategies employed (as discussed in the ‘‘Background’’ section above). On the one hand, the relatively low level of variance in student achievement among schools in South Korea may be attributable to certain structural features of South Korea’s egalitarian approach to lower secondary education. On the other hand, the trend of the increasing between-variance and influence of socioeconomic background may be the result of the recent educational transformation that has been increasingly geared toward school choice and curriculum differentiation in South Korea’s secondary schooling. Likewise, the relatively high level of between-school variance in student achievement in the United States may reflect the high degree of heterogeneity among schools, whereas the decreasing between-school variance may be attributable to the greater effort that the United States has been making toward the reduction of inequality between schools over the recent decades. This study has important policy implications for the reduction of educational inequality in South Korea as well as other countries. A growing body of cross-national research of student achievement (e.g., Buchmann & Parrado, 2006; Park, 2008c; Pong, Dronkers, & Hampden-Thompson, 2003; Xu, 2008) has shown that institutional and policy arrangements matter in the process of educational stratification and inequality, offering evidence in support of institutional theory arguments (Kerckhoff, 1995, 2001). Our comparative analysis adds more evidence to demonstrate that different educational approaches lead to different results with respect to educational equality. In South Korea, the recent shift from the egalitarian approach to the market-oriented approach (e.g., increasing school choice and curriculum differentiation) to education may lead to higher educational inequality unless other policy interventions are also considered. Indeed, a recent study (Green, 2009) found that countries with the most comprehensive education systems (e.g., the Nordics) have the most equal outcomes, whereas countries with school choice and diversity (e.g., the United Kingdom) have a high degree of educational inequality. Taken together, the findings suggest that institutional educational changes can make a difference in educational inequality.

NOTES 1. Free compulsory education at the lower secondary level began in 1985 with remote mountainous and island areas; it expanded to rural areas in the early 1990s and to all cities across the nation in 2004 (MEST, 2009b).

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2. The high school–bound students in the non-HSEP region are exceptional. In a region that has not implemented the HSEP, general high schools are allowed to select their students mainly on the basis of their middle school academic records. Special purpose high schools such as foreign language and science schools are also allowed to select their students on the basis of their middle school academic records and other criteria (e.g., written essays and in-depth interviews). 3. Although varying from region to region, general assignment procedures under the HSEP are as follows: (1) high school–bound students are screened on the basis of their middle school records (e.g., school performance), (2) screened students are allowed to apply to three general high schools within their school district, and (3) they are assigned to one of those schools by a computerized lottery system. In a region that has not adopted the HSEP, students are allowed to apply to high schools that they wish to enter, and individual general high schools select their students on the basis of students’ middle school performance. Decisions with respect to the adoption of the HSEP are made by the local education office based on an agreement among the members of the community (e.g., parents and teachers). 4. As of 2009, 28 cities had adopted the HSEP, affecting approximately 75% of the total general high school student population (MEST, 2009b). 5. Extra lessons are often provided before and after regular lessons.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors are indebted to Hyunjoon Park for his thoughtful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript. The authors also thank several anonymous reviewers for their helpful advice.

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Byun, S., & Kim, K. (2008a). Parental involvement and student achievement: Focusing on differential effects by family socioeconomic status. Korean Journal of Sociology of Education, 18(1), 39–66. Byun, S., & Kim, K. (2008b). The impact of cultural capital on educational outcomes of high school students in South Korea. Korean Journal of Sociology of Education, 18(2), 53–82. Byun, S., & Kim, K. (2009). Revisiting the effects of the high school equalization policy: A propensity score matching approach. Paper presented at the fourth conference of the Korean Education and Employment Panel, Seoul. Chang, S., & Sohn, B. (2005). The effects of family background on academic achievement. Korean Journal of Sociology, 39(4), 198–230. Coleman, J., Campbell, E. Q., Hobson, C., McPartland, J., Mood, A., Weinfeld, F., & York, R. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Gamoran, A. (1987). The stratification of high school learning opportunities. Sociology of Education, 60, 135–155. Green, A. (2009). Education, inequality, and erosion of social cohesion. Forum: For Promoting 3-19 Comprehensive Education, 51(1), 5–8. Hoffer, T. (1992). Middle school ability grouping and student achievement in science and mathematics. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 14, 205–227. Jimerson, S. R. (2001). Meta-analysis of grade retention research: Implications for practice in the 21st century. School Psychology Review, 30(3), 420–437. Kang, S., Jang, W., Kim, J., Jang, J., Kim, Y., Yoon, J., Ryu, H., Namgoong, J., & Nam, M. (2005). An empirical study on the effect of the high school equalization policy on student achievement. Seoul: Korean Educational Development Institute. Kao, G. (2004). Parental influences on the educational outcomes of immigrant youth. International Migration Review, 38(2), 427–449. Kao, G., & Turney, K. (2009). Barriers to school involvement: Are immigrant parents disadvantaged? Journal of Educational Research, 102, 257–271. Kerckhoff, A. C. (1986). Effects of ability grouping in British secondary schools. American Sociological Review, 51, 842–858. Kerckhoff, A. C. (1995). Institutional arrangements and stratification processes in industrial societies. Annual Review of Sociology, 15, 323–347. Kerckhoff, A. C. (2001). Education and social stratification processes in comparative perspective. Sociology of Education, 74(Extra issue), 3–18. Kim, H., Cho, I., Na, J., Cha, D., & Gim, J. (2004). A study on the implementation strategies of ability grouping between classes in the secondary schools. Seoul: Korean Educational Development Institute. Kim, K. (2005). Educational gap in Korea and determinant factors. Korean Journal of Sociology of Education, 15(3), 1–27. Kim, K. (2006). The effects of family disruption on academic achievement. Korean Journal of Sociology of Education, 16(1), 27–29. Kim, M., Lee, H., & Cheong, G. (2008). A study on the expansion of ability grouping between classes for promoting excellence. Seoul: Korean Educational Development Institute. Kim, S., & Lee, J. (2003). The secondary school equalization policy in South Korea. Unpublished manuscript. Available at http://www.kdischool.ac.kr/download/Faculty_resume/ Equalization3.pdf Kim, T., Lee, M., Lee, Y., & Lee, J. (2004). Empirical analysis of the effects of the high school equalization policy on student achievement. Seoul: Korean Development Institute.

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Park, H. (2008b). Effects of single parenthood on educational aspiration and student disengagement in Korea. Demographic Research, 18(13), 337–408. Park, H. (2008c). The varied educational effects of parent-child communication: A comparative study of fourteen countries. Comparative Education Review, 52, 219–243. Park, H. (2009). Growing curriculum differentiation and its implications for inequality in Korea. Paper presented at the annual meeting of Association of Asian Studies, Chicago. Park, H., Kim, K., & Byun, S. (2009). Private tutoring as a form of parental involvement: parental involvement and students’ cognitive outcomes in South Korea. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco. Park, K. (2008a). Population change in South Korea. In: H. Seok (Ed.), Korean social trends 2008 (pp. 5–16). Seoul: Korea Social Science Data Archive Esquire Foundation. Pong, S., Dronkers, J., & Hampden-Thompson, G. (2003). Family policies and children’s school achievement in single- versus two-parent families. Journal of Marriage and Family, 65, 681–699. Raudenbush, W. S., & Bryk, S. A. (2002). Hierarchical linear models: Applications and data analysis methods. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Seol, D. (2005). Optimum population of undocumented foreigners in Korea. Seoul: Ministry of Justice. Seth, J. M. (2002). Education fever: Society, politics, and the pursuit of schooling in South Korea. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Sung, K. (2002). The analysis of the relationship between high school equalization policy and the general low-achievement phenomenon of the students. Korean Journal of Sociology of Education, 12(3), 121–135. Sung, K. (2004). A hierarchical linear modeling on the effects of high school equalization policy on high school students’ achievement. Korean Journal of Sociology of Education, 14(3), 87–106. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2007). World population prospects: The 2006 revision, highlights. Working Paper no. ESA/ P/WP.202. UN, New York, NY. Available at http://www.un.org/esa/population/ publications/wpp2006/WPP2006_Highlights_rev.pdf United Nations Statistics Division. (2008). Table 25. Divorce and crude divorce rates by urban/ rural residence: 2002–2006. UNSD, New York, NY. Available at http://unstats.un.org/ unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2006/Table25.pdf Wells, A. S. (1993). The sociology of school choice: Why some win and others lose in the educational marketplace. In: E. Rasell & R. Rothstein (Eds), School choice: Examining the evidence (pp. 29–48). Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute. Willms, J. D. (2003a). Ten hypotheses about socioeconomic gradients and community differences in children’s developmental outcomes (Available at http://www.unb.ca/crisp/pdf/0305.pdf ). Quebec: Human Resources Development Canada Publications Centre. Willms, J. D. (2003b). Literacy proficiency of youth: Evidence of converging socioeconomic gradients. International Journal of Educational Research, 39, 247–252. Willms, J. D. (2006). Variation in socioeconomic gradients among Cantons in French- and Italian-speaking Switzerland: Findings from the OECD PISA. Educational Research and Evaluation, 12(2), 129–154. Willms, J. D., & Echols, F. H. (1993). The Scottish experience of parental school choice. In: E. Rasell & R. Rothstein (Eds), School choice: Examining the evidence (pp. 49–68). Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute.

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Wo¨Xmann, L. (2000). Schooling resources, educational Institutions, and student performance: The international evidence. Kiel Working Paper no. 983. Kiel Institute of World Economics, Kiel, Germany. Available at http://www.uni-kiel.de/ifw/pub/kap/2000/kap983.pdf Xu, J. (2008). Sibship size and educational achievement: The role of welfare regimes crossnationally. Comparative Education Review, 52(3), 414–436. Yoon, I. (2008). An increase in international immigration. In: H. Seok (Ed.), Korean social trends 2008 (pp. 24–29). Seoul: Korea Social Science Data Archive Esquire Foundation. Zhou, M. (1997). Growing up American: The challenge confronting immigrant children and children of immigrants. Annual Review of Sociology, 23, 63–95.

POLICY NOTE: DIVERSIFICATION OF THE STUDENT POPULATION AND MULTICULTURAL EDUCATIONAL POLICIES IN KOREA Youngdal Cho ABSTRACT The rising number of marriages between a Korean husband and a foreign wife, the growing influx of foreign migrant workers, and the ongoing entrance of North Korean defectors have diversified the racial and ethnic composition of student populations in South Korea. The increased diversity in student populations presents serious challenges to Korean schools that have long been accustomed to homogeneous population and culture. The current study provides an overview of the current educational conditions of ‘‘multicultural students,’’ encompassing three major groups: children of international-marriage couples, children of foreign workers, and children who are North Korean defectors (or born in South Korea to parents who are North Korean defectors). In particular, current school attendance of children from multicultural families and the educational challenges they face in school and at home are described. Then, this study introduces current policies and programs enacted by various agencies to Globalization, Changing Demographics, and Educational Challenges in East Asia Research in Sociology of Education, Volume 17, 183–198 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3539/doi:10.1108/S1479-3539(2010)0000017009

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deal with the diverse needs of those multicultural students and also to increase awareness among citizens of multicultural issues. Finally, this chapter closes by suggesting directions for further policies and efforts to promote multiculturalism in Korean education.

INTRODUCTION South Korean society has been undergoing a fast diversification in regard to the population’s racial and ethnic composition, due to the drastic rise in international marriages in South Korea (hereafter Korea), as well as the influx of foreign workers and the ongoing migration of North Korean defectors. According to national statistics, 42,356 marriages, or 13% of the total marriages reported in 2005 were international marriages between a Korean and a foreigner (Korean Statistical Information Service – Marriage, 2009). In the same year, as many as 38% of marriages among agricultural, forestry, and fishery male workers involved foreign brides (Korean Statistical Information Service – Marriage, 2009). In addition, workers from foreign countries have rapidly increased since the late 1990s, reaching 0.54 million foreign workers as of 2008 (Ministry of Justice-Korean Immigration Service [hereafter KIS], 2009, p. 277). North Korean defectors, so-called Saetomin (‘‘people settling in a new territory’’), have also steadily increased since 1995. In a year of 2008, a total of 2,809 individuals defected from North Korea to South Korea (Korean Statistical Information Service – North Korea, 2009). The rapid population diversification imposes a significant challenge to Korean policy makers and to Korean schools, long accustomed to operating on the assumption of a monolingual, homogeneous population. For instance, there were a total of 13,445 students from international marriages: 11,444 elementary school students, 1,588 middle school students, and 413 high school students as of April 2007 (KIS, 2008). Given that international marriages have increased rapidly in recent years, a large number of children born into international families are not yet at school ages but will be entering school systems in the coming years. As will be described later in more detail, these children are at risk for issues such as poor language skills, identity confusion, and ostracism. Even more problematic, a substantial number of children of foreign workers do not attend school at all, in large part because of the illegal immigrant status of their parents. Moreover, many young defectors from North Korea fail to adapt to school. Although

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the number of school-age North Korean defectors is relatively small (997 as of 2006), those children often suffer from poor scholastic records, a lack of friendships with fellow students, and language barriers, resulting in a significantly higher dropout rate compared to their peers from South Korea (Park, Yoon, & Cho, 2007b). In recent years, substantial efforts have been made to actively support children of international-marriage couples, foreign workers, and North Korean defectors. For instance, the legislative bill, ‘‘Act for Protection and Support of Immigrant Families (2007),’’ intends to provide compulsory multicultural education and government welfare for immigrants by international marriages. The legislative bill, ‘‘Act to Support Inter-Racial Families (2006),’’ requires schools to provide students with an education based on grounds of anti-discrimination and non-prejudice; and, finally, the legislative bill, ‘‘Act to Support Multicultural Families (2008),’’ aims to provide support for members of multicultural families to learn the Korean language and to be educated for social adaptation (Office of Lawmaker Gyeong Hwa Ko, 2006, 2007; Office of Lawmaker Chung Hwan Kim, 2006; Office of Lawmaker Hyang Suk Jang, 2007).1 Additionally, the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development announced the plan, ‘‘Educating Children of Multicultural Families’’ in 2006, and in 2007 urged its implementation, and revised the National Curriculum to add ‘‘Multicultural Education’’ as an official subject in the school curriculum (Yang, 2007). Owing to the recent nature of the rise in the student population from multicultural backgrounds, an overarching framework for education for multicultural students has yet to be established. In fact, any notion at all of ‘‘multiculturalism’’ in education is new to many school principals, teachers, and students, as well as to policymakers. The first goal of the current study is to provide an overview of the current educational conditions of what we will term ‘‘multicultural students,’’ encompassing three major groups: children of international-marriage couples, children of foreign workers, and children who are North Korean defectors (or born in South Korea to parents who are North Korean defectors). In particular, circumstances of current school attendance of children from multicultural families, and the educational challenges they face in school and at home, will be described. The second part of the chapter will be devoted to introducing current policies and programs for multicultural education in Korea. For purposes of this chapter, multicultural education in Korea is defined not narrowly as curriculum focused on multicultural issues but broadly as educational efforts to provide multicultural students with equal opportunities for achievement (see Banks, 2006a, 2006b). In response to the rapidly growing number

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of multicultural students, the Korean government and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have initiated several policies to deal with the diverse needs of those multicultural students and also to increase awareness among citizens of multicultural issues. This chapter describes the types of policy projects that have been implemented by classifying them according to the organization responsible for promoting the project and the goal of project. Subsequently, this chapter also discusses multicultural policy projects in terms of target population. Finally, this chapter closes by proposing a new concept, ‘‘Reflective Socialization,’’ as a guiding framework for multicultural education policy in Korea. By offering a succinct overview of multicultural education issues in Korea, this study seeks to provide context for future studies of the psychological, socio-cultural, and pedagogical aspects of Korean multicultural education.

DIVERSIFICATION OF STUDENT POPULATIONS AND THEIR EDUCATION2 As noted earlier, the Korean government distinguishes three different groups of students in regard to multicultural education: children of international-marriage couples, children of foreign workers, and children who are North Korean defectors (or born in South Korea to parents who are North Korean defectors). Each group of students can be further distinguished as seen in Table 1. Below, the current educational conditions for each group of students are described, with a focus on major difficulties and challenges these students face in school and at home. A comprehensive, systematic review of education of multicultural students is beyond the scope of the current study. Instead, a more limited discussion is provided to pinpoint the major issues that multicultural students currently face. Table 1.

Three Groups of Students from Multicultural Background.

Multicultural Family Family of international marriage Family of foreign workers Saeteomin (North Korean defectors) family

Student Child born Child born Child born Child born Child born Korea Child born

to Korean father and foreign mother to Korean mother and foreign father to foreign workers married in Korea to married immigrants to Korea in North Korea and immigrated to in Korea

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Children of International Marriages The major form of international marriages in Korea recently is the marriage between a Korean man and a foreign woman. An estimated number of foreign wives married to Korean men as of 2007 was 96,694 (Table 2). Table 2 shows the distribution of those foreign brides by nationality (KIS, 2008, p. 600). As seen in the table, Korean Chinese [Chinese citizens )]3 who are members of the Korean minority ethnic group, Chaoxianzu ( women account for the largest share (32%), followed by Chinese women (25%) and Vietnamese women (22%). Other major countries from which foreign wives came from include Japan, the Philippines, and Mongolia. It is clear that foreign wives of Korean men are mostly from developing countries in Asia, with the exception of wives from Japan. Studies reveal that two forms of international marriages are particularly relevant: marriages that involve never-married men in rural areas and marriages that involve divorced men of low socioeconomic status in urban areas (Lee, Seol, & Cho, 2006). As indicated by the fact that major forms of international marriage involve Korean husbands in low socioeconomic positions, a considerable number of international marriage families are at risk of poverty. It is generally estimated that more than half of the foreign wife–Korean husband households live on an income below the minimum cost of living (Park et al., 2007a). After the Nationality Act was amended in 1997 (NATE, 2009), children born of international marriages received Korean citizenship and were Table 2.

Nationality of Immigrant Brides. Number of Immigrant Brides

Total

96,694

Korean Chinese Chinese Vietnamese Japanese Filipino Mongolian Thai Uzbekistanian American Other

31,006 23,976 21,513 5,297 4,881 2,060 1,779 1,170 532 4,480

Source: KIS (2008, p. 600).

Percentage 100 32.1 24.8 22.2 5.5 5.0 2.1 1.8 1.2 0.6 4.6

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eligible for the equal rights that all native-born Koreans have in all aspects of social life, including education. International marriages started to increase, first, in agricultural and fishing villages in the late 1990s and, at the turn of the 21st century, children born to such international couples began to attend elementary schools (Park et al., 2007b). Therefore, most of these children are still too young to attend school or are at most elementary school students. In 2007, about 85% of school-enrolled students from international-marriage families were elementary students (Park et al., 2007b). However, as they grow up, the number of children from international marriages will increase in secondary schools. Children from international-marriage families are facing substantial difficulties in school (Park et al., 2007b). Most of them have reported being unhappy in school because of poor language skills, identity confusion, and emotional shock. Because children in international families are often raised by foreign mothers with poor Korean language skills, they are slow in learning the Korean language. Because children from international-marriage families have fathers and relatives who are native Korean, they might have a better environment in learning how to speak Korean than children of foreign migrant workers. However, children of international-marriage families still show serious language difficulties, especially in reading comprehension, vocabulary, and writing skills (Cho et al., 2007).4 Moreover, children of international marriages often become confused about their identity as they grow up. In research conducted by Park et al. (2007a, p. X), one Korean-Chinese woman interviewed stated: ‘‘We, Korean Chinese, are neither Korean nor Chinese. Between them, we have our own culture. We can’t fully understand Korean culture because of different thoughts and ideas.’’ Studies have also shown that students from international marriages were more likely to experience ostracism in their schools compared to native Korean students (Cho et al., 2007; KEDI, 2005).

Children of Foreign Workers Among a total of 0.5 million foreign workers residing in Korea in 2008, nine of ten workers are engaged in simple, non-skilled work (KIS, 2009, p. 277). In terms of nationality, about half of the foreign workers are Korean Chinese, followed by workers from Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and China (excluding Korean Chinese) (KIS, 2009). Those migrant workers are not eligible to invite their family members to reside in Korea. However, through various means, some migrant workers have

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brought family members from their home countries or have had births in Korea. Therefore, the majority of children of foreign workers are indeed ‘‘illegal’’ immigrants themselves. The number of undocumented immigrant children is difficult to estimate, but researchers agree that the number of those children has likely increased due to the rising inflow of children of (undocumented) foreign workers and increasing marriages among these workers in Korea (Oh, 2009). Researchers also point out that a considerable number of undocumented immigrant children do not attend schools at all in Korea due to the fear that their parents’ illegal status would be revealed.5 In 2005, 1,574 children of foreign workers of which the majority are probably illegal immigrants were enrolled in public schools in Korea (995 in elementary schools, 353 in middle schools, and 227 in high schools) (Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology, 2008). The school life of those roughly 1,500 children of (illegal) foreign workers is similar to that of children of international marriages, described earlier (Park et al., 2007b). In other words, the poor academic performance of these children in school due to their insufficient language skills is of concern, and they also experience identity confusion and an unhealthy emotional impact from group ostracism or alienation (Park et al., 2007b). In interviews with 50 children of foreign workers undertaken by the National Human Rights Commission (2003, p. 91), children indicated major difficulties that they faced in school and often resulted in group alienation: ‘‘language barriers (56%),’’ ‘‘poor grades (16%),’’ ‘‘teasing, assaulting, and trouble in relationships (12%),’’ and ‘‘difficulty making friends (8%)’’ (National Human Rights Commission, 2003). Identity formation is another critical issue for children of foreign workers. Given that most foreign workers in Korea come from Southeast Asian countries that have lower levels of economic development than Korea, children of those foreign workers often lose pride in their native countries (Park et al., 2007b). Moreover, those who look quite similar to other Korean students tend to hide their true ethnicity as they grow up (Park et al., 2007a). Just as Kim reports in this volume about Korean students in Singapore, children of foreign workers in Korea are more likely to be ‘‘downgraded’’ – registered in grades that are lower than grades of most Korean children of the same age (Park et al., 2007b). In other words, children of foreign workers tend to have classroom peers who are younger. Although the grade assignment is determined based on Korean language skills, the age gap between children of foreign workers and their peer Korean students often becomes a barrier for children of foreign workers to fit into school life. Numerous incidents have been reported in which older children of foreign

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workers were badly treated by their younger Korean peers due to poor Korean language skills (Cho et al., 2006). Although children of international-marriage couples, in which mostly mothers are foreigners, can also suffer from poor language skills, the difficulty due to poor language skills seems to be a particularly prominent issue among children of foreign workers in schools. Regarding educational content, children of foreign workers seem to have particular difficulties in learning Social Studies and Korean language/literature (Cho et al., 2007). In a survey, 25% and 22% of the surveyed 92 children of foreign workers reported Social Studies and Korean language/literature, respectively, as the most difficult school subject (Cho et al., 2007, p. 50).

Children of North Korean Defectors According to study by Park et al. (2007a), many North Korean defectors live in poverty. 31.7% of household heads (usually fathers) of North Korean defector families are jobless, 10% are engaged in simple labor, and 23.3% are machinery operators (p. 19). Along with poverty and other social difficulties in the new system of South Korea, low enrollment and high dropout rates have been major problems of the children of North Korean defectors. According to one data source, the enrollment rate of the children of North Korean defectors for elementary, middle, and high schools were merely 70.3% (elementary school), 58.4% (middle school), and 10.4% (high school), respectively, as of August 2005 (the Ministry of Unification (2005, p. 87). Compared to this, according to the Statistical Yearbook of Education (2009), the enrollment rate of native Korean students was 98.8% (elementary school), 94.6% (middle school), and 91.0% (high school) (Table 3). The comparisons of school enrollment rates between children of North Korean defectors and their South Korean peers highlight the significantly lower levels of enrollments among the former group. Table 3.

School Enrollments of Children of North Korean Defectors. Elementary Middle School High School Lifelong Education Total School (6–12) (13–15) (16–20) Center

Target children Enrolled students Enrollment rate (%)

223 191 85.7

Source: Park et al. (2007b, p. 20).

167 82 49.1

411 27 6.6

3

801 303 37.8

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Table 4.

The Most Serious Concern in School Reported by Children of North Korean Defectors.

Category

Poor grades in school Different accents (North Korean dialects) Poor family environment Outward appearance (height, face, figure, etc.) Lack of close friends Family discord (quarrels among parents, brothers and sisters, and divorce) Indifference of teachers Total

Elementary School

Middle School

Total

20 (58.8) 7 (20.6) 1 (2.9) 3 (8.8) 2 (5.9) 0 (0.0)

28 (90.3) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 2 (6.5) 1 (3.2) 0 (0.0)

48 (73.9) 7 (10.8) 1 (1.5) 5 (7.7) 3 (4.6) 0 (0.0)

1 (2.9)

0 (0.0)

1 (1.5)

34 (100.0)

31 (100.0)

65 (100.0)

Source: Kim (2005, p. 12).

Children of North Korean defectors show not only lower levels of school enrollment but also higher dropout rates. Among those who attend school, children of North Korean defectors are at considerably higher risk of dropout. The ratio of dropouts to the new enrollments from 1999 to 2004 was the lowest among elementary school students (1%), followed by middle school students (16%), and high school students (15%) (Park et al., 2007b, p. 20). In comparison with such high rates of dropout among children of North Korean defectors, dropout rates among South Korean students in elementary and secondary schools are negligible (Park et al., 2007b). Furthermore, the biggest concern of the children of North Korean defectors was ‘‘school grades’’ (Table 4) In a small-scale survey, children of North Korean defectors reported ‘‘school grades’’ as their most serious concern in school life (Kim, 2005). Park et al.’s study (2007b, p. 21) showed that as many as 90% of surveyed middle school students indicated school grades as the most serious concern in school life, higher than elementary school students (59%). The second greatest concern of the elementary school students from North Korean defectors’ families was their different accents, which are quite distinctive from the standard accent of South Korea (Kim, 2005).

MULTICULTURAL EDUCATIONAL POLICY IN KOREA Current policy projects for multicultural families can be classified according to the responsible organization and the policy goal. The responsible

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organizations include the central government, local governments, district offices of education (schools included), and NGOs. The policy goals can be distinguished into four different ones: multicultural education, public health and welfare support, legal assistance, and promotion of mutual understanding (Park et al., 2007a, pp. 5–8). Here, multicultural education policies refer to those directed to help multicultural children and their families to learn Korean language and culture and thus facilitate integration of multicultural students into schools. Public health and welfare support refers to some programs for providing food and medical services to poor multicultural families. Policies for legal assistance aim to provide guidance for understanding various immigration-related laws such as ‘‘Korean Nationality Act’’ and ‘‘Korean Immigration Law’’ to help acquisition of Korean citizenship, and other important legal rights. Finally, the policies for promoting mutual understanding include efforts to increase immigrants’ involvement in communities and enhance multicultural awareness among native Koreans. As seen in Table 5, in terms of responsible organization, the Central Government and District Office of Education (schools included) have been very active in implementing policies. There are a total of 98 multicultural policies as of 2006. Among them, 38 policies (39%) were promoted by the Central Government and 26 policies (27%) were promoted by the Office of Education (schools included). In sum, policies promoted by the Central Government and the District Office of Education accounted for 66% of total policy projects directed at multicultural families. When it comes to multicultural education policy, the Central Government and the District Office of Education were the main promoters. Among Table 5.

Frequency Distribution of Multicultural Projects by Goal and Responsible Organization.

Promotion Goal Body

Multicultural Public Health Legal Mutual Education and Welfare Assistance Understanding Support

Total

Central Government Local Government Dis. Office of Education (schools included) NGO

16 (36%) 5 (12%) 16 (36%)

8 6 0

8 4 0

6 6 10

38 (39%) 21 (21%) 26 (27%)

7 (16%)

1

0

5

13 (13%)

Total

44 (46%)

15

12

27

98 (100%)

Source: Park et al. (2007a, p. 64).

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the total of 44 multicultural education policy projects, both the Central Government and the District Office of Education accounted for 16 policies each (72% in total). The reason that multicultural education policy has been mainly handled by these two organizations is because of ‘‘a sufficient budget to deal with this matter (in the case of Central Government)’’ and ‘‘the need for change in schools (in the case of District Office of Education)’’ (Park et al., 2007a, pp. 53–84). Multicultural policies can be further distinguished according to the target as well as the goal and responsible organization. As discussed so far, there are three distinctive multicultural groups designated by the government: international marriage families, immigrant worker families, and North Korean defector families. Among the policies implemented so far, almost half of the policies are targeted at international marriage families, followed by the policies for immigrant worker families and North Korean defector families, respectively (Park et al., 2007a). In other words, current policies for multicultural families in Korea are heavily geared toward children and families of international marriages. In discussing current policy projects for multicultural families, it is noteworthy that only a small number of policies were aimed to promote racial/ethnic consciousness of native Korean students and their families (Park et al., 2007a, p. 93). Given the long subscription to the notion of homogeneous culture in Korean history, to accommodate new population realities will require that promoting open attitudes of native Koreans toward multicultural children and families becomes an important policy goal (Cho et al., 2007, p. 149). In a nation-wide survey of 659 parents of native Korean students conducted by Cho et al. (2007), parents showed somewhat mixed attitudes toward multicultural education. As seen in Table 6, less than half of surveyed native Korean parents agreed or strongly

Table 6.

Attitudes of Parents of Native Korean Students.

Percentage of parents who agreed or strongly agreed to the statement: a. We need to preserve the unique culture of multicultural families (40.5%). b. We need to participate in school multicultural programs (45.1%). c. Students from multicultural families should be given a priority for college admission and employment (42.4%). d. Teachers should pay more attention to multicultural students (37.5%) e. We need to pay more tax for multicultural students (28.9%). Source: Cho et al. (2007).

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agreed with each of the following statements (Cho et al., 2007, pp. 96–107): ‘‘we need to keep the unique culture of multicultural families,’’ ‘‘we need to participate in multicultural education programs run by school,’’ ‘‘students from multicultural families should be given priority even for college admission, and employment,’’ and ‘‘teachers should pay more attention to multicultural students in lesson interactions of classroom.’’ Those parents of native Korean students showed a particularly negative response to the statement, ‘‘I am willing to pay more tax for students from multicultural families.’’ Only one of three parents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement (Cho et al., 2007, p. 105).

CONCLUSION: CHALLENGES AHEAD In responding to rapidly increasing numbers of international-marriage families, foreign workers, and North Korean defectors, central and local governments in Korea have developed several programs to support educational and economic environments of those ‘‘multicultural’’ children and their parents. As discussed earlier, those policies cover various aspects of life, including education about Korean language and culture, legal and medical supports, and opportunities for community involvement. Although central and local governments (including district offices of education) have played an important role in shaping policies for multicultural families, efforts and commitment of NGOs to help multicultural families cannot be ignored. As examples, the Foreign Worker Center and the Foreign Worker Shelter for children of foreign workers have been established by citizens and religious groups (Park et al., 2007a). Also, many extracurricular programs with which students of foreign workers can enhance their learning have been developed as well (Park et al., 2007b). Despite such efforts and policies, however, educational issues that ‘‘multicultural’’ students are currently facing in schools and homes pose serious challenges to Korean schools. Most of all, all these three groups of children are at high risk of poverty and live in rural and urban areas that provide insufficient educational facilities. Poor language skills and the lack of knowledge and experience of Korean culture have been identified as major obstacles in their school life. Although they may have more knowledge and experience of Korean culture, children of North Korean defectors experience a considerable cultural gap compared to their South Korean peers given that economic, cultural, and political structures of South Korea are so different from those of North Korea (Park, 2007).

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Moreover, although growing, multicultural awareness of native Korean students and their parents is still fairly limited. All these considerations lead us to the conclusion that some further action should be taken to overcome these obstacles. More institutional support and educational consideration in teaching and learning should be offered to facilitate integration of children of multicultural families into schools and society. In considering educational polices for multicultural children, however, efforts should go beyond institutional supports to enhance ‘‘reflective socialization’’ of multicultural children. In general, ‘‘socialization’’ is a process by which a person learns the values, norms, and required behaviors which permit an individual to participate as a member of the organization and society as G. Mead and C. Cooley mentioned (Son et al., 2006). Here, being different from socialization in general, ‘‘reflective socialization’’6 refers to a process of socialization that includes critical self-reflection on and examination of their own status and surroundings and active behaviors to overcome their obstacles by learning the values, norm, and required behaviors. The role of educators in this process of reflective socialization is to facilitate children of multicultural families to consider themselves with some critical reflection, overcome the confusion of self-identity, and prepare the best strategies to get ahead in Korean society. There is no doubt that the encouragement and support from ‘‘significant others’’ are essential: school teachers will play a pivotal role in leading the reflective socialization. Being a person who spends a lot of time with children of multicultural families, it is absolutely necessary for teachers to help them grow in the right direction with a better understanding of cultural diversity and tolerance. For this, schools should have more diverse programs for multicultural education and empower teachers, parents, and related parties to make the right decisions on time. Among children from multicultural families, for example, those who had the opportunity to be a class leader showed a higher level of self confidence than those who were never a leader in the classroom (Cho et al., 2007). This example implies that active behavior and participation play an important role in developing the self-confidence of multicultural students. Along with various institutional supports for education, a fundamental issue for children of multicultural families is still the limited legal system to guarantee rights of multicultural families. Along with the rising inflow of migrants, Korean immigrant laws have been increasingly modified to address legal rights of multicultural families (Park et al., 2007a). However, there still are many steps to be legally and systematically taken to prevent prejudice and discrimination against immigrants and to protect their

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right. For instance, conferring citizenship through ‘‘jus sanguinis’’, Korean immigration law is still considered as considerably conservative in requirements of naturalization of immigrants (Park et al., 2007a). Given that the legal system defines the basic rights of multicultural children and their families, it can have overarching influences on policies in other aspects of society, including education. Furthermore, the multicultural education-related projects that are scattered across Central and Local Governments and educational institutions should be integrated and properly managed. In addition, to offer systematic support to professional staff for multicultural education, it is essential to establish research and teaching organizations that can provide effective and comprehensive training in multicultural education to school teachers and other school staff on the basis of systematic research on educational and other related issues of multicultural children and their families.

NOTES 1. Quoted from Yang (2007, p. 199). 2. Major sources of this section are studies of Park et al. (2007b) and Cho et al. (2007). 3. Korean Chinese mainly consist of some Koreans (and their descendants) who migrated into China during the Japanese occupation and did not return to the Korean peninsula after independence. 4. Also refer to the following statement by a teacher in an elementary school from an interview conducted by Park et al. (2007b): ‘‘After the home visit, I have continued to observe three students for a month. Because they look similar to other students, it seemed that they had no problem getting along with other students. However, the three students were very passive and had less confidence in themselves. When it came to their mothers, in particular, they appeared embarrassed and discouraged. They were never alienated or teased by others, but they had very poor performance in class. In fact, they were away behind in writing. Even though I gave them an extra lesson after class for an hour every day, there was no improvement. To take care of these students’ poor performance in school, I interviewed their mothers’’ (interview with a teacher in ‘‘A’’ elementary school). 5. Since the Enforcement Decree of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was amended in 2003, children of illegal foreign workers are eligible for the benefits of school education. They are entitled to (1) personal freedom, freedom of expression, and the right of access to information, (2) the right to be fostered, the right to family reunion (provided that the parent is a legal immigrant), and right to being protected from a harmful environment, (3) the right to no discrimination, (4) the right to be protected from discrimination or punishment, (5) the right to acquire nationality, the right to rest and vacation, and the right to participate in cultural activities, (6) the right to get education and the right to be protected from

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forced labor. In addition, if the Certificate issued by Foreign Affairs/Immigration Office is submitted to the school, children (ages 7–12) can be admitted and get a diploma after graduation. If they want to continue studying in middle school and high school, they can attend a public school as an irregular student. 6. Being different from simple socialization, the term ‘‘reflective socialization’’ refers to the way in which new concept of socialization for multicultural students provides the basis for successful life-styles and self-conceptions. I have devised this conception with the help of Reflexive Modernization of Ulrich Beck and others (Beck, Giddens, & Lash, 1994).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I express my special thanks to the editors and anonymous reviewers for the useful comments on a previous version of the chapter. I also thank the Center for Multicultural Education in Seoul National University, Korea.

REFERENCES Banks, J. A. (2006a). Multicultural education: Characteristics and goals. In: A. Banks & C. Banks (Eds), Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (pp. 3–31). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Banks, J. A. (2006b). Cultural diversity and education: Foundation, curriculum, and teaching. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc. Cho, Y., Park, Y., Lee, J., Lee, K., et al. (2007). Survey on basic awareness for establishment of multicultural educational policy. Research report, Multicultural Education Center of Seoul National University (in Korean). Cho, Y., Yoon, H., Park, S., et al. (2006). Survey on the situation of children’ schooling from multicultural families (in Korean). Seoul, Korea: Ministry of Education and Human Development. KEDI. (2005). A study of an analysis on child’s welfare form foreign worker’s family (in Korean). Seoul Korea: Korean Educational Development Institute. Kim, M. (2005). Present conditions of North Korean refugee students on school adjustment and measure of support (in Korean). Seoul: Korean Educational Development Institute. Korean Statistical Information Service. (2009). Available at http://www.kosis.kr Lee, Y., Seol, D., & Cho,, S. (2006). International marriages in South Korea: The significance of nationality and ethnicity. Journal of Population Research, 23(2), 165–182. Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology. (2008). Educational statistics. Available at http://std.kedi.re.kr/index.jsp Ministry of Justice, Korean Immigration Service (KIS). (2008). 2007 Immigration statistics. Seoul: Bind-Tech Press. Ministry of Justice, Korean Immigration Service (KIS). (2009). 2008 Immigration statistics. Seoul: Bind-Tech Press.

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Ministry of Unification. (2005). Parliamentary inspection data source of the ministry of unification, chapter IV, Parliament in Korea. NATE. (2009). Nationality act. Available at http://100.nate.com/dicsearch/pentry.html?i ¼ 116279 National Human Rights Commission. (2003). A survey on the situation of human right of children from foreign worker’s families, Seoul, Korea (in Korean). Oh, S.-B. (2009). An exploratory study on the opportunities and challenges faced by children of immigrant workers within the Korean educational system. Studies on Korean Youth, 20(3), 305–334 (in Korean). Park, H. (2007). Understanding the experience of North Korean refugee teenagers on academic achievement in the social studies. Master’s Thesis, Seoul National University (in Korean). Park, S., Sung, S., Kwak, H., Kim, M., et al. (2007a). A study of progress, mission, and performance analysis of multicultural educational policy in Korea (in Korean). Seoul: Multicultural Education Center of Seoul National University. Park, S., Yoon, H., & Cho, Y. (2007b). Research on the present conditions of children in South Korean multi-cultural families. Education Studies and Practice, 71, 1–64 (in Korean). Son., et al. (2006). Society in common (in Korean). Seoul Korea: Dusan Press. Statistical Yearbook of Education. (2009). Korean Government, Korea. Available at http:// www.index.go.kr/egams/stts/jsp/potal/stts/PO_STTS_IdxMain.jsp?idx_cd ¼ 1520 Yang, Y. (2007). Present conditions and perspectives on South Korean multi-cultural education. In: O. Kyung-Suk, et al. (Eds), Multiculturalism in South Korea: A critical review (pp. 197–230). Seoul: Hanwoul Academy.

PART IV MIGRA TION AND EDUCATION IN THE CITY-STATES OF EAST ASIA

THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS OF MAINLAND CHINESE IMMIGRANT STUDENTS IN HONG KONG Suet-ling Pong and Wing Kwong Tsang ABSTRACT Immigrant children’s educational assimilation has been a concern to policymakers in the former British colony of Hong Kong, which has received continuous immigration from Mainland China. This chapter examines the academic progress of Mainland Chinese immigrant students in Hong Kong’s junior secondary schools from Form 1 (7th grade) to Form 3 (9th grade). Our database is the Medium of Instruction Longitudinal Survey (MOILS) that tracks a cohort of junior secondary students in 1999–2000 from a representative sample of all Hong Kong secondary schools. We find that Mainland students start out in Form 1 at a higher level of achievement than do native Hong Kong students in all academic subjects except the English language. They attain greater subsequent achievement gains than do native students in most subjects. Even though they do not catch up with native students in the English language, they narrow the nativity gap over time. Mainland students’ high performance cannot be explained by their low socioeconomic backgrounds, or the poor- and low-achieving schools they attend. School type and age moderate the nativity-achievement relationship. Schools with low-ability students are more effective than are schools with higher-ability Globalization, Changing Demographics, and Educational Challenges in East Asia Research in Sociology of Education, Volume 17, 201–230 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3539/doi:10.1108/S1479-3539(2010)0000017010

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students in promoting Mainland students’ achievement. Older Mainland students show greater academic progress than do younger students regardless of nativity. The implications of these Hong Kong results for the United States and international studies on immigrant children’s academic assimilation are discussed.

EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS OF MAINLAND CHINESE IMMIGRANT STUDENTS IN HONG KONG No other country is more visible than China who, being the most populated country in the world, has contributed significantly to human migration. Since the economic reform and political movements of the later 1970s, more than 18 million Chinese have left China. Today, one of the six people in the world is from China (Kwong, 2007). Understanding Chinese immigrants’ integration into new host societies has become an increasingly important subject for immigration research. Previous studies of Mainland Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong have painted a grim picture, showing that many were out of work or experienced declining wages (Lam & Liu, 2002a). Others describe segregation and isolation of Mainland Chinese immigrants in ‘‘concentrated poverty’’ (Chiu, Choi, & Ting, 2005). The lack of occupational advancement and deep poverty would lead to the downward assimilation of immigrant groups who would be trapped in poor ethnic enclaves where children lack successful role models. This chapter studies child-immigrants from Mainland China to Hong Kong. Education has been shown to be a universal means for upward mobility (Sorokin, 1927), thus the Mainland Chinese immigrant children’s future life chances in Hong Kong depend on their performance in Hong Kong’s schools. Also, education affects an individual’s norms, values, and outlooks. Successful educational assimilation eventually helps Mainland Chinese immigrants to fully participate and integrate into Hong Kong society. In contrast, unsuccessful assimilation of the next generation of immigrants would create a segregated and isolated underclass.

A BRIEF IMMIGRATION HISTORY A former British colony, Hong Kong is quite ethnically homogenous. In 2006, the Chinese made up 95% of its population. The Filipinos made up of 1.6% and Indonesians 1.3%. The remaining 2% consists of a variety of

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ethnicities, including Caucasian, Indian, Nepalese, Japanese, Thai, Pakistani, and other Asian (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2006). This chapter focuses on the Chinese population. Hong Kong has had a continuous population inflow from the Mainland: refugees in the 1950s and 1960s, ‘‘new immigrants’’ in the 1970s and 1980s, and now the ‘‘new arrivals’’ since Hong Kong’s reunification with China in 1997 (Siu, 1999). In 1974, Hong Kong issued the ‘‘reach-base’’ policy that aimed at curbing Chinese immigration from the Mainland. The policy recognized the rights to work for all illegal immigrants who crossed the border before November 1974. Those who successfully reached the urban areas of Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon peninsula were considered to be safe by ‘‘reaching base’’ (Lam & Liu, 1998). After then, any illegal immigrants were arrested and repatriated. Those who reached base were eligible for permanent status in Hong Kong after 7 years of residence. However, this effect of the reach-base policy was short-lived. Unilaterally closing the border did not stop illegal immigrants. After China lifted the restriction of internal mobility in accordance with the 1979 economic reform policy, border control of the Mainland side weakened and there were surging numbers of illegal immigrants. Between 1978 and 1980, the inflow of Chinese immigrants, about half legal and half illegal, was estimated to be more than 400,000 (Siu, 1999). Finally, with China’s consent in 1983, Hong Kong has been admitting 150 legal immigrants daily from China since then. Although Mainland immigrants have increased in number, they also have changed in age structure and in their relationship to Hong Kong residents. Immigration policy has favored family reunification since 1993, admitting more children and spouses from the Mainland. Between 1987 and 1997, the majority (47.3%) of over 390,000 immigrants came as dependent children (Siu, 1999). This large influx of children from China has made Hong Kong stand out among the 24 school systems in the Third International Study of Science and Mathematics Achievement (TIMSS) as having the largest percentage (approximately 20%) of foreign-born children in third grade (International Study Center, 1999). The percentages of immigrant children would be considered even larger if we were to include children born in Hong Kong of Mainland parents, i.e. those in the ‘‘second-generation.’’ Among the 15-year-old students in the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) survey of 2003, the percentages of foreign-born children with foreign-born parents are 20.4% and native-born children with two foreign-born parents are 22.9%. They both make up a total of 43.3% of the Hong Kong PISA sample (Ho et al., 2003).

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Because education is the most important means of upward social mobility, immigrant children’s educational success or failure will contribute to their future socioeconomic well-being. This study examines immigrant children’s performance in Hong Kong’s lower-secondary school (equivalent to 7th–9th grades in the United States) in various academic subjects. We build on previous research that typically examines the nativity gap using cross-sectional data or data on generations (parents and children) to explore how the nativity gap changes over time. We show that the conclusion of educational assimilation can be quite different between cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, and caution interpretations that rely solely on results reported at one point in time.

IMMIGRANT ASSIMILATION: THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS Immigrant assimilation has occupied social scientists for decades. Economists tend to focus on immigrants’ labor market assimilation, defining assimilation as the process of earnings convergence between arrival cohorts of immigrants and natives (Borjas, 1994, 1995). To political scientists, immigrant assimilation means political socialization and incorporation of immigrants (Garcı´ a Bedolla, 2005). Sociologists have focused on marital and spatial assimilation, the processes in which immigrants come to marry or live side-by-side with natives (Alba & Logan, 1993). Regardless of disciplines, all social scientists are interested in immigrants’ educational assimilation – the process of convergence in educational attainment or achievement between immigrants and natives. In the United States, most early research on educational attainment concentrates on adult immigrants. As the number of immigrant children increases, researchers have turned to examine educational assimilation of children from immigrant families (Rumbaut, 1996). In Hong Kong, labor market assimilation characterizes most work on immigrant assimilation, which documents the widening earnings gaps between Hong Kong natives and Mainland Chinese immigrants (Lam & Liu, 2002a, 2002b). We know less about Hong Kong immigrants’ assimilation in the political, social, and educational domains. In education, there are some reasons to believe that children of new immigrants to Hong Kong are at risk for educational failure. Parents of children who arrived in Hong Kong from the Mainland since 1991 are over-represented in the poorest quarter of the income distribution (Post, 2004). The earnings gap between


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immigrant and native males widened from 11.3% to 25.5% between 1981 and 1991, and this worsening economic situation for immigrants was due largely to their low level of human capital (Lam & Liu, 2002a). Much research in sociology of education finds that family income is positively associated with academic achievement. Therefore, based on family income alone, we would expect that Mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong have lower performance than native Hong Kong students. However, family income is not the only factor determining students’ academic achievement, and it is even less important for immigrant children than for native children. Quantitative research in the United States has found foreign-born students to outperform native students in achievement tests despite their low socioeconomic backgrounds (Hao & Bonstead-Bruns, 1998; Kao & Tienda, 1995; Rong & Grant, 1992; Schwartz & Stiefel, 2005; Vernez & Abrahamse, 1996). Explanations for the immigrant achievement advantage vary. The widely accepted views include immigrant optimism (Kao & Tienda, 1995), social capital in ethnic-immigrant communities (Zhou & Bankston, 1998), and bilingualism (Portes & Hao, 1998). For those who are ethnically different from the dominant group, discrimination may also play a role, although there is no agreement on how discrimination works as a mediator. An older view suggests that immigrants’ dual frame of reference helps them psychologically to overcome discrimination (Ogbu, 1991), but a recent view contends that discrimination generates immigrantpessimism towards the future, prompting immigrant children to work harder in school (Louie, 2004). Portes and Zhou (1992, 1993), through their study of today’s second generation in the United States, suggested an alternative ‘segmented assimilation model’ which posits that the patterns of assimilation vary by immigrant groups. Different groups assimilate into different sectors of American society. Some groups follow a linear assimilation process and eventually escape poverty and achieve socioeconomic advancement, just as European immigrants did in the past. Other groups may experience deterioration in socioeconomic status over the generations, and become susceptible to longterm poverty and discrimination. Still others may achieve socioeconomic mobility that matches middle-class White Americans, but with preservation of culture from their place of origin. Three discrete paths of becoming American depend on the ‘‘modes of incorporation,’’ which is a function of policies and prejudices existing in the host country. The relevant parameters of the favorable or unfavorable incorporation include skin color, location, and occupational opportunities. Overall, the segmented assimilation perspective places the assimilation process in the context of a larger society

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consisting of segregated and unequal segments. There is therefore no single path every immigrant group follows into a ‘‘mainstream.’’ Reconciling this segmented assimilation theory and other hypotheses, Richard Alba and Victor Nee (2003) recently proposed a ‘‘new immigration theory’’ that revitalized classical assimilation of the Chicago School through new historical evidence. They contended that assimilation to the mainstream society remains a central social process in the adaptation of immigrants and their descendants, past and present. In the United States, immigrants were always discriminated against and the economy did not always work to their advantage, but they managed to assimilate by the way of cumulative and purposive rational actions in pursuit of some goals, such as getting a good education and a good job. The force of assimilation for immigrant children is so strong that even immigrant youth who were widely perceived as problem students with high rates of dropout and delinquency, experienced upgrading in their educational attainment.

IMPLICATIONS FOR HONG KONG Which path of educational assimilation does Mainland Chinese immigrant children follow: upward mobility, downward assimilation, or muscle-up assimilation? As aforementioned (Lam & Liu, 2002a; Post, 2004), Mainland Chinese adult immigrants have lower human and financial capital. The low socioeconomic status of Mainland Chinese children likely depresses their school achievement. However, there are many factors that can compensate for Mainland children’s socioeconomic disadvantage. Culturally, differences between Mainland Chinese and native Hong Kong students are minor. The majority of the Mainland Chinese and native Hong Kong students come from the Han ethnic group. Hong Kong popular culture has spread across the border to many parts of Mainland China, especially the Guangdong province which has sent the most immigrants to Hong Kong. Many immigrants are familiar with the clothing styles, pop music, movies, food, and mannerisms in Hong Kong before migration. Also, students from Guangdong province speak Cantonese – the dialect spoken in Hong Kong. According to the 2006 by-census, approximately 91% of the population aged 5 and above reported Cantonese as their home language, and another 6% claimed the ability to speak Cantonese (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2006). Without ethnic, language, and other cultural differences, Mainland Chinese


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immigrant children in Hong Kong face fewer problems of adjustment to the host society, compared to immigrant children worldwide. Several other factors also compensate for Mainland Chinese immigrant children’s socioeconomic disadvantage. First, immigrant parents tend to hold optimism and high expectations for their children (Kao & Tienda, 1995). Immigrant children are well aware of their parents’ sacrifices and are motivated to work hard for future success. Second, many Mainland immigrants have relatives in Hong Kong who can provide assistance. This form of social capital among kins is extremely useful to the newly arrived family who need help finding schools for their children. Third, the political context of reception since the 1990s has been quite favorable to the Mainland immigrants. Hong Kong government actively helps immigrant children from the Mainland to adjust to local schools several years after the signing of the Sino-British agreement that authorized Hong Kong’s return to Mainland China. The Education and Manpower Bureau – the administrative branch of the government that manages all Hong Kong schools – implemented a number of policies in support of integrating Mainland students. These policies include the School-based Support Scheme Grant, Induction Programme, Full-time Initiation Programme, and placement services.1 They provide funding for supplementary lessons in schools, tailoring curriculum, purchase of teaching aids and resource materials, organizing orientation programs, guidance programs, and extra-curricular activities. They also provide services to induct Mainland immigrant children so that they learn to be familiar with local community and culture. Because English instruction in the Mainland lags behind Hong Kong that has a history of English-medium schools, government funding is provided to run English remedial classes. Other remedial classes are for written Chinese because the Mainland uses simplified characters whereas Hongkongers use traditional characters. Finally, the education initiatives also aim at improving Mainland children’s study skills, to foster personal development and social adjustment, and to give newly arrived children the exposure to Hong Kong classroom situations. In addition, the Hong Kong school system is flexible to Mainland Chinese students in two respects. The first is the medium of instruction. As a colonial legacy, a small portion of schools in Hong Kong uses the English medium, but the majority of schools adopt the Chinese language. Mainland Chinese immigrant students generally do not have a language problem in Chinesemedium schools. The second aspect of flexibility is the loose age-grade relation. Overage for the grade is not only allowed but sometimes even encouraged for immigrant

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children. One major reason for Mainland students’ overage is that the official school entry age in Mainland China is 7 but it is 6 in Hong Kong (Institute for Statistics, 2003). Mainland students are typically one year older than their native counterparts for the same grade. Another reason is that Mainland immigrant children often repeat school grades at the time when they enter Hong Kong schools (Chan, 1998). The highly centralized Hong Kong school system prescribes a rigid system of promotion and placement supported by a series of high-stake examinations. To enter a school, an immigrant student has to pass an admissions test designed and administered by that school. Prestigious schools, including all the English-medium schools, can be more selective than other schools. Because of a lower level English curriculum in Mainland China, new Mainland immigrant students often perform poorly in the English language tests. For that reason alone, schools may recommend placing them in a lower grade.2 Also, the recent education reform pushed for accountability measures, of which student achievement is a major issue. By placing immigrant children in a lower grade, a high-achieving school avoids the risk of poorer achievement. Generally immigrant parents would not mind because their children are more likely to enter a high-achieving school. Indeed, interviews by the first author found that many immigrant parents believe that repeating a grade can help immigrant children to catch up and succeed in the new school system.3 Therefore, it is important to bear in mind that Mainland students’ overage for their grade is largely a product of the mismatch of the home and host-country educational system, and has little to do with grade retention that signifies academic failure. Mainland students’ overage can better be characterized as ‘‘redshirting’’ in the school entry literature (Graue & DiPerna, 2000; Pong, 2009). The fact that immigrant students are asked to repeat one or more grades has generated public concern in Hong Kong (Chan, 1998). Some feared that overage is a negative label adversely affecting immigrant children’s self-esteem and motivation to achieve. However, repeating a grade can help them to learn what they have missed. A year of easy school work can give immigrant children time to adjust socially in school. Karl Alexander et al. (2003) found that being pulled back a grade helps students to perform better academically, especially in their repeated year. Thus, it is an empirical question whether Mainland immigrants’ grade repetition has any negative consequences. Immigrant children’s learning may depend on the type of schools they attend. In Hong Kong, schools are highly segregated according to students’ achievement. At the end of elementary school, each student is assessed under the territory-wide evaluation system administered by the Education


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Department. Students’ scores are compiled as composite achievement scores known as the Academic Ability Index (AAI). This index classifies students into five ‘‘bands,’’ each of which represents one-fifth of the AAI distribution. The top 20% are categorized as Band-1 students, and the bottom 20% are Band-5 students. Furthermore, according to the medium-of-instruction policy implemented by the HKSAR Government since 1998, it has been stipulated that the top 40% of students in the AAI are identified as ‘‘EMIcapable’’ – students capable of using English as a medium of instruction. Any secondary schools that enroll 85% or more EMI-capable students in their first-grade intakes are qualified to be English-medium schools. As a result, most English-medium schools are Band-1 schools. Virtually all Band3 to Band-5 schools are required to use Chinese as the medium of instruction. Our research questions are as follows. How do Mainland Chinese immigrant students perform in Hong Kong schools, compared with their native Hong Kong counterparts? Does this nativity gap change over time as students progress through the secondary years? No Hong Kong research today has examined immigrant children’s academic achievement in relation to the schools they attend. Thus we ask these questions: Are Mainland immigrant students distributed equally across different types of schools? Does their performance vary by the type of schools they attend? Research on immigrant children’s educational assimilation has relied primarily on cross-sectional survey data that provide three groups of students for comparison: the first, second, and third-plus generations. The first generation refers to foreign-born children with foreign-born parents. The second generation refers to native-born children who have at least one foreign-born parent. The third-plus generation refers to native-born children whose parents are both native-born. These three generational groups are useful in understanding educational inequality by immigrant backgrounds, but it is problematic to make statements about immigrant assimilation because these are artificial generations. Each generation represents a different arrival cohort who faced a unique context of reception in the host country. Each artificial generation is a distinct group, and the behaviors of one artificial generation cannot be used to predict the behaviors of another. Thus, one cannot draw conclusive statements about immigrants’ assimilation using cross-sectional data. This chapter examines immigrant assimilation of a cohort of students entering secondary school in 1999. Following the same individuals over time for 3 years, we are better able to make statements about educational assimilation of Mainland Chinese immigrant students.

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DATA We use the medium of instruction longitudinal survey (MOILS) for our analysis. This survey was commissioned by the Education Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) to evaluate and compare students in schools adopting either Chinese or English as medium of instruction. A primary objective is to trace the academic and personal development of Hong Kong students in each type of schools during the lower-secondary school years. In Hong Kong, grades in secondary school begin in Form 1 and continue until Form 7. Starting in the academic year of 1999–2000, MOILS tracked two cohorts of students from secondary schools that serve primarily Hong Kong and Chinese immigrant students. The small numbers of international schools or other non-Chinese schools are not in the sampling frame. Thus our study cannot be generalized to non-Chinese immigrant youths. A total of 101 secondary schools4 were selected by stratified random sampling based on two criteria: (1) the medium of instruction used in schools (English and Chinese medium) and (2) the achievement level of the student intake (high, medium, and low), indicated by students’ ‘‘academic ability index.’’ This index is measured by cumulative test results, school grades, or other criteria, and is required of every primary school graduate for the purpose of allocating secondary school places. All Form 1 (Secondary 1) and Form 2 (Secondary 2) students from each of these 101 schools were included in the base year sample in 1999–2000. Each student was tracked in 2000–2001 and 2001–2002, until they reached the end of Form 3 (9th grade). Thus one cohort of students was surveyed three times and the other was surveyed twice. To maximize information, we use the former cohort who began secondary school in the academic year of 1999–2000 and were Form 1 students in the first wave of data collection. They consist of 22,680 students in 1999–2000. The attrition rate was low: 4% in the first follow-up and approximately 3% in the second. In the second semester of each survey year, sampled students were assessed on their achievement in five school subjects: Chinese, English, mathematics, science, and social studies. The survey instruments include not only the student questionnaire, but also teacher, administrator, and parent questionnaires. For the purpose of our study, we utilize only the student and parent questionnaires. Parent survey was administered only once in 2000. The non-response rate was 15%. Because our major focus is students’ immigrant status that comes from the parent survey and parent-reported SES is a key control variable, we eliminate these non-response cases from our study sample.

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Exploratory analysis finds that the students in these non-response cases have lower test scores and their schools are in the bottom quarter in terms of school average SES. Although low school-mean SES would predict immigrant status, the age distribution of these non-response cases rejects this prediction. Students in the non-response cases are not significantly different from all other students in terms of age. They are only 0.06 year older, and their distribution in the age groups of 10–12, 13–14, and 15–19 are 67%, 26%, and 6%, respectively. This age distribution is much closer to the distribution among Hong Kong native students than to that among Mainland Chinese immigrant students (see Table 1 in the results section below). Thus it is quite likely that the missing cases consist mainly of low SES native Hong Kong students, suggesting that our estimate of the nativity gap to the favor of Mainland Chinese students’ achievement may have been biased downward. We further drop 116 cases with unknown place of birth Table 1.

Profiles of Mainland Chinese Immigrant and Hong Kong Native Students.

Variable

Student-level variables Being female Age 10–12 Age 13–14 Age 15–19 Family income Father’s education level Mother’s education level Socioeconomic status (SES) Parental expectation School-level variables School mean SES School type English medium High-ability Chinese medium Medium-ability Chinese medium Low-ability Chinese medium Observations

Hong Kong Native

Mainland Chinese Immigrant

All

.500 .824 .174 .002 2.752 3.367 3.126 .088 5.096

.510 .206 .533 .261 2.308 2.917 2.942 .365 4.942

.502 .717 .237 .047 2.675 3.289 3.094 .010 5.069

.025

.088

.005

.287 .252 .251 .210

.208 .239 .239 .314

.273 .25 .248 .228

12,218 (82.5%)

2,586 (17.5%)

14,804 (100%)

po.01 for mean differences by nativity; the test statistics are adjusted for clustering within

school.

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of the student and another 226 students who were born outside Hong Kong or Mainland China. After dropping these cases, we have a sample of 14,804 students for the first two waves, and 14,336 for all three waves of the longitudinal sample.

VARIABLES Dependent Variable MOILS designed curriculum-based achievement tests in five subjects: Chinese, English, mathematics, science, and social studies. In lowersecondary school (Forms 1–3) all students follow a common curriculum, which means that given a certain grade, every lower-secondary student has the same opportunity to learn.5 This study examines three subjects that are required for high school graduation: Chinese, English, and mathematics. The Chinese language test consists of instruments testing students’ skills in listening, language form and function (e.g., vocabulary, syntax, and lexical skill), reading comprehension, and writing. The English language tests aim at testing students’ skills in listening, language form and function (e.g., vocabulary, syntax, and grammar), reading comprehension and writing. The mathematics test consists of multiple-choice items testing various computations skills. In order to improve the measurement quality of the achievement tests, MOILS applied the Rasch’s dichotomous model to scale the multiple choice items to generate adjusted total scores for each achievement test (Andrich, 1988; Wright & Masters, 1982).6 All achievement test scores we analyze here are Rasch-adjusted scores that have a standard deviation close to one.

Independent Variables All our independent variables come from the Parent Survey. The major independent variable is the dichotomous variable representing students’ place of birth in Mainland China. Those born in Mainland China are compared to the Hong Kong natives. Students’ age is constructed from their date of birth. Children are supposed to enter Primary 1 (1st grade) when they turn six by December.7 Thus, we calculate students’ age on December 31, 1999, and constructed


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dummy variables representing two age categories: 13–14 and 15–19. The reference group includes the modal age group of 12 who make up approximately 72% of the total student population in the 1st year of secondary school. A small number (15) of students are 10 or 11 years old; they are grouped with the 12th year olds as the reference category. Students’ socioeconomic (SES) background is an index constructed using father’s education, mother’s education, and family income, all of which reported by the parents in the second wave. The original parent’s education has 5 categories: no schooling or kindergarten, primary school, junior secondary school, senior secondary school (including matriculation), and tertiary education. The original family income variable is a categorical variable. The SES variable is a standardized variable with a mean around 0 and a standard deviation of 1. Parents’ educational expectations for their children is a nominal variable that has 6 values: never thought about it, finish junior secondary school, finish upper secondary school, finish matriculation courses beyond secondary school, Associate degree or equivalent, and university degree or above. Three school variables describe the type of schools students attend. One measures school-mean SES. It is constructed by averaging individual students’ SES within school. The other is a set of four dummy variables indicating both the medium of instruction and student ability. These dummy variables are (a) English-medium school, (b) high-ability (HB) Chinese-medium school, (c) medium-ability (MB) Chinese-medium school, and (d) low-ability Chinese-medium school (reference).

PLAN OF ANALYSIS We perform four types of statistical analysis. First, we use summary statistics to give a profile of the Mainland Chinese immigrant students and compare their profile with that of Hong Kong native students. Second, we explore if there is a nativity gap in test scores in the first year of secondary school, i.e., in Form 1. This is a cross-sectional, multivariate analysis on the achievement of three subjects: Chinese, English, and mathematics. Third, we explore if a nativity gap exists for the achievement growth between Form 1 and Form 2, and between Form 2 and Form 3. Because the test scores are not comparable for different year, we employ the method of repeated cross-sectional analysis of the test scores for each year, with control of the test scores of the previous year. Fourth, we examine if any individual, family, and school factors account for the nativity gaps where they exist.

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Because students are nested within schools, an ordinary least square model will violate the assumption of independence for students who attend the same school. To take into account intra-correlation within schools, we use the hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) for our analysis. Students are the first-level units and schools are the second-level units.

RESULTS Profile of Mainland Chinese Immigrant Students Our data show that Mainland Chinese immigrant students differ from native Hong Kong students in many aspects. Table 1 shows Form 1 students’ demographic, socioeconomic, and school characteristics. As expected, Mainland students are more likely to be older for the grade. In our sample of Form 1 students, over 82% of native Hong Kong students are 10–12 years old, whereas only 21% of Mainlanders are. Note that there are few (less than 1%) students aged 10 and 11, so the category of 10–12 years old really reflects predominantly 12 years olds. Less than 1% of Hong Kong students aged 15–19, but 26% of Mainland students are in that age group. The modal age group for the Mainland students is 13–14. On average, Mainland students are about 1.5 years older than native Hong Kong students.8 Compared to native Hong Kong students, Mainland students are socioeconomically disadvantaged. Their family income is lower and their parents have less education. Their SES is approximately 45% of a standard deviation below the SES of native Hong Kong students. However, despite the low SES of Mainland students, their parents’ expectations of their education are about the same as the expectations of native Hong Kong parents. This is evidence of immigrant parents’ optimism for their children’s future. There are also nativity differences in the distribution of different types of schools. Mainland students’ schools have lower average SES than do native students’ schools. Although the percentage distribution of Mainland students is only slightly lower than that of native Hong Kong students in English-medium schools, Mainland students are 10% more likely to attend a low-ability Chinese-medium school than are native students. Achievement Gap by Nativity The low SES backgrounds of the Mainland students do not predict their high academic achievement, as shown in Table 2. Mainland students

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Table 2. Variable

Achievement Test in Rasch Standardized Score, by Immigrant Status. Hong Kong Native

Mainland Chinese

All

Achievement Gap (Mainland – HK)

Form 1 (Secondary 1) Chinese English Mathematics Science Social studies

.027 .110 .030 .037 .051

.191 .216 .150 .142 .104

.056 .053 .051 .056 .061

.164 .326 .120 .105 .053


.021 .097 .017 .022 .02

.149 .206 .036 .212 .101

.044 .045 .020 .019 .034

.128 .303 .019 .234 .081


.037 .091 .043 .024 .016

.137 .132 .042 .057 .128

.055 .052 .043 .030 .035

.100 .223 .001 .033 .112

12,218

2,586

14,804

Observations

Notes: Total N ¼ 15,030. The standard deviation of the test scores of each subject is about 1. All achievement gaps are statistically significant at .01 level. The test statistics are adjusted for clustering within school.

outperform native students in every subject except the English language for almost every survey year. Because these test scores have a standard deviation very close to one, the differences in means can also be read as the differences in terms of a standard deviation. In Form 1, the largest nativityachievement gap is in the Chinese language, followed by mathematics, science, and social studies. However, the negative achievement gap is large in English. Mainland students lag behind native students in more than 30% of a standard deviation of the English test scores. Mainland students’ achievement advantages in the Chinese language, science and social studies persist in Forms 2 and 3. Particularly, their advantages in science and social studies appear to have taken off. The growth in the science-test-score gap in favor of the Mainland students is particularly large in Form 2, which is almost a quarter of a standard deviation.

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By the end of the junior secondary school, in Form 3, Mainland students outperform native students in social studies, science, and the Chinese language by 11%, 3% and 10% of a standard deviation, respectively. In addition, Mainland students’ disadvantage in English appears to decline steadily over time. By the end of the junior secondary school, the English-achievement-gap drops to approximately 22% of a standard deviation. Descriptive statistics do not allow us to make generalizations beyond the characteristics of our sample to the population of secondary school students in Hong Kong, so we turn next to our HLM analysis that tests the hypothesis of a positive or negative achievement gap by nativity for each academic subject. Table 3 shows the 15 HLM models for each school subject in Forms 1, 2, and 3. The students’ place of birth in Hong Kong or Mainland China is the only variable in Form 1. The regression coefficients of students born in Mainland China confirm that in Form 1, Mainland students outperform their native counterparts significantly in all subjects except English. Again, the size of the significant achievement gap is largest for Chinese and mathematics than for science and social studies.

Table 3. HLM Analysis of Form 1 Achievement Gap by Nativity and of the Growth in Achievement Gap in Forms 2 and 3.

Form 1 test scores Born in Mainland Form 2 test scores Born in Mainland Form 1 scores Form 3 test scores Born in Mainland Form 2 scores N po.01.

Chinese

English

Mathematics

Science

Social Studies

0.299 (0.019)

0.137 (0.015)

0.226 (0.021)

0.199 (0.023)

0.143 (0.022)

0.102 (0.015) 0.580 (0.007)

0.046 (0.011) 0.642 (0.007)

0.036 (0.017) 0.497 (0.008)

0.171 (0.021) 0.478 (0.009)

0.095 (0.022) 0.337 (0.010)

0.062 (0.016) 0.595 (0.008)

0.044 (0.012) 0.661 (0.008)

0.063 (0.018) 0.529 (0.009)

0.005 (0.022) 0.456 (0.009)

0.126 (0.022) 0.298 (0.009)

11,764

11,204

10,716

10,001

10,238


217

In the regressions predicting Form 2 test scores, the corresponding Form 1 test scores are included as a control. As such, the nativity coefficient is interpreted as the gap in achievement growth between Forms 1 and 2. The nativity gap in achievement growth is positive for all subjects except English, and the gap is the largest for science. Mainland students’ growth in English test scores does not catch up with the growth in English test scores of native students, resulting in a negative nativity gap averaging approximately 5% of a standard deviation. That said, the negative nativity gap in English is not as large as the 14% in Form 1. What is remarkable is that by Form 3, the nativity gap in English turns positive, indicating higher growth rates in English test scores among Mainland students than those among native students. Although Mainland students have not overtaken native students in English in Form 3, the result suggests a trend of narrowing English test score gap. In fact, at the end of the junior secondary school, Mainland students continue to show significant advantage in the growth of test scores in Chinese, mathematics, and social studies, although the advantage in the growth of test scores in science disappears.

Explaining the Achievement Gap In the following three tables we examine if students’ demographic characteristics, their SES, and the SES and type of schools they attend account for the achievement gap by nativity. Tables 4–6 shows that, in the face of other covariates, the nativity gap remains significantly positive in favor of Mainland students in the subjects of Chinese, mathematics, science, and social studies, in all three lower-secondary grades. Comparing the nativity coefficient in Tables 4–6 with the corresponding nativity coefficient in Table 3, we find that in most cases, a positive nativity is larger when other covariates are included in the model. This suggests that immigrant students’ disadvantaged background or school characteristics mask their superior achievement. The exception is English achievement in Form 1 and Form 2. The demographic, SES, and school covariates account for some of Mainland students’ poor achievement in Form 1 English and all of their poor English achievement in Form 2. We find but do not report here that simply controlling for students’ age has an effect of eliminating Mainland students’ disadvantage in English achievement. By Form 3, the nativity gap in English achievement turns positive. Similar to other subjects in Form 3, this positive English achievement gap is larger when other factors are taken into account.

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Table 4.

HLM Analysis of Form 1 Achievement in Five Subjects.

Born in Mainland Female Age 13–14 Age 15–19 SES Parent expectation English medium HB Chinese medium MB Chinese medium School-mean SES N

Chinese

English

Mathematics

Science

Social Studies

0.319 (0.023) 0.160 (0.015) 0.018 (0.018) 0.035 (0.039) 0.004 (0.008) 0.046 (0.006) 1.359 (0.095) 1.072 (0.081) 0.665 (0.076) 0.169 (0.076)

0.049 (0.017) 0.246 (0.011) 0.049 (0.014) 0.163 (0.029) 0.083 (0.006) 0.049 (0.004) 1.643 (0.085) 1.005 (0.072) 0.585 (0.067) 0.377 (0.068)

0.177 (0.025) 0.117 (0.016) 0.025 (0.020) 0.169 (0.043) 0.023 (0.009) 0.048 (0.006) 1.299 (0.099) 1.111 (0.083) 0.629 (0.083) 0.142 (0.085)

0.198 (0.028) 0.092 (0.018) 0.024 (0.022) 0.009 (0.049) 0.002 (0.010) 0.056 (0.007) 0.735 (0.109) 0.989 (0.093) 0.485 (0.093) 0.154 (0.094)

0.144 (0.027) 0.010 (0.018) 0.019 (0.022) 0.006 (0.047) 0.001 (0.009) 0.042 (0.006) 0.877 (0.106) 0.850 (0.092) 0.471 (0.091) 0.135 (0.091)

11,764

11,204

10,716

10,001

10,238

HB, high-ability; MB, medium-ability. The reference category of school type is low-ability. po.05, po.01, and po.10, dummy variables indicating missing age and parental expectations are included in the regression.

Other Covariates All other covariates except students’ age behave the way we expect. Girls do better than boys in the two languages but not in mathematics and science. Nevertheless, girls appear to have caught up with boys in mathematics and science in Form 3. Parental expectations are a significant predictor uniformly of any kind of achievement, explaining approximately 3–5% of a standard deviation. However, the positive SES-achievement relationship that has been well documented in previous literature is not consistently found here. This may be due to the highly segregated nature of Hong Kong schools. The degree of school segregation is reflected in the large betweenschool variances for every subject except English. Within-school variances are much smaller than between-school variances. As aforementioned, Hong Kong secondary schools are stratified by student achievement in

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Table 5.

HLM Analysis of Form 2 Achievement in Five Subjects, Controlling for Form 1 Achievement.

Born in Mainland Female Age 13–14 Age 15–19 SES Parent expectation English medium HB Chinese medium MB Chinese medium School mean SES Form 1 achievement N

Chinese

English

Mathematics

Science

Social Studies

0.139 (0.019) 0.088 (0.012) 0.014 (0.015) 0.097 (0.031) 0.007 (0.006) 0.035 (0.004) 0.583 (0.069) 0.446 (0.059) 0.229 (0.055) 0.059 (0.055) 0.562 (0.007)

0.011 (0.013) 0.110 (0.009) 0.035 (0.011) 0.064 (0.023) 0.031 (0.005) 0.027 (0.003) 0.832 (0.060) 0.329 (0.051) 0.148 (0.047) 0.014 (0.047) 0.598 (0.007)

0.060 (0.021) 0.031 (0.014) 0.032 (0.017) 0.033 (0.037) 0.010 (0.007) 0.036 (0.005) 0.640 (0.082) 0.448 (0.069) 0.067 (0.068) 0.092 (0.070) 0.486 (0.008)

0.161 (0.026) 0.142 (0.017) 0.001 (0.020) 0.076 (0.044) 0.006 (0.009) 0.047 (0.006) 0.024 (0.088) 0.358 (0.075) 0.089 (0.075) 0.163 (0.076) 0.464 (0.009)

0.109 (0.027) 0.081 (0.018) 0.034 (0.022) 0.009 (0.048) 0.017 (0.010) 0.046 (0.007) 0.281 (0.090) 0.330 (0.078) 0.143 (0.077) 0.116 (0.077) 0.326 (0.010)

11,764

11,204

10,716

10,001

10,238

HB, high-ability; MB, medium-ability. The reference category of school type is low-ability. po.05, po.01, and po.10, dummy variables indicating missing age and parental expectations are included in the regression.

public examinations. Because high achieving students also tend to come from high SES families, achievement-segregation highly correlates with SES-segregation. When different SES students are tracked in different schools, there leaves little within-school variances to be explained by SES. In the absence of the school-type variables in our models, school-mean SES significantly predicts achievement scores. However, its effects are washed out when the school-type variables are controlled. Students in English-medium schools do the best, on average, than Chinese-medium schools. And Chinese-medium schools are further stratified by students’ ability level. The average level of students’ ability in a school is strongly associated with average student achievement.

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Table 6.

HLM Analysis of Form 3 Achievement in Five Subjects, Controlling for Form 2 Achievement.

Born in Mainland Female Age 13–14 Age 15–19 SES Parent expectation English medium HB Chinese medium MB Chinese medium School mean SES Form 2 achievement N

Chinese

English

Mathematics

Science

Social Studies

0.115 (0.019) 0.179 (0.013) 0.062 (0.015) 0.098 (0.033) 0.014 (0.007) 0.031 (0.005) 0.457 (0.068) 0.332 (0.058) 0.151 (0.054) 0.102 (0.054) 0.569 (0.008)

0.070 (0.015) 0.127 (0.010) 0.023 (0.012) 0.087 (0.025) 0.004 (0.005) 0.034 (0.004) 0.629 (0.087) 0.235 (0.073) 0.184 (0.068) 0.040 (0.068) 0.613 (0.008)

0.072 (0.022) 0.017 (0.014) 0.018 (0.017) 0.003 (0.038) 0.014 (0.008) 0.042 (0.005) 0.520 (0.089) 0.365 (0.075) 0.217 (0.074) 0.128 (0.077) 0.513 (0.009)

0.065 (0.027) 0.025 (0.018) 0.068 (0.022) 0.166 (0.047) 0.011 (0.009) 0.044 (0.006) 0.349 (0.077) 0.375 (0.066) 0.196 (0.066) 0.122 (0.067) 0.445 (0.009)

0.133 (0.027) 0.094 (0.018) 0.002 (0.021) 0.045 (0.047) 0.032 (0.009) 0.045 (0.006) 0.480 (0.123) 0.410 (0.106) 0.210 (0.105) 0.191 (0.104) 0.291 (0.009)

11,764

11,204

10,716

10,001

10,238

HB, high-ability; MB, medium-ability. The reference category of school type is low-ability. po.05, po.01, po.10, dummy variables indicating missing age and parental expectations are included in the regression.

Overage for the grade does not consistently confer disadvantage in terms of student achievement. In many cases, the coefficient of overage (15–19) is not statistically significant, but it appears to be consistently negative for English achievement. As aforementioned, age alone completely accounts for Mainland immigrant students’ disadvantage in Form 2 English.

Interaction between Nativity and School Type Next we explore how Mainland students perform in different types of schools stratified by students’ ability and the medium of instruction. Table 7

Table 7.

Interaction between Nativity and School Type.

Form 1 test scores Born in Mainland (M) English medium HB Chinese medium MB Chinese medium M (English medium) M (HB Chinese medium) M (MB Chinese medium) Form 2 test scores Born in Mainland (M) English medium HB Chinese medium MB Chinese medium M (English medium) M (HB Chinese medium) M (MB Chinese medium) Form 3 test scores Born in Mainland English medium HB Chinese medium MB Chinese medium M (English medium) M (HB Chinese medium) M (MB Chinese medium)

N

Chinese

English

Mathematics

Science

Social Studies

0.384 (0.039) 1.392 (0.096) 1.083 (0.082) 0.683 (0.077) 0.171 (0.053) 0.025 (0.052) 0.068 (0.052)

0.037 (0.029) 1.664 (0.085) 1.035 (0.072) 0.616 (0.067) 0.076 (0.040) 0.127 (0.039) 0.144 (0.039)

0.362 (0.043) 1.376 (0.099) 1.173 (0.084) 0.677 (0.083) 0.334 (0.058) 0.237 (0.057) 0.154 (0.058)

0.349 (0.050) 0.800 (0.111) 1.039 (0.094) 0.519 (0.095) 0.286 (0.065) 0.195 (0.064) 0.093 (0.068)

0.187 (0.050) 0.905 (0.108) 0.863 (0.093) 0.472 (0.092) 0.139 (0.064) 0.044 (0.063) 0.029 (0.065)

0.168 (0.031) 0.599 (0.070) 0.461 (0.060) 0.231 (0.056) 0.066 (0.042) 0.064 (0.042) 0.012 (0.042)

0.052 (0.023) 0.857 (0.061) 0.349 (0.051) 0.167 (0.048) 0.107 (0.031) 0.076 (0.031) 0.071 (0.030)

0.105 (0.037) 0.659 (0.082) 0.462 (0.070) 0.081 (0.069) 0.080 (0.049) 0.049 (0.048) 0.048 (0.050)

0.242 (0.046) 0.063 (0.089) 0.384 (0.076) 0.105 (0.076) 0.175 (0.059) 0.093 (0.058) 0.037 (0.062)

0.152 (0.050) 0.305 (0.091) 0.345 (0.079) 0.146 (0.079) 0.112 (0.064) 0.054 (0.064) 0.011 (0.066)

0.192 (0.033) 0.487 (0.069) 0.358 (0.059) 0.174 (0.055) 0.131 (0.044) 0.098 (0.044) 0.087 (0.043)

0.086 (0.025) 0.636 (0.087) 0.238 (0.073) 0.190 (0.068) 0.030 (0.034) 0.007 (0.034) 0.028 (0.033)

0.228 (0.038) 0.583 (0.090) 0.418 (0.076) 0.263 (0.075) 0.255 (0.050) 0.196 (0.050) 0.162 (0.051)

0.214 (0.048) 0.398 (0.079) 0.425 (0.068) 0.243 (0.068) 0.195 (0.063) 0.201 (0.061) 0.187 (0.065)

0.263 (0.050) 0.532 (0.123) 0.448 (0.107) 0.246 (0.106) 0.229 (0.064) 0.136 (0.063) 0.126 (0.065)

11,764

11,204

10,716

10,001

10,238

HB, high-ability; MB, medium-ability. The reference category of school type is low-ability. po.05. po.01. po.10. Other covariates of gender, age, SES, parental expectation and school mean SES are included but not reported here.

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shows the results on the interaction effects between nativity and school type. Although the main effect of nativity remains to be positively significant for all grades and all subjects except Form 1 English, almost all interaction effects bear a negative sign, and many are statistically significant. This suggests that compared to their native counterparts, Mainland students do not do well in ‘‘better’’ schools that use an English medium or of higher average student achievement. This result is surprising to us. Although Mainland students understandably have academic difficulties in Englishmedium schools, we do not expect them to have difficulties in high-ability Chinese-medium schools. Future studies need to look into these high-ability Chinese-medium schools to understand why a nativity gap exists in these schools, especially in Form 3, to the disadvantage of Mainland students.

Interaction between Nativity and Student’s Age Because most Mainland students are older than native Hong Kong students, we are interested to know if older Mainland students perform better relative to their peers. The analyses that investigate the interaction between nativity and age are presented in Table 8. The results suggest that Mainland students who are 15 or older do not differ from Mainland students who are aged 12 or younger, but Mainland students aged 13–14 do significantly better. In fact, Mainland students’ overage explains why Mainland students outperform native Hong Kong students in every grade of mathematics as well as in all subjects except science in Form 3. Recall from Table 1 that over half of all Mainland students are aged 13–14, that is, 1–2 years older than the modal age for the grade. Table 8 shows that they are the highest achievers of all age groups in Form 1. Figs. 1 and 2 further illustrate these relationships between nativity, age, and achievement growth. The reference group in the graphs, indicated by the zero horizontal line, is Hong Kong native students who were aged 10–12 in Form 1. This is the normative age range for this cohort of students. Both figures show that over-aged native students have negative values, except for the social studies result which is statistically insignificant, suggesting that academic achievement of over-aged native students grows significantly slower than does academic achievement of their younger counterparts. However, the reverse is evident among Mainland immigrant students. Being older is clearly not a disadvantage. Both graphs show greater achievement growth, indicated by positive values in test scores, among the Mainland immigrant students aged 13–14 than their immigrant counterpart aged 10–12. The achievement

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Table 8.

Form 1 test scores Born in Mainland (M) Age 13–14 Age 15–19 M (age 13–14) M (age 15–19) Form 2 test scores Born in Mainland Age 13–14 Age 15–19 M (age 13–14) M (age 15–19) Form 3 test scores Born in Mainland Age 13–14 Age 15–19 M (age 13–14) M (age 15–19) N

Interaction between Nativity and Age.

Chinese

English

Mathematics

Science

Social Studies

0.216 (0.036) 0.050 (0.020) 0.117 (0.184) 0.171 (0.046) 0.184 (0.190)

0.087 (0.027) 0.059 (0.015) 0.322 (0.134) 0.059 (0.035) 0.201 (0.138)

0.014 (0.039) 0.033 (0.022) 0.031 (0.213) 0.315 (0.050) 0.328 (0.219)

0.121 (0.045) 0.000 (0.025) 0.094 (0.224) 0.128 (0.057) 0.013 (0.231)

0.126 (0.043) 0.014 (0.024) 0.023 (0.227) 0.029 (0.055) 0.035 (0.233)

0.073 (0.029) 0.034 (0.016) 0.243 (0.148) 0.107 (0.037) 0.214 (0.153)

0.041 (0.021) 0.043 (0.012) 0.184 (0.104) 0.047 (0.027) 0.153 (0.108)

0.014 (0.033) 0.046 (0.019) 0.085 (0.181) 0.076 (0.043) 0.098 (0.186)

0.108 (0.041) 0.013 (0.023) 0.104 (0.203) 0.081 (0.052) 0.236 (0.210)

0.076 (0.044) 0.046 (0.024) 0.301 (0.229) 0.061 (0.056) 0.268 (0.236)

0.029 (0.030) 0.088 (0.017) 0.254 (0.154) 0.140 (0.039) 0.244 (0.159)

0.008 (0.023) 0.047 (0.013) 0.147 (0.114) 0.128 (0.029) 0.137 (0.118)

0.017 (0.034) 0.043 (0.019) 0.278 (0.187) 0.142 (0.044) 0.369 (0.192)

0.039 (0.043) 0.074 (0.024) 0.408 (0.215) 0.036 (0.055) 0.275 (0.222)

0.003 (0.043) 0.038 (0.024) 0.351 (0.226) 0.205 (0.055) 0.441 (0.232)

11,764

11,204

10,716

10,001

10,238

po.05. po.01. po.10.

Other covariates of gender, SES, parental expectation, school types, and school mean SES are included but not reported here.

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SUET-LING PONG AND WING KWONG TSANG 0.4 Mainland

Hong Kong

0.3

0.1

age10-12

ies Soc

Stud

nce

ema

Scie

tics

sh

Math

Chin

age13-14

Engli

ese

ies Stud

nce

Soc

-0.3

Scie

tics ema

sh

Math

-0.2

Engli

-0.1

ese

0 Chin

Test scores

0.2

age15-19

Fig. 1. Achievement in Form 2, Given Form 1 Achievement Level. Note: The Test Score for Hong Kong Native Students Aged 10–12 is the Reference Group, Set at Zero.

0.2

ies Stud Soc

e Scie nc

matic

s

sh

Math e

Chin

Engli

ese

ies Stud

nce

s

sh

matic

Scie

Soc

-0.3

Math e

-0.2

Engli

-0.1

ese

0

Chin

Test Scores

Mainland

Hong Kong

0.1

-0.4 -0.5 age10-12

age13-14

age15-19

Fig. 2. Achievement in Form 3, Given Form 2 Achievement Level. Note: The Test Score for Hong Kong Native Students Aged 10–12 is the Reference Group, Set at Zero.

advantage of over-age among Mainland immigrant students is consistent with the idea of redshirting, a concerted effort aiming at promoting immigrant children’s competitiveness. As discussed earlier, the practice of redshirting was surfaced from the interview data collected by the first author.


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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS We report in this study several findings on Mainland Chinese immigrant students’ academic performance in Hong Kong’s lower-secondary schools, based on our analysis of longitudinal survey data in Hong Kong. First, we find that Mainland students in our sample are older than native Hong Kong students. They also occupy lower socioeconomic status and are more likely to attend low-ability Chinese–medium schools than their native counterparts. Despite their disadvantageous backgrounds, Mainland students outperform native Hong Kong students in all academic subjects except English, in all three grades from Forms 1–3. Their advantage in Form 1 is largest in Chinese and mathematics. Second, Mainland students attain achievement growth in most subjects except English faster than native students in Forms 2 and 3. Although Mainland students perform poorly in English compared to their native peers in every grade, they accelerate over time and narrow the nativity gap in Form 3. Third, Mainland students’ high performance cannot be explained by their unconventional age, poor backgrounds, and low school quality. By contrast, when comparing with native student with the same demographic, family, and school characteristics, Mainland students’ performance becomes even stronger. The only exception is Mainland students’ low English achievement that can be accounted for by their older-than-modal age. This result is consistent with the fact that children learn a foreign language better at a younger age. Over-aged immigrant children likely enter Hong Kong when they are older and have to repeat one or more grades. These immigrant children tend to have more difficulty in the English language than their native peers. Fourth, we find Chinese-medium schools to be more effective than English-medium schools to promote Mainland students’ educational assimilation. However, we also find that the nativity gaps are higher in most school subjects in high-ability Chinese-medium schools than in medium- or low-ability Chinese-medium schools, suggesting that highability schools tend to suppress Mainland immigrant students’ achievement. These results show that keen competition, especially in a different language environment, is more detrimental to immigrant students than their own socioeconomic background. Further investigation needs to understand how different types of schools distribute learning opportunities differentially to immigrant and native students. Our fifth finding concerns Mainland students’ overage for their grade. The best Mainland performers are slightly older than the modal age of 12 in Form 1 (or 13 and 14 in Forms 2 and 3, respectively). Research on

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‘‘academic redshirting’’ in the United States (Graue & DiPerna, 2000) has found achievement benefits of children entering school at a later age. Mainland students who redshirt have one or two extra years to re-learn what they know, pick up new skills, learn the loop, and become test smart. As a result, they are advantaged educationally compared to their samegrade peers, regardless of nativity. These results from Hong Kong have important implications for international studies on immigrant children’s academic assimilation. Educational researchers typically examine the overall GPA or one or two academic subjects and draw conclusions on immigrant children’s school adjustment. This is problematic because, as we have seen, immigrant children’s performance can be better or worse than natives’ performance, depending on the academic subject in question. Generally, subjects that require proficiency in a second language suppress immigrant children’s achievement. Immigrant children’s achievement is strongly related to their exposure to a different curriculum in their home country, a fact that is rarely addressed in past educational literature on immigrant children. For example, it is widely believed that the mathematics curriculum in Mainland China is more advanced than that in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong being a former British colony has an advantage over English learning. That is why we find Mainland students do well in mathematics but not in English. Similarly, in other countries such as the United States, Chinese immigrant children tend to outperform native White children in mathematics (Hao & BonsteadBruns, 1998), and this mathematics advantage cannot be explained by their current family and school characteristics. Some U.S. scholars attribute Chinese students’ success to cultural factors such as authoritarian parenting (Dornbusch, Ritter, Leiderman, Roberts, & Fraleigh, 1987) or Confucian heritage that emphasizes educational achievement (Hsiao, 1988; Rozman, 1991). Our findings here suggest that one does not need to revert to a cultural explanation. A comparison of curriculum contents for various subjects for the United States and Chinese school systems can be fruitful for understanding Chinese immigrant students’ academic performance in the United States. Our findings from Hong Kong may have implications for Mexican immigrant students in the U.S. Unequal economic development and higher wages pull large migration from the poor to the rich sides of the border in both Asia and North America. Why do Mexican immigrant students have relatively low achievement whereas Mainland immigrant students do so well? Language and culture are often cited as explanations. Our study suggests that curriculum differentials are important. For example, Mexican math and science curriculum may be less advanced than the U.S. curriculum,


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resulting in their lower test scores compared to the United States in PISA. Another explanation may be related to the different school systems in Hong Kong and the U.S. Hong Kong school curriculums are uniform by grade level, whereas the U.S. schools are characterized by curriculum differentiation. At any grade level, the U.S. students can choose different levels for each subject (honors, advanced, regular, or remedial classes). The U.S. school system is flexible in accommodating a wide range of student abilities within the same grade, thus the need for immigrant children to repeat a grade can hardly be justified. This may be why Latino immigrant students seldom repeat a grade: only 29% Latino immigrant students do so when they made a transition from their home-country to the United States (Pong, forthcoming). But Latino students who make a smooth transition without repeating a grade may pay a price of being placed in lower-level classes. This initial disadvantage could be exacerbated as they move along the school system. Future studies should look into the potential benefits or harm of immigrant redshirting for Latino students in the United States. Our results appear to contradict a recent report of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on literacy assessments that shows immigrant disadvantage in mathematics, reading, and science performance in Hong Kong (OECD, 2006). This OECD report is based on data from the PISA, an international study of literacy performance of 15-year-olds in over 40 countries. Different from our study here, the OECD analysis did not control for the grade students attend. We have shown that Mainland students are generally older than native Hong Kong students, thus the 15-year-old Mainland students are most likely to be in one or more grades below the modal grade. Students in lower grade do not learn the materials to compete with students in higher grade. That is why foreignborn students appear to be educationally disadvantaged. A recent study reports that Mainland Chinese immigrant students in PISA outperform their native Hong Kong peers in mathematics, reading, and science (all tested in Chinese), after grade is taken into account (Pong, 2009). This is further evidenced that Mainland immigrant students are doing well in subjects that pose no language barrier to them. In sum, we have found successful educational assimilation of Mainland Chinese immigrant adolescents in Hong Kong’s secondary schools. The success of Mainland students can be attributed to a variety of factors. Immigrant redshirting and a stronger home-country curriculum are two factors surfaced from our data analysis. We believe that the overall positive context of reception of Mainland immigrants by the Hong Kong government after the 1990s is an important driving force as well. Hong Kong will

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continue to absorb more immigrant children in the foreseeable future and help them through the educational system. It remains to be seen, however, whether these new immigrants will attain upward mobility after secondary school in Hong Kong.

NOTES 1. Information in this subsection comes primarily from the official website of the Bureau. For details, see http://www.edb.gov.hk 2. Personal communication with a principal of a secondary school in Sheung Shui, the New Territories. 3. Focus group interview with lower secondary school students in a school in Sheung Shui, the New Territories. 4. The population is just over 400 schools. 5. Hong Kong students are not tracked until Form 4 (10th grade) into various combinations of Arts, Science, and Commerce streams. 6. These Rasch-adjusted total scores are generated by the PARSCALE software. 7. According to the Education Bureau’s website: ‘‘All children in Hong Kong who have attained the age of 5 years 8 months or older (as at 1st September of the year of school entry) are eligible to participate in this admission scheme provided that they have not been allocated a Primary One place previously.’’ 8. The average age of Hong Kong Form 1 students is 12.19, and the average age of Mainland students is 13.69.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The first author is grateful for the financial support provided by a Fulbright Scholar research scholarship from the U.S. Department of State and for the assistance received from the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES). We would like to thank Kwok Wing Sum for his excellent research assistance.

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POSTSECONDARY EDUCATIONAL EXPANSION AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION IN HONG KONG David Post ABSTRACT This chapter discusses the social mobility and the political consequences of three education events in Hong Kong: the extension of free and compulsory schooling in 1978, the construction of universities after the Tiananmen repression amid popular unrest, and the creation of two-year degree programs after Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region. The chapter shows the repercussions of these events for civil society organizations and political parties. The chapter first reviews the historical context for state-society relations created by the current Special Administrative Region and the former British Crown Colony. It presents two alternative perspectives on the impact of higher education for civic development and social mobilization, perspectives rooted in neofunctionalist and in neo-Weberian sociologies of education. Next, the chapter discusses the actors and agents of political change in Hong Kong. Inferences are drawn about the social integration of new immigrants from Mainland China, as well as the opportunities for women and for lowerincome students, based on analysis of 35 years of Hong Kong Census data (1971–2006). The chapter concludes by raising questions about the future ability of governments and parties to define the postsecondary policy Globalization, Changing Demographics, and Educational Challenges in East Asia Research in Sociology of Education, Volume 17, 231–269 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3539/doi:10.1108/S1479-3539(2010)0000017011

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agenda, an agenda that now threatens to escape from government control and become a flash-point of popular mobilization.

Because social integration and state legitimacy can be affected by new educational opportunities, and the raised expectations from those opportunities, postsecondary expansion is contended by actors seeking a hand in state–society relations. In this context, research focusing on the allocation of social status through education can illuminate a political process far beyond personal or group mobility. Studies of equity and access in higher education indirectly investigate the transformation of the ways individuals are situated by their education – and the ways they consciously situate themselves – in relation to the status hierarchy of political power as well as the hierarchy of wealth and prestige. Accordingly, social stratification research should include consideration about the ultimate impact of higher education on the public’s acceptance of universities as gatekeepers, and the public’s view of government responsibility. Postsecondary educational expansion has the potential to alter the actions and mutual relationships of persons outside the government apparatus, and to affect the belief systems underlying civil society. To illuminate the consequences of higher education expansion for civil society as well as social mobility, few places in the world are better-suited for research than Hong Kong. In the final decades of colonial rule, and since its 1997 reunification with China, Hong Kong’s top-down control of postsecondary opportunities and supply-side expansion allow a ‘‘before’’ and ‘‘after’’ view of a society where until recently the state assumed total control for the market for postsecondary education. More clearly than in many other societies, in Hong Kong this ‘‘before-after’’ view of education policy can be linked to broader social effects. Elsewhere that nations which have expanded their educational opportunities, expansion resulted from grass-roots pressure and was, thus, much more the product than a cause of political demands. This is particularly true in the most well-documented cases of East Asia, including Korea (Park, 2007), Taiwan (Tsai & Shavit, 2007), and Japan (Ishida, 2007). Hong Kong differs sharply from these and most other countries. Through public finance and planned growth – rather than as a response to popular social demand – Hong Kong expanded educational opportunities at an astonishing rate since primary education was made compulsory in 1971. In retrospect, the exceptionality of Hong Kong can be seen as a natural experiment for the impact of top-down educational policies that are insulated from popular demand pressures. Three key policy events, in particular, altered the opportunities for social

Postsecondary Educational Expansion and Social Integration

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mobility and, concomitantly, the ways that Hong Kong’s residents conceive of the state and of themselves as members of their society. These events were, first, the 1977 extension of compulsory education to nine years, by Governor Murray MacLehose in response to European trade unionists. Second, after the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, there was an acceleration of university construction and finance to allow greater access under Governor David Wilson. Third, in 2000 Hong Kong’s first Chief Executive of the Special Administrative Region (SAR), Tung Chee Wah, in response to competition from Singapore and Shanghai, sought to increase postsecondary rates of participation to 60%, thereby diversifying the types of opportunities available, and promoting self-financed 2-year degree programs. In this chapter, I consider jointly the social mobility and the political consequences of these three exogenously determined education policies, including the opportunities and the challenges facing civil society organizations, political parties, and non-governmental actors. I first review the historical context for state–society relations in the current SAR and former British Crown Colony. I then introduce two alternative perspectives on the impact of higher education for civic development and social mobilization, perspectives rooted in neo-functionalist and in neo-Weberian sociologies of education. Next, I discuss the actors and agents of political change in Hong Kong. I draw inferences about the social integration of new immigrants from Mainland China, as well as the opportunities for women and for lower-income students, based on my analysis of 35 years of Hong Kong Census data. I conclude by raising questions about the future ability of governments and parties to define the postsecondary policy agenda, an agenda that now threatens to escape from government control and become a flash-point of popular mobilization.

BACKGROUND Before the Sino-British accord of 1982, where Britain promised to relinquish Colonial authority and return Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, Hong Kong possessed one of the world’s most restrictive systems of higher education, at least relative to its wealth and other social infrastructure. The government owned and operated only two universities, accommodating less than 3% of each age cohort. And yet, despite this exclusivity, the colony successfully monopolized postsecondary opportunities by either absorbing or relegating to the margins any potential competitors. Potential students were forced either to compete for a space in one of the two universities or

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(for the wealthy) study in Britain, America, Australia, Canada, or Japan. For basic education the colonial government closely cooperated with nonstate institutions of civil society (chief among them Church or independent schools). Its regulation gave the government a leading role in defining Hong Kong’s opportunity structures and permitting social mobility. A backward look at the integration of Hong Kong is illumination of the continuity as well as the challenges facing the SAR government. In pre-colonial and early colonial Hong Kong, status and authority had been regulated by a tributary system whereby later arrivals to the Kowloon Peninsula (Hakka peoples) farmed land and fished the coastal waters, paying taxes to one of the four large family clan groups which had previously settled in the flattest and most fertile areas. Formal education and legitimated expertise were recognized, but scholarship and education was only a tiny element in the allocation of authority. And even this tiny element was integral, not to the new British Colony, but to the Ch’ing Empire, where the consequences of its breakdown during the 19th century were severe.1 Precisely because Chinese education in Hong Kong was recognized as integral to greater China, the British government, in reaction, began to focus on schooling as a way to demarcate colonial sovereignty. In direct response to the Ch’ing government’s attempt to establish direct links with Hong Kong village schools, in the early 20th century, the colonial government began to require registration and control of all schools in the colony, passing the first education ordinance. This early state-society pattern suggests parallels with subsequent development of education in the colony. Rather than to build and operate primary and secondary schools, the government preferred to subsidize existing schools in return for curricular control. University development evolved differently, and was more top-down. In 1955, a review of the sole institution – Hong Kong University – recommended that it become a bilingual, English-Cantonese media institution serving as a meeting point for graduates both of Chinese- and English-media secondary schools (Keswick, 1952). This suggestion was abandoned following protest from the British lecturers at the university. As an alternative, the government allowed the amalgamation of three newer Chinese-media colleges into a second, publicly funded Chinese University of Hong Kong. Both universities were then regulated by a new official, designated, legal body, the University Grants Committee (UGC). Another perennial example of government control was over the regulation of the colony’s legal and medical professions.2 The government has been unwilling to cede control over gatekeeping through education until very recently. Four examples of governmental

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authority over educational opportunity can be cited, two from the colonial period and two from the SAR period. In 1978, in the first example, Governor Murray MacLehose accelerated a government plan to extend compulsory schooling to the first nine years of school. Rather than waiting until 1979, MacLehose decided immediately to universalize free education up through the first three years of secondary school (termed ‘‘lower’’ secondary). This move came not in response to grassroots mobilization from below, but because of trade pressures from the European Economic Community, which was concerned about unfair competition from the number children working in Hong Kong’s textile industry. This executive move effectively truncated a nascent debate between government bureaucrats, industrialists, and humanists (who did not yet use the language of human rights but who focused on education for the arts and the development of children’s full potential). Since the mid-1960s, information has been published about the numbers of students who finished the primary and lower-secondary levels. Information is also published on the numbers of students in each year who initiated their studies in a government-funded school space.3 This policy event can be gauged by the proportions of students who continued from one year to the next and who received this government funding, which can be seen in Fig. 1. As the Fig. 1 shows, the growth of public spaces was not progressive but came abruptly during the late 1970s under the governance of Murray MacLehose. Hong Kong families who in past years would have had to make difficult decisions about which of their children to enroll consequently benefited from the free schooling made

From Primary 6 to Government-supported Secondary 1 From Secondary 3 to Government-supported Secondary 4 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Fig. 1. Hong Kong Government Support of Education: Percentages of Students Who Completed Primary School Six and Secondary School Three Who in Subsequent Year Continued Their Educations in a Government-Funded School Space. Source: Hong Kong Annual Digest of Statistics, various years.

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available after 1978. As we will see, this public investment particularly benefited girls in Hong Kong. Fig. 1, thus, shows in each year the percentage of children who finished primary school in the previous year and who were able to continue on to secondary at government expense. Fig. 1 similarly shows the percentage of children who had completed the third year of secondary school and who were able to continue their studies at government expense in the fourth year (‘‘senior secondary’’). A second colonial example of state authority came 11 years later in the postsecondary education sector. Hong Kong was experiencing significant brain-drain in the wake of the 1982 Sino-British accord, as many professionals left Hong Kong because of anxiety over the looming 1997 handover to China. In the 1980s, as well, Hong Kong manufacturers began to relocate to southern China, with its cheaper labor force, and Hong Kong faced a transition to a service economy even while many of the most educated workers emigrated, at least temporarily, in order to secure a citizenship elsewhere. Then, on June 4, 1989, China cracked-down violently on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. The mood in Hong Kong grew dark as over a million Hong Kongers protested against the Beijing Government. In this context, Hong Kong’s existing plans to gradually increase the numbers of bachelor degree spaces in Hong Kong’s universities seemed inadequate. Soon after the Hong Kong demonstrations the Education and Manpower Branch decided, with support from Governor David Wilson, to launch a massive expansion of opportunities for the bachelor degree in Hong Kong.4 A new goal of 18% of each cohort was established. Creating these opportunities came through constructing one new university (the University of Science and Technology) as well as upgrading polytechnic institutes to universities, taking over the finance of the existing Lingnan College and creating Lingnan University, and amalgamating several separate colleges of education into the new, degreegranting Hong Kong Institute of Education. An indictor of government action in postsecondary education is available from the records of the UGC. As can be appreciated from Fig. 2, the 18% goal was very quickly realized. Much of the early expansion in numbers of students came through increased participation by affluent families who would otherwise have sent their children overseas to study. Fig. 2 presents both the actual numbers of new university students and the percentages of university-aged students who enrolled. Similar to Fig. 1, the pattern seen in Fig. 2 indicates a steep increase in the number of students and the participation rates, especially in the years immediately after Tiananmen. Note, too, a key difference in the expansion of public places available for

20%

16000

18% 16%

14000 12000 10000

Number new enrollments Percent age group

14% 12% 10%

8000

8%

6000

6%

4000

4%

2000

2%

0

0% 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

Number full-time equivalent new enrollments

18000

New enrollments as percent of age group

237


Academic Year

Fig. 2.

New Higher Education Students Enrolling in Publicly-Funded (UGC) Bachelor Degrees, 1981–2006. Source: University Grants Committee.

students seeking bachelor degrees. The expansion of primary and secondary continuation rates slowed in the 1990s as the result of a ceiling effect: near universal coverage was reached by government subsidy. The few children who did not continue in government schools were usually from very wealthy families who enrolled them in private schools that received no government support. For university studies, by contrast, after the steep expansion from 1986 to 1996, enrollments leveled-off but at a comparatively low percentage of eligible students. This different pattern, as we will see, created a different change in opportunities for poorer students and those whose families had immigrated to Hong Kong from Mainland China. In response to the government’s inability further to increase the (very expensive) subsidies available for students at the bachelor’s level, greater numbers of families began to send their children for degrees in overseas institutions (primarily to Australia, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan). The third example of state action came about in 2000. Tung Chee Wah, Hong Kong’s first post-handover Chief Executive, faced mounting unemployment among the young as Hong Kong faced an increasingly competitive environment in relation to other Asian centers of technology and service, especially Singapore and Shanghai. Tung’s 2000 policy address therefore boldly promised to increase educational opportunities. His dilemma was that the government could no longer afford to pay the same per pupil subsidies for higher education that universities were costing the government. He therefore envisioned a self-supporting short-course or

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associate degree sector that would enable a further 40% of Hong Kong’s youth to pursue their educations. His plan came as a shock to the education establishment and to his own secretary of education. Few details had been considered before the announcement, and there was no medium term strategy regarding what should be done for graduates who wished to continue their studies in one of the universities. The government pledged to provide land and building for new institutions, and to permit students in non-bachelor’s programs to apply on the same basis as university students for financial assistance to cover their costs. But the lavish subsidy of university students was not an option for the expansion envisioned by the Chief Executive (Hong Kong was spending approximately US22,000 annually on recurrent costs alone, not including research funding and capital costs). Tung Chee Wah’s announcement succeeded in sparking local providers of adult and continuing education to establish new programs and new locales for their operations, as they sought government construction costs and prepared to profit from student fees that were greater than those being charged by the university bachelor’s programs. There was another sense in which Tung’s proposal was successful, at least in the short term: it was populist, and was pitched directly toward the Hong Kong people, circumventing political parties, civil servants, and education institutions. The effect was to present his government as the leader toward greater educational opportunity. Tung was borrowing new ideas from his commissioner of education, Antony Leung, who had crafted an argument for postsecondary education around concerns for social mobility (thus robbing an issue that might have been used by opposition leaders). Although partly outside the scope of the current chapter, the most recent example of insulated decision making occurred following the 2007 election for the post of Chief Executive. Donald Tsang Yam-Kuen became the acting Chief Executive in March 2005, and in 2007, an 800-member election committee (composed mostly of functional representatives of interest groups) selected over the candidate of the Civic Party, Alan Leong Kah-kit. In the debates leading up to the election, Alan Leong’s Civic Party raised the profile of education policy. The party platform promised that, if elected, Alan Leong would extend free and compulsory education from 9 to 11 years. He also promised to upgrade postsecondary education, and to stop further reductions in the budgets allocated to universities. He emphasized that the government should allow schools greater autonomy from the government. After his election, and in his formal Policy Address, Donald Tsang gave education attention, and he promised to extend free and


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compulsory education to 12 years (including a year of kindergarten). But the public rationale offered by Tsang differed from those mentioned by the Civic Party or the opposition ‘‘Pan-Democrats.’’ Tsang promised to ‘‘continue to raise the quality of education and upgrade our human capital, encourage more outstanding non-local students to study in Hong Kong and work here after graduation, and attract more talents to Hong Kong with a view in optimizing our demographic structure.’’ In each of these examples, proactive policies by a strong governor or chief executive effectively preempted any public demands for education opportunity. Hong Kong’s soft authoritarian state was able to resist latent pressures for expanded education long after most democracies of similar wealth had implemented mass basic and postsecondary education in response to social demand. In Hong Kong, social demand remained latent partly because the public had no channel wherein to influence public debate, and partly because, as we will see, the terms of the government tried to frame the debate not in terms of ‘‘opportunity’’ but in terms of ‘‘manpower planning’’ and concerns over the need for technical expertise. As we will see, the government carefully avoided discussion of ‘‘social mobility’’ until it was used by Antony Leung (chair of the UGC and then the Education Commission in the context of a broader 2000 Education Reform). When the government finally began to deviate from manpower planning rationales (it changed the name of it’s education department only last year from ‘‘Education and Manpower Branch’’), the intention may have been to co-opt education as a political issue, taking a demand that could have been voiced by opposition, and placing at the center of government program. However, there were internal contradictions in the government’s solution in equalizing educational opportunity by promoting privatized sub-degree programs at the postsecondary level. Seeing these contradictions, Hong Kong’s opposition parties (the Democratic Party and the Civic Party) issued election platforms that were at odds both with the government’s ‘‘manpower’’ approach and the positions of the two pro-government parties (the business-oriented Liberal Party and the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for Betterment of Hong Kong – DAB). Key positions of these political parties are reproduced in Appendix.

EFFECTS OF STATE CONTROL ON CIVIL SOCIETY What are the net effects on public discourse and civic consciousness of attempts by Hong Kong’s recent administrations to control postsecondary

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educational opportunities? How have rising expectations of educational opportunity shaped discourse and consciousness? Questions of Hong Kong identity provide one entry point to this larger issue. In large-scale surveys respondents with more education have tended to identify themselves as ‘‘Hong Kongese’’ rather than ‘‘Chinese’’ citizens (Lau, 2000). In one sense, this finding may seem unsurprising, since more educated persons also tend to be younger. But we should analyze carefully the possible ways that education may affect identity. In what ways might the education system influence the likelihood that its citizens would identify themselves as Hong Kongers and what are the implications for the social integration of Hong Kong? In answer to these questions there are two alternative, though not mutually exclusive, interpretations. First, socialization and collective identity may be achieved through social organizations. Neo-functionalists have viewed schools as necessary for the diversification and integration of children in social roles. Schools and universities (like the military, the clan group, the Church, and some political groups) transmit common value orientations to their members, while also training adults to fill specific responsibilities. As organizations, schools similarly regulate children through teaching them social norms both through an official and a hidden school curriculum. Children learn who they are both through explicit lessons and through unspoken rituals they experience while they are students, thereby developing a diverse range of talents that are needed to ensure that society remains vital rather than tradition-bound. This interpretation of social integration holds the promise of civic integration as well as economic diversification. A positive view of educational institutions – including postsecondary education – is that these institutions will promote debate in a common space and shared forum. Societies which might otherwise be splintered by the centrifugal forces of disparate identities and competing interests can, through a common system of higher education, create stakeholders from these groups in shared institutions. The best exponent of this view is the consensus document drafted though the input of dozens of national leaders, university administrators, and development experts. The Taskforce for Higher Education and Society argues, Higher education promotes values that are more inclusive or more ‘‘public’’ than other civic venues, such as religious communities, households and families, or ethnic and linguistic groups. Higher education is expected to embody norms of social interaction such as open debate and argumentative reason; to emphasize the autonomy and selfreliance of its individual members; and to reject discrimination based on gender,


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ethnicity, religious belief, or social class. The best higher education institution is a model and a source of pressure for creating a modern civil society. This is an ideal not often realized, but is nevertheless a standard against which to measure national systems.

An alternative perspective is that individuals accept their allocation of social status from organizations if these organizations are recognized as ‘‘legitimate.’’ Publicly supported or recognized schools and universities succeed, in part, because they are recognized as social institutions that rightfully govern access to status positions. Education can integrate societies and form common identities through promotion of universalism, regularity, transparency, and application of the rule of law with regard to the outcomes of education. When general rules are applied to all individuals, then they see themselves in relation to that institution as an individual rather than as a member of a language or ethnic group. Exponents of this view, which could be termed a ‘‘neo-Weberian’’ perspective, point to the ways that national development historically has focused on the integration of citizens as individuals, not groups, and that individual educational opportunity is essential for the legitimation of nation states which were threatened by external challenges to their authority by supra-national or competing identities (for example, of ‘‘Christendom’’ or, perhaps, pan-Chinese identity). As Ramirez and Boli (1987, p. 6) argue, Of the many legitimating myths that arose and became institutionalized in Western Europe in the modem era, five are of primary importance for our understanding of the process by which mass schooling became a necessary part of the response to external challenges to state power. They include the legitimating myths of (1) the individual, (2) the nation as a society made up of individuals, (3) progress, (4) childhood socialization as the key to adult character, and (5) the state as guardian nation and guarantor of progress.

In this view, the identification of individuals with the nation depends on their acceptance of the state’s role in regulating and allocating opportunities for individual well-being. John Meyer (2001, p. 154) has succinctly described the end result of this global tendency: ‘‘the focus on individual equality, rather than group rights or needs, suggests how much education in the contemporary world has a liberal and individualist cast. Talk that educational opportunity ought principally to be structured by national or local needs, rather than by individual choice (and thus liberal market forces), tends to disappear.’’ Meyer’s suggestion, while perhaps apt in much of the world, finds an important counter-factual in Hong Kong. As aforementioned,

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manpower planning perspectives have not disappeared in Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s continued use of manpower planning might be explained by the paradox inherent in Hong Kong education. Nation states attempt to create a coherent, distinctive national identity. Schools create this identity not only by imparting a common curriculum, but also language and set of rituals. Nation states also create an integrated society by using schooling to achieve a monopoly on the allocation of social status. But Hong Kong has never been a nationstate. Its curriculum and rituals have been very confusing to children in the past. In the post-handover period, Hong Kong has attempted to unify its diverse schools by asking more to use ‘‘mother-tongue’’ (Cantonese) instruction rather than English, and also to increase their use of Mandarin Chinese. Apart from the inconsistent content of the curriculum, with it’s ambiguity over which polity demands student loyalty, there is a latent contradiction that is apparent in Hong Kong just as in every society that uses equal education opportunities to produce unequal outcomes. Increasingly in Hong Kong, the basic opportunities for status attainment are distributed unequally at the postsecondary levels. In past years, before the return to Hong Kong of many wealthy families (and before huge real increases in the cost of overseas university education for the children of wealthy families), Hong Kong universities tended to absorb greater proportions of poor families than they do today. Although the share of university degree students from the richest quarter of households declined from 44 to 34% over 1981–1991, this percentage climbed back to 38% in 2001. What is potentially even more confusing for Hong Kong families, and more critical for the maintenance of a legitimate authority over education, is the rapid emergence in Hong Kong of a segmented system of postsecondary education. As aforementioned, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive launched an independent plan (with minimal input from education planners) to privatize new opportunities for postsecondary education. This is resulting in stratified alternatives for postsecondary education. Before 2002, Hong Kong had a relatively unified and undifferentiated system of postsecondary education. Subsequently, Hong Kong has diversified its system by creating a selfsupporting and privatized 2-year sub-degree or associate degree sector. This diversity of institutional types, on the one hand, offers more students an opportunity to obtain postsecondary education. On the other hand, the new opportunities have the potential to side-line some students into dead-end occupations because there is still no credit transfer mechanism for 2-year students to continue to the bachelor’s level.


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WHAT DO CENSUS DATA TELL US ABOUT EDUCATIONAL ACCESS IN HONG KONG? Researchers who investigate the consequences of expanded public support and the diversification of education can draw on an impressive series of census data in Hong Kong. Few societies anywhere have been so open and transparent with high-quality information over a period of rapid economic development and political change. That Hong Kong has done so continuously before and after the Handover to China is nothing short of astounding. Although multi-party debate has emerged only in the past 20 years, there is a degree of transparency and public recording that clearly indicates the ways that resources were channeled to educational providers under the colonial and the S.A.R. governments. At both the household- and individual-level, micro-use samples of census data are available since 1971. The quality and coverage of these data have increased in recent years (as discussed later). However, basic information has been preserved over four decades on educational participation of Hong Kong children, along with information on their family resources and social status. Hong Kong Census data are collected every five years. In addition to an enumeration of the entire city, a smaller random number of households is interviewed by representatives of the Census and Statistics Department. From this sub-sample, a probability sample equivalent is created by the Department. I analyzed a 1% sub-sample of the 1971 population census. For 1981, 1991, 1996, 2001, and 2006 I analyzed a larger 5% sub-sample. As I will discuss later, the census methodology changed after 1996, but it is possible to make these data consistent for comparisons over the full 1971–2006 period. The Census does not collect information about the social origin of each individual. However, information about an individual’s parents and households can be obtained if that individual resides with the family during the time of the census. The overwhelming majority of Hong Kong’s young people – even university students – have resided with their parents until marriage. For the 1971, 1981, and 1991 census years, there is information for individuals about themselves and – when they resided with their parents at the time of the census – there is also information about the family. In this sense, we can consider the total population sample of children, and a slightly smaller sample of children who resided with parents at the time of the census. When comparing individual’s educational attainment over time, it is possible to use either the census sample of individuals or of children to reveal historical tendencies in the likelihood of education depending on

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gender, age, or place of birth. Furthermore, it is possible to use the census sample of children (but not individuals living independently in 1971, 1981, or 1991) to uncover tendencies over time in the impact of family factors on the likelihood of receiving a particular level of education. Since 1996, the Census began to use a de jure rather than a de facto definition of residence. From the 1996 census onward, Hong Kong asked respondents about the education and employment status of all individuals who usually were part of the household, even if at the time of the census they resided elsewhere temporarily (‘‘mobile residents’’). The census thereby captured information about young people who lived in university dormitories and even children who were studying at overseas universities (the census coded whether the child lived in Hong Kong, and the educational level of university students was specifically given as either Hong Kong or overseas universities). The new methodology became critically important because, as we will see, increasing proportions of young people began to study outside Hong Kong from 1996 to 2006. In order to make a longer comparison of educational attainments, I have restricted the census sample of individuals to include only those who were living in Hong Kong, and I have excluded ‘‘mobile residents’’ from the later three census years. Information about of individuals for each census year allowed me to calculate the rates of educational attainment5 presented in Table 1. In Table 1 we can see the expanding participation by males and females in all levels of education. Over the 35-year period, secondary access became universal. Postsecondary access also grew, though it is still far below the rate of access in similarly developed economies (Hong Kong’s GDP/ capita is similar to that of Switzerland and the United States). From Table 1 it is possible to note, as well, the changing role of gender in educational attainment. How likely were girls to have attained a particular educational level, as compared with boys? If we consider the ratio of net girls’ attainment rates divided by boys’ attainment, we can get a rough sense of the vast change Hong Kong girls experience within a single generation. In 1981, girls were much less likely than boys to have studied in a Hong Kong university. By 2006, girls were far more likely to have done so. This pattern can be observed in Fig. 3. In this figure, equality would be indicated by parity between the net attainment of girls and boys. In a year when a smaller percentage of girls attain education than boys at a particular level, Fig. 3 plots a point below 1, the ‘‘line of parity.’’ In a year when greater percentages of girls attained education than boys, this point is above 1, the line of parity. Similar tabulations are possible focusing only the sub-sample of children living with a parent rather than the larger sample of all individuals,

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Table 1.

Educational Attainment of Hong Kong Residents by Ages 19–20. Male

Female

Total

1971 1% Census sample Percentage who attained Percentage who attained Percentage who attained Percentage who attained

lower-secondary level upper-secondary level any type of post-secondary education university bachelor degree program

63.1 32.5 6.2 2.2

53.4 28.6 4.5 1.8

58.25 30.6 5.4 2.0



84.0 55.4 5.2 1.7

78.5 56.2 4.0 0.9

81.25 55.8 4.6 1.3



97.0 69.0 17.4 6.2

98.0 84.9 20.2 6.2

97.5 76.8 18.8 6.2

1996 5% Census samplea Percentage who attained lower-secondary level Percentage who attained upper-secondary level Percentage who attained any type of post-secondary education Percentage who attained university bachelor degree program

97.5 74.8 22.7 12.6

97.5 86.8 23.2 14.3

97.5 80.6 22.3 13.3


98.0 83.0 28.5 13.1

99.0 88.5 33.0 16.3

98.5 85.8 30.8 14.7


99.0 90.6 36.8 8.9

99.0 95.4 39.9 12.1

99.0 92.9 38.4 10.5

a

The 1996, 2001 and 2006 Census tabulations are limited to individuals who were physically present in Hong Kong at the moment of the census. This restriction facilitates comparison with earlier 1971, 1981 and 1991 census years, when no information was collected by the Census about ‘‘mobile’’ residents who were temporarily outside HK, for example to attend university abroad (Whereabouts ¼ 4). Post-secondary attainment rates are therefore only for individuals who attended Hong Kong institutions.

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1.4 1.2 1.0 line of parity: ratio of girls' / boys' attainment 0.8

lower-secondary attainment ratio upper-secondary attainment ratio

0.6

bachelor degree in HK ratio 0.4 1981

Fig. 3.

1991

1996

2001

2006

Education Attained by Hong Kong Girls Relative to Attainment by Boys at Ages 19–20, by Census Year.

regardless of place of residence. If we consider children who lived with their father, we can tabulate the percentages of those who attained specific education levels and whose fathers’ occupations could be broadly classified as clerical/professional (‘‘white collar’’) or as manual (‘‘non-white collar’’). Comparable – although not identical – occupational classifications were used in all census years. Repeating the calculations seen previously for gender, it is possible to estimate roughly the relative net likelihood of attaining secondary and university education for 19- and 20-year-old children whose father’s occupations fell into these broad classifications. Fig. 4 presents these relative odds. Fig. 4 shows a striking decrease in the inequality of access to lower secondary (the first three years) and then to upper secondary. By 2006, there were no significant differences in the net likelihood of access to these levels between children whose fathers worked in each type of occupation. However, the trend for study in the university level is more complex. Relative to the children of ‘‘white collar’’ fathers, there was a decrease of inequality from 1971 to 1996. In 1971, working-class children were less only approximately 20% as likely to have begun university study (for a bachelor degree in Hong Kong) by the age of 19 or 20. A steady trend closed this gap such that, by 1996, working class children were much more likely to have attained this level of study than in previous years. This period corresponded to the dramatic growth in government-provided university, seen previously in Fig. 2. In 2001 and 2006, however, after growth halted (and after secondary schooling was universalized), the relative likelihood of bachelor degree study fell for working class children as compared with the

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line of parity: ratio non-white collar / children of white collar occupation fathers 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 lower-secondary attainment ratio 0.2

upper-secondary attainment ratio bachelor degree in HK ratio

0.0 1971

1981

1991

1996

2001

2006

Fig. 4. Education Attained by Children of Working-Class Fathers at Ages 19–20 Relative to Attainment by White-Collar Occupation Fathers, by Census Year.

children of white-collar fathers. It seems that social integration has been accomplished, but only to a certain point, by the expansion of education. When the government was unable to expand subsidized access to bachelor degrees in Hong Kong it sought to expand a lower-cost alternative using diplomas and promoting ‘‘associate’’ degrees for commuter students who would continue living with their families. Sometimes these programs were associated with one of the eight recognized universities, but their students were not fully recognized as university members. Access to these programs was more open (and, ironically, more expensive) compared to the elite bachelor programs. At the same time, greater numbers of Hong Kong parents sought to enroll their children in university programs outside of Hong Kong. This is widely understood in Hong Kong as a response to the political uncertainty surrounding Hong Kong’s 1997 Handover, and the desire by parents to hedge their bets by helping their children to obtain foreign credentials and (sometimes) overseas passports. From the 1996 census, it has been possible to estimate the percentages of students who studied outside Hong Kong (because they were considered ‘‘mobile residents’’). How has educational expansion helped to integrate new arrivals from Mainland China? To address this question, I tabulated postsecondary attainment rates for individuals who had been born in Hong Kong and also those who had been born on the Mainland. In general, children whose families had immigrated to Hong Kong from the Mainland had attained less

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Percentage Attaining Level

Associate or sub-degree 25

Bachelor's Program in HK Bachelor's Program outside HK

20 15 10 5 0 1996 2001 2006 Hong Kong Natives

1996

2001 2006 Born on Mainland

Fig. 5. Postsecondary Attainment Rates of Usual Hong Kong Residents, Ages 19– 20, by Immigrant Status and Census Year. Note: Includes attendance in non-HK, overseas universities by usual hong kong residents who were physically outside of household and outside of Hong Kong during the time of the census.

education by the age of 19–20 as compared to those who were born in Hong Kong. As will be seen later, this deficiency was present even among those who had moved to Hong Kong when they were younger than 10. Fig. 5 illustrates the 10-year trend in postsecondary education. As already seen in Fig. 2, the growth in bachelor degree programs halted after 1996. Unsurprisingly, the attainment rate was stable in the sample of Hong Kong natives over the 1996–2006 periods. But this does not mean a halt to the increasing rates of postsecondary participation by Hong Kong natives. Rather, there has been a redistribution of college-going to non-degree and overseas institutions. Of even greater significance is that the participation rates in Hong Kong B.A. programs actually fell slightly among 19–20-year-old children whose families had moved to Hong Kong from Mainland China.6 Rates of study in both overseas programs and in associate/sub-degree programs increased substantially over the decade. A greater increase can be seen among Hong Kong natives than among immigrant children. Since 2001, immigrants increased very little in their rates of associate/sub-degree attainment. In 1996 relatively few native or immigrant children studied at an overseas university. During the subsequent decade, sizeable proportions of persons did so. One of the net results of these changes for postsecondary

249


education is that Hong Kong government-subsidized universities no-longer defined the sector or monopolized the provision of education. Proportionately fewer stakeholder families were connected with Hong Kong’s Bachelor-granting institutions, and more were involved with overseas universities. As we will see, those who studied in overseas universities come primarily from the top income groups of Hong Kong natives. There are important long-term consequences to the changed distribution of postsecondary students among the three options shown in Fig. 5. These options are not alternative but unequal routes to social mobility and wealth. Rather, these options lead to very different outcomes, and these differences are increasing over time. Most workers are in their early careers by the time they reach age 24–25. Fig. 6 presents the mean monthly salaries (in current dollars) for workers of this age group depending on their educational attainments in associate, Hong Kong degree, and overseas degree programs.7 Fig. 6 compares the mean monthly salaries of 24–25-year-old workers in these three groups of postsecondary educational attainment with workers who have no postsecondary education. As we can see from Fig. 6, the early salaries of workers generally declined from 2001 to 2006 as the Hong Kong economy experienced a deep recession and declining productivity. Unemployment rates increased over this period. So did the numbers of workers with postsecondary education (apart from the level numbers of 16000 No Postsecondary study Associate or sub-degree in HK Bachelors degree in HK Bachelors degree outside of HK

Current Hong Kong Dollars

15000 14000 13000 12000 11000 10000 9000 8000 7000 1996

2001

2006

Workers Born in Hong Kong

Fig. 6.

1996

2001

2006

Workers Born on Mainland

Monthy Income of Hong Kong Workers, Ages 24–25, by Educational Attainment, Immigrant Status, and Census Year.

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workers with bachelor degrees from Hong Kong, seen in Fig. 5). Workers who had been born on the Mainland of China – at least those reported in Fig. 6 who had lived in Hong Kong for 10 years or longer – tended to similar monthly salaries for each education level as compared with native Hong Kong workers. However, notice that the monthly salaries of workers with associate degrees or diplomas fell precipitously for both native and immigrant workers as these non-bachelor programs expanded and as their graduates flooded the labor market. These non-degree programs declined in value precisely at the time that the Hong Kong government attempted to redirect some of university aspirants away from bachelor degree programs and toward these self-financed (and, hence, much more expensive) community college programs. Because immigrants who pursued postsecondary education did so increasingly in these program, their earnings gap with native Hong Kong students will tend to fall. The differentiation seen in Fig. 5 could arise for reasons other than immigration status. A child’s place of birth may be less important than material family resources. The direct costs of Hong Kong’s university bachelor programs are small, given a progressive system of need-based loans and government grants, and because fees are relatively low in comparison with the large government subsidy of universities. But parental income could be important for educational attainment because parents pay for supplemental lesson study and other enrichment activities. Parents with higher incomes tend to be more highly educated, and their educational attainment serves to motivate children, whereas the parents are more able to assist children with school assignments and to place children in better secondary schools. For these reasons, it is important to observe the association between parental income and the propensity to attain postsecondary education. Recent studies of postsecondary attainment and allocation, for example in Korea and in Taiwan, (Park, 2007; Tsai & Shavit, 2007) have shown the stability of occupational origin on access. Park (2007) emphasizes the need for comparable measures of income in these investigations, and the Hong Kong census data offer the opportunity to gauge income categories. For each census year, I aggregated the total monthly earnings of both parents. Because I was most interested in the relative advantage of children from different income levels in each year, I standardized the measure of income by creating four quartiles of parental earnings for the 1996, 2001, and 2006 Census.8 Fig. 7 presents the rates of attainment by usual Hong Kong resident children in each census year. These rates are calculated and presented for all children, regardless of where they physically resided at the moment of the census, unless children had established a permanent

2001 Census

25

poorest quarter

20

20

20

15

15

15

10

10

10

5

5

5

0

Fig. 7.

Overseas university degree program

lower-middle quarter upper-middle quarter richest quarter

0

0 Associate University or subdegree bachelors in HK degree in HK

2006 Census

25

Associate University or subdegree bachelors in HK degree in HK


Associate University or subdegree bachelors in HK degree in HK



1996 Census

25

Postsecondary Educational Attainment Rates for Usual Hong Kong Resident Children, Ages 19–20, by Parental Income Quartile in 1996, 2001 and 2006 Census.

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household of their own. In each census year, children from the upper 25% of the parental income distribution were substantially more likely to have entered a bachelor degree program in Hong Kong or overseas. The net likelihood of studying in a degree program is roughly similar, however, between students from the bottom three-quarters of the parental income distribution. By contrast with the over-representation of top-income children in Hong Kong or overseas bachelor degree programs, we see very little disadvantage of lower-income children in terms of access to associate or sub-degree programs. In each census year, many more low income students attended associate/sub-degree programs than bachelor programs. As previously seen in Fig. 6, the income benefit of these more expensive programs is much lower than the income benefit associated with a bachelor degree. What are the recent trends in the combined impact of gender, immigration status, and family income on the opportunity to obtain postsecondary education? To help answer that question, I estimated multinomial logistic regressions of the three postsecondary outcomes discussed previously in Figs. 5 and 7. For each outcome, the odds ratios of demographic factors are estimated for having initiated an associate degree, a bachelor degree in Hong Kong, and an overseas degree. In addition to measuring the impact of the quartile of the father’s income, I estimated the effects of sibship size. Income has to be shared among other members of the household, and so the income available to each child would generally decline as the number of siblings increases. I therefore included in the regression model a measure of the number of siblings who share the home with the 19–20-year-old child. To gauge recent changes in the impact of these variables on postsecondary educational attainment, I merged the 2006 and 2001 data together and included a dummy variable to show whether a particular child was being measured in 2006 (as opposed to 2001, the ‘‘base’’ year). Finally, I estimated the effects of the interaction of each variable with the dummy variable for 2006. I estimated two different specifications of this model. In the first model specification I focused only on income, and I then estimated the direct and interaction effects of the 2006 year (rather than 2001), parental income (measured in quartiles with the bottom quartile as missing reference group), the number of siblings living at home, and whether the child was female (as opposed to male, the omitted reference category). In the second model specification I included information about immigration status to gauge the relative success of recent immigrants in moving up the education ladder. Table 2 presents the odds ratios associated with each variable. Odds ratios for variables that are greater than 1 indicate that greater values of those

Model 1

Census is 2006 (not 2001) Parents’ income is second (not bottom) quarter Parents’ income is in third (not bottom) quarter Parents’ income is in top (not bottom) quarter Interaction: second quarter 2006 Census Interaction: third quarter 2006 Census Interaction: top quarter 2006 Census Number of siblings sharing home

HK-Sub

HK-B.A.

Overseas

HK-Sub

HK-B.A.

Overseas

1.690 (4.44) 1.136 (1.36) 1.303 (2.90) 1.480 (4.19) 0.885 (0.98) 1.002 (0.019) 1.020 (0.16) 0.931 (2.15) 0.934 (1.48)

0.880 (0.83) 0.893 (0.98) 1.199 (1.67) 2.022 (6.74) 1.474 (2.38) 0.949 (0.33) 1.302 (1.73) 0.816 (4.99) 0.933 (1.14)

2.560 (3.79) 0.574 (2.07) 0.778 (1.02) 5.814 (9.33) 1.056 (0.17) 1.169 (0.53) 0.746 (1.26) 0.750 (3.83) 0.839 (1.80)

1.902 (5.29) 1.138 (1.38) 1.298 (2.85) 1.395 (3.53) 0.851 (1.28) 0.929 (0.60) 0.897 (0.86) 0.911 (2.77) 0.972 (0.61)

1.027 (0.17) 0.894 (0.96) 1.193 (1.61) 1.872 (5.96) 1.409 (2.09) 0.864 (0.90) 1.110 (0.68) 0.792 (5.63) 0.979 (0.34)

2.764 (4.02) 0.576 (2.06) 0.774 (1.04) 5.468 (8.96) 1.028 (0.085) 1.109 (0.35) 0.686 (1.61) 0.735 (4.05) 0.863 (1.50)

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Interaction: siblings 2006 Census

Model 2


Table 2. Multinomial Logistic Regression Estimates of Postsecondary Attainment by Age 19–20 (Odds Ratios of Attending HK- Sub or Associate Degree, HK-B.A./B.S. Degree, or Overseas Degree Program as Opposed to no Post-Secondary).

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Table 2. (Continued ) Model 1

Model 2

HK-Sub

HK-B.A.

1.156 (2.31) 0.824 (2.29) –

1.444 (5.01) 0.986 (0.13) –

Immigrated from mainland after age nine

–

–

–

Younger immigrant 2006 Census

–

–

–

Older immigrant 2006 Census

–

–

–

14574

14574

14574

Child is female (not male) Interaction: female 2006 Census Immigrated from mainland by age nine

Observations

Overseas 1.185 (1.39) 0.985 (0.094) –

HK-Sub

HK-B.A.

Overseas

1.178 (2.60) 0.818 (2.35) 0.798 (1.76) 0.304 (6.48) 0.727 (1.99) 0.734 (1.36) 14574

1.478 (5.30) 0.973 (0.26) 0.841 (1.17) 0.0908 (6.23) 0.530 (3.03) 0.888 (0.24) 14574

1.199 (1.48) 0.974 (0.17) 0.615 (1.52) 0.407 (2.28) 0.705 (0.91) 1.354 (0.69) 14574

Note: Z statistics in parentheses. po.01. po.05. po.1.

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variables tend to make it more likely that a child would have a particular postsecondary outcome. Odds ratios for variables that are less than 1 indicate that greater values of variables reduce the odds of a particular outcome. Odds ratios that are not statistically significant show there is no evidence of any positive or negative effect. A statistically significant interaction effect of an independent variable with the 2006 dummy variable indicates that the effect of that variable has changed during the 2001–2006 period, either making the 2001 effect stronger (odds ratios greater than 1) or weaker (if odds ratios are less than 1). The mere fact that a child is 19–20 years of age in 2006 (and not 2001, the omitted reference group) made it far more likely that the child would have studied in a Hong Kong sub-degree or associate degree program. Children from the 2006 sample were also much more likely than in 2001 to have studied for a bachelor degree in an overseas institution. The odds ratios associated with these outcomes are 1.69 and 2.56, respectively (both statistically significant). Importantly, there is an insignificant effect of the 2006 time period on studying for a bachelor degree in one of the Hong Kong’s universities. The insignificant odds ration reflects the leveling-off of Hong Kong expansion, seen previously in Fig. 2, compared to the growth in overseas and non-bachelor’s enrollments, seen in Fig. 5. Greater numbers of siblings tended to reduce the likelihood of any type of postsecondary study. Children with greater parental income were more likely to have begun postsecondary study (especially at an overseas institution, where top-income quartile children had about 5.8 greater odds of studying as compared to children with parental income in the bottom quartile). There is a small but significant positive interaction effect with the 2006 census of living in a top income quartile household: compared with their advantage in 2001, the richest children appeared to have become relatively more (as compared to poorer children) to have studied in a Hong Kong university. There was less chance in 2006 than in 2001 that children with many siblings would have studied oversees (odds ratio of .839 for the sibling interaction with 2006). Model 2 from Table 2 repeats the analysis of postsecondary outcomes seen in Model 1, but includes immigration status from Mainland China (Model 2) and the time period interaction of immigration (Model 3). This model shows that children who had immigrated from Mainland China after they were nine years old were extremely unlikely to have begun any form of postsecondary education by the time they were 19 or 20. Children who had arrived in Hong Kong by the time they were nine or younger were – at least in 2001 – no less likely to have begun in a Hong Kong

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bachelor degree program. However, as can be seen from the statistically significant odds ratio of 0.530 in Model 2 for the 2006 interaction effect, children who had arrived at younger ages were relatively unlikely to have begun in a Hong Kong bachelor program in 2006. The disadvantages associated with immigration from China appear to have worsened over time. This can only be considered ‘‘bad news’’ from the perspective of social integration.

THE POLITICAL RESPONSE TO EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY In most modern non-totalitarian societies, the provision of schooling historically has been elastic with respect to demand, at least at the primary and secondary levels. That is to say that, as greater numbers of families chose to prioritize their children’s educations and forego their children’s earnings, governments have offered progressively more publically funded places to meet this demand. At the more-expensive postsecondary levels, non-totalitarian governments have also permitted more educational opportunities in sync with social demand pressures. Most governments historically did not allocate sufficient funding to permit universal postsecondary education. But churches or private organizations founded universities (usually before the existence of modern nation-states) and these absorbed much of the public’s demand for higher education. Hong Kong’s universities are new, largely owned and operated by the state, and Hong Kong had never featured a pluralist or conventionally democratic governance. Thus it followed neither of these patterns for secondary or postsecondary education. Its colonial government permitted private schools to operate but leaders were unresponsive to social demand pressures for increased subsidy of secondary education. Compared to nation-states in the Asian Pacific region (where education had important nation-building and civic functions), Hong Kong lagged behind. Only in the late 1970s did the English governor of Hong Kong, Murray MacLehose, decide to accelerate educational expansion by making the first three years of secondary school free and compulsory. Coming more than 10 years after Taiwan universalized its lower secondary school, the decision by MacLehose was reached in the absence of local political pressures but consultation with trade union leaders from the European Economic Community, who were concerned about unfair competition by Hong Kong manufacturers


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using child laborers. University access was also similarly very limited. Hong Kong’s government monopolized the provision of bachelor degrees and even government-recognized diplomas. The advantage of this monopoly and comparatively elite system was that the per-student university spending was lavish. As compared with the per-student spending by the Education Department on Kindergarten, Primary, and Secondary schooling, the government provided far greater subsidies to postsecondary institutions through the autonomous UGC. This elite system abruptly began to expand and diversify beginning in the late 1980s and 1990s. Again, the decisions to accelerate the spending and coverage of postsecondary education responded, at least arguably, more to external pressures than from local demands. In the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, Governor David Wilson deviated from a more cautious higher education strategy, informing the UGC (then meeting in Australia) that he intended to expand dramatically the opportunities for obtaining university degrees. New construction and new faculties soon doubled the number and the percentages of students going to university. Before 1989, debate over the purpose of education was stultified by the manpower planning orientation of the government. As Hong Kong’s former Executive Secretary of the UGC reflected, years after returning to England, ‘‘the sort of debates that go on in this country, in the UK, about, about widening access to, you know, poorer areas, and the debate about providing university places to people from working-class backgrounds and poorer backgrounds, and backgrounds from families with no previous experience of higher education – it wasn’t really, it wasn’t an issue in Hong Kong.’’ As an example of the government’s manpower focus, and as useful contrast with the type of discussion that eventually did emerge, consider a still-born debate in the Legislative Council from 1977, when a government ‘‘Green Paper’’ was circulated to solicit public opinion for universalizing lower secondary education. In a Legislative Council session, members posed questions to Kenneth Topely, the colonial director of education. One member, Alex Wu, called the government shortsighted, arguing that, The main theme of the Green Paper could fairly be described as relevance: the relevance of our educational system to the pattern of our society. Unfortunately, I think, the Green Paper has taken too narrow a view of relevance, concentrating almost entirely on the economic aspects. It is certainly right that we should cut our coats according to our cloth. Hong Kong has always been sensible enough to live within its means and that principle must apply even to education. However, this argument should not be taken too far. There is more than one specific reference to the undesirability of educating young

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people beyond the capacity of the economy to employ their talents, and to some extent this thread runs through the whole document. The thinking behind the proposals of the Green Paper seems to me unnecessarily utilitarian.

In response, the education director carefully avoided embracing other than economic considerations, though Topley conceded that, I apologise to Mr Alex WU if the Green Paper gave the impression that the authors’, and therefore the Government’s interests were too utilitarian, more concerned about training a work-force than giving our children an all-round education. It is true that we were concerned that we should not create a system of education which would in time, as has happened elsewhere, damage the fabric of our society.

The ‘‘damage’’ to which Topley referred concerned, first, the possibility that expectations might rise faster than economic opportunities for graduates of secondary school, and that the options for these students at the postsecondary level would not keep pace with the numbers of student who sought to continue to a higher degree. But, more noteworthy, the disagreement between Topley and Wu presaged the future confrontation over the purpose and meaning of education, and whether human development or economic development was to be considered as a legitimate justification for government involvement. The deliberate expansion of higher education did much to raise the expectations of the public for equitable distributions of opportunity. Some of this change may have originated in the attitude of David Wilson himself. Interviewed 18 years after his post-Tiananmen expansion of higher education, Lord Wilson recalled officiating at university graduations. [I remember] the thrill of going to graduation ceremonies in all Hong Kong universities where, as governor, I was ex officio chancellor or the equivalent at all universities, giving degrees to these very, very bright, shining-faced young people, carefully, carefully dressed, looking so cheerful and proud of themselves, and then walking out through a great, big hall. y And where on each side were their parents or their friends, and the sense of pride in the faces of those parents, and the fact that you could see that many of them were very clearly from housing estates, they were from middle to lower social levels of society, and the thrill of seeing both those students, and the thrill of seeing on the faces of their parents the sense of achievement in watching their own children moving up beyond the level that they had ever been able to attain, and thinking: That’s it, that’s the essence of Hong Kong.

In a similar vein, five years after the completion of the ‘‘Sutherland Report’’ on the restructuring of higher education, Stewart Sutherland commented on the justification for government concern that went far beyond economic productivity, commenting, ‘‘If you’re going to have a progressive democracy, you need educated citizens, whatever form democracy takes – and it, of


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course, has many forms, not the least in Hong Kong. But there are the beginnings of democracy there now, where there wasn’t 15 years ago. Citizenship of whatever kind, if it’s participative, formally or informally, requires education. That’s one reason for saying it’s a public good.’’ Ironically, in subsequent years, even while the government was doing more to promote education, public opinion surveys indicated a decline in public satisfaction with the government’s role from 1998–2004 (Social Indicators Project, 2004). After 1997 the public expected more and had raised expectations. The nature of public discontent can be gauged not only through opinion surveys, but also from the open web-based discussions that were conducted by anonymous participants in the web site of Hong Kong’s UGC. The following five entries are representative of a public debate. 1. The Government collects taxes and then distributes the money to cater for the needs of the society. The reason is that the major concern of commercial enterprises is profit-making. That’s why we have subsidized charitable organizations, subsidized primary education, subsidized secondary education, subsidized housing and subsidized hospitals, etc. Nowadays, higher education is a necessity for all youngsters in the knowledge based economy of HKSAR. The HKSAR government should not discontinue its subsidy for sub-degree education else those needy students will be deprived of the chance for higher education. 2. Look at the self-financing programs, most of them would not allow their students to have access to libraries, student union, student clubs/societies, gymnasium, counseling, student development office, swimming pool etc. As the self-financing operators have to control cost in order to make profits, the students will have little campus life and they will have little/no choices/electives available for study. y Rich parents can send their children overseas to study in famous universities. How about the poor parents? 3. I find the current debate and consultation absolutely ridiculous. It begins with money and ends with money. Everyone sounds like education is all about money. Government wants to cut back and reallocate the money, institutions resist and want more money. The whole business of higher education is money-driven. Will HK have world-class universities if we pour in more money, re-distribute it or snatch it from the market and students? Can somebody talk about the value and ideals of higher education? Can we look at the issue of quality? Can we talk about

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people? Can we talk about education for the sake of education? Rich families send their children abroad; hard working students with good achievements from poor family stay in Hong Kong’ universities; students with unsatisfied scores and from poor families have to take the study of associate degree. 4. Our government, on one hand, wishes to enhance the quota of higher education, but on the other hand, pushes thousands of poor children to the self-financing courses. Families and students have to shoulder the heavy financial burdens and also lose the opportunities of enjoying whole person development. This may be the greatest ‘‘creation’’ of this irresponsible and shortsighted government! 5. Yes it may not be wise for government to foot the bill of all institutions, but does it expect to cut off the oxygen all of a sudden and let the schools wean overnight, and survive by ‘‘sink and swim’’? Isn’t it crazy to push everybody into the market of private education in just months? y Also why can’t people stop thinking of giving up your democratic rights and autonomy to government? y Has this government not threatened our liberty enough with a looming sedition law, a draconian illegal assembly law, a disenfranchised legislature and a high-handed housing policy? Is the deficit really a result of our overpricing, or just the toll of economic mismanagement at the very top? As entry 5 above indicates, there is a nascent discourse connecting education opportunity with a broader democratic mobilization. And yet, as of 2007, the political opportunity this offers, especially for parties opposed to the government, has hardly begun to be taken by any interest group. The opposition Democratic Party did call for a distinctive position, seeing education as a part of civic and democratic development. In June 2002, from the floor of the Legislative Council, the Democrat (and Profession Teachers Union president) Cheung Man-Kwong proposed an amendment to a motion on ‘‘associate degrees.’’ Cheung’s motion, though without legal impact, would have expressed the sense of the Legislative Council that government funding for associate degrees should be equivalent to its funding of bachelor degrees. Knowing that the government had never planned to subsidize associate degrees to the same extent as bachelor degrees, this motion pressed the DAB party (a ‘pro-government’ party) to choose between supporting the government, on the one hand, and supporting educational opportunities, on the other. Most DAB members were forced publicly either to abstain or to oppose Cheung’s motion, and the motion failed. The issue was further set in motion by a claim that


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Cheung made in the newsletter of the Professional Teacher’s Union. Cheung argued there that, the emphasis of [the government’s] policy, whether it be on education or environmental protection, is laid more on its value as an economic tool than on its intrinsic humanistic values. In the field of education, ‘‘cultivating talents’’ means providing sufficient human resources to improve Hong Kong’s competitiveness and to increase its wealth. As for environmental protection, ‘‘Making Hong Kong an ideal home’’ is promoted more as a selling point to attract foreign capital than as a concept to encourage a green living style. To cultivate a whole person and to build a green environment, we must rely on every individual. To do this, we need a democratic political system where we can choose our own government through universal suffrage. Only such a government, as opposed to one relying on the support of the businesses, can truly represent us and help us decide our own fate.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then the positions of two progovernment parties give us some indication of the transformation of policy discourse and the acceptance of social mobility and integration. In an interview with a leading member of the DAB party, an educator with many years experience, the importance of social mobility was acknowledged as important. But this was primarily to achieve ‘‘social harmony.’’ JT:

So we would like to see more young people coming from the working families, moving up into the tertiary sector. And after they get their qualification, then they can join the professions, they can improve their livelihood. DP: So it’s not only for the economic productivity of Hong Kong as a whole, but also to help the working-class students achieve mobility. Is that correct? JT: Yes. I believe, we believe that it is important, very important, in fact, to achieve social harmony.

In addition to the DAB party, the Liberal party position has also moderated in response to the position of the Civic party. As one leading member commented in an interview, reflecting on the position of the Civic Party, ‘‘what the Civic Party says is important – we’re not debating that. But on the other hand we always argue that we need to be in a very strong economic position, particularly with such a small Hong Kong surviving in such a big world. Now with globalization and things getting very complicated, and we really need to maintain our economic position.’’ Where will the discourse of educational opportunity go in the future? As Legislative Council member (Civic Party) Margaret Ng considered the prospects of a larger discourse on education policy, she was both pessimistic and hopeful. She commented that ‘‘when we look at government’s rhetoric and setting of the agenda for public discussion, basically they’re about the

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economy, about getting the jobs – and about less getting jobs than pushing Hong Kong’s economy y .as I can see, education is almost completely in the context of the economy. I see a minority view – but a very, very minority view – which doesn’t actually get heard, which is that education is not about the economy. Education is about educating people, about bringing up people who will be the future leaders. And I think that is a relatively, a voice struggling to be heard, but I doubt if it’s being heard.’’ There are reasons why the demographic transformation of educational opportunity, and the truncating of opportunities at the postsecondary level, does not change the planning discourse over night. Embracing human rights and social equity as legitimate goals of an education system is fraught with risk for a government constituted under the SAR’s Basic Law. Some studies have documented ways that governments elsewhere were ‘‘socialized’’ about international human rights norms. It has been observed that ‘‘socialization processes start when actors adapt their behavior in accordance with the norm for initially instrumental reasons. Governments want to remain in power, while domestic NGOs seek the most effective means to rally the opposition. The more they ‘talk the talk,’ however, the more they entangle themselves in a moral discourse which they cannot escape in the long run.’’ As government-planning documents and promises begin to take for granted an expanded role in guaranteeing human rights for their citizens, regardless of social origins, the public’s expectations are raised. Opponents can then turn these raised expectations to their advantage and create ‘‘bidding’’ by competing public advocates and interest groups. Therefore, the decision to expand the rationale for higher education opens the door to a new dynamic that could further limit state autonomy (cf. Alston, 1994; Boli, 1999). It is likely that the government carefully sought to avoid posing the provision of educational services as a fulfillment of human rights, and preferred to base its educational programs exclusively in terms of Hong Kong’s economic development needs. These needs required assessment by expert manpower planners. Ironically, given Hong Kong’s image as a bastion of free-market economics, demand-side expansion was limited at the postsecondary level. Until the very recent past, there were no political parties in Hong Kong, and even religious schools counted on government subvention for their operation, in exchange for which they taught a standard curriculum. The government historically has been the major funder of the arts, whereas there are virtually no private foundations supporting intellectual activity apart from the Research Grants Committee of the UGC. With an ideology of economic growth and, after 1997, loyalty to the Chinese Motherland,


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Hong Kong’s government has sought control over civil society through cooptation and benign neglect. Most of all, civil society has stultified and been truncated, according to Ma Ngok, because of the flawed constitution and the failure to allow direct election of the majority of the legislative counselors or the Chief Executive. There are still few challengers to the state for sponsorship in civil society. But, at least in the most recent ‘‘election’’ of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, Donald Tsang, there was an opposition candidate from the newly formed Civic Party, Alan Leong. Both the DAB party and the Democratic Party have complained in the Legislative Council about a bottle-neck of secondary school graduates who wish to continue to the postsecondary level but cannot do so. In this context, the relation between state and civil society has begun tentatively to move to a more pluralist position. This diversity may create a bidding process wherein the executive branches of Hong Kong’s government offer greater services in education in order to preempt demands from the political parties. I suggest that the movement is ‘‘tentative’’ because, in the current environment, the debate over the purpose of education appears stymied by an overall failure of civil society institutions to incorporate the energies of disgruntled students and parents. In this regard, the scene in education is not unique, but reflects a more pervasive disconnection between the public and potential institutions of change. Hong Kong presents political scientists with an ‘‘apparent paradox’’ (Chan & Chan, 2006, p. 649). On the one hand, there is little vertical social cohesion, and respondents to one of the largest surveys of trust and civic engagement found little participation in broad interest groups, political parties, or voluntary associations. On the other hand, there is a pervasive feeling of solidarity and identity and high trust of other Hong Kongers, leading to possible ‘‘horizontal social cohesion.’’ This finding contradicts one of the Hong Kong’s most widely accepted generalizations. ‘‘Utilitarian familialism’’ was the term coined 25 years ago by S. K. Lau to describe the ‘‘normative and behavioral tendency of an individual to place his familial interest above the interests of society at large.’’ But the suggestion by Chan and Chan points to a failure of institutions rather than any defect in the Hong Kong personal orientation. The problem is studied in depth by Ma Ngok, who documented a pervasive unwillingness and inability of political parties to generate mass organizations around social welfare issues. In part this is because the terms of debate are refracted continuously through the prism of China and the Hong Kong’s relation to the Communist Party of the Mainland government. Rather than develop around local issues, interest groups are identified as either ‘‘pro-China’’ or ‘‘pro-democracy.’’ Ultimately, control over opposition

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membership is exerted by China government, which has denied entry to the Mainland by members of the Democratic Party. This contributes to keep membership small (approximately 600 members). Another reason for the inadequacy of parties as has been their inability to effect legislation or (except in rare cases, such as concerning opposition to the Article 23 Internal Security Act) to halt attempts by the Chief Executive to pass unpopular legislation.

CONCLUSIONS Since Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to the People’s Republic of China, its education policies merit scholarly attention, and not only by East Asian specialists in education. As we have seen, one reason stems from Hong Kong’s rapidity of school and university expansion, far faster than in the O.E.C.D. nations or the Asian N.I.C.s. Free and universal primary schooling was adopted only in 1971; only in 1978 did the colonial government provide three additional years of free secondary schooling. Only after the Tiananmen Square crackdown did David Wilson, its English governor, decide that Hong Kong must have a mass rather than an elite system of higher education. Such rapid expansion means that any subsequent social changes would certainly be notable if, in fact, they occur anywhere in the world as the result of education. Hong Kong policies are of broad importance because, as discussed earlier, both the colonial and the SAR governments maintained an insulated, technocratic control over education. Until recently, Hong Kong discouraged participation by interest groups in education planning. Thus, changes in Hong Kong society that were associated with education are more attributable to state initiatives than is the case where school participation has expanded as a function of increased public demand (as in the United States). Today Hong Kong is governed, as it was during the colonial era, by a soft authoritarian bureaucracy without direct input to educational decisions by voters. It remains possible ( just as under British governors MacLehose and Wilson) for Chief Executive Donald Tsang single-handedly to declare major revisions of policy without consulting constituents. Any, yet despite this apparent insularity, civil society is being transformed as a result of educational provision. The value of productive, quality, humanistic, and equal education has become the lingua franca both of government populism and of opposition critique. Thus, both the government and the opposition now seek legitimacy through cultivating roles as advocates of education.


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Scholars throughout the world who study equity in postsecondary educational opportunity have focused on the consequences of public policy for individuals and groups. Investigators working in this tradition engage a broad and vital research agenda. But this agenda, as we have seen in the case of Hong Kong, should extend even farther. Its fullest engagement would require that we look beyond the impact of postsecondary equity for individual students, families, social class, or ethnic groups and include social integration and state legitimacy. The potential for Hong Kong’s expanded educational opportunities to enrich civil society remains a potential source of contestation and pluralism, and a source of social mobilization that has yet to be fully realized but is on the way.

NOTES 1. Ping-ti Ho (1973) speculated that the corruption of the Imperial civil service examination system – one of the original sources for Max Weber’s insight about bureaucratic authority – contributed to the mid-19th Century Tai Ping rebellion in southern China. 2. The extra-national sources of legitimacy and of accreditation that characterize these professions have long put Hong Kong ‘‘service professionals’’ (So, 1999) in conflict with the government, as battles over regulation became perennial. Today the Hong Kong Bar Association is one of the Hong Kong’s most vocal opposition groups, as state authority is unable to maintain control over the gatekeeper to the legal profession. 3. ‘‘Government-funded’’ school spots are available not only through schools owned and operated by the Education Department, but also in an array of school types through different subsidy arrangments. In exchange for government subsidies, most schools agree to pay teachers a uniform salary and to cover a common curriculum so as to prepare students for city-wide examinations. 4. David Wilson had been a top advisor to Governor MacLehose. During an interview, Wilson connected the postsecondary expansion of the 1990s with the secondary school expansion led by MacLehose. 5. Note that these are ‘‘attainment’’ and not completion rates. An individual is said to have ‘‘attained’’ a level if he or she has begun that level, regardless of whether the level is completed. 6. As Suet-ling Pong discusses in her contribution to this volume, the parents of those immigrants may deliberately have held back (‘‘red-shirted’’) their children to make them more competitive with Hong Kong native children. The fact that B.A. participation fell from 1996–2006 among 19–20-year-old immigrant children does not allow us to conclude that fewer immigrants would ever enter a Hong Kong B.A. program, only that fewer had done so by the ages of 19–20 as compared with natives. 7. Note that the tabulations presented in Fig. 6 are for all individuals – those living with parents or not – who had been legal Hong Kong residents for the previous 10 years. By restricting the analysis to workers who would have completed secondary

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school in Hong Kong, we eliminate from consideration those whose educations might have been in Mandarin Chinese on the Mainland, and whose disadvantage was associated purely with their deficiency in the Cantonese dialect. 8. Parents who were not working or whose income was missing were assigned a value of ‘‘zero’’ income. Children who lived with only one parent who was working had less real income in this approach than did children who lived with both parents and whose quartile of family income would have been greater. One drawback of this method is that it ignores the potential earnings of non-working parents, whose contribution to the family may be equal to or even greater than contributions from parents who earned an income in the labor force. Other analyses, not reported here, have focused on mothers’ educational attainment and the changing impact of mothers’ education over time. The results are largely consistent with the trends I found when looking only at the changing effect of earned income.

REFERENCES Alston, P. (Ed.) (1994). The best interests of the child: Reconciling culture and human rights. New York: Oxford University Press. Boli, J. (1999). World authority structures and legitimations. In: J. Boli & G. Thomas (Eds), Constructing world culture (pp. 267–302). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Chan, J., & Chan, E. (2006). Charting the state of social cohesion in Hong Kong. China Quarterly, 187, 635–658. Ho, P.-t. (1973). The ladder of success in imperial China. New York: Colombia University Press. Ishida, H. (2007). Japan: Educational expansion and inequality. In: Y. Shavit, R. Arum & A. Gamoran (Eds), Stratification in higher education (pp. 63–86). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Keswick, J. (1952). Report of the committee on higher education in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: The Government Printer. Lau, S.-k. (2000). Hongkongese or Chinese: The problem of identity on the eve of resumption of Chinese Sovereignty Over Hong Kong. In: S.-k. Lau (Ed.), Social Development and Political Change in Hong Kong (pp. 255–284). Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Meyer, J. W. (2001). Reflections: The worldwide commitment to educational equality. Sociology of Education, 74, 154–158. Park, H. (2007). South Korea: Educational expansion and inequality of opportunity for higher education. In: Y. Shavit, R. Arum & A. Gamoran (Eds), Stratification in higher education (pp. 63–86). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ramirez, F. O., & Boli, J. (1987). The political construction of mass schooling: European origins and worldwide institutionalization. Sociology of Education, 60, 2–17. So, A. Y. (1999). Hong Kong’s Embattled democracy: A societal analysis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Social Indictors Project. (2004). Social cohesion indicators. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong. Tsai, S.-L., & Shavit, Y. (2007). Taiwan: Higher education expansion and equality of educational opportunity. In: Y. Shavit, R. Arum & A. Gamoran (Eds), Stratification in higher education (pp. 140–164). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.


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APPENDIX. HONG KONG PARTY PLATFORMS RELEVANT TO EDUCATION Liberal Party Manifesto Economic and social progress for Hong Kong’s people is the primary and perennial target to which we must all dedicate our efforts. We will strive for an even better future by sustained dynamic growth through sound economic principles and planning. Building on proven success, we aim to create an economy that will bring about jobs and wealth for all. In addition, we must, through long term-planning, ensure that the growth we seek will be a sustainable one and that our children enjoy the best education so that they remain competitive in this increasingly globalized economy. Democratic Party Education is concerned with the development of humankind. Therefore, education should aim at teaching our next generation to be loving in our families, community, country and nation, in addition to preserving peace on earth. In addition to teaching academic knowledge, education policy should then aim at helping students to develop independent minds, healthy moral standards, decent temperaments, and to be honest, responsible, just and loving persons. y The young should not only be considered precious community resources, but also be given respect and the opportunity to live and grow in a free and democratic environment. DAB (Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong) We advocatey 6. Lifelong Learning and Worker Training: Formulate a comprehensive, proactive human resources policy; strengthen different types of conventional education; improve work and vocational training programs; actively develop continuing education; and seek long-term and steady source of funding that provides lifelong learning, worker training, and skills development. 7. Investment in Our Education: Increase education expenditure to 4% of the GDP in five years; introduce effective competition mechanisms into

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schools; further increase the teacher to students ratio; carry out a comprehensive review of the current education system; improve education standard ‘‘two written languages and three spoken languages’’; and devote substantial efforts to develop information technology in schools.

Civic Party Manifesto We believe everyone should be given a fair chance to succeed and work towards the fulfillment of his or her potential. We believe in the creation of sustainable communities and in the improvement of the quality of life as a common goal. We believe economic development should be pursued in that context and not for its own sake. We believe social harmony and stability can only come about with social justice and equity.

SOURCES: INTERVIEWS 2002–2007 CHUNG Yue-ping. Dean, Faculty of Education, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Member, Education Commission. February 5, 2002. CHEUNG Man Kwong. Legislative Councilor, Functional Representative for Education Profession (Democratic Party) and President of Hong Kong Professional Teachers Union. February 6, 2002. YEUNG Yiu-chung. Legislative Councilor (Democratic Alliance for Betterment of Hong Kong), Chairman of LEGCO Panel on Education, and Member of the Education Commission. February 7, 2002. Emily LAU. Legislative Councilor (Frontier Party) and Member of Higher Education Expansion Sub-committee of Education Panel. February 7, 2002. Leslie LO. Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong and Director, Hong Kong Institute of Educational Research. February 12, 2002. Richard Yue-chim WONG. Director, School of Business and Chair of Economics at University of Hong Kong. Member, University Grants Committee. February 17, 2002. YEUNG Sum. Legislative Council member, Democratic Party, Chairman and later member of Higher Education Expansion Sub-committee of Education Panel. February 7, 2002 and April 30, 2007. CHENG Kai-ming. Pro-Vice-Chancellor, University of Hong Kong, member of Education Commission, and Chair of its sub-committee on Postsecondary Education. March 9, 2002 and April 20, 2007. Margaret NG. Legislative Council member (Independent, later Civic Party). April 19, 2002 and May 10, 2007 (Civic Party member).


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Clement LEUNG. Principal Assistant Secretary for Higher Education in Education and Manpower Bureau. May 27, 2002. Joseph WONG Wing-ping. Secretary of the Civil Service and past-Secretary for Education and Manpower. May 27, 2002. Fanny LAW. Secretary of Education and Manpower. June 13, 2002. Fernando Cheung. LEGCO Member, Functional Representative of Social Welfare Sector, Civic Party, May 2, 2007. FUNG Wai Wah. Lecturer in Social Work, City University. May 3, 2007. Michael STONE. University Grants Committee Secretary General, 2003–2007. May 4, 2007. Rosanna WONG Yick-ming. Chairman, Education Commission, 2001–2007. May 16, 2007. YOK Sing. Legislative Council Member, Chair, Education Panel; member DAB Party. April 20, 2007. Selina CHOW LIANG Shuk-yee. Legislative Council Member, Member of Education Panel Member of Education Commission, 1990–1992; Deputy Chair, Liberal Party. May 9, 2007. James TIEN. LEGCO member and Chairman, Liberal Party. May 9, 2007. Thomas YU. Civic Party Exec. Committee, President 2003–2004 of Hong Kong Federation of Students. May 10 2007. Charmaine LEE Pui Sze. Principal Assistant Secretary for higher education. May 10, 2007. Antony LEUNG. Chairman, UGC 1994–1998; Chairman Education Commission 1998–2001. May 12, 2007. Peter CHEUNG. Executive Director, HKCAA and Secretary General, UGC 2000– 2003. May 16, 2007. Nigel FRENCH. Secretary General of UGC 1990–2000. May 28, 2007. Oxfordshire, England. Lord Stewart SUTHERLAND. Former Member of University Grants Committee, and Principal Author of 2002 Higher Education Review. May 30, 2007 Gresham College, London. Lord David WILSON. Governor of Hong Kong, 1987–1992. June 1, 2007. Cambridge University. Betty FUNG. Deputy Secretary for Education and Manpower. June, 14, 2007.

‘DOWNED’ AND STUCK IN SINGAPORE: LOWER/MIDDLE CLASS SOUTH KOREAN WILD GEESE (KIROGI ) CHILDREN IN SINGAPORE Jeehun Kim ABSTRACT Korean educational migrant (kirogi) families have received widespread popular attention due to their ironic form of family that sacrifices the togetherness of a family. Recent trends suggest that this practice is spreading to the less affluent classes and that many such families are heading to ‘new’ destinations, including Singapore. This study examines the transnational schooling and life experiences of Korean transnational educational families in Singapore. It addresses the questions, why did these families choose Singapore? Why did transnational schooling, which parents almost unanimously said that they had organised for the betterment of their children’s future, lead to some families getting stuck in the destination country? Fieldwork in Singapore and Korea was conducted between April 2006 and September 2007. In-depth interviews with both mothers and fathers who have at least one child attending public, private or international Globalization, Changing Demographics, and Educational Challenges in East Asia Research in Sociology of Education, Volume 17, 271–311 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3539/doi:10.1108/S1479-3539(2010)0000017012

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schools in Singapore, at the primary or secondary level, were conducted with 18 families. The analysis was conducted using a grounded theory approach and NVivo 7/8. Although the Korean state’s emphasis on international competitiveness and parental aspirations for their children’s future upward social mobility were common motivators, Koreans in Singapore were also attracted by the relatively low cost, English–Chinese bilingualism and other ‘familyfriendly’ features in Singapore. However, kirogi children had highly contrasting schooling experiences and they met with mixed success in gaining what they expected. Furthermore, many children in public schools faced demotion and other difficulties in their new school environments. Some less affluent families found themselves facing dilemmas of cross-border schooling. This study shows that transnational schooling does not necessarily operate equally favourably for participants from diverse class backgrounds. It also demonstrates that the societal contexts of reception in both the countries of origin and of destination, including the buffering institutions and reference groups and peer culture, are important factors shaping the schooling and life experiences of educational migrant children and in reconfiguring their trajectories.

INTRODUCTION Sunghoon’s family, a typical mother-and-children transnational educational migrant family, came to Singapore about two years ago with the initial intention of staying about two years. However, at the time of the interview, the parents believed staying in Singapore ‘‘at least until [their children] complete high school’’ would be inevitable. In fact, they sought arrangements to return about six months ago, in an attempt to find a school that could receive their children, according to their age, in Korea. As the wife stated, ‘‘I really, really want to go back, but because of the issues related to the children, we cannot’’. These statements reflect her dilemma, the complicated implications of transnational schooling: the systemic differences in public schooling between Singapore and Korea and the ‘downgrade/demotion’ in Singapore that her children suffered by their moving to Singapore. Her first son was demoted (popularly called ‘downed’ among Koreans in Singapore) for one year and her second son was demoted for two years when they transferred to public schools in Singapore. Considering the peer culture in Korea, her sons resisted their parents’ proposition of

Lower/Middle Class South Korean Kirogi Children in Singapore

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returning to a school where they would be behind a year or two from their former classmates, who had not left for overseas schooling. To sustain their second home in Singapore, the family spent more than three quarters of their household income on their Singaporean expenses. This necessitated a herculean effort by the husband, who toiled at his own small restaurant in Korea for 12 h a day, with only 2 days off per month. This family’s story is, in fact, shared by many other interviewed families; one to three years of demotion of the school grade when transferring schools internationally, an inevitably prolonged stay because returning would not be a favourable option, and sometimes, unsatisfactory familial relationships. This experience was shared particularly among the relatively less affluent group, whose children attended public schools in Singapore, as well as the older children. However, many other families whose children attended international schools showed highly contrasting (far higher) levels of satisfaction in their children’s schooling and their overall life in Singapore. This study addresses the following questions: Why did these kirogi families choose Singapore for their children’s schooling? Why did transnational schooling, which both the affluent and less affluent groups of parents almost unanimously said they had organised for the betterment of their children’s future, lead some families like Sunghoon’s into being mired in Singapore? Transnational educational families from East Asia attract international media attention including from the New York Times (Onishi, 2008). They are also a popular topic of research over the past decade, including many case studies on Korean or Chinese in conventional English-speaking immigrant states such as Canada (Waters, 2002, 2005; Skeldon, 1994; Hardill, 2004; Kobayashi & Preston, 2007), the USA (Orellana, Thorne, Chee, & Lam, 2001; Zhou, 1998; Ahn, 1996; Cho, Choi, Lee, & Abelmann, 2007; Lee & Koo, 2006), Australia (Kang, 2008; Lee, 2005a) and New Zealand (Ho, 2002; Kim, Choi, & Lee, 2005). Despite this interest, little is known about the transnational schooling experience of these children and of the lower middle class despite indications that the popularity of this practice of transnational educational migration is growing among the lower middle class. The existing body of literature on these transnational educational migrant families views this phenomenon as largely an aspect of the more affluent middle class families’ endeavours to reproduce their advantageous position in society for their children, by providing them with a second chance; by providing a better environment; for them (Ahn, 1996; Cho, 2002) or by pursuing diverse forms of capital, such as cultural capital or social capital (Waters, 2002, 2005). This study addresses the specific transnational schooling experience of these children

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and focuses on the less affluent migrant families, paying attention to the societal contexts of reception in both the countries of origin and of destination. It also investigates the (re-)configuration of migration trajectories. The structure of this study is as follows: first, a critical review of Korean transnational educational families in comparative perspective will be presented, along with a short discussion of the sampled families and, methodology. Second, the reasons these families choose to come to Singapore are explored. This will provide points of reference for considering whether their reasons for migrating have been achieved, a question that will be dealt with in the following sections. Third, the transnational schooling experiences of the students are investigated. Both their everyday educational experiences in Singapore and the family-level dilemmas that some families experience are discussed. Fourth, important nonschooling issues of children at this age are investigated. Finally, the study concludes with a discussion of the findings and their implications.

THE WILD GEESE (KIROGI) EDUCATIONAL MIGRANT FAMILIES The Rise of Kirogi Educational Migration and Diversification of Destination Countries in Korea Wild Geese (kirogi in Korean) educational migration is a type of jogiyuhak (literally meaning ‘Early Study Abroad’ (ESA)), which refers to a form of migration, the main purpose of which is the overseas schooling of children in primary and secondary schools. ESA does not in itself refer to overseas education of students of these school ages without an accompanying parent.1 A kirogi family refers to a situation where one parent (almost always the mother) accompanies her children overseas for the purpose of their education, while the husband remains in Korea, working to support his family financially. The husband/father is called a kirogi husband/father and the wife/mother is called a kirogi wife/mother. In its form, Korean kirogi is identical to Chinese families of Hong Kong and Taiwan who are termed ‘astronaut husbands’ and ‘parachute/satellite children’ (Ho, 2002; Waters, 2002, 2005). Even though this migration, or its variants, may have existed before, it was not described academically until the early and mid-1990s. This coincides with state promotion of globalisation by Kim Young Sam


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government (1993–1998) and the rise of middle class in Korea. It is also concurrent with a series of economic restructuring measures taken in Korea since the Asian Economic Crisis in 1997. The measures meant a crushing blow to employment practice, which has become highly unstable. In reaction, the disconcerting sense of insecurity led many middle class people to seek assurance in the form of heavy investment in their children’s education. Many parents believe that investing in education, particularly in the kind that will help their children acquire foreign language – preferably English – through ESA will promise ‘guaranteed returns in the age of uncertainty’ (Cho, 2004, pp. 165–166). Kirogi migration is an increasingly important social and educational issue in Korea. More than 10,000 parents of primary and secondary school students in Korea make this decision annually (Figs. 1 and 2). Data on these student migrants in Korea shows two distinctive trends, which are crucial for my study and to the understanding of the phenomenon; there was a 10-fold increase as a whole, but a 40-fold increase in the number of primary school students over the past decade between 1996 and 2007. It should be noted that these official figures are likely to be a minimum as they captured the officially reported figures at the schools that the students had left. As Fig. 2 shows, nearly 30,000 students, including 12,341 primary students, 9,201 middle school students and 6,126 high school students left Korea for long-term ESA in the academic year of 2007/2008. The figures exclude students, who were accompanied by parents who went abroad for overseas assignments, or those who had emigrated permanently. In contrast, there were only approximately 20,000 returnee students – 12,789 primary students, 5,259 middle school students and 2,229 high school students – who returned to Korea in the academic year of 2007/2008 (Tables 1–3). This figure does not distinguish between school age children of returned immigrants (who once emigrated permanently but returned) and expatriate/professional temporary migrants (without permanent emigration) from ESA student migrants. Among 20,277 returning students in 2007/2008, 72.63% had stayed abroad for less than 2 years, 11.33% stayed between 2 and 3 years, 9.35% stayed between 3 and 5 years and the remaining 6.69% stayed more than 5 years (Korean Ministry of Education, 2008). Considering the returning students and the length of their stays abroad, the returnees from ESA are estimated to be less than half of the new emigrants each year during the period for which the data is available. Also, those who returned after completing their secondary education abroad could not be counted in the data. Therefore, the number of those still studying abroad (which the Ministry does not have any data on) will be far more than these

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Figure 1. Number of Students Who Withdrew from Schools in Order to Move Abroad by Reported Reason, 1995–2007. Source: Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (previously, Ministry of Education and Human Development or Ministry of Education, referred to hereafter as Ministry of Education) (various years). Overview of Primary, Middle and High School Students who left for the purpose ). 2005 Report. Availof ESA or returned ( able at http://www.mest.go.kr/me_kor/inform/1/2/1207871_10862.html. Accessed on November 27, 2009. Data on other years shown on the table can be requested by contacting the author. Note: The figures for 1995 and 1996 include dozens of approved cases of students2 receiving overseas education in primary and secondary schools in the category ‘early study abroad’ (ESA).

figures. The media have estimated that there were more than 100,000 Korean students abroad for their primary and secondary education in 2005 (Kim, 2006). Two important recent trends in Korean kirogi families are the diversification of destinations and an increase of students heading to new destinations. In recent years, countries such as Singapore, the Philippines, India and South Africa – all of which have English as (at least) one of their


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Figure 2. Number of Students Who Withdrew from Schools in ESA by School Level, 1995–2007. Source and Note: Refer to Fig. 1. These breakdown figures are taken from the first category (study abroad) of Fig. 1.

official languages – have become increasingly popular destinations for Koreans, though many still choose to go to the USA, Canada or Australia like their Chinese counterparts from Hong Kong and Taiwan. These new popular destinations, as Tables 1 and 2 indicates, are gaining popularity among lower middle class parents. This recent trend has led to speculation that factors other than ‘learning English’, then known force majeure of the educational migration, play a crucial part in parents’ decision-making process in Korea.

Transnational Educational Migrants Transnational educational families around the world have received widespread academic attention. This type of family constitutes an important component of the transnational family literature (Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002).

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Table 1.

Destination Countries of Children Withdrawn from Primary and Secondary Schools, 2005–2007. 2005

2006

2007

Southeast Asia USA China Canada Australia New Zealand Japan United Kingdom Latin America Germany Middle East Russia France Spain Others Unidentified

4,011 12,171 6,340 4,426 1,674 1,413 812 504 356 293 170 159 176 70 1,091 1,478

6,624 14,474 7,199 6,155 2,196 2,082 769 598 448 261 214 182 179 48 2,398 1,604

7,421 14,006 6,880 5,453 2,030 1,833 810 568 431 252 210 179 126 59 1,687 1,470

Total

35,144

45,431

43,415

Source: Refer to Fig. 1. Note: The figures for each year are based on the academic year from 1 March to 28 February of the following year. The figures are inclusive of both kirogi and non-kirogi migrant children who withdraw from schools. Original data is collected as the above (‘Southeast Asia’, ‘Latin America’ or ‘Middle East’) by the Ministry.

Table 2.

Returnee Students to Primary and Secondary Schools by Countries that They Stayed, 2000–2007.

Year

USA

China Canada SE Asia New Zealand Australia Japan Others

Total

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

2,869 3,504 3,552 4,532 5,355 4,743 6,115 6,157

378 561 618 1,025 1,223 1,416 2,281 2,601

6,562 8,019 8,355 12,198 14,963 13,586 18,362 20,277

309 500 648 1,252 1,899 1,825 2,628 3,332

574 628 568 873 1,255 1,345 2,422 3,354

Source and Note: Refer to Table 1.

250 422 815 1,639 1,896 1,310 1,260 1,309

242 330 352 500 655 595 841 902

455 469 385 496 549 419 517 527

1,485 1,605 1,417 1,881 2,131 1,933 2,298 2,095


Table 3.

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

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Returnee Students by School Levels, 2000–2007.

Primary School

Middle School

High School

Total

4,010 4,942 5,351 7,471 9,676 7,309 10,536 12,789

1,416 1,811 1,803 3,006 3,097 3,950 4,851 5,259

1,136 1,266 1,201 1,721 2,190 2,327 2,975 2,229

6,562 8,019 8,355 12,198 14,963 13,586 18,362 20,227

Source and Note: Refer to Table 1.

The equivalents of Korean kirogi families are ‘astronaut husbands/families’, ‘parachute/satellite kids’ (Lam, Yeoh, & Law, 2002; Orellana et al., 2001; Waters, 2002, 2005; Ho, 2002) and, in a Singaporean context, ‘study mothers’ (Huang & Yeoh, 2005). ‘Student alone’ educational migrant children in a North American context are termed ‘parachute children’ (Zhou, 1998; Waters, 2002). Focusing on ethnic Chinese in New Zealand, Ho (2002, p. 145) defined ‘the astronaut families’ as ‘families in which one or both parents are persistently absent overseas’. In particular, ‘astronaut husbands’ refers to those who formally gain permanent residency in other immigrant countries but go back to conduct their business in their home country and manage their families in the new ‘home’. ‘Parachute/satellite kids’ are the children of these astronaut families, who either live with their mothers, or with legal guardians, or alone with their parents managing two homes across the borders, particularly in Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Ong, 1999; Waters, 2002, 2005; Ho, 2002; Ho, Ip, & Bedford, 2001). Studies on the Chinese equivalent stressed the political aspect of multiple citizenship, combined with the political instability in Hong Kong and Taiwan, as part of the affluent middle class’ ‘safety insurance’ at the family level (Waters, 2002; Zhou, 1998; Ong, 1999). A key additional element in Chinese astronaut families, which is not necessarily the case for Korean kirogi families, is acquisition of the host country’s citizenship. Another key difference is the initially intended duration of staying abroad among Koreans, who can be short-termers (up to two years) and long-termers, whereas Chinese tended to be long-termers. However, few have studied the very core of these families’ experience, namely, the schooling of these children (Zhou, 1998). Waters (2005) criticised previous work for overemphasising the instrumental purpose of acquiring

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citizenship. Instead, she argued that educating children overseas is not just for gaining credentials, but is also a way of accumulating cultural capital (Bourdieu’s (1986) term), which is something valued both at home and abroad and will be beneficial for the improvement of their class position in the long term. Aspirations for the ‘good’ of the family (Ho, 2002; Lam et al., 2002; Waters, 2002, 2005) are regarded as one of the common reasons why transnational families choose to migrate. In a similar vein, Huang and Yeoh (2005), focusing on the mainland Chinese ‘study mother’ migrating to Singapore for the education of their children, argued that the ‘sacrificial mother’ discourse paramount in Confucian ethics and traditional values operates as the foundation of these mothers’ devotion for the ‘good’ of their children. The good in this case is an English education. Though most mothers were university educated and held professional jobs before migration, they tended to utilise the limited work opportunity granted under their visa by engaging in menial jobs to earn additional financial resources (Huang & Yeoh, 2005). Huang and Yeoh’s (2005) study is one of the few exceptions to the rule that the literature on astronaut or kirogi families and parachute children focuses on affluent (or middle class) Asian families. Some sociological work has paid attention to the combination of the middle class, their family-centered orientation in Korea and the global opportunities within which kirogi families opted for migration, which is in line with many of the studies on astronaut families. However, previous studies of kirogi migration or ESA parachute children in Korea have focused on family maintenance experiences, focusing on the parent couples (Choi, 2006), on mothers living together with their children (Kim et al., 2005), on fathers living alone in Korea (Kim & Chang, 2004; Kim, 2006), or on the adaptation to overseas life by the children (Kim, Choi, & Lee, 2006; Kang, 2008; Han, Kee, Kang, Park, & Merriam, 2002; Lee, 2005a, 2005b; Park, Park, Choi, Marsella, & Kim, 2002). Recent work in education studies tries to understand the decision-making process (Cho et al., 2007) and to discover those who are willing or likely to go abroad in Korea (Son, 2005; Kim & Yoon, 2005). Cho (2004, pp. 159–163) argues that the combination of the couple, ‘‘wives who can speak good English and husbands who have money’’, and ‘‘their orientation towards prioritising their children’’ is the basic underlying structure of this type of family. These middle class parents appreciated global human capital – expressed as speaking good or fluent English – and were dissatisfied with the Korean educational system (Lee & Koo, 2006; Cho, 2004). Their dissatisfaction with Korean education was also recognised as a push factor. Cho claims further that kirogi migration can be seen as


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upper to middle class families’ survival strategy in the late capitalist society (Cho, 2004). However, these sociological works have remained silent about why this migration is so widespread, and why it is now trickling down to the lower economic strata in the country. In short, few have studied the less affluent class families, instead privileging the phenomenon as an elite middle class one (a notable exception is Huang & Yeoh, 2005), and few have studied the experiences of migrant children and mothers with school systems. The question of whether different class status in the same setting leads to different experience or not remains under-investigated. More importantly, the previous literature tended to neglect both the role of the institutional or socio-cultural structures of the host or origin societies in the experience of these migrant students’ lives, and the negative implications of this migration. A notable exception is Orellana et al. (2001, p. 583) who argued that some of children may be ‘‘caught between two nations, educational systems and ways of growing up, which conveys one of the risks of transnational childhoods – feeling marginal in both places’’. Also, most studies relied on either the wives abroad or the husbands in Korea, despite the fact that many of the studies explain the phenomenon as a family-level strategy.

THE STUDY AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES This study was motivated initially by my informal observations of Korean kirogi children in a Korean church in Singapore in early 2006. I subsequently carried out the fieldwork in four stages (Singapore-Korea-SingaporeKorea) over 17 months between mid-April 2006 and early September 2007. One of the ways to choose sites for an ethnographic study is to follow the movement of people and the information involved in the research subject (Marcus, 1995). This study involves kirogi mothers/wives and their children staying together in Singapore and their husbands/fathers in Korea. Therefore, it necessitates the adoption of a two-stage approach: interviewing kirogi wives first in Singapore and then interviewing their non-accompanying husbands. Selecting interviewees the other way around was not feasible. I interviewed 18 kirogi mothers who came to Singapore with their children for the purpose of their children’s primary and secondary school education at public or international schools. Among these 18 families, 8 husbands were also interviewed (refer to Appendix Table A1 for their characteristics). Analysis and interpretation of the collected data were informed by the grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006), ‘transnational perspective’

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(Khagram & Levitt, 2008) and the ‘career’ approach of the Chicago School (Marshall, 1998), considering the fact that previous studies on Koreans in Singapore were not conducted, therefore little is known about them. As the grounded theory approach prescribes (Charmaz, 2006; Creswell, 2007), although I used the semi-structured interview schedules, continuous interim analyses of the interviews at each stage either dropped or added some questions for further investigation. Interviews lasted between 1 and 3 h; a typical interview with a husband lasted for about 1 h and with a wife lasted for about 2 h. All formal interviews were digitally recorded with the consent of the interviewees and informal conversations and observations were written as field notes. Published documents, such as personal essays in newsletters or quarterly magazines of the Singapore Korean Association, as well as other newspapers and magazines in the Korean media, were also collected. I recruited cases as diverse as possible, using multiple points of entry and the snowballing technique, until I was confident that no new significant case could be added. Although interviewing the study group, I recognised the discourses and stories about kirogi families, and paid particular attention to the following issues in recruitment: the types of schools children attend (local versus international and primary versus secondary), length and stage of their intended stay (newcomers, old timers and those returning soon), level of satisfaction with their experience in Singapore (from highly disappointed to highly satisfied) and wealth/income level of respondents (living in wealthy neighbourhood versus public housing). These issues were considered to ensure the diversity of the interviewees. I also utilised established contacts established during a prior stay in Singapore from 1999–2002. All interviewees had university education or higher, except three who had two-year college diplomas and one who had a high school education. However, my interviewees were also from a range of financial standings. One group in the sample contains five lower middle class families; their monthly budget in Singapore was between 3,000 and 4,000 SGD, more than half of their household income in Korea, and they lived in public housing in Singapore and their children attended public schools. This group is relatively easy to distinguish from the other group, which is comprised of their middle class or affluent counterparts (see Table A1). Though all lower middle class families send their children to public schools and the upper middle class mostly send their children to international schools, the division of class and school types of these children is not neatly dividable. As I was snowballing informants, I came to identify two more types of wild geese families. One of these families is a left-behind family whose


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husband was reassigned to a post in Korea, whom I refer to ‘expatriateturned kirogi’. Although recruiting more kirogi wives for interviews, I was able to identify an additional new type of wild geese family: ‘regional expatriate kirogi’. They are families whose husbands were running a business or working in a Southeast Asian country, which then influenced their decision to send their wives and children to Singapore for the sake of their children’s education.3 There are six such families in my sample. Other cases are those depicted as ‘typical’ kirogi families in previous Korean studies. Namely, the husband runs a business or works in Korea to support the family financially whereas the wife cares for their children abroad. The school performance of the sampled children was varied. This was partly resultant from my deliberate attempt to reach both relatively good and bad performers. I believe it also reflects the popular participation of both groups in kirogi migration in Korea. Among families in my interviewed sample who had two or more children, some siblings performed better than other siblings. Some families’ accounts showed that providing a second chance was one of the reasons why they departed, which was in line with other studies (Zhou, 1998; Ahn, 1996). In some other cases, good school performance in Korea was an additional reason why these families made their decision to send their children abroad to attend schools, to provide them with an even better environment and opportunities.

CONTEXTS OF DEPARTURE AND RECEPTION: WHY MIGRATE AND WHY SINGAPORE? Dissatisfaction with the schooling in Korea, the Korean state’s emphasis on globalisation and international competitiveness and parental desire to support their children’s future social mobility via opportunities to acquire foreign languages were shared by almost all the informants. Many interviewees echoed that schooling and after-school learning in Korea is organised in a war-like way (Seth, 2003), particularly among the middle class, who also viewed it as costly. The emphasis on English and other foreign languages as valuable assets, especially with the state-driven discourse on ‘globalisation’, is widely appreciated in the society (Cho, 2004; Park & Abelmann, 2004; Park, 2007). Within this context, many families have left Korea. This seems to provide a cultural script in which educational migration is considered a viable option, at least for the middle class. More importantly, this has become a viable option for the lower middle class who perceive that, if they choose to go to a lower cost destination,

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they can also participate. It seems that kirogi migration has become similar to private tutoring in Korea, which has become a norm rather than an option for many middle class people. It is evident from the following accounts that many of the classmates of their children were leaving Korea, which provided my interviewees with a chance to reflect. Many of [my son’s] classmates went abroad when they were in the fourth and fifth grades. The two most popular destinations were Singapore and Australia. [We] were aware of this situation, and the opportunity came. y Also many other fathers of about my age emigrated and lived happily. [Among the six families we were close to] four emigrated. The other was a medical doctor, who could not migrate, right? y [Q: You said they live happily, what do you mean by that?] First of all, they have time to be together with their family. They do not live like here y They can come home early and live an ordinary life. y According to a teacher [at my son’s school], [among the six classes for a grade], about one class have gone. (Daeho’s father, emphasis added)

Daeho’s family lives in a wealthier Seoul district and their son went to one of a few private primary schools in Korea, and his account reflects many of Seoul’s middle class parents’ aspirations for their children’s education. It seems that educational migration or immigration is close to ‘lifestyle’ migration, where the ‘education’ of children plays a major part, together with other elements of a more comfortable or a perceived ‘better’ lifestyle. Also, importantly, this phenomenon is not limited to Seoul nor to the wealthier privately schools in Korea. The Korean Ministry of Education’s (2008 and various years) data show the educational migrants are spreading over the country. The kirogi phenomenon is spreading to include a sufficiently broad swath of society that it is becoming a cultural script, at least among the more affluent middle class. Further, the phenomenon is gaining popularity as it trickles down to the less affluent families as well. This is evidenced by the following account of Mina’s mother who now sends her daughter and son to a public school in Singapore and is from Busan, the second largest city in Korea: There is a boom of ESA in Korea. y We didn’t take it seriously, but thought of sending [our children] for two or three months or so for English language learning. y While we were thinking of sending them to Canada or Australia, I saw several reports on Singapore on TV. y [Q: When was that and what was it about?] While we were in Korea, there was a report on television and a report in a newspaper, talking about Singapore’s educational aspects and Singapore is on the rise as a destination. y One day, a neighbour in [my apartment building] told me that she was going to Singapore. I thought to myself: ‘Ah, ha.’ Then I thought, should I also get some information? Then, I searched the Internet. After the search, I decided to come in fifteen days. (Mina’s mother)


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Why, then, has Singapore suddenly become so popular among Koreans as a destination for ESA? The Korean Embassy in Singapore has estimated that there were about 3,000 Korean primary and secondary school students there as of 2006 (Interview with the Consul at the Korean Embassy on 24 May 2007). What are the educational benefits that attract Koreans to Singapore? First, two advantages quickly become obvious: the cheap cost of public schools and the merits of learning English and Chinese simultaneously.4 Many informants gave their reasons for choosing Singapore as follows: Singapore is part of the English-speaking world and at the same time because of the dominant presence of ethnic Chinese, [we can get] the Chinese language. (Youngjin’s mother)

Singapore is further attractive because of its lower cost of living relative to Western English-speaking countries. This factor was particularly enticing to families whose children attended the local schools. I will examine this merit in a later section. The opportunity to acquire the Chinese language and the cultural similarity between Korea and Singapore in their emphasis on education were also mentioned. Many Koreans already regard learning English as essential and they have recently come to recognise the importance of learning Chinese as well. Almost all informants expressed their aspiration to make their children ‘more competitive in the globalisation era’ or ‘not being left behind by others’. The recent rise of China leads people to pay attention to bilingual Singapore. Furthermore, if the children maintain their knowledge and practice of the Korean language, parents think their children will be welcomed wherever they go in the future. In other words, studying in Singapore is seen as an economic and rational choice for acquiring English– Chinese bilingualism which can provide future competitiveness. We may call it aspiration to acquire ‘global human capital’. In this context, the Singapore government’s policies to attract foreign students into the country also need to be noted. Coining the strategy of developing an ‘educational hub’ in the region, the Singapore government has valued and developed arrangements to attract foreign students since 1997 (Huang & Yeoh, 2005, p. 385). Its emphasis on the ‘industry’ aspect, on aspiring to be a ‘Global Schoolhouse’ (Huang & Yeoh, 2005, p. 386), shows that this drive was organised by the Singapore Tourism Board and Economic Development Board rather than the Ministry of Education. The Board opened the Singapore Education showcase information centre at the entrance of Singapore’s busiest upscale shopping district,

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Orchard Road,5 as well as maintaining the information website in several languages including Korean, and ‘‘extol[ling the] many virtues of studying in Singapore, y [including] Singapore’s bilingual policy’’(Huang & Yeoh, 2005, p. 385). Several Korean private agencies were listed in the website. Second, an equally important consideration was safety and security. Singapore has been considered a more secure place than the developed Western world. Informants paid extra consideration to this issue because wives and children have to travel and stay overseas without their husbands; this results in less anxiety for the whole family. This is evident in the following accounts: We thought of the US, Australia, Singapore and the Philippines. Singapore was the best when we considered security. The core [consideration] was the security issue. Another was that the US and Australia have a ‘laissez-faire’ educational system. In this regard, we chose Singapore. (Aram’s father)

Many informants had weighed the merits of several destinations, not only Singapore, before making a decision. In fact, as Aram’s father was a working professional migrant, the family had lived in the Philippines and Singapore for several years. Third, Singapore’s proximity to Korea or their country of workplace also accounted for their choice, particularly among the ‘regional expatriate kirogi’ and ‘expatriate-turned kirogi’ families. Visiting requires a 6-h flight from Korea, and as there is only an hour’s time difference, real-time communication via both phone and internet is convenient. This point is illustrated by the following account in which a husband is engaged in his own business: Being close [to Korea] was the best selling point. Not only that, education, which is English education, is something that we can do whilst being close to my business location, which makes it easier for me to visit. I can come to visit and to see my children at least once a month, even if only briefly. That’s convenient. If I sent them far away, like New Zealand or the US, which I also considered and wanted, it would be difficult for me to visit them. (Jooeun’s father)

Some even go further and say that Singapore is a preferred place for wives, as the living environment is also convenient and comfortable. Daeho’s father told me why this is so: When the children are young, people choose to go where the mothers like it; Australia or Singapore rather than the USA or the UK. (JK: ‘‘Why is that so?’’) There is hearsay among the wives, [Australia or Singapore is] a good [comfortable] place [to live]. (Daeho’s father, emphasis added)


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In summary, wild geese families have considered seriously many familyfriendly conditions that Singapore may offer, precisely because their decision to stay apart for the sake of their children’s education will strain their family life. This was combined with educational and cost benefits as Singapore offered the opportunity to learn Chinese and English at the same time and the affordable public schools. The next section explores how the advantages of sending their children to Singapore were experienced.

TRANSNATIONAL SCHOOLING IN SINGAPORE: ASPIRATIONS AND REALITIES A pivotal merit, recognised among the interviewees, regarding schooling in Singapore was enabling their children to gain the global linguistic capital of learning English and Chinese. This section will examine first, experiences of schooling at both international and public schools, and second, if their hopes of acquiring global linguistic capital, i.e. two foreign languages, were fulfilled as they had wished and expected. Before addressing these issues, we should take note of the current situation. About half the Korean students in Singapore attend public schools, and the other half, international schools, according to the Korean Embassy’s estimates in 2006.6 Korean pupils have become a significant minority group in Singapore’s international schools, often the second or third largest ‘national’ group, following the nationals of a particular international school (e.g. US citizens at the Singapore American School or British citizens at a British system school). Almost all international schools in Singapore (where English is the medium of instruction) had a long waiting list for Koreans, as the unofficial ‘quota’ for them had already filled. Children of Korean diplomats were also on the waiting list, which was not the case a few years ago. For example, in 2006, the Singapore American School had about 420 Korean students; the United World College of Southeast Asia (UWC), a highly regarded British-system international school, had about 230 Koreans; the Overseas Family School about 300 and the Canadian International School 207 Koreans. These schools are larger than most other international schools in Singapore. Smaller schools such as the Australian International School, the Dover Court Preparatory School, the ISS International School and the International Community School each had more than 50 Korean attendees.7

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‘We Can Tell from Mothers’ Faces’: Contrasting Experiences of International School versus Local School By and large, the children of wild geese families had different schooling experiences depending on the types and levels of their schools. Not all those families whose children attended public schools in Singapore can be considered lower middle class families in Korea, but all the lower middle class children in Korea attended public schools. However, the more affluent families or those with professional expatriate or international business experience mostly chose international schools. First, after spending several months, many families whose children attended the local public schools had deep concerns about their children’s schooling experiences and education, as the reality that they found there was somewhat unexpected. This included the value-for-money in learning the two foreign languages. According to Sunghoon’s mother: [What I heard in Korea about the private tutorial fees in Singapore was very cheap but it turned out to refer] to the bottom level. y [What is worse] people here do not really speak English in their ordinary life, at least among ordinary people. If I go outside, I can only hear and meet Chinese-speaking people. y I thought that Chinese language classes were taught in school but English is the main language of ordinary life. While I live here, I come to realise that the opposite is the truth. (Sunghoon’s mother)

Her account of the prevalence of Chinese-speaking people is partly related to the geographical demographic and social class of the neighbourhoods. She stayed in a condominium surrounded by HDB blocks (Singapore’s high-rise public housing apartments), which house a significant portion of the Chinese-speaking population. This prevalence of Chinese-speaking people in their everyday experience led them to devalue Singapore as an English-speaking country because many of them thought of learning English as their primary target followed by learning Chinese. Many of lower middle class families gave similar accounts of their living experience as well as their children’s school life described earlier, as their children attended the nearby public schools. In sum, even though the wild geese migrant families came to the same country, their level of satisfaction with their children’s schooling and education seemed to be different, largely depending on the types of schools they attended, which tended to vary with the economic affluence of families. In contrast, mothers whose children attended international school told quite a different story. Also, they lived in a middle class neighbourhood, where even ethnic Chinese Singaporeans would use English in their everyday


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lives and often with their children. For example, Boram’s mother, whose two children who were in grades 3 and 4 at a nearby international school, lived in one of the Singapore’s most expensive residential areas and recounted her satisfactory experience, ‘‘I found that the living environment was very convenient and helpful for me. y Also for my children’s education, it is a good country’’. Thus, a key difference in children’s schooling experience consists in whether children attended an international school or a local public school. Problems related to schooling are mostly associated with public school attendees. Then, why do local public school attendees experience more rigid schooling than their counterparts in other schools? In short, a major reason why Koreans (or foreigners in general) have such difficult experiences in Singapore’s public schools lies partly in the differences between the national systems, which many of the migrants did not take seriously into account. Unlike Korea, Singaporean public schools at primary and secondary levels are hierarchically ranked based on academic performance of their students. Within a school, students are also divided into different classes based on their academic performance. Singapore also has a tracking system for students in the secondary schools, dividing them into ‘special’, ‘express’, ‘normal (academic)’ and ‘normal (technical)’ streams. Those attending the ‘normal’ streams at the lower secondary level may not go into the academic stream at the upper-secondary levels which will lead them to universities. For example, among 47,168 12-year-old students enrolling in Singapore’s public schools, only 4,218 were in the special stream, 25,221 were in the express stream, 11,796 were in the normal (academic) stream and 5,922 were in the normal (technical) stream in 2005 (Singapore Ministry of Education, 2006, p. 9). The Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), taken at the end of primary school education, is the critical exam which will determine students’ tracks in the later stages of their education and their life. Once an educational track is set for an individual, it is very hard to transfer. From Grade 4 of primary school, such a division is enforced. Students have to take examinations to enter secondary schools (the middle school equivalent). The schools are ranked accordingly. This means that international transferee students at public schools are more likely to experience a ‘hard landing’ if there is no buffer for the transfer and transition. Second, there are other systemic differences from other English-speaking countries. This public school system may have its own merits for its nationals, but it can be a particularly heavy burden for foreign students who are just starting their studies without sufficient English fluency or in one of the official languages that students must study. Unlike international schools

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in Singapore or public schools in other English-speaking countries, English as Second Language (ESL) classes, designed to help foreign students’ transition smoothly to the core classes, are not available in public schools. Also, students who want to transfer to public school are required to sit for transfer exams, in English, and almost all will be downgraded/demoted between one and three years from their own school levels in Korea. The standards of other subjects are stringent as well. Therefore, middle class Singaporean parents pay as much attention to education as their Korean counterparts do. The systemic difference is reflected in the following narrative of Youngjin’s mother, who describes the different experiences of those attending public and international schools from the perspective of parents of public school goers. In fact, this was repeatedly heard both from public and international schoolgoing mothers: ‘Mothers whose children attend international schools are smiling’ y ‘Mothers of the local [public school children] are filled with concerns.’ y ‘We can tell from the face of the mothers whether their children go to an international school or to a local school.’ y [Q: Why is that so?] Children [at international schools] do not have [regular and frequent] exams and their classes are fun. Therefore, the pressure is less [for children and mothers]. y [Singapore’s public schools] are the same as schools in Korea, memorising and testing, y There is so much memorisation and so many tests that the children are getting so much stress. (Youngjin’s mother, emphasis added)

In sum, children in public and international schools had highly contrasting daily experiences of schooling in Singapore. Contexts of reception for foreign students in Singapore’s public schools were at best neutral, whereas those at international schools were favourable, so as to facilitate smooth transitions for their students. Learning both Chinese and English What is the experience of learning two languages like? Were their hopes of acquiring two foreign languages fulfilled as they wished and expected? I will suggest that this depends very much on the school types that the children attended. In general, learning both languages simultaneously was particularly difficult for those who are attending the local schools. This learning experience requires us to look at how language acquisition is experienced in schools at the systemic and institutional levels. Ciwoo’s mother told me: We can learn both languages [i.e. English and Chinese] but neither of them satisfactory. y We have got both of them just at the basic level. Those who went to


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the US may not have been exposed to the Chinese language. Comparing them, we get two, but [the children] are not doing well at either of them. y We may lose both [languages]. It is easy to acquire both [at a basic level] but it is hard to master both. (Ciwoo’s mother)

It was also notable that, for some children, the very environment of bilingual schooling that their parents pursued was challenging them. Meanwhile, being exposed to a two foreign language environment at a very young age, such as at a kindergarten or nursery level, often raises the concerns of parents of such pupils and other parents who observe such cases. The issues associated with learning two foreign languages have often differed from the parents’ initial expectations because they go beyond the difficulties of learning. The following is an experience of a young pupil at a kindergarten and another pupil at Primary 1 who came to Singapore about six months ago. This shows the initial difficulties that a young child faces in a bilingual learning environment, which may be relevant to children of other ages as well: In the case of the local kindergarten, the teachers instruct him in Chinese in the morning, and, from noon, English instructors teach him in English. As he learns both Chinese and English, he was crying because he could not understand both languages. y Some mothers complain that there are too many Koreans at their schools but it was better for us to get adjusted to [the new school environment]. y If there were no Korean friends in his class, it would be much harder for him to attend the school. (Jooeun’s mother)

The above experience is not confined to very young students, but it is also experienced by older primary public school students as well. They have difficulties in learning two foreign languages simultaneously, particularly Chinese, which was one of the core reasons why they chose Singapore. Then, can the hope of learning two foreign languages, English and Chinese, be achieved? A short answer is that it seemed not, particularly for public school goers. It is very rare that they achieve this expectation. I view this more as a systemic than personal problem. The following two cases of learning these languages at public (Youngjin and his younger sister) and international schools (Euree and her younger brother) serve to illustrate my point. Among many of the public school attendees in my sample, there was only one Korean student to complete Chinese classes at school. This account, from Youngjin’s family, gives insight into what Korean students confront at school. Like most others, Youngjin’s parents chose Singapore by the attractive thought of achieving trilingualism. Youngjin was demoted by one year when he arrived one year and seven months ago. For the first Chinese exam, he scored 38 of 100, the best among the Koreans in the class.

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For English, he achieved 64 marks, above the passing standard of 50. When Youngjin’s mother met the Chinese teacher, she was told, ‘‘Why don’t you drop the Chinese class by submitting a form at the school office? His average school performance will be affected because of his learning Chinese’’. However, he did not want to give up the class, which all the other Koreans had done. Even though he [and other Koreans] went to a private cramming school for Chinese, according to him, ‘‘all of them just looked out of the window’’ as they could not understand what was being taught at the cramming class either. Instead of dropping Chinese, he asked his mother to arrange for a Chinese tutor who could speak English too. This approach worked. He attained 72 marks for his Chinese class within six months, which surprised him, his mother and teachers. Over the latest summer vacation, he ‘lived with CDs in Chinese’. In the most recent exam, he scored 74 marks. However, he wanted to drop the subject, since his overall average dropped significantly because of the Chinese exam result, which would affect his qualification for secondary schools. This time, the Chinese teacher persuaded him and his mother not to, saying that ‘‘he is the only student in the entire class who achieved the full mark for the Chinese composition section of the exam’’. The top student of the Chinese class overall, a Taiwanese, did not get the full mark for this section. According to Youngjin’s mother, other Korean mothers receive calls from the school recommending them to drop the subject. They are often told that their children should read English books at the library during the formal Chinese classes to improve their English instead. In fact, almost all the interviewed mothers of public school pupils told similar stories. Most of them dropped the subject but continued learning Chinese through private tutorials. This experience of learning Chinese is also different in international schools, as the language taught is either compulsory or optional. In contrast to public school children, the Chinese language experience of Euree and her younger brother, an eleventh and a tenth grader at the Singapore American School, shows the different experience of typical international school students. Like others, they continued learning Chinese both at school and at home with private tutors twice a week. They chose Chinese as a second foreign language since the school requires them to choose one. Among the available languages, they, according to Euree’s mother, chose this ‘‘as these days the demand for the Chinese language [in the world] is increasing and the level of Chinese taught at the school is not so difficult’’. In fact, she feels that children ‘‘do not need private tutorials to catch up with the classes at school’’ but she allows her children to receive them, as it would be useful for them to speak Chinese better, not just to catch up with their classmates.


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There is a big gap in the standard of Chinese taught at public and international schools. Her children’s Chinese level is Level 5, which is the highest at the school for high school students. This is also the level which her children would need to sit for an AP (Advanced Placement) program test, which will be credited later at an American university or college and will also be favourably viewed for university entrance applications. The highest level of Chinese at international schools, according to her children’s private tutor in Chinese, ‘‘was probably the equivalent of what Primary 3 students of public schools were taught as a second mother tongue’’. In sum, parents’ wish to raise trilingual children through public schooling in Singapore leads to difficult and different realities in the classrooms. The expectation that time would resolve the initial difficulties in adjusting to the new educational system may not be satisfied. Most children are asked to drop Chinese language classes in public schools. This is not because they spend less time and effort, but more because they are behind their Singaporean classmates, as the language curriculum is set in another mother tongue. Because of this structural difficulty, there is only one case among my sampled families where the child successfully caught up with the Chinese language in a public school. Other public school attendees had to be satisfied with learning their Chinese through private tutorials, without school lessons, a situation which was less favourable than for international school attendees, largely because of the rigidity of context of reception for foreign students at the local level.

Stuck in Singapore: The ‘Downed’ and Tracking System in Public Schools Another local context of reception shows how the national system works against transnational educational migrants. Unlike some other difficulties, ‘downgrading/demoting’ (commonly called ‘downed’ among Korean mothers) and the tracking system in Singapore, which may pose a neutral concern for Singaporean students, may have prolonged and potentially negative impacts on children by shaping their childhood and adolescence. This is particularly linked to the systemic differences of cross-border education, which, in fact, most parents had expected to be positive or complementary to what their children had already received, before they made their move. However, only 1 of 12 sampled families and only 1 of 18 children attending public schools in these families have not been affected by this systemic difference through the demotion by 1 to 3 years, from those in Korea8. Few expected

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this downgrading and tracking system before moving to Singapore. The few who were aware of them had underestimated the importance of such differences and their implications for their children’s future. They, however, will have to confront the difference in a few months’ time, as their own children transfer with demotions into the public schools. Most interviewees expressed their concerns about their children’s demotion. It is fair to say that they were puzzled as to what to do about this matter. There was only one case where no demotion was experienced. Hyunwoo, a sixth grader at a primary school, was not demoted when he transferred to a Singaporean public school one and a half years ago. Demotion is not only confined to students who come directly from Korea but also affects Mainland Chinese who are native Chinese speakers, as they struggle to pass the transfer exam in English when they transfer to Singapore’s public schools (Huang & Yeoh, 2005). Also, even those who went to international schools before coming to Singapore had similar difficulties of getting into their own grades at public schools in Singapore. There are four sampled families who underwent the same experience, two each who attended international schools in Vietnam and Indonesia. We need to consider three factors which explain why Korean children’s demotion can have an effect at least over their youth, if not over their whole life. First, demoted pupils have to repeat the subjects they studied up to three years ago, although these subjects have been taught in English in their Singapore classes. Their grades in Singapore reflect their level of competence in exams for these subjects written in English; not their overall understanding of the contents. If Korean pupils’ English improves in about a year, so that they can do the exams even in English, they cannot be reassessed and upgraded to the school grades according to their age. Therefore, parents often expressed their concern that demotion may have an impact on their children’s present schooling experience. For example, the third child in Nayoung’s family who was demoted by two years found herself bored in class, as she took a fifth grade class in a public school when she should have been attending the first grade of a secondary school for three months. The solution was to transfer her to a private school by taking another transfer exam; this allowed her to be accepted into the sixth grade. Second, if these public school attendees return to Korea, they may not be accepted into a school grade in line with their age, as they will have missed the required curriculum during their schooling overseas. The only officially available by-pass to this is by taking special exams (a qualification test which was originally designed for those who could not attend schools) for the next level of schooling in Korea. To sit for this test, however, they are


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required to drop out of school. This understandably places a tremendous burden on young pupils, lacking the interaction with and support of classmates, who can often go on to become their lifelong friends at this stage. This is why parents feel that returning to Korea would not be a favourable option to get out of their situation and many of them told me that ‘it is inevitable’ that they would have to prolong their stay further if they cannot afford to transfer to an international school in Singapore or to make another move to a third country for further schooling. Third, the risk from the demotion may not be resolved easily in the future, even if it is not exacerbated. The worst scenario of all, probably the nightmare of wild geese families at public schools, was recounted by interviewed families who had observed and heard about it: When Korean children go to public school, most of them enter into the express track [after the initial adjustment of one year or so] y However, when they move on to the second grade [of secondary school], as the subjects become more difficult, many of them are dropped to the normal track. (Insung’s mother)

The normal track in Singapore, essentially, may not enable its students to go to an academic secondary school but to a technical school. This situation could be a dead end for Koreans, because virtually all those who want to go to an academic track secondary school can go to one in Korea. In other words, the pursuit of transnational schooling – aimed at pursuing better opportunities that are available overseas – may end up producing a worse situation. Because of this system of retaking, tracking and downgrading, Singapore seems not to be suitable for those students whose performance in Korea – children of ‘the second chance’ – is not good, who may make up some portion of kirogi students. The following account of Nayoung’s mother shows this point: I heard of one student going to the first grade of secondary school for three years. y In such a situation, the family should pack up and leave. There are some others whose children did not do well [in Korea] and parents think that ‘learning English would be good for them if they do not want to study.’ Those children, if they are in the middle or high school, they cannot catch up with the tough schooling here. For children like these, parents will recognise in a year’s time that they cannot succeed here as well, and they will leave. I have seen many such cases around here. (Nayoung’s mother)

We may wonder, then, why are there so many Koreans who still come to Singapore despite this potential risk? I suggest that this unexpected and unintended consequence of transnational schooling is one that many Koreans are not yet aware of, partly because the wild geese phenomenon of

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overseas schooling at primary and secondary levels is relatively recent and partly because those who have potential problems are trying to avoid them individually. The latter, as I showed earlier, includes going to another country. The problem is at the moment submerged, but I suggest that this will become an issue in the near future.

STRATEGIES OF TRANSNATIONAL ADAPTATION: NON-SCHOOLING ISSUES AND THE TRANSNATIONAL DETOUR The benefits of receiving an overseas education in Singapore and the discontent with Korea’s educational system and environment might lead us to conclude that transnational education may be able to resolve key parental concerns. This section suggests that this is not necessarily the case, but that experiences vary, particularly in the areas that these families take for granted before they move. This subsection will focus on non-schooling issues and how the future trajectory of these migrant children is being reshaped by their current experience. Transnational Childhood and Adolescence: Reshaped Peer Group and Culture An important hidden dimension of demotion its potential effects on friendship, peer group and peer culture, which are central elements of childhood and adolescence and the schooling and non-schooling aspects of children’s lives. First, friendship is an area where demoted students were affected as their classmates were younger and often less mature. This issue is magnified if the wild geese students are in the upper primary or secondary levels, when children are growing fast physically and mentally. The following account is typical of the relationships experienced by demoted Korean students at public schools: [T]hey seem to compare themselves with their classmates, feeling their classmates are y ‘childish.’ Although [their classmates’] English is better, they seem to think that the gap in their mental ages is wider than that. y In Korea, [befriending classmates] does not end when school is over. They go together for hakwon (private after-school learning institutions or cramming schools) and other hobbies and cultural activities. [In Singapore] the opportunities [to mix with classmates] seem to be narrower [than in Korea]. (Mina’s mother)


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Second, as they were surrounded by younger local classmates, many Korean children sought friendship within their co-ethnic community, consolidating their ethnic bonds but possibly losing localising opportunities. Partly because of the difficulties in making non-co-ethnic friends at schools and partly because of language and cultural issues, relatively older children (upper graders in primary schools and secondary students) also commonly expressed their preference for befriending co-ethnic classmates. This is often viewed unfavourably by their parents, at the initial stage, who want their children to be immersed in a new English-speaking environment with non-Korean friends. For example, Sunghoon’s mother initially did not want to let her children play too frequently with their Korean friends at school in the hope that limiting this would help her children adjust quicker. She thought if they mixed with other Koreans, their proficiency in English would not catch up as fast as she hoped. However, she changed her mind when she realised that ‘‘at my sons’ age, there isn’t a more important thing than friends’’. She recalled her own experience as a youth and thought ‘‘if they were in Korea now, their friends at middle school or high school would become their life-long friends. Now [being in Singapore] their chances [of making such friends] are less. I felt sorry about that’’. These days, she lets their children play with their Korean friends. Third, the peer culture of children among the Korean community in Singapore has been transformed. The interplay of Korean culture and the consequence of demotion has reorganised the peer culture among the Korean student community in their schools and in other arenas of co-ethnic gatherings, including churches. Unlike many other countries, this is a particularly sensitive issue among Koreans, where hierarchy according to age (especially up to the high-school level) is rigid culturally and linguistically (as a year’s age difference requires Koreans to use a different term to address others at this age) at least throughout the schools. For example, I observed while I was volunteering as a Sunday school teacher that many students who are demoted in Singapore are called by their Korean classmates either ‘‘hyung (literally, the term is used for ‘elder brother’ in Korean by younger boys; oppa is used by younger girls)’’ or ‘‘euni (the term used for ‘elder sister’ in Korean by younger girls; nuna is used by younger boys)’’. This unusual organisation of peers has become common among the Korean student community, since age matters when addressing one another. Unlike those entering universities, who sometimes re-sit the entrance exams for one or two years when they fail to enter to a university of their choice, similar re-sits are rare for high school pupils. Knowing this from their own schooling experience, parents are particularly

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concerned and often aim for their children to complete secondary education in Singapore to avoid such negative experiences in Korea, taking a few years longer in the process. This is something that most parents did not expect or consider seriously before coming to Singapore. In sum, the friendship and peer culture of Korean kirogi children, particularly demoted public school goers, was re-shaped in their life in Singapore. At the same time, peer culture and peer groups in Singapore and Korea become a constraint when the children’s families want to return, which will be discussed in the following subsection.

Triangulating the Ideal Time to Come and to Return The best timing and duration for their children’s overseas education was a particularly heated issue among wild geese families. It was related to not only the best timing to acquire English (and Chinese) but also to maintain the Korean language- and subject-related issues, especially when children are younger. The following account of Jooeun’s mother shows her views with regard to a better combination of overseas education and Korean education from her own experiences with similar wild geese families and her own children: Coming [to Singapore] at the first grade [of primary school] is not good. y If anyone [at Primary 5] comes and stays for two years [or so], the gap will be too big. That is not good either. If somebody [at Primary 3] comes and studies for two years [or two and a half years], the school subjects in Korea wouldn’t be left behind and some further support after returning to Korea would make one good enough. My first child came a little too late and the second child came a little too early. That is inevitable because of the age gap between the two. But ours is not an ideal case.(Jooeun’s mother)

For those who have multiple children, the acquisition of foreign languages while simultaneously maintaining their native tongue is tense, if not a contradiction. In fact, the ideal or best timing is especially hard to decide in the setting of an individual family, if there is more than one child, as the family may have to reach a compromise among their children. However, this triangulation between what they were actually doing and what others were doing was a common and heated topic for most kirogi families, which seemed to be accumulated at the collective level and circulated to their friends and acquaintances both in Singapore and Korea. This information was particularly important for those who came to Singapore for a shorter period, such as one or two months or a semester, to test the water. Several families,


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particularly those of younger pupils, in fact, came to Singapore for a fixed period of time, with the intention of planning another round of going abroad. After spending some time abroad, many kirogi families encounter an unexpected reality and they come to realise the merits of the Korean education that they had taken for granted. At the beginning of this study, I suggested that their discontentedness with the Korean educational system was one of the reasons why wild geese families leave Korea. However, many wild geese parents began to make educational decisions based on these new realisations and they realised the importance of what they had taken for granted in Korea, particularly about Korean subjects. This was truer for families who have been staying abroad for more than two years, particularly among the regional expatriate kirogi families. Their lengthy stay away from Korea led them to become keener on often underappreciated Korean education system and curriculum. In particular, Some families came to appreciate the usefulness of some Korean subjects. The following is an account of a father whose children attended a highly regarded international school in Singapore: As we have been abroad, our children have missed what they should have learned in Korea. Of course, they have acquired English but there are many losses, such as the Korean language and Korean history, as well as maths, which Koreans in Korea are excellent at. Also, the amount of what students learn at international schools is less than what Koreans learn at schools in Korea. (Aram’s mother)

In sum, seeking the ideal timing or duration to come, to prolong one’s visit and to return, triangulating between one’s own experience and others’ was the deepest concern for the parents for the present and for any feasible future trajectory. But it is an inherently daunting task for a family when the stages of schooling of multiple children are considered together.

Why not Return? Context of Return and Reconfiguration of Trajectories If many of the kirogi students experienced unexpected difficulties, particularly among the lower middle class migrants, then, it might be asked, why don’t they return? I will discuss the role of the context of reception in the home country for returnee children. On the whole, most kirogi families seem not to want to take any further risks with their children’s schooling. Many seem to foresee now what it would be like to re-adjust, based on their difficult experiences of adaptation

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in Singapore and their earlier experiences in Korea, which lead them to remain where they are (up to the last moment of their decision) rather than to return immediately. In this regard, first, they are gauging both countries in their decision whether to go further or not, ‘when’ and ‘where’ to go. That may be a reason why, even though the types of wild geese families are different, as I have shown in my study, their future trajectory shows greater similarity than difference. Second, not only the educational aspects but also the peer culture and peer/cohort groups, both in Singapore and Korea, were considered in their decision-making process. Thirdly, not all kirogi families had similar future routes. In fact, the stages of children’s schooling, especially whether children were primary or secondary school students seemed to be the most important factor, as public school goers at primary school can make the choice of return more easily, as demotion would not be a difficult matter. This was related to the current context of reception and return, particularly the primary schooling policy in Korea that allows returnee students to be easily accepted for the grade that fits the returning students, if they pass the accreditation test, and which is operated under the framework of universal education at the primary school level. There were some variations in their responses, depending on the kirogi types. When facing this dilemma, expatriate-turned kirogi families tend to decide to prolong their stay in Singapore. In fact, the existence of this kirogi type is a result of professional migrant families’ decision to prolong their stay for the sake of their children’s schooling. This is evident in the following account of Aram’s mother: Our case was special in that [my husband] worked for eight years [in Singapore and the Philippines] consecutively. y If middle or high school students go back to Korea, it is not a good thing [for children]. All those in similar situations recommended us to remain [abroad]. That was what made us remain. (Aram’s mother)

Though she said her case was special, in fact, this is the opinion of the majority of migrants like her. In fact, her case was typical for those whose children were at the secondary schools when the husband was reassigned to his post in Korea and who chose to remain in Singapore. The recommendation of ‘all those in similar situations to Aram’s mother reflects the prevalence of such detouring migration trajectories among professional migrants. First, their uneasiness about returning to Korea after a significant time abroad has to do not just with their anxiety about returning but with foreseeable problems of adjustment to Korea’s competitive learning environment and peer culture, but also other issues, including a lack of


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institutional arrangements, such as specialised schools for returnees in Korea, for example, unlike the situation in Japan (Goodman, 1986, 1990). A mother of a fourth and a first grader told me about her anxiety: I worry that when we go back to Korea, my children may have peer conflicts with their peers [caused by this demotion and the cultural experience that they received] if they stay here for long. (Mina’s mother)

Knowing this, according to Aram’s mother, her children ‘‘have a fear of returning to Korea because of [what they haven’t experienced], and a fear of having to study very intensively as they observed their friends doing when they visited Korea during the vacations’’. This fear may not be viewed as an overreaction when buffering schemes for returnees are not available; one such scheme is available to the children of professional migrants.9 Second, the regional expatriate kirogi type also had similar concerns to those of the expatriate-turned kirogi type, but when they faced a problem in Singapore, the children and their parents considered going to a third country. They considered transnational detouring, i.e. going to a third country. The following account illustrates this point: When the first child (Nayoung) took the O Level exams, we had a hard time. With her results, it was not possible to enter a junior college [Singapore’s equivalent of an academic stream senior high school] here. Then, we wanted to go to a country with many schools. Here, there are not many schools. I thought of going to Australia or Canada. y I thought that I was giving her too much pressure at her age. y She later decided to go to a [post-secondary technical school] in Singapore, in consideration of her younger sisters and brother. (Nayoung’s mother)

Considering the similar level of regional affiliation between expatriatesturned kirogi and many of the regional expatriate kirogi type, the transnational detouring choice may be an option for expatriates-turned kirogi if they can afford to do so. Third, a similar attitude is also prevalent among the typical wild geese families. As I suggested earlier, many of those who had difficulties in moving further in Singapore seriously considered going to a third country or moving to an international school rather than returning to Korea when they could afford it. In the case of those who are locked in to transnational schooling between Singapore and Korea, because of the interplay between Korean culture, Singapore’s local educational system of downgrading (and repeating) and the tracking system and their future implications, it is particularly difficult for parents to resolve the issue alone. This partly explains why those families

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caught in the dilemma of transnational education do not return to Korea. Insung’s mother explained: ‘‘In such cases, if their children are downtracked to the normal stream, they just let their children attend these classes, as they cannot afford transfers to international schools. For parents who can afford it, they transfer their children to private schools in Singapore’’. Younger children have enough time to adapt to the local system during their primary school education and some are successfully incorporated into the top upper secondary schools in Singapore. However, the upper graders and secondary school pupils may not have enough time to fully compete in Singapore’s competitive-tracked educational system. When I asked Insung’s mother what she would do if this unfortunate situation were to occur, as she is part of the more affluent group, she said that she would think about the alternatives, such as transferring her children to an international school in Singapore or going to Canada or the USA. But she ruled out the ‘option of returning to Korea’ because the gap in subject knowledge which widened while staying in Singapore is hard to bridge and because of her children’s peer relations. Fourth, another reason why these wild geese families did not want to return to Korea until the completion of secondary school abroad is related to the Korean system regarding returnees. In the case of the typical wild geese families, they are not even considered as eligible to apply for a returnee quota for a place at a high school or university if they return. The only possibility, under the current entrance system to high school or university, is based on the merits of their foreign language ability or similar kinds of ability, which are open to all. This was one reason why most of the kirogi parents did not even mention the special entrance scheme at all, particularly at the high school level. For this reason, most parents regarded the problem of return as an individual family’s problem rather than perceiving it as a problem on any other level. The fact that their emigration abroad was against the current regulations seemed to make them regard their cases as remaining at the individual level, even though they sometimes expressed the hope that, as the number of wild geese families became more significant, the government might consider some form of arrangement that might ease their return. However, it is not currently clear that any such scheme will be implemented soon. Considering the current context of reception for prospective returnees, which are largely inadequate to provide any kind of buffer for the returnees, in general, or the wild geese migrants in particular, seems to mean that these families will have to continue to organise their children’s education abroad rather than return.


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CONCLUSION: THE GROUNDED REALITIES OF TRANSNATIONAL SCHOOLING This study has highlighted the grounded realities of the transnational schooling of Korean wild geese educational migrant families in Singapore, who sought for advantages through early study abroad, particularly focusing on less affluent families. It has also highlighted why and how the same pursuit can be experienced differently and in contrasting ways among the participants in transnational educational migration. This study found that although the Korean state’s emphasis on international competitiveness and parental aspirations for their children’s future upward social mobility has led many middle class families to arrange for their children to study abroad to acquire a foreign language ability, Koreans in Singapore were also attracted by relatively low cost, the English–Chinese bilingualism and other ‘family-friendly’ features of staying and studying in Singapore. In particular, what distinguishes Singapore from other destinations, thereby making it one of the most popular destinations in recent years among Koreans, is that it allows for the acquisition of another influential foreign language, Chinese. It also reduces the sacrifices that family members have to make by being closer to home, making visits less expensive and more feasible. This strategic choice can also be understood as a Korean version of the social mobility project for families (Heath, Rothon, & Kilpi, 2008; Van Zanten, 1997; Zeroulou, 1988). In fact, similar conditions in Singapore have attracted Mainland Chinese ‘study mothers,’ but for them the Chinese language was a matter of convenience (Huang & Yeoh, 2005), whereas it was an issue of linguistic capital for Koreans. This suggests that the same societal condition in a host society can be viewed in a different way, even among similarly motivated educational migrants, depending on their different countries of origin. Kirogi children in Singapore had highly contrasting schooling experiences and met with mixed success in gaining what they expected. Many Koreans expected that their migration would give their children more human linguistic capital, with English–Chinese bilingual education at formal schools, thus enabling them to have an edge over others. However, their gaining of such an edge depended largely on the types of schools they attended and their relative socio-economic situations. Furthermore, many children in public schools, particularly from the lower middle class, faced demotion and other difficulties in adjusting to their new schooling environment, including those of a rigidly hierarchical school system and less exposure to an English-speaking environment. Some of this less affluent

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group found themselves facing dilemmas which arose from the unforeseen negative consequences of cross-border schooling, which may have a sustained impact on the children. Their difficulties arose largely from the institutional differences across nations. The difference in the educational systems of the two countries, and the initial acceptance policies for foreign students in Singapore, meant that most international transfer students had to be demoted in public schools. The remark that the ‘‘faces of the mothers of local school children are filled with concern whereas those of the mothers of international school children are smiling’’ shows not only the difficult and different impacts of their school experiences on students, but also how this affects their mothers, who are both the caregivers and the managers of their children’s education (Park & Abelmann, 2004). This ironic situation is in stark contrast to their prior expectation of achieving a better environment for their children and for the accompanying mothers, by tapping into the opportunity of acquiring bilingual capacity and utilising the ‘family-friendly conditions’ that Singapore may offer. Therefore, the case of Korean public school students shows that transnational schooling does not necessarily operate equally favourably for participants from different social class situations. This study showed the darker side of transnational schooling. Some families were identified as being caught in a dilemma by falling foul of the unforeseen, thus suffering from unintended yet negative consequences. My finding advances what Orellana et al. (2001, p. 583) found among transnational educational children: that they are ‘‘caught between two nations, educational systems and ways of growing up’’. This would be most rigid in the case of the lower middle class public school attendees. They are less able to make a future move back home or to a third country, when they are confronted with problems in a foreign country. This is the case regardless of their own abilities; in fact, the children were hard-working and their mothers (and fathers) made efforts for their children within a tighter budget. They may get lost in the midst of a family-level globalisation project; this is partly due to the rigid realities of cross-border education. The mass production of demoted Korean students has also transformed the peer culture of the Korean student community in Singapore. When it was combined with an age-sensitive Korean culture, it reorganised the peer culture of Korean youth in Singapore. Also, the nature of the friendships of demoted students affects their childhood and early adolescence experience negatively, and it has led Korean kirogi children to stick to their co-ethnic friends. Therefore, this study has shown the influence of national level institutions, and of student peer culture (of both origin and host societies),


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which constitute the contexts of reception, in shaping the current and future trajectory of transnational migrants. However, for demoted public school students, returning to Korea was not perceived to be a good choice, as there were other potential risks for their children. These risks included breaching the age-sensitive Korean peer culture and the difficulty in re-entering a competitive environment with a gap in their learning, which was widened by the lost years due to the demotion. For these reasons, many Korean children resisted returning. Those parents who could afford it seriously considered transferring their children to an international school in Singapore or moving to a third country, but others seemed unsure as to what to do. As a whole, this study demonstrates the importance of societal contexts of reception and the institutions in both the countries of origin and of destination. Critical institutions include buffering institutions and reference groups and peer culture for migrant or returnee children, as well as the socio-economic situations of migrant families. These contexts and institutions shape the schooling and life experiences of educational migrant children and their families and matter for reconfiguring their trajectories.

NOTES 1. One group that is not fully covered in this study but belongs to the category of ESA students is the students who go abroad alone for their primary and secondary school education. 2. In the Korean context, sending primary and lower secondary school children abroad solely for the purpose of education is still illegal, though this regulation is virtually impossible to enforce, as the existence of such students and their rise in numbers indicate (see Figs. 1 and 2). In the case of upper-secondary school (high school) students, studying abroad was liberalized in 2000. A revised regulation on overseas education (17 November 2000) allows graduates of middle school to go abroad for their self-funded ESA. Those who have not graduated their middle school are exceptionally ‘approved’ by the superintendents of school districts or President of the National Institute of International Education (under the Ministry of Education) (Ministry of Education, 2003). These ‘approved students’ among ESA students were 59 in 1995, 56 in 1996, 394 in 1997, 433 in 1998, 189 in 1999, 228 in 2000, 567 in 2001, 345 in 2002, no data in 2003 and 2004, 6 in 2005, 3 in 2006, and 2 in 2007. 3. Similarly to this type, some husbands were making frequent and lengthier overseas business trips around the world, including to Singapore. 4. Malaysia’s private schools are another destination that lures Korean kirogi students to pursue bilingual (English and Chinese) schooling. 5. On 11 March 2009, I visited the Centre and was told that it was going to be replaced by two new information centres for the Ministry of Education.

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6. The following figures on the number of Korean students are based on the information at a popular Korean community website in Singapore (www.singlove. com, accessed on 9 June 2006), which took note of the presentation by the Consul of the problems of Korean kirogi students in Singapore. The figure was confirmed (Interview on 24 May 2007 with the Consul at the Korean Embassy). 7. Since the Singaporean government does not reveal any detailed data on foreign students, an exact breakdown of the numbers of Koreans in public and international schools could not be officially obtained through the Singaporean government. The Korean Embassy’s estimation was made by sending official requests to all the international schools and from its own estimate of public school attendees. Not all the international schools responded to the Korean Embassy’s request relating to the enquiry about the number of Korean students. 8. This systemic differentiation due to moving into a new schooling environment is not applicable to four children who started their Primary 1 education in Singapore. Singapore government recently implemented new guideline for age criteria for admission of international students. Probably recognising the significance of the ‘downing’ issue in public schools, the Singapore Ministry of Education now ‘‘does not recommend admission to levels where international students will be more than two years older than their classmates.’’ (http://www.moe.gov.sg/ accessed on 29 November 2009). 9. As I do not have any public school goer who is an expatriate-turned kirogi, which was difficult to find during my fieldwork, I cannot say for sure whether this group shares the same dilemma of transnational schooling as public school goers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Professors Anthony Heath, Nancy Abelmann, Frank Furstenberg, Annette Lareau, Roger Goodman, Emily Hannum, the editors and anonymous reviewers of RSE, and my friends, Seong Young Lee, Soo Min Chung and Ying-Chieh Wu, for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts. I am also grateful to Professors Brenda Yeoh and Yoon-Hwan Shin and all the informants and interviewees I met during my fieldwork in Singapore and Korea. Despite their helpful comments, if there are errors in this study, the fault is solely mine.

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APPENDIX Table A1. Family Casea

Type

Age

Characteristics of Interviewed Wild Geese Families.

School Type

(Wife/ Husband)

Child 1

Age/Gender/Grade of Children

Expat

(42/44)

International 17, M, Grade 9

Boram Ciwoo Daeho

Typical Typical Typical

(36/41) (40/42) (37/38)

International 10, M, Primary 4 International 13, M, Primary 6 International 11, M, Primary 5

Euree

Expat

(44/45)

International 18, F, Grade 11

F G Hyunwoo Insung Jooeun K Mina

Typical Regional Typical Regional Typical Regional Typical

(40/43) (40/45) (43/47) (41/50) (34/42) (41/46) (39/42)

International Localf Local Localf Local Localf Localf

10, M, Primary 4 14, M, Secondary 1 12, M, Primary 6 14, M, Secondary 1 7, F, Primary 1 15, F, Secondary 2 11, F, Primary 4

Nayoung

Regional

(42/42)

Localf

(42/46)

Localf

18, F, Upper Secondary 15, M, Secondary 2

b

Husband’s Occupationc

Household Income

15, M, Grade 8

Korean 6 M KW MNC 9, M, Primary 3 Own Biz Unknown US MNC 16.7 M KW Partner, IT 5 M KW firm 10,000SGDd 17, M, Grade 10 Korean MNC Own Biz Unknown 11, M, Primary 4 Own Bizc 8 M KW 7, M, Primacy 1 Own Biz 15 M KW 11, M, Primary 4 Own Bizc 10 M KW 6, M, Kinder 2 Own Biz Unknown 12, F, Primary 5 Own Bizc Unknown 8, M, Primary 1 Company Unknown employee 16, F, Secondary 3 Own Bizc Unknown 13, M, Primary 5

Self4.5 M KW employed

Monthly Husband Expense in Interviewed Singapore 7,000 SGDd

Yes

15,000 SGD 6.5 M KW 2.5 M KWe

No No Yes

5,000 SGDd

No

10,000 SGD 5 M KW 5 M KW 5 M KW 6,500 SGD 8,000 SGD 4 M KW

No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No

6 M KW

No

3 M KW

Yes

JEEHUN KIM

Aram

Sunghoon Typical

Child 2

Regional Typical

(40/49) (41/43)

Localf Local

14, F, Primary 6 8, M, Primary 2

12, M, Primary 4

Youngjin

Typical

(39/40)

Localf

11, M, Primary 4

7, F, Primary 1

Z

Regional

(41/45)

Local/Korean 15, F, Secondary 2

11, F, Primary 5

Teachera Company employee Company employee Company employeea

6,000 SGD 3.5 M KW

3,500 SGD 3,000 SGD

No No

3 M KW

3,000 SGD

No

6,000 SGD

4,000 SGD

Yes

Note: All the names are pseudonyms, taking from popular names of children in Korea. I refer to the families by the fictional names of their first child. a Family case follows the name of the first child; Other alphabet case (such as F) refers to the case was not cited in the study. Insung’s and Daeho’s mother are working part-time as a private tutor and make 2–3,000 SGD a month, which is not reflected in their household income above. Hyunwoo’s, Youngjin’s and cases T, U and Z families stay in HDB (public housing) in Singapore. b Jooeun’s family has a third child (3, male and nursery), Nayoung’s family has a third child (15, female and Secondary 2) and fourth child (12, male and Primary 5). c Refers husbands are engaging their business wholly or partially in another Southeast Asian country. d These figures do not include educational expenses either subsidised by company or paid by their own savings. e About half the expenses are paid by grandparents. f Refers that children’s school grade was demoted (‘downed’) after initial assessment test to transfer to public schools in Singapore. Those entering primary grade 1 do not need to take such a test and are accepted according to their age.


T U

311

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