Asian (Re)Education on Film, Episode 14
The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, UK/Italy/France/China, 1987)
For the last episode in this series, I’ll be discussing The Last Emperor, which was actually the first feature film about China that I ever saw, shortly after it came out in 1987. Unlike the other films I’ve been discussing, this is a Hollywood blockbuster with a Western director, Bernardo Bertolucci. But like Chen Kaige’s King of the Children (Episode 2), which appeared in the same year, it’s also a document of China’s liberal 1980s, the decade of Beijing’s ‘Opening Up’, when the country was more tolerant and open that it had ever been, or would subsequently become.
Bertolucci was given permission to shoot on location in Beijing’s Forbidden City, as well as in other locations such as the former palace of the Emperor of Manchukuo in Changchun. This makes for a visually stunning production, and one that I find particularly evocative. In the early 2000s, I worked in a compound just north of the Forbidden City, at the People’s Education Press (PEP). PEP’s offices were just east of Jingshan Park, and during my lunch break, I would often climb the hill in the park to admire the panoramic view of the old imperial palace.
My role at PEP was to write and edit English language textbooks for China’s secondary schools, but the sort of education with which The Last Emperor deals is rather less conventional. The central narrative thread consists of the story of the ‘re-education’ of Aising Gioro Pu Yi, the boy-emperor of the Qing Dynasty who was deposed in 1911. The film cuts backwards and forwards between the portrayal of Pu Yi’s life in a Communist-run re-education camp during the 1950s, and episodes from his earlier life. It is largely based on Pu Yi’s heavily censored autobiography, From Emperor to Citizen, published in English by Beijing’s Foreign Languages Press, which I remember seeing prominently displayed in every ‘Foreign Languages Bookstore’ on my early visits to China in the 1990s. It also draws on the book Twilight in the Forbidden City, the memoir of Pu Yi’s tutor, Reginald Johnston, a British educator whose stint at the heart of Beijing preceded mine by 80 years or so.
Pu Yi’s autobiography, which can be read as a particularly elaborate example of the Communist genre of ‘self-criticism’, was meant to showcase the regime’s humanity and integrity. ‘Re-education’, as a method for dealing with the regime's ideological opponents, was promoted as emblematic of the essential humanity of Communism. Other regimes might kill or torture their enemies: the corrupt Kuomintang, for example, whom the Communists displaced, or the brutal, hated Japanese imperialists. But Communism - as a creed underpinned by ‘science’ and enlightenment - would reason with its opponents, demonstrate to them the error of their ways, and turn them towards the one true path of progress. That, at least, was the theory that Pu Yi’s story, above all, was meant to exemplify.
As we’ll see, though, this film - despite having been made with the approval of the Communist authorities - somewhat subverts that narrative. It does so particularly through its depiction at the end of the Cultural Revolution. For that reason, amongst others, this is a film that almost certainly could not be made today. And as I’ll discuss, there is more to say about the doctrine of re-education itself, and its contemporary application in the China of Xi Jinping.
You can watch the film online here: https://archive.org/details/t-41789
Further reading:
Aising Gioro Pu Yi (1960). From Emperor to Citizen: The Autobiography of Aising Gioro Pu Yi. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.
Reginald Johnston (1934). Twilight in the Forbidden City. Cambridge University Press (reissue 2011).
Bulag, U. E. (2023). The wheel of history and minorities’ ‘self-sacrifice’ for the Chinese nation. Comparative Education, 60(1), 96–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2023.2271781
Asian Education on Film, Episode 13
Red Beard (赤ひげ) (Kurosawa Akira / 黒澤明, Japan, 1965)
From a contemporary Japanese primary school, the setting for the film Monster, in this episode we move back in time to mid-19th century Japan and a very different educational context. Red Beard, by the great director Kurosawa Akira, portrays a public clinic in a city in late Edo-era Japan (that is, around the early or mid-19th century). It offers a classic portrayal of the sensei/deshi or teacher-disciple relationship typical of the deeply hierarchical educational culture of so-called ‘Confucian’ societies. As Confucius himself put it in one of his aphorisms: ‘A teacher for a day is a father for life’ (一日為師，終生為父). In other words, the respect one owes to a teacher forms a sacred bond of loyalty equivalent to that between a father and son.
That sort of hierarchical, rather authoritarian, teacher-disciple relationship is a feature of education in many Asian societies. We see it in Amitabh Bachchan’s portrayal of the guru-like college principal in the film Aarakshan. The immense patriarchal authority that teachers or professors wield in South Asia is reflected in the deferential habit of addressing teachers - and former teachers - as ‘Sir’ (or less frequently ‘Madam’). Similarly, in East Asia, senior professors enjoy enormous homage from former students, and the associational activity of academic life often revolves around the sage-like figure of a venerable scholarly patriarch.
Mifune Toshio’s character in Red Beard, the head physician of the clinic, Niije-sensei, is in one sense a sagely archetype of precisely this kind. The film revolves around Nike’s relationship with his impatient - and initially reluctant and disrespectful - young disciple, Yasumoto. The film charts the taming of Yasumoto, as he learns to appreciate the wisdom of his elder colleague, and finally realises that his supreme ambition is to emulate and serve him.
But Kurosawa films, things are seldom quite as straightforward as at first sight they might appear. Niije is certainly stern and rather autocratic, but he exercises his teacherly authority primarily by force of example. He himself exudes contempt for corruption amongst those in positions of power and authority. And far from insisting on undying loyalty, he smooths the way for Yasumoto to pursue fame and fortune elsewhere, only for Yasumoto voluntarily to reject that path and pledge himself to the service of his master.
The story also reflects a certain scepticism about the value of modern science. Yasumoto’s initial arrogance stems largely from pride in his modern medical expertise, lending him knowledge superior to that of his seniors. He has been studying in Nagasaki, the hub for exchanges between Edo Japan and the wider world, and the centre for what was called ‘Dutch Learning’ (蘭学). Niije is keen to discover what Yasumoto has learnt to derive knowledge that will be useful in treating his patients. But at the same time, the older doctor expresses scepticism concerning the curative power of medicine and science on their own.
For Kurosawa, that scepticism regarding the power of science carried a message, or warning, for the Japan of the 1960s, which was experiencing surging growth and rapid industrialisation and modernisation. He’s reminding those seduced by the power of science of its limits in the face of poverty and injustice. Rather than treating his patients as malfunctioning machines, as bodies to be repaired and retuned for productive labour, Niije-sensei is acutely conscious of how individual sickness can often be traced to the moral malaise of society.
So, Red Beard shows the completion of the education of a young man who thinks he knows it all, but who comes to appreciate how little books alone can teach him. Yasumoto learns that tending for the sick is as much a matter of understanding suffering and injustice as of knowledge of anatomy or science. At the same time, he is challenged to question the ultimate purpose of learning itself: Is it a route to profit and power, or a means of serving others? The learned man must confront a moral choice. Will he use his learning for self-aggrandisement, or for the benefit of his suffering fellow-men?
The film can be viewed here: https://archive.org/details/red-beard
Further reading:
Ronald Dore. 1984. Education in Tokugawa Japan. University of Michigan / Athlone Press.
Wolfgang Michel. 2007. ‘Border Crossing and Intellectual Curiosity: On the Modernisation of Japanese Medicine during the Edo Period’, Conference Paper. International Conference: 150th Anniversary of the Beginning of Modern Western-style Medical Education in Japan. Nagasaki University, 9 Nov. 2007. (available at https://api.lib.kyushu-u.ac.jp/opac_download_md/25942/michel-2007-border-crossing.pdf)
Asian Education on Film, Episode Twelve
Monster (怪物) (Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 2023)
The Taiwanese film I discussed last time, After School, offered a slightly corny treatment of themes of adolescent sexuality, transgression of gender norms, and so-called ‘boys love’. The 2023 Japanese film, Monster (or 怪物 / Kaibutsu), directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu (是枝 裕和), touches on somewhat similar themes in a rather more thoughtful and troubling way. Monster also carries echoes of Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Rashomon, telling the same story from multiple perspectives so as to challenge our initial evaluation of its characters’ actions and motives. It also features the final film score by the late, great composer (and occasional actor), Sakamoto Ryuichi.
Monster is set in an anonymous town or small city. It’s not Tokyo or Osaka, but it could be almost anywhere. Over the landscape of abandoned railways, rusting industrial machinery and mould-stained concrete lingers the aura of gentle decay characteristic of contemporary Japan. The story initially seems to involve a case of bullying - the source of much recent moral panic in Japan - but other themes also emerge. These include the tension between the suffocating conformity of Japanese life and the individual search for meaning, a favourite theme Kurosawa, too (exemplified by his portrayal of bureaucracy in the 1952 film, Ikiru).
Like After School, this film, Monster, makes extensive use of flashback as a narrative device. But it does so to very different effect. After School relies on a conventional, mono-perspectival narrative, using flashback to evoke nostalgia and to dramatise the contrast between the homophobic 1990s and the tolerant progressivism of present-day Taiwan. But in Monster, flashback is used in the style of Rashomon to present multiple narratives of the same events. The effect is to disrupt the viewer’s initial assumptions about the key characters. As we experience that disruption, we begin to realise that stories told by those in authority may be self-serving fictions designed to deflect criticism and avoid trouble. We also realise how those fictions conceal and suppress the struggles of individuals - adults or children - for meaning and recognition. We’re confronted with the vision of an oppressively conformist society that stigmatises and ostracises individuals who disturb its superficial calm.
Watching the film: The film can be viewed in Japan on Amazon Prime (though in Japanese only, without subtitles). Outside Japan, a version with English subtitles should be available.
Further reading:
Andrea Gevurtz Arai (2016). The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan. Stanford University Press.
Thomas P. Kasulis (2002). Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy and Cultural Difference. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Asian Education on Film, Episode Eleven
After School (成功補習班) (Blue Lan / Lan Cheng-lung, Taiwan, 2023)
The supplementary tutoring industry, or ‘cram schooling’, is a phenomenon we’ve already touched on in Episode 8 on the Indian film Aarakshan. There, the cram school chain the ‘KK Institute’ stood for all that was rotten in the Indian system: for rampant profiteering, for the antithesis of genuine education. But in many contemporary Asian societies, tutorial schooling or ‘shadow education’ has become an integral part of the education system, for better or for worse.
Taiwan, and East Asia more generally, has been at the forefront of what some see as a shadow education ‘craze’. After School (成功補習班) is set in Taipei during the mid-1990s, an era when, as we’re told at the start of the film, competition for university entrance in Taiwan was intense (with only a 30% acceptance rate). The late twentieth century witnessed a massive expansion of higher education across East Asia, but universities remained acutely stratified. The numbers competing for entry to the most prestigious institutions sky-rocketed, intensifying competition. Factors contributing to the peculiar competitive intensity of education systems in East Asia include rigid labour markets featuring seniority-based arrangements for hiring and promotion; and chronic insecurity stemming from minimal public welfare guarantees.
Cram schooling was already ubiquitous when I arrived in East Asia in 1992, as I quickly learnt when I started looking for work as a tutor. My first job was tutoring a five-year-old Taiwanese boy for the entrance examination to the kindergarten of an international school in Hong Kong. Shortly afterwards, when I became a teacher at a local secondary school, I found that most of my students were spending hours outside school receiving private tutoring. Cram schools were big business, and posters advertising them were plastered on billboards and buses around Hong Kong, promoting famous young tutors like glamorous rock stars. From my time in Taiwan in the late 1990s, I remember one cinema advertisement for a tutorial school chain. It showed two homeless men on the streets of New York. One says, ‘Life’s terrible here, Joe!’ The other replies, ‘Yeah, Bill! Let’s go to Taiwan and teach English!’ The punchline: ‘We only employ qualified English teachers!’
But cram schools are not just about examination preparation - for many teenagers, they are also places to socialise, away from cramped apartments, squabbling siblings and busy parents. It’s this aspect of tutorial schooling that After School takes as its main focus or theme. This is a story of adolescent friendship and sexuality, rather than soul-destroying academic competition.
It’s also a celebration of Taiwan’s reputation as an Asian beacon for progressive attitudes on gender and sexuality. Amongst many younger Taiwanese, the embrace of LGBTQ+ discourse and liberal stances on gender issues are integral to visions of Taiwan as a tolerant, multicultural Asian democracy. That’s not to suggest that the adoption of these values is merely instrumental. But Taiwan’s relative openness to these trends can certainly be attributed, in part, to the pride many feel in the island’s distinctiveness as a vibrant democracy.
You can watch the film via this link: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8ytr74
**Further reading ** Ho M. (2019). ‘Taiwan’s Road to Marriage Equality: Politics of Legalizing Same-sex Marriage’. The China Quarterly. 2019;238:482-503. doi:10.1017/S0305741018001765
Chen-Dedman, A. (2022). ‘Tongzhi Sovereignty: Taiwan’s lgbt Rights Movement and the Misplaced Critique of Homonationalism’. International Journal of Taiwan Studies, 6(2), 261-290. https://doi.org/10.1163/24688800-20221267
Chao, T. Y., Sung, Y. T., & Tseng, F. L. (2024). ‘High-stakes test anxiety among Taiwanese adolescents: a longitudinal study’. Cogent Education, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2024.2321019
Asian Education on Film, Episode Ten
Lunana - A Yak in the Classroom (Pawo Choyning Dorji, Bhutan, 2019)
From bustling New York, the setting of the film I discussed last time, English Vinglish, we move to the Himalayas for a story about what is portrayed as ‘the most remote school in the world’. Lunana - A Yak in the Classroom is set in Bhutan, the Buddhist kingdom nestled between Northeast India and Tibet, famous in recent years for its pursuit of ‘Gross National Happiness’.
The difficulties of delivering modern schooling in poor, geographically remote regions is one theme here. Demand for modern education in remote communities is strong; herders and farmers see schooling as offering their children a chance of a better life, through employment in the modern economy. At the same time, governments interested in social control and strong borders see schools as useful for nation building as well as rural uplift. In Lunana, we’re shown village children raising Bhutan’s national flag and singing the national anthem at the start of the school day.
The challenges of schooling in such remote regions are cultural as well as logistical. Sometimes, transforming local culture is precisely the point: to Bhutan’s north, in Tibet, boarding schools have been used in recent years to suppress the Tibetan language and promote consciousness of a monolithic ‘Chinese national community’. Elsewhere, for example in Soviet-era Mongolia, boarding schools performed a more complex role, offering modern education to herding communities partly in order to maintain the herding lifestyle. In remote communities, primary schooling is typically local, but secondary education happens in boarding schools. We hardly see any secondary-age children in Lunana. Perhaps some are away at school in the town or city.
If so, how many of those young people will return? As modern education reaches the most remote communities, young people are increasingly drawn towards modern, urban life. The lure of the city is hard to resist. I remember visiting a fairly remote region of the Peruvian Amazon on a rainforest tour in 1988. Our small party arrived by boat at a riverside village, to be greeted by locals dressed in grass skirts who sold us beads and necklaces with pirhana skulls. But as we returned to our boat, passing the village school playground, we saw the same children who had just greeted us in native dress playing basketball in trainers and Michael Jordan t-shirts. The vision of pure, uncorrupted, indigenous jungle life sold to tourists like us concealed a more complex reality.
But is the inevitable transformation of indigenous cultures a reason for limiting the spread of modern education? In recent years, some scholars have tended almost to fetishise indigeneity. The ineffable wisdom of indigenous peoples is often contrasted with the shallow consumerism of modern, Western life. This lament for lost traditions is understandable. However, exoticising indigenous communities, or portraying them simply as victims of Western colonialism, can deny or belittle their agency. And the dichotomy between Western and non-Western societies is far too simplistic. For almost all of us, the comforts and stimulation of modern city life possess an almost irresistible allure, but their pursuit can leave our lives feeling soulless, empty and stripped of deeper meaning. This tension is at the heart of that foundation stone of modern German literature, Goethe’s Faust, which Marshall Berman described as ‘a veiled debate about the modernisation of Germany’. Faust pursues freedom and cultural dynamism, but at the cost of his soul. The protagonist of Lunana, the teacher Ugyen, finds himself facing a somewhat similar dilemma.
The film can be viewed here: https://www.bilibili.tv/en/video/4787537374091776
Further reading:
Marshall Berman (2010). All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. London: Verso.
Gita Steiner-Khamsi and Ines Stolpe (2006). Educational Import: Local Encounters with Global Forces in Mongolia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Leibold, J., & Dorjee, T. (2023). 'Learning to be Chinese: colonial-style boarding schools on the Tibetan plateau'. Comparative Education, 60(1), 118–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2023.2250969
Asian Education on Film - Episode 9
English Vinglish, Gauri Shinde (India, 2012)
The previous two films in this series dealt with educational inequality in India (Aarakshan) and the (sporting) legacy of British imperialism on the subcontinent (Lagaan). In different ways, both also highlighted India’s diversity and the challenges of forging a cohesive national identity there. One feature of contemporary Indian (and South Asian) society that is intimately related both to social divisions and attempts to transcend them is language; namely, the tensions between vernacular languages and English.
Across post-colonial South Asia, English has maintained its cultural dominance and social cachet. It remains a major language of government and administration; of law and justice; and of elite education. Amidst the region’s linguistic diversity, English continues to function as an important ‘link language’. And while Britain may no longer be the major world power it once was, the economic and cultural dominance of the USA has further bolstered English as the global lingua franca. Command of English is therefore required for many desirable jobs in the professions, academia, and commerce - not least in India’s burgeoning tech sector. It has consequently become entrenched as a crucial marker of social and cultural status for South Asia’s educated middle classes - some of whom even speak English at home.
This association of English proficiency with ‘elite’ status has fuelled significant resentment amongst the majority of South Asians for whom English-medium education is beyond reach. The neglect of vernacular languages by many educated South Asians also widens divisions of sentiment and identity between them and less privileged social groups. Anglophone South Asian elites may come to feel more culturally connected to the USA or Britain than to their own societies, and end up feeling truly at home neither in South Asia nor the West. Meanwhile, nativist political movements such as India’s BJP have capitalised on widespread resentment of Anglophone dominance to promote increasingly extreme forms of xenophobic nationalism.
The film English Vinglish offers a relatively light-hearted examination of the implications of the role of English language proficiency as an indicator of social status and education. It does so by focusing on the experience of Shashi Godbole (played by Sridevi), a housewife who suffers various humiliations due to her inability to speak English. By making Shashi the focus of an exploration of the tensions surrounding the role of English, the film also highlights the dimension of gender, in a society where the educational attainment of women still significantly lags behind that of men.
This film can be viewed online via this link: https://www.bilibili.tv/en/video/4788011286009344
Further reading: Jayasooriya, L. B., & Vickers, E. (2025). Bilingual education and identity politics in post-war Sri Lanka. Comparative Education, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2025.2460916
LaDousa, C., C. P. Davis, and N. Choksi. 2022. “Postcolonial Language Ideologies: Indian Students Reflect on Mother Tongue and English.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 32 (3): 607–628. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12378. Pennycook, A. 1998. English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London: Routledge.
Asian Education on Film, Episode Eight
Aarakshan: India vs. India (Prakash Jha, India, 2011)
India’s immense diversity was given a positive spin (no pun intended) in the cricketing film we looked at last time, Lagaan. But that romantic fantasy only scratched the surface of the explosively controversial issue of caste. Lagaan, as you may remember, features a spin bowler with a crippled arm who is initially shunned by the other villagers because he is a casteless untouchable. Untouchables, or ‘Dalits’, along with so-called ‘Scheduled Tribes’, were granted reserved places in government jobs and higher education institutions soon after Indian independence. This was enshrined in India’s 1950 Constitution, whose main author, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, was himself from a Dalit family.
But the inequities of the caste system affect far more of India’s population than Dalits alone. Patterns of caste hierarchy vary across India’s regions, but the ‘lower’ castes include many millions who sit just above the casteless Dalits. For decades after independence, there were calls for these groups to benefit from the sort of reservations or quotas afforded to Dalits.
Those calls were eventually considered by the Mandal Commission, established by the Janata Party Government of Prime Minister Morarji Desai in 1979. The left-leaning Janata Party had won the elections of 1977, held after the lifting of Mrs Gandhi’s State of Emergency; this was the first time in India’s post-independence history that Congress had lost a national election. In 1980, the Commission delivered its report, recommending a 27% reservation for ‘other backward castes’ (OBCs) in government jobs and higher education institutions. But by that time, the Congress had returned to power, and for ten years nothing was done to implement the report’s recommendations.
The recommendations were finally implemented in 1990 by the government of V.P. Singh, which was a coalition of the Janata Dal, the BJP, the Communist Party and several smaller parties. The principle of reservations in centrally-funded educational institutions was extended in 2006 by a Central Education Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act introduced by the then Congress-led government. This sparked protests amongst upper caste groups, and a legal challenge that went all the way to India’s Supreme Court.
In 2008, the Supreme Court upheld the 2006 Act, although it capped reservations at 50% of total admissions. It also stipulated that the concept of ‘backwardness’ should encompass measures of wealth, not just caste identity. As a result, richer members of OBCs, a so-called ‘creamy layer’, are excluded from reservations.
The expansion of reservations and the Supreme Court’s clarification of the criteria defining ‘backwardness’ have spurred campaigns by various groups for OBC recognition. This in turn has contributed to inter-caste rivalries that have been exploited by politicians. The Hindu nationalist BJP, in power at the centre since 2014, has been quite effective in expanding its appeal especially amongst poorer OBCs who tend to gain less from the reservations policy. These groups are often more receptive to identity-based messaging that blames out-groups for their disadvantage. The political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot has done some interesting analysis of the BJP’s use of caste rivalries to build its electoral base.
The film Aarakshan gives the Bollywood treatment to the dispute over caste-based reservations in Indian higher education. It stars Amitabh Bachchan, the Bollywood superstar who also provided the narration for the film Lagaan. Aarakshan is set at the time of the Supreme Court ruling of 2008, and depicts the related social tensions.
Watching the film: I’m unable to find a free-to-stream version of the film with subtitles. However, the film seems to be available on Amazon Prime and Netflix.
Further reading:
Barrington Moore, Jr. 1966. The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Harmondsworth: Pelican.
Christophe Jaffrelot. 2021. Modi’s India. Princeton University Press.
Kaur, S., Dutt, M. 2025. ‘Education during the COVID-19 pandemic: Experiences of urban poor children in Chandigarh city’, International Review of Education. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-025-10147-4
Asian Education on Film, Episode Seven
Lagaan - Once Upon a Time in India (Ashutosh Gowariker, India, 2001)
In the previous episode, I discussed the baseball film Kano, based on the real story of a 1930s Taiwanese high school baseball team. That film reflects a fashionable nostalgia for Japanese colonial rule that helps reinforce the image of Taiwan today as a multicultural Asian society. This time, I want to look at another film that deals with the colonial origins of a massively popular Asian sport, and it’s one closely related to baseball: cricket. This is Lagaan, the 2001 Indian film starring Bollywood superstar, Amir Khan. In stark contrast to Kano, this makes no pretence at historical authenticity; it’s a rollicking fantasy about how the Indians came to learn cricket from the British and then beat them at their own game. Also unlike Kano, while Lagaan deals with themes of colonialism and of cultural and religious diversity, it is anything but nostalgic; on the contrary, it is all about anti-colonial defiance.
But is Lagaan about education? Why include it in this series looking at ‘Asian Education on Film’? Well, one reason is simply that I love this film: it's a gloriously over the top melodrama, in the all-singing, all-dancing Bollywood style. It’s also very funny: on one level, it’s a sort of parody of a nationalistic, anti-colonial propaganda film. It’s glorious entertainment, and was both enormously popular and critically acclaimed when it was first released.
Alongside its entertainment value, though, there’s also a more serious aspect to Lagaan which explains my decision to include it here. The film was released in 2001, in the midst of the Hindu nationalist BJP’s first spell in national power. Although that earlier BJP regime seems moderate by the standards of Narendra Modi’s government today, it sparked alarm in many quarters through its efforts to challenge or undermine the secular basis of India’s post-colonial constitutional settlement. It did that not least through reforms to the curricula and textbooks issued by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), based in Delhi. Those reforms sought to promote a Hindu nationalist narrative of the Indian past, ignoring or denigrating the historical role not just of the British, but also - and in particular - of Muslims and their contribution to Indian culture and society.
Lagaan can be seen in part as an attempt by Bollywood to defend or reassert the secular, inclusive vision of India that the BJP was attacking. Bollywood itself has always been a multi-faith, multicultural enterprise; many of its most prominent stars - including the star of this film, Amir Khan - have been Muslim. Besides Khan, this film involved Bollywood royalty: Amitabh Bachchan, perhaps Indian cinema’s biggest star, provided the voiceover or narrative. This, then, is Bollywood itself in educational mode, using the power of cinema to deliver a form of civic instruction to Indian audiences. And doing it brilliantly through a romantic fantasy of the origins of the game of cricket that, in truth, does unite Indians of all faiths and classes.
A simple summary of the rules of cricket is available here.
Lagaan can be viewed here:
Further reading:
Ramchandra Guha. 2016. A Corner of a Foreign Field: the Indian History of a British Sport. Gurgaon: Penguin India (second edition).
Chris England. 2002. Balham to Bollywood. London: Hodder and Stoughton
Kano (Umin Boya (馬志翔), Taiwan, 2014) (Released in Japan as 「KANO 1931海の向こうの甲子園」)
Sport is an aspect of education that seldom receives the attention it deserves, whether from policymakers, academics, or many teachers and parents. However, historically team sports have played a vital role in the socialisation of students, especially of boys. This is partly a matter of health and physical training, but also, crucially, of moral and military preparation. The Duke of Wellington, the British commander who defeated Napoleon, famously remarked that ‘The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton’. At the height of the British Empire, in 1892, the poet Henry Newbolt published the poem ‘Vitae Lampada’ (‘The Torch of Life’), which features the famous line, ‘Play up, play up and play the game!’ This draws an explicit parallel between the ethos of the game of cricket and the spirit with which the British soldier was expected to confront perils in remote lands where ‘England’s far and Honour’s a name’.
I will have more to say about cricket in the next episode, when I discuss the Indian film, Lagaan, but this time I want to discuss the role of sport in socialising young men in another Asian empire - that of Japan. This sport is the American variant of cricket: baseball. Leaving aside the reasons why Japan came to adopt this sport in the first place, by the 1920s and 1930s baseball had come to assume an iconic status as the team sport for Japanese boys. By the same token, baseball training and the ethos of the sport were infused with core beliefs concerning the character and duties that defined Japanese manhood and the loyal imperial subject.
But the imperial subjects of the baseball team in Kano are not stereotypically ‘Japanese’, but multiculturally Taiwanese. This film, which is based on a true story, depicts the baseball team of the Chiayi School of Agriculture and Forestry, or Kagi Nourin Gakkou (嘉義農林学校) - ‘Kano’ for short. The Kano team reached the final of the Japanese high school baseball tournament - the Koshien - in 1931. The Koshien is still a big deal today in Japan, where it's broadcast every summer on national television. Back in the 1930s, commentary was broadcast over the radio, and the tournament included teams from across the Japanese Empire, including Taiwan, Korea and Dalien in Northeast China. ‘Kano’ were the first team from outside the main Japanese archipelago to get to the Koshien final.
This film is directed by the indigenous Taiwanese actor-director, Umin Boya, but produced and co-written by Wei Te-sheng. In a sense, it forms the third of a trilogy of films written or directed by Wei which deal with aspects of Japan’s colonial legacy in Taiwan. The first of those films, Cape Number 7 (海角七號), which came out in 2008, is the highest-grossing Taiwanese film of all time. That film epitomises the sepia-tinted nostalgia for the Japanese colonial era that has been a major theme of popular culture in post-Martial Law Taiwan. The second film in the trilogy, Seediq Bale (in which Umin Boya acted), is rather different: it tells the story of a bloody anti-Japanese rebellion by indigenous Taiwanese. In Kano, the nostalgic tone is once again more to the fore, but intermingled with other themes. Prominent amongst these is the ethos of baseball itself, and its association with a particular ideal of masculinity.
The film can be viewed online via the following link: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8i98t5
Further reading:
Robert Whiting (1989/2009). You Gotta Have Wa. Knopf Doubleday.
Juyeon Bae (2023). ‘Mnemonic Politics around the Japanese Colonial Era in Post–Cold War Taiwan: Wei Te-sheng's Colonial Trilogy and Post–New Cinema’. positions 1 November 2023; 31 (4): 839–862. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10714285
Asian Education on Film Episode Five
Ilo Ilo (爹妈不在家) (Anthony Chen, Singapore, 2011)
In the previous two episodes of this series, I’ve discussed films dealing with aspects of Asian women’s experience of education and its effect on broadening the opportunities available to women. In the previous episode, on Ann Hui’s Song of the Exile, we saw this illustrated in the story of a complicated mother-daughter relationship, played out against the backdrop of the political upheavals of twentieth-century East Asia. But when it comes to the emancipating effects of education for middle-class or professional women in contemporary Hong Kong - the home of the women depicted in that film - what is often overlooked is how this may depend on the exploitation of other women: a female underclass of maids or nannies. In Hong Kong, Singapore and other major cities in East and Southeast Asia, many of these maids come from the Philippines. These ‘Filipina maids’ are often themselves quite highly educated and fluent in English, so that their duties include not just cleaning, cooking and caring for their employers’ children, but also informally supporting the education of those children through speaking English to them. But at the same time as the economic dysfunction of the Philippines impels these women to seek employment overseas, caring for the children of strangers, they are often forced to leave behind families and children of their own.
In Ilo Ilo, Anthony Chen explores the relationship between one such Filipina maid and her Singaporean employers, Heck and Leng, and their primary school-aged son, Jiale. It’s a film that superbly captures the dependence of many middle-class families in cities like Hong Kong and Singapore on their Filipina maids, and how that dependency can lead to exploitation and abuse. But Chen also sensitively depicts the stresses affecting the Singaporean parents, as they struggle to maintain their status and livelihood in the intensely pressured, competitive and uncertain economic context of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Those stresses affecting the parents inevitably affect their young son, Jiale. The central focus of the film is the relationship that develops between young Jiale and Teresa (or Terry), the family’s new maid.
The film can be viewed online on Amazon Prime or Netflix (depending on your region). Options for free viewing appear currently to be unavailable.
Further reading:
Ju, B., Yang, X., Pu, X. H., & Sandel, T. L. (2023). ‘(Re)making live-in or live-out choice: the lived experience of Filipina migrant domestic workers in Macao’. Gender, Place & Culture, 31(12), 1713–1734. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2023.2265581
Maca, M., & Morris, P. (2012). ‘The Philippines, the East Asian “developmental states” and education: a comparative analysis of why the Philippines failed to develop’. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 42(3), 461–484. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2011.652814
Asian Education on Film, Episode Four
Song of the Exile (客途秋恨) (Ann Hui, Hong Kong / Taiwan, 1990)
The story of Song of the Exile revolves around the relationship between a young Hong Kong-born woman, Hueyin (or Hiuyan in Cantonese) (曉恩), and her Japanese-born mother, Aiko. Their estrangement and eventual reconciliation forms the core narrative thread. While education is a marginal theme, identity, how it is learnt and unlearnt, how it changes over time, is a central concern of the film. We see the main characters searching for a sense of belonging that’s ultimately resolved by their willing adoption of a local, Hong Kong, identity. In part, then, this is a celebration of Hongkongeseness - an identity that today, in the 2020s, the Chinese authorities are seeking to undermine or destroy as they use education to inculcate a monolithically ‘Chinese’ consciousness amongst Hong Kong’s youth.
This film was released in 1990, during an earlier period of great upheaval for Hong Kong. The 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration had set the territory on the path towards ‘reunification’ with China. In 1989, the brutal crushing of China’s Student Movement, epitomised by the Tiananmen Massacre of June 4, created huge shock. Many Hongkongers came to reexamine their loyalty to China, or at least to the regime in Beijing. Meanwhile, a sense of Hong Kong as a place with a distinctive identity of its own was steadily growing, especially amongst the young.
But Song of the Exile is far more than a political allegory; amongst other things, it’s a semi-autobiographical reflection on the director’s own life. The main character, Hueyin, is really an avatar for Ann Hui (許鞍華) herself. The film begins when Hueyin’s formal education ends, as she completes her studies in London. As the story unfolds, we’re shown in flashback various scenes from her childhood, while we follow her on a journey of self-discovery from Britain, to Hong Kong, to Japan and finally back to Hong Kong again. The result is partly a very personal coming-of-age story, and partly a meditation on the trials endured by ‘exiled’ or diaspora communities - and especially women - as they adopt or construct new identities for themselves.
The film can be viewed via this link (original Cantonese dialogue): https://rarefilmm.com/2018/05/ke-tu-qiu-hen-1990/ A version dubbed into Mandarin is available here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8juoe1
Further reading:
Audrey Yue (2010). Ann Hui’s ‘Song of the Exile’. (The New Hong Kong Cinema), Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Luk, Bernard Hung-Kay (1991). “Chinese Culture in the Hong Kong Curriculum: Heritage and Colonialism.” Comparative Education Review 35, no. 4: 650–68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1188110.
Twenty-four Eyes (二十四の瞳) Kinoshita Keisuke (1954)
This film tells the story of Ōishi Hisako, a young schoolteacher assigned to teach at a primary school on the island of Shodoshima, in Japan’s inland sea. Although it’s not far from the city of Hiroshima - perhaps close enough for the residents to have seen the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb in August 1945 - Shodoshima is a rural backwater. It’s portrayed here as a rustic idyll representing many of the best aspects of Japanese tradition. At the same time, as the story takes us from the late 1920s to the late 1940s, we’re shown how Japan’s experience of militarism, war and defeat affects this remote community.
Both the film and the novel on which it is based are infused with a strong anti-war message. The novel, by the female author Tsuboi Sakae, was published in 1952, just two years before the film appeared. It embodies the anti-militarism and pacifism that were powerful currents in a Japan profoundly traumatised by the Asia-Pacific War. The incredible destruction wreaked on Japan’s cities by American bombers in the early 1940s was perhaps the most visible and dramatic aspect of this trauma, but Twenty-four Eyes gives us a different perspective. It portrays a close-knit rural community that, despite its remoteness, cannot escape the suffering of war, but which stoically persists.
This story also presents a women’s perspective on war. The spotlight falls on the experience of those far from the actually fighting, on what the British called the ‘Home Front’. The central figure, Ōishi-sensei, is by no means a passive victim, but a woman with agency and opinions of her own. She also embodies a sadder and wiser Japan rebuilding itself out of the ashes of war. In place of the ruthless military machine that had devoured so many young Japanese, many educators and intellectuals in the 1950s aspired to remodel Japan as a pacifist democracy. And just as education had fuelled wartime militarism, a new form of education, infused with an ethos of care and compassion, would be needed to bring this new Japan into being.
The film can be viewed here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6uajez
Further reading:
John Dower (1999). Embracing Defeat. New York: W.W. Norton.
Ienaga Saburo (2000). Japan’s Past, Japan’s Future: One Historian’s Odyssey. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Audie Bock (2008). Twenty-four Eyes: Growing Pains. The Criterion Collection.
**Asian Education on Film
Episode Two - King of the Children (孩子王) (Chen Kaige, China, 1987) ** In this second episode of the series Asian Education on Film, Edward Vickers discusses Chen Kaige’s 1987 film King of the Children, based on a short novella of the same name by Ah Cheng. A classic of filmmaking by one of China’s leading so-called ‘Fifth Generation’ directors, King of the Children deals with the episode that was formative for this entire group: the experience of ‘sent down youth’ (知情 / zhiqing) during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976.
Like many of these youth, the main protagonist of King of the Children, a young man who goes by the name (or nickname) Lao Gar, is assigned to teach in a village school. The Cultural Revolution is widely regarded in China today, at least by educated urbanites, as having been an unmitigated disaster as far as education was concerned. To be sure, these years were disastrous for higher education, with high schools and colleges initially closed and educational opportunities for urban youth blocked or curtailed. Selective academic examinations were abolished. Tertiary institutions eventually reopened with programmes primarily targeted at ‘soldiers, peasants and workers’, and access determined on ‘political’ grounds (or ‘class background’). Curricula at every level of education were highly politicised.
But King of the Children offers a more complicated reflection on the cultural and educational implications of the Cultural Revolution. Village schools of the kind depicted in this film were responsible for a significant spread in basic literacy and numeracy across rural China. In this sense, the educational implications of the Cultural Revolutionary decade were far from entirely negative. However, the message Chen Kaige is seeking to communicate here is that, at a deeper level, the Cultural Revolution and the educational arrangement associated with it, far from overthrowing China’s traditions or ‘old culture’, actually epitomise some of its worst elements - elements that have endured down to this day.
The full film of King of the Children can be viewed here: youtube.com/watch?v=h4o_gaXHXp4
Further reading / viewing:
Chen Kaige and Tony Rayns (1989). King of the Children and the New Chinese Cinema. London: Faber and Faber.
Suzanne Pepper (1996). Radicalism and Education Reform in Twentieth Century China: The Search for an Ideal Developmental Model. Cambridge University Press.
Jiang Wen (1994). In the Heat of the Sun (陽光燦爛的日子).
Zhang Yimou (1999). Not One Less (一个都不能少). China: Guangxi Film Studio.
In this season of the Asian Education Podcast, Edward Vickers introduces films that deal with themes related to education or the experience of youth in Asian societies.
In the first episode, Edward discusses Aparajito, by the famous Bengali director, Satyajit Ray (1921-1992), the central film in Ray’s Apu Trilogy. This film portrays the boyhood of Apu, a child from an impoverished Bengali family of the Brahmin (priestly) caste. It deals with tensions between tradition and modernity, the rural and the urban, common to societies across Asia and beyond. We follow Apu as he enrols first in a village school, and then (as a scholarship student) in a high school in the Bengali metropolis of Calcutta. The film sensitively explores what this journey means both for Apu himself, and for his family, in particular through its depiction of his relationship with his illiterate mother.
The film can be viewed online here: https://archive.org/details/aparajito-apu-trilogy-pt.-2
Suggested further reading: Biswas, M. (ed.) (2006). Apu and after: Revisiting Ray's cinema. Ray, S (1994). My Years with Apu. Viking. Robinson, A (2003). Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye: The Biography of a Master Film-Maker. I. B. Tauris.
In this episode of the Asian Education Podcast, we are joined by Andy Smart, who is an education and publishing consultant with a background in teaching and educational and children's publishing - with multinational publishers as well as his own children's publishing company. Since 2000 he has worked in several countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, on textbook policy, English and Arabic-medium primary curricula, textbook planning and development, children's reading, and general publishing. This episode focuses on issues related to externally-supported education reform projects in Asia, given his long-term engagement with the World Bank and other international organizations as an external expert.
In 2023, the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (GEEAP) published a report on 'Smart Buys' for improving learning in low- and middle-income countries. The GEEAP is described as 'an independent, cross-disciplinary body composed of leading education experts from around the world' with a mandate 'to provide succinct, usable, and policy-focused recommendations to support policymakers’ decision-making on education investments in low- and middle-income countries'. We ask Andy to respond to this panel’s claim that textbooks are 'bad buys' (along with salary, libraries and other inputs) - and, more broadly, what it means to talk of 'good' or 'bad' 'buys' in education.
Andy has rich experience working on World Bank projects in Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Tonga. We ask him to explain the values or vision that informs his work, and to reflect on the challenges involved in working as a consultant for international organisations. Since the World Bank's educational work has been heavily critiqued in comparative education literature, we also ask Andy for his reaction to some of the critiques of education interventions by the World Bank as ‘neoliberal’ or ‘neocolonial’?
In 2018 Andy helped to set up NISSEM.org with other practitioners and academic colleagues to promote better use of textbooks for socio-emotional learning in low-income countries in support of Sustainable Development Goal Target 4.7. In some of their work, Yoko and Ed have warned against UNESCO’s turn to SEL. They discuss some of their concerns and ask Andy to explain NISSEM’s focus on SEL.
Finally, we ask Andy to tell us about an ongoing project he's working on in Tonga, developing teaching materials for children in local schools.
Recommended readings:
GEEAP (2023). Cost-effective Approaches to Global Learning. FCDO, The World Bank, UNICEF, USAID
Andy Smart (2024). 'From Big Ideas to Small Practice: Competency-based curricula in low-resource, centralised education systems', 1ARTEM e-journal, Vol 16, No. 1
Smart, A. (2024). From big ideas to small practice: Competency-based curricula in low-resource, centralised education systems. IARTEM E-Journal, 16(1), 1–16. https://iartemejournal.org/index.php/IARTEM/article/view/1055
Smart, A. (2021). Teachers’ guides: isn't that what they should be? IARTEM E-Journal, 13(1), 1–26. https://iartemejournal.org/index.php/IARTEM/article/view/971
Smart, A. (2019). Refining primary social studies textbooks for behavior change in Bangladesh, in Smart, A., Sinclair, M., Benavot, A., Bernard, J., Chabbott, C., Russell, S.G., & Williams J.H. NISSEM Global Briefs: Educating for the social, the emotional and the sustainable, 512–531 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TT0GmXI2hHemVMGjC2uPRn0OA4ixH0UZ/view
Smart, A. and Jagannathan, S. (2018). Textbook Policies in Asia: Development, Publishing, Printing, Distribution, and Future Implications. Asian Development Bank. https://www.adb.org/publications/textbook-policies-asia
In this episode, we travel to the western end of ‘Asia’ (as conventionally defined) to discuss the internationalisation of higher education in the politically troubled context of Israel / Palestine. Our guest on this occasion is Dr. Annette Bamberger of Bar Ilan University in Israel. Annette has conducted comparative analysis of higher education internationalisation in many societies, but in this episode she and Ed primarily discuss the implications for Israeli university internationalisation (and especially ties with Asia) of the current war in Gaza.
Higher education internationalisation can take a variety of forms. In many Anglophone countries, for example, the commercialisation of universities has been accompanied by concerted efforts to expand recruitment of fee-paying Asian students. But as Annette explains, the goals of university internationalisation in Israel have tended to be less commercial and more strategic in nature - and this has influenced the evolution of the sector’s ties with Asian institutions.
As they do for many countries, China and India loom especially large in Israeli discussions of university internationalisation. After decades of hostility during the Cold War, when Chairman Mao called the Jewish state ‘a dagger pointing at the heart of the Arab people’, China’s ties with Israel have been steadily warming since diplomatic relations were established in the early 1990s. Today, Israeli universities host a number of Confucius Institutes, one has a branch campus in China, and research collaboration (especially in science and technology) has been flourishing. However, the current Gaza conflict has cast something of a shadow over ties with China, as Beijing has taken a more critical line towards Israel.
Relations with India, meanwhile, have continued to flourish regardless of the current conflict. In attempting to explain this, Annette points to ties of language (i.e. shared fluency in English) and a shared understanding of religion’s role in society. For example, Indian students and scholars tend to be readily accepting of features of Israeli life such as dietary restrictions. Rather more disturbingly, a sense of shared anti-Muslim animus may be a factor in making some Indian students - those influenced by the Hindutva ideology of Prime Minister Narendra Modi - favourably disposed towards Israel, and relatively untroubled by the strife in Gaza. This, together with interest in Israeli technology (and defence industries), is certainly a factor in reinforcing the BJP government’s interest in promoting stronger links to Israeli higher education.
What, though, of Israeli ties to universities elsewhere in Asia? In those Muslim-majority countries where ties had been improving in recent years, notably Turkey, the current conflict has caused a significant rupture. Elsewhere, prospects of developing closer partnerships have receded. Meanwhile, Vietnam and Thailand have emerged as significant new partners for overseas student exchanges (though less for research). Surveying Asia as a whole, however, and in a context where ties with European and North American partners seem under threat, India stands out as an especially promising land for internationalising Israeli universities.
Recommended readings:
Bamberger, A. (2018). ‘International Student Mobility in Israel’. International Higher Education, (96), 9–10. https://doi.org/10.6017/ihe.2019.96.10774
Bamberger, A., & Kim, M. J. (2023). ‘The OECD’s influence on national higher education policies: internationalisation in Israel and South Korea’. Comparative Education, 59(4), 602–619. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2022.2147635 (deeper analysis about the internationalization policy; notes the rationale for turning towards Asia)
Bamberger, A., Yan, F., & Morris, P. (2023). ‘Adapting “internationalization” to integrate “troublesome” minorities: higher education policies towards Hong Kong and East Jerusalem’. Journal of Education Policy, 38(2), 254–276. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2021.2002419
This is a link to Annette’s PhD thesis, the last chapters of which detail the shift towards Asia:
In this episode, Edward Vickers talks to Evelyn Kim (Kim Min Ji), who lectures on the Comparative Education MA at the UCL Institute of Education. They discuss Evelyn’s work on policies pursued by the South Korean government since around 2012 under the rubric of ‘Happiness Education’. Various surveys have suggested that young people in Korea are particularly unhappy, by comparison with their peers elsewhere. Prominent amongst the reasons cited for this are pressures related to the education system and the culture of high-stakes testing.
Evelyn and Ed begin by discussing the reasons for the apparent unhappiness of Korean youngsters, probing beyond the features of the education system to socio-economic and structural factors (welfare provision, the labour market). It is these factors, they suggest, that are crucial to explaining the insecurity that drives the intensity of competition for qualifications.
In her paper, Evelyn argues that ‘happiness’ has been a ‘floating signifier’ in Korean public discourse. In other words, it is a term that has been assigned somewhat different meanings by actors with varying political and social agendas - notably Korea’s two major political parties. But while discussing the different approaches taken by these conservative and centre-left groupings, Evelyn notes that there have been significant similarities in their policy responses. Neither of the major parties, which have alternated in power since the early 2000s, have taken measures that fundamentally tackle the factors that make living conditions for ordinary Koreans stressful and insecure. In this context, talk of ‘happiness’ serves essentially as a rhetorical tactic, signifying that politicians feel the pain of ordinary people, without implying any concerned effort to alleviate its structural causes.
Meanwhile, a significant consequence of policies and discourse associated with ‘happiness’ talk has been what Evelyn terms ‘the skililfication of individuals’ non-cognitive domains’. What this means, she explains, is that qualities associated with the socialisation of students - values, civic consciousness, various character traits or even ‘wellbeing’ itself - are no longer seen simply as intrinsically desirable. Instead (or additionally), these characteristics are increasingly valued instrumentally, for their supposed contribution to enhancing learners' ‘human capital’. In the context of discussions of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, these so-called ‘non-cognitive skills’ are prized as the qualities that will grant humans a competitive advantage vis-à-vis robots or AI, and ensure their continuing employability.
This wider phenomenon of the ‘skillification of non-cognitive domains’ relates to the international discourse of ‘social and emotional learning’ (SEL), which has increasingly been associated with the language of ‘competencies’ and ‘skills’. Evelyn and Ed discuss other examples of this, such as ‘gratitude education’ in China. They touch on the dystopian implications of approaches that see qualities such as ‘happiness’ and ‘gratitude’ as tools for the enhancement of productivity and the preservation of social harmony and political order.
Finally, the discussion returns to the role of organisations such as the OECD in promoting or disseminating the gospel of SEL. While acknowledging the significance of OECD attempts to develop metrics for ‘non-cognitive skills’, Ed and Evelyn conclude that the direction of influence from the OECD to national policymakers has by no means been one-way. There has to some extent been a process of mutual reinforcement, with policymakers, corporations and multilateral entities borrowing and sharing concepts and slogans in pursuit of the shared goal of shoring up a human capital-intensive, low-welfare, ultra-competitive, labour-exploitative developmental model. But in the case of Korea, policy discourse under the current right-wing regime seems to have swung from an emphasis on ‘happiness’ towards greater stress on duty, stoked by fear of the threats to national security posed by an increasingly dangerous and unstable world order.
Recommended readings:
Min Ji Kim (2023). Happiness, politics and education reform in South Korea: building ‘happy human capital ’for the future, Comparative Education, 59:4, 489-505, DOI: 10.1080/03050068.2022.2147633
Yi, W., & Vickers, E. (2024). Discipline and moralise: gratitude education for China’s migrant families. Comparative Education, 60(1), 77–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2023.2296191
In this episode, Ed talks to Benjamin Mulvey of Glasgow University about an article Ben has recently written with Bok-Nga Lee on ‘the intellectual-state relationship and academic freedom in China’. Many observers have noted growing constraints affecting scholarly research and higher education in China over recent years. At the same time, some of the work on Chinese higher education published in prominent Western journals over recent years has sought to argue that cultural difference precludes meaningful comparison between ‘academic freedom’ in China and ‘the West’. In their article, Mulvey and Lee offer a forceful critique of this culturally relativist line of argument.
One problem they highlight is the tendency of the cultural relativists to rely on monolithic stereotypes of both ‘China’ and ‘the West’. As Mulvey observes in his paper with Lee, and as he and Ed discuss in this interview, these homogenous monoliths quickly crumble under scrutiny. While differences between cultural traditions are undeniable and significant, cultures are enormously diverse and constantly changing. Many of the authors Mulvey and Lee critique appear to take at face value the claims of the Communist authorities of the 21st-century People’s Republic of China to represent the culmination of centuries of ‘Chinese tradition’. But seldom considered are the cases of Hong Kong and Taiwan - societies whose cultural roots are undeniably Chinese, but where freedom of speech (and scholarship) and civil liberties are taken very seriously indeed. Chinese cultural purists may object that these societies have been sullied in their cultural purity by ‘imperialist’ influences from Britain, the USA or Japan. But by the same token, the influence on the PRC of Soviet ideology and institutions has been profound. Such arguments tend merely to underline the futility of attempts to isolate the pure ‘essence’ of any culture or tradition.
A prevalent representation of ‘Chinese’ culture in the literature (in English) on higher education portrays it as ‘Confucian’. But with respect to Confucianism in particular, as well as Chinese culture in general, such representations tend to be unduly monolithic and stereotyping. Typically, scholars arguing for a uniquely ‘Chinese’ interpretation of academic ethics tend to argue that Confucianism mandates subordination of scholars to the state, emphasising the duty of scholars to serve the state. They thus see the concept of scholarly autonomy, or the compulsion to ‘speak truth to power’, that underpins a liberal vision of academic freedom as somehow alien to ‘Chinese culture’. But while it may be accurate to see forms of ‘state Confucianism’, today as in the past, as emphasising the subordination of scholarship to state interests, Mulvey and Lee emphasise that there is far more to Confucianism than this. Confucian tradition itself has been subject to a highly diverse range of interpretations, and there is an important strand of Confucian scholarship that emphasises the scholar’s duty to pursue ‘the Way’ with integrity, and fearlessly criticise rulers who depart from it.
But perhaps the problem with arguments over ‘Chinese’ versus ‘Western’ conceptions of academic freedom (or anything else) is fundamentally to do with a faulty conception of ‘culture’ itself, as something fundamentally unchanging and ahistorical. Cultural traditions are, in fact, permeable and constantly changing. Ben and Ed discuss the prevalent tendency to judge ideas on the basis of their pedigree or ‘authenticity’. Even if an idea can be traced to origins in ‘China’ and ‘the West’ (a problematic task given the complex entanglement of cultural traditions), why should ‘authenticity’ matter in the first place?
The Mulvey and Lee paper concludes with the authors distancing themselves from any suggestion that Chinese higher education should adhere to ‘Western values and norms’ when it comes to academic freedom. They portray such norms as having ‘their foundations in European rationalism’, while stressing that ‘a Chinese understanding of academic freedom could take many forms’. But this implies that ‘a Chinese understanding of academic freedom’ might, in fact, embrace forms of
‘rationalism’ that some might associate with ‘the West’ - which is what we have witnessed in contemporary Hong Kong, Taiwan and in the writings of liberal Chinese scholars elsewhere.
Recommended readings:
Mulvey, B., & Lee, B. N. (2024). The intellectual-state relationship and academic freedom in China: a reappraisal. Studies in Higher Education, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2024.2332407
Callahan WA. (2012). Sino-speak: Chinese Exceptionalism and the Politics of History. The Journal of Asian Studies. 2012;71(1):33-55. doi:10.1017/S0021911811002919
The Philippines is one of the largest exporters of migrant workers in the world. Global shipping as well as the hospitality, medical, entertainment, domestic work and other sectors of many economies rely heavily on Filipino workers.
In this episode, Edward Vickers talks to Dr Mark Maca about his research into the relationship between education and the phenomenon of Filipino migrant labour. They discuss the significance of the educational and linguistic legacies of American colonial rule for creating the conditions in which it was possible for labour migration to ‘take off’ in the Philippines. The US colonial authorities established mass provision of basic education, leaving the mass of the Filipino population with at least a rudimentary command of English. At the same time, adoption of US educational models bequeathed a qualifications system that commanded widespread recognition abroad.
Although there was already a steady stream of Filipinos travelling overseas for work from the time of US rule, it was under the Presidency of Ferdinand Marcos (senior) in the 1970s that labour export began to be actively promoted and coordinated by the state. Mark explains how the decision of the Marcos regime to facilitate labour migration arose out of elite fears of economic and political crisis during the 1970s. Encouraging the export of labour was in part a means of creating a political ‘safety valve’, producing an outlet for the energy and ambition of young people frustrated by the economic sclerosis and pervasive clientelism of Filipino society. The movement overseas of many of the best and brightest young Filipinos has removed much of the threat they might otherwise have posed to the continued dominance of the established, feudalistic elites.
Mark’s research has shown how many aspects of the Philippines’ education system reflect or serve the interests of those elites. For example, the Philippines is rare among formerly colonised societies in using official media to praise the manifold ‘contributions’ of the country’s former colonisers (especially the USA) to its development. Textbooks, museums and other vehicles for public history make almost no attempt to deploy memories of colonial oppression to foster a sense of national unity. The positive evaluation of colonial rule is largely attributable to the collaborationist record of the dominant landowning elites, and their enduring closeness to the former colonisers.
As well as praising legacies of colonial rule, school curricula and public culture promote an image of migrant workers as patriotic ‘heroes’. In the contemporary Philippines, to love your country is to leave it! While this is an issue only touched on in this interview, it is discussed further by Mark in his published work.
Meanwhile, the 2023 election to the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos (junior), son of the autocrat who began the systematic promotion of labour export in the 1970s, testifies to the success of this strategy from the perspective of the feudalistic elite that continues to dominate society and politics in the Philippines.
Suggested readings:
Mark Maca (2017). ‘American colonial education policy and Filipino labour migration to the US’, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 2017-07, Vol.37 (3), p.310-328.
Mark Maca and Paul Morris (2014). ‘Education, national identity and state formation in the modern Philippines’, in Edward Vickers and Krishna Kumar (eds), Constructing Modern Asian Citizenship. Abingdon: Routledge, 125-148.
Maca, M., & Morris, P. (2012). ‘The Philippines, the East Asian “developmental states” and education: a comparative analysis of why the Philippines failed to develop’. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 42(3), 461–484. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2011.652814
NGOs and philanthropic organisations have played a growing role in the education sector in many societies over recent years. This has perhaps been especially apparent in the aid sector, with the activities of outfits such as the Gates Foundation expanding alongside the work of bilateral and multilateral aid organisations.
In this episode, Latika Gupta and Edward Vickers discuss the case of India, where NGOs and private organisations (philanthropical and otherwise) have come to play an especially significant role in influencing education policy. And, as emerges in the course of this conversation, this role has evolved and changed over the past two or three decades, in ways that Latika and others find alarming.
Perhaps the most significant NGO actor in India’s education sector is Pratham. As Latika explains, the regular ‘ASER’ reports that Pratham produces on educational outcomes across India, and the offices that they maintain in states across the country, have come to constitute almost a parallel administrative structure - penetrating educational policymaking processes and effectively performing functions that one might expect government to perform.
This growing prominence of NGOs in the Indian education sector comes in the context of a long-running sense of crisis surrounding public schooling in India. There is a widespread belief among Indian elites that the public sector is irredeemably 'broken' and that it is therefore necessary to look to the private sector for educational 'solutions'. Pervasive elite scepticism of the public sector, and a weak commitment to education as a ‘public good’, are perhaps reinforced by the lack of engagement of wealthier Indians with the public schooling system, with most sending their children to private schools. Latika and Ed discuss some of the reasons for this disengagement. These include ingrained caste prejudice and expanded educational access for poorer Indians since the 1990s, which have incentivised many elites to withdraw their children from the public sector. Meanwhile, economic growth alongside spiralling socio-economic inequality over the same period mean that more privileged Indians now have the wherewithal to pay relatively expensive private school fees.
Crucial to understanding the agenda of educational NGOs such as Pratham is to trace their funding. Much of this comes from prominent entrepreneurs within India itself, many of them involved in the technology sector. But substantial funding also comes from overseas, for example from tech entrepreneurs (including some ethnic Indians) based in the USA. And when it comes to the involvement of tech entrepreneurs in educational ‘philanthropy’, conflicts of interest potentially arise. Pratham has been particularly vociferous in promoting the expanded use of smartphones and education technology in enhancing ‘learning’. Latika explains how the ‘technicist, corporate’ approach has been associated with promotion of an increasingly narrow and instrumentalist conception of ‘learning’, to the neglect of ‘teaching’ and the social or socialising aspect of education.
Another issue that arises in the context of NGO activism in India’s education sector today relates to the political context, which is increasingly dominated by Hindu nationalist forces. As Latika has observed, this has meant that NGO involvement in educational provision, for example in tribal communities in central India, nowadays tends to go hand-in-hand with promotion of Hindutva and nationalist messaging.
Related readings:
Aparna Kalra. 2024. ‘How Rich Donors Have Caused More Harm than Good to India’s Education’, The Wire. https://thewire.in/education/how-rich-donors-have-caused-more-harm-than-good-to-indias-education. February 28.
Aparna Kalra. 2007. ‘Education fund eyes pvt schooling for poor’, Mint. https://www.livemint.com/Companies/u2laxlnifd60eoy482hQSJ/Education-fund-eyes-pvt-schooling-for-poor.html, May 17.
Edward Vickers. 2007. ‘To teach more children well’, Mint. https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/2SzDpJ4RgCLKJZpgSdDipN/To-teach-more-children-well.html, November 20.
Pratham website: https://www.pratham.org/
Central Square Foundation. 2019. State of the Sector Report: Private Schools in India. https://www.centralsquarefoundation.org/State-of-the-Sector-Report-on-Private-Schools-in-India.pdf
Miglani, N., & Burch, P. (2021). ‘Education reform imaginaries: mapping -scapes of philanthropic influence’. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 42(5), 682–698. https://doi-org.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/10.1080/01596306.2020.1836747