Family Strategies, Guanxi, and School Success in Rural China [1 ed.] 1138841064, 9781138841062

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Family Strategies, Guanxi, and School Success in Rural China

Research in school success in contemporary China indicates that while market reforms have reproduced advantages for children from the cadre and the professional families, simultaneously creating new opportunities for children of the new arising economic elites, they have done less for traditional peasant families. This book places a special emphasis on how rural parents from different social backgrounds use guanxi (interpersonal social networks) to maintain the interconnectedness between their families and schools to create advantages for their children in school success. It investigates, by an ethnographic study in a rural county in middle China, how families from different social backgrounds within rural society get involved in the schooling of their children and how this contributes to different patterns of school success. The book argues that schools provide few formal and routine channels for rural parents to become involved in their children’s schooling. This raises the importance of family strategic initiatives to employ guanxi in the creation of advantages for their children’s school success. The book concludes with discussions about guanxi as an important mechanism for social exclusion in post-socialist China. Chapters include: •• •• •• •• ••

Family strategies, parental involvement and school success The roles of parents: voices of parents regarding school involvement Policy discourses: missing the link between family and school Peasants: family and kinship The blurring division between home and school

This concise and comprehensive book is a qualitative study that will appeal to researchers and advanced students in Chinese education and society. Xie Ailei is a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong.

Education and Society in China Series Editor: Gerard A. Postiglione

China’s economic rise has been breathtaking and unprecedented. Yet educational opportunities remain highly unequal. China has the essential ingredients to build a great system of education, but educational governance needs an overhaul if China is to realize its goal of dramatically boosting its technological output to world-class levels. As more work by established Chinese and overseas scholars becomes accessible in English to the larger global community, myths will be removed and replaced by more accurate and sophisticated analyses of China’s fascinatingly complex educational transformation. This series will provide highly analytical examinations of key issues in China’s education system. Books in the series include: School Choice in China: A different tale? Wu Xiaoxin Educating the Children of Migrant Workers in Beijing Migration, education, and policy in urban China Myra Pong Re-envisioning Chinese Education The meaning of person-making in a new age Edited by Guoping Zhao and Zongyi Deng Family Strategies, Guanxi, and School Success in Rural China Xie Ailei

Family Strategies, Guanxi, and School Success in Rural China

Xie Ailei

First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Xie Ailei The right of Xie Ailei to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Xie, Ailei, author. Title: Guanxi and school success in rural China / Xie Ailei. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, [2016] | Series: Education and society in China; 4 Identifiers: LCCN 2015044012| ISBN 9781138841062 (hardback) | ISBN 9781317555148 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Education, Rural—Social aspects—China. | Education— Parent participation—China. | Academic achievement—Social aspects—China. Classification: LCC LC5148.C6 X538 2016 | DDC 370.9173/40951—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044012 ISBN: 978-1-138-84106-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-73249-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK

To my parents Xie Linfeng (谢林峰) and Zhang Shoufeng (章寿峰).

This Page is Intentionally Left Blank

Contents

List of figures List of tables Foreword Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1 Introduction

ix x xi xiii xiv 1

Rural children and their school success in the market transition era  1 Rural society, economic transformation, and social stratification  4 Family strategies, parental involvement and school success  10 Social capital, guanxi, and inequality and school success  16 Research methodology  21 Structure of this book  30 2 The connection between home and school: the missing linkage

39

State schooling and school success in Zong  39 The roles of parents: voices of parents regarding school involvement  44 Policy discourses: missing the link between family and school  60 Teachers’ voices: restricted access to schooling  63 Formal channels allowed by schools: limited interconnectedness 66 Summary and discussion  70 3 Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response The blurring division between home and school  74 Peasants: family and kinship  76

74

viii Contents Cadres and professionals: community, colleagues, and friends  84 The new economic elites: peidu and guanxi producing with teachers  94 Summary and discussion  99 4 Consequences: intended and unintended

102

Intended consequences  102 Unintended consequences  107 Summary and discussion  110 5 Discussion and conclusions

112

Introduction 112 Growing school involvement and the weak formal linkage between family and school  113 Market reform, social stratification, guanxi exclusion, and access to social capital  116 Inequality in social capital and its consequence  118 Index

123

Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 2.1 2.2

Rural labour involved in the agricultural sector Rural families’ net income Gini coefficient in rural China Income inequality in rural China Rural per capita income in the east, central, and west The general economy of Zong County The number of students in primary and secondary schools Transition rates

5 7 8 9 10 22 40 41

Tables

1.1 Parental involvement with definition 1.2 Employment and income gap in Zong County 1.3 School profiles 1.4 Interviewees in the field 1.5 Family profiles 1.6 Household heads and their children 1.7 Teachers and principals 2.1 Central and ordinary rural schools, with reference to statistics at the national level

13 23 25 26 26 28 29 43

Foreword

The role schools play in perpetuating social and economic inequalities and, conversely, the role schools can play promoting greater equality continue to be issues of wide interest and considerable importance to governments, educators, and parents worldwide. These issues are of special interest in the context of China, given the massive size of its education system, the role education plays in Chinese society, and the interest of the Chinese government in working through schools to promote greater equity. Dr. Xie starts from the recognition that the Chinese government has made great progress over the past few years in improving the quality of rural schools and in raising the achievement levels of these children. Nonetheless, the evidence shows that not all students benefit equally. Children from affluent families experience greater advantages growing up, tend to do better in school, and enjoy more post-secondary opportunities. How, then, are children from rural poor areas to compete in an increasingly complex society? Parents want what is best for their children. In making education-related decisions, most parents make choices that optimize comparative advantage for their children within the schooling process and beyond. One way to create such advantage is to utilize the social networks that operate within the family, between families and the school, and within communities. Such networks create and convey social capital. They broker information and channel favour. As such, these networks can be important mediators of opportunities for education and life advancement. This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of how these networks form and operate in the context of rural China. Dr. Xie highlights the importance of interconnectedness between family life and school life in the education of rural children. He then examines how these networks are used by rural parents to gain advantages for their children in the schooling process. This book provides a clear and penetrating analysis of the growth of basic education in rural China and the extent that youth from different family backgrounds were able to benefit from that expansion. While school access was extended, not all students benefited to the same extent. Dr Xie’s examination of the patterns and reasons for inequities in the student experience and subsequent learning outcomes is an important contribution to the

xii Foreword literature on China, but speaks to a larger audience of those concerned with the role of social capital in schooling. The message of this book travels well. The story that Dr. Xie tells is one part of the global narrative about the long-term social and economic consequences of educational expansion. Improvements in basic and higher education have not yet automatically translated into a more equal society in terms of school success. Classroom teaching has an influence over equity. However, the relationships between schools, parents and communities matter in important ways. Supportive school-home relationship benefits students. Less effective support at home may lead to disadvantage for the children from deprived backgrounds. What Dr. Xie concludes from his is research is that schools in rural China need to make more concerted efforts to improve their collaboration with the parents of students coming from more disadvantaged backgrounds, a finding of relevance to other developing countries in transformation. David W. Chapman Birkmaier Professor of Educational Leadership University of Minnesota

Acknowledgements

As my writing reaches a new stage, I find many debts have accumulated during different stages of this research and I want to express my thanks to those who helped me in the past years. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Gerard A. Postiglione at the University of Hong Kong. This book developed out of the research I conducted when I was his PhD student. His always positive outlook and confidence in my research inspired me and gave me encouragement. Many people helped me with my research in Anhui, where the fieldwork of this study was carried out. They introduced me to their colleagues and discussed their school systems patiently with me, which enriched my understanding of the school system in the field. I thank those principals, teachers, parents, and students interviewed, who for ethical reasons cannot be named. They shared their experiences, insights, hopes and hopelessness with me. Many scholars have shared their insights into this research and their friendship with me over time. I thank Dr Liu Lin, Professor Cheng Kai-ming, Dr Ki Wing Wah, Dr Jin Jun, Professor Law Wing Wah, Dr Liu Dian, Professor Mark Bray, Dr Shao Yanju, Professor Wu Zhihui, Professor Yang Rui, Dr Yang Xinrong, Mr Zhang Jun, Dr Zhang Li-fang, Dr Zhang Yong, Professor Zhang Yuping, and Ms Kuang Huan. I want to thank my parents, Xie Linfeng and Zhang Shoufeng, for their support over the years. I am especially grateful for the help provided by my parents-in-law, Guang Shanlin and Ruan Jianping. They took care of my daughter when I was in the field and preoccupied with academic writing. Lastly, I wish to thank my wife, Guang Tingting, and daughter, Xie Xiangyi. They put up with my frequent absences required to complete the fieldwork and write this book.

Abbreviations

APR Academic performance report CCP Chinese Communist Party FtU First-tier university HEIs Higher education institutions HRS Household Responsibility System Jss Junior secondary school NCEE National College Entrance Examination PTA Parent–Teacher Association PTO Parent–Teacher Organization RDICSSA Rural Development Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Science RMB Ren Min Bi (Chinese currency) Sss Senior secondary school StU Second-tier university TtU Third-tier university TVE Township and village enterprise Vss Vocational secondary school

1 Introduction

Rural children and their school success in the market transition era Since 1978, rural schools have comprised the major proportion of the Chinese education system. More than 80% of primary schools and over 50% of junior secondary schools are rural. Rural schools also provide an education for the majority of students in China’s school system. For nearly twenty years after 1978, over 50% of Chinese students received their primary education in rural schools, and this number decreased only recently with the decline of the rural student population and consolidation of rural schools (Yang, 2010; Wu, 2010). Great efforts have been made over the past few decades by the Chinese government to improve the quality of rural schools and provide quality education to rural children. With the aim of helping more rural students to complete their first nine years of education, a new system of funding rural compulsory education was established at the end of 2005 (Yang, 2006a, 2010). Under this system, students in compulsory education were exempt from textbook and miscellaneous school fees and provided with subsidies when attending boarding schools (Lou & Ross, 2008). Further steps were taken to improve public expenditures on rural primary and junior secondary schools. New mechanisms assume the shared roles of the central and provincial governments in funding compulsory education. As a result, the central government’s compulsory education budgets were increased rapidly (Yang, 2010). Expenditures on rural compulsory education were also fully merged into the central and local government budgets. A mechanism was also established to guarantee funding for rural compulsory education by combining the fund allocations from the central and local governments (Lou & Ross, 2008; Yang, 2010). Other policies were initiated to reduce disparities between rural and urban schools in funding and the quality of teachers and facilities. The Ministry of Education, for example, required governments at different levels to balance resource allocations between rural and urban areas and give priority in recruiting new teachers to village and small township schools and schools that are far less developed than those in cities.

2 Introduction These new policies and practices had pronounced effects on the achievement levels of rural children. Access to primary and secondary school education for rural students, for example, improved tremendously. The proportion of rural primary school graduates who attended rural junior secondary schools increased from around 65% in the mid-1980s to nearly 100% in 2010 (Development and Planning Division of Education Department, 2010). As most rural junior secondary school graduates who are admitted by senior secondary schools will move to towns and cities for their senior secondary school education, it is difficult, using official data, to estimate the actual number of rural students in senior secondary schools. However, we can still see the improved chances of rural students’ access to senior secondary schools by looking at the transition rates from rural junior secondary schools to senior secondary schools. Data from the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) (Yang et al., 2014) show that more than 50% of graduates from rural junior secondary schools may be accepted by senior secondary schools upon graduation. Driven by the great expansion of the higher education system, the number of rural students in China’s colleges and universities is also increasing. For example, the proportion of rural students in higher education institutions increased from 48% in 2000 to around 59% in 2012 (Sun, 2013). Greater access for rural students to primary and secondary schools and to higher education is also a result of market reforms, which have been accompanied by substantial economic growth over a thirty-year period. Prior to the market reforms, the link between schooling and the labour market was relatively weak, as radical education policies were implemented and great efforts were made to eliminate social differences in schools during the socialist era (Hannum, 1999; Unger, 1982; Zhou, 2004). For example, merit-based criteria for selecting students were abolished, and political recommendations and class labels became the primary means of determining progress in schooling (Unger, 1982). Now, the link between education and occupational achievement was reestablished with the transition from a redistributive to a market economy, resulting in a new opportunity structure valuing the returns on human capital (Debrauw & Rozelle, 2007; Parish, et al., 1995). The increasing rewards of investment in schooling, as a result, elevated parents’ desires for their children’s education (Zhou, 2009; Kipnis, 2011). To help their children achieve academic success, they invest a larger share of their income than before in their children’s education, sacrifice their own time and free their children of household chores, and purchase higher-quality academic inputs for them, including good nutrition, private tutoring, and good schooling (Wu & Qin, 2014; Kong, 2010). The economic reform has also begun to cause rural schools to have more diversified student bodies. For example, with the booming of China’s economy more than 269 million farmers are moving to cities in search of jobs (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2014). Many of them take their children to the cities where they work. However, because of the denial of

Introduction  3 full access to public schools in the cities, most of them have to leave their children behind, to be taken care of by their grandparents or other relatives and enrolled in local rural schools (Yang, 2008; All-China Women’s Federation, 2008). Furthermore, as market reform has created a social structure that is more stratified in rural society, as discussed below, the social backgrounds of rural students has become more and more diverse in terms of social economic status. As the market reforms deepen, it became increasingly clear that the chance of school success has turned out to be different for children from different social groups. The most basic indicator of school success is access to colleges and universities. Research shows that students from cadres’ and professionals’ families constantly outperformed their peers from other backgrounds in access to higher education institutions (Zhou, 2004). However, their counterparts from families of emerging economic elites (including household business owners, individual industrialists and commercialists (geti gongshanghu, 个体工商户), and private entrepreneurs (siying qiyezhu, 私营企业主) who have achieved great success in accumulating wealth in the market transition era have gained substantial advantages in attending colleges and universities. Although many studies have been conducted nationwide, using both urban and rural samples, the pattern is evident in rural areas. For example, Liu found that, among rural students, those with parents who are ordinary peasants are less likely than their peers from other backgrounds in rural areas to gain access to colleges and universities (Zhang, 2014 March 31). While the stratified pattern of school success for rural students from diverse social backgrounds has become increasingly clear, research is still lacking on the process of how this differentiated pattern came into being and the influence of market forces on the process. Most of the current literature about the school success of rural students looks at their families as a homogeneous group and sees the quality of rural schooling as the main determinant of their chances of success in education. The strategies that rural families from different social backgrounds have employed to create a learning environment that is conducive for school success is still less likely to be the focus of research. China’s market transition has seen the improvement of economic returns on investment in human capital, which highlights parents’ strategic initiatives to help their children achieve success in education. The increasing social stratifications in rural society also raise again the issues of class competition for advantages in education and group differences in passing these advantages to younger generations. An understanding of the strategies that rural parents from different social backgrounds employ in education is important in understanding the process of how advantages and disadvantages in school success are produced and reproduced within rural society. Marketization processes in the last thirty years have provided important references for understanding the increasing inequality and emerging social

4 Introduction stratification in rural China. They have also provided a social context for understanding the relative strength of the influence of the family and the school on the success of rural students in education. The following sections will be primarily concerned with this transition process.

Rural society, economic transformation, and social stratification Chinese rural society has experienced two extraordinary transformations since the end of the 1940s, which were initiated by Mao and Deng. While the first transformation featured the rapid overturning of political institutions and the land tenure system, the second saw the reversal of most of the policies enacted during the radical era (Unger, 2002). During the socialist era, China’s countryside was highly collective, with agricultural production within each village held by production teams (shengchan dui, 生产队). What peasants produced had to be sold to government procurement stations at fixed prices (Lin, 1992). Furthermore, peasants were constrained from being involved in private trade or producing handicrafts. They were also deprived of the right to leave farming and to immigrate to cities to seek industrial work (Davis & Wang, 2009). The market reforms undertaken in post-socialist China, however, saw changes in most of these policies and the reorganization of the peasants’ lives and livelihoods (Unger, 2002, p. 95). The market transition that began at the end of the 1970s started with the introduction of the Household Responsibility System (HRS, Jiating lianchan chengbao zerenzhi, 家庭联产承包责任制). The HRS system was first an experiment that was launched at the end of the 1970s in both impoverished inland provinces and regions specializing in cash crops such as cotton (Cai et al., 2008; Lin, 1992). With success in linking the returns on production and incentives with output, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tried to extend the reform to more areas and popularize the system throughout the agricultural sector (Du, 2010). Through HRS, collective agriculture was eventually abandoned and the land divided into family plots (Nee, 1996). Although farm households did not actually possess full ownership of their allocated land, as the titles were still in the name of the village, they were, for the first time since the establishment of collectivist agriculture in China, allowed to lease collective-owned land on a family basis and sell their products (Nee, 1996; Unger, 2002). This shift from a collective system to a system where households had decision-making powers and control over the land and other resources finally restored property rights to individual families (Nee, 1991; Oi, 1989). Beyond HRS, additional steps were taken to reform the mandatory quota procurement system. The market system was gradually introduced into the process of selling and buying grain (Jeffries, 2006). Through a series of distinct but closely related phases, the government gradually eliminated the substantial subsidy to the urban grain supply and most of its control over

Introduction  5 grain marketing (Garnaut & Guonan, 1996). The gradual removal of the control over the demand and supply of grain granted peasants the right to decide what to produce and how to market their products (Tang, 1996). Re-establishing market mechanisms in the trade of rural products urged peasants to improve efficiency in the use of the family’s labour power since the proper use of this labour power was again directly linked to benefits for their families (Unger, 2002). Families with spare labour began to use more land to plant labourintensive, high-priced commercial crops (Du, 2010; Unger, 2002; Zhou, 2009). They also used more time to grow animals with the aim of diversifying and increasing their incomes. Moreover, peasants began to earn a substantial part of their living outside of agriculture. With the reduction in demand for farm labour brought about by technological innovation and increased capital inputs, families with a surplus labour force became highly involved in non-agricultural sectors. Some of these families even left villages for long periods to work in richer rural areas, urban factories in the eastern coastal areas, at urban construction sites, or on other pursuits (Nyberg & Rozelle, 1999). The number of rural residents who are directly involved in the agricultural sector has been decreasing steadily since 1978, when more than 90% of rural labourers were still in the agricultural sector; by 2009, the number had declined to around 60% (see Figure 1.1). With the impact of market reforms becoming more and more profound in rural villages, the free circulation of labour, commodities, and funds has 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1978

1980

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Percentage rural labour involved in agricultural sector

Figure 1.1  Rural labour involved in the agricultural sector Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China. (2009b). China statistical yearbooks, 2009. Beijing: China Statistics Press.

6 Introduction led to a dramatic increase in the number of township and village enterprises (TVEs) and the rise of private enterprises. Most TVEs were established during the 1980s; they were collectively owned in the sense that they were sponsored by township and village governments, and they soon became one of the most booming segments of the Chinese economy (Cai et al., 2008). At the height of their success, TVEs contributed more than 40% of the national gross industrial output and employed around 130 million workers (Zhou, 2009). Though they were soon left behind by the restructured state-owned enterprises and emerging private enterprises after the 1990s, they were still important entities that provided a large amount of off-farm employment to rural labour. For example, in 2009 TVEs employed over 155 million rural labourers, equivalent to one-quarter of the rural labour population (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2009a). The 1990s also saw the growth of private enterprises in rural areas with encouragement from the central and local governments, and the process was accelerated when many TVEs were finally sold to private owners (Nyberg & Rozelle, 1999; Unger, 2002). During the socialist era, rural households had few chances to generate income and accumulate wealth. Most were confined to villages, and the major part of their income was earned from farming. For example, in 1978, when market reforms began, rural residents earned over 85% of their incomes from the agricultural sector. The majority could accumulate little wealth from this since most of their products had to be sold at low prices to the state to provide urban dwellers with sufficient food (Lin, 1992). Now, after decades of reforms, families in rural areas have begun to profit substantially by selling what they have produced. What peasants earn from farming has increased rapidly with improvements in both agricultural productivity and agricultural prices. Between 1990 to 2009, for example, the per capita net income earned from the agricultural sector by peasants increased from less than 500 RMB to around 2,000 RMB (see Figure 1.2). Moreover, peasants began to earn a substantial part of their income outside the agricultural sector. In 1990, for example, over half of peasants’ income came from farming. By 2010, however, more than 60% of peasants’ income came from off-farm endeavours and other sources. For example, a substantial part of their income now comes from labour markets in cities. According to the annual report from the Rural Development Institute at the Chinese Social Science Academy (RDICSSA, 2010), the income of rural households from immigrant work has grown steadily over the past thirty years. With the shortage of immigrant workers in many eastern and coastal areas in recent years, rural households have earned even more from their immigrant employment. Research shows that the monthly salary for a migrant worker was 781 RMB in 2003, but by 2006 it had increased to 953 RMB with a yearly increase of 22% (Ru et al., 2006). A recent survey by the National Bureau of Statistics found that the average monthly salary for migrant workers had increased to more than 2,600 RMB in 2013 (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2014).

Introduction  7 6,000

5,000

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Figure 1.2  Rural families’ net income Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China. (2009a). China rural statistical yearbooks, 2009. Beijing: China Statistics Press.

In spite of rapid economic growth and the continual accumulation of wealth, poverty persists in rural areas, especially in remote rural areas. The proportion of the rural population living in extreme destitution decreased substantially during the reform era, dropping from over 14% in 1987 to less than 2% in 2007. Nevertheless, the absolute number of rural residents in poverty is still large (Zhou, 2009). In 2004, for example, there were still more than 25 million rural residents earning less than 700 RMB per year. In 2007, the number of rural residents with a per capita income below 800 RMB per year was still around 15 million (Zhang, 2008). If the number of near-poor whose per capita income is just above or just below the poverty threshold (944 RMB per year) are included, the number of rural people who still live in critical situations has trebled to more than 64 million (Zhang, 2008). Rural residents in poverty are concentrated in the middle and western parts of China. For example, using the government definition of poverty as a per capita income of less than 785 RMB per year in 2007, the number of rural residents in poverty was 1.41 million in the east, 4.61 million in the middle, and 8.78 million in the west (Zhang, 2008). This indicates that over

8 Introduction 90% of the rural population in poverty occupies the middle and western parts of the country. Most of these people and their children live in impoverished mountain areas and cannot get access to high-quality education and healthcare. Many fell into poverty because of the high cost of sending their children to schools and having to pay high medical charges in the feefor-service healthcare system (Davis & Wang, 2009). The above story about wealth and poverty reveals a simple fact about the market reform: some are taking the lead, while others are left behind. Prior to market reforms, the inequality in rural society was relatively inconspicuous, as most people in the rural sector earned about the same. However, with significant changes in household income structure and the rapid development of non-farm opportunities, overall income inequality increased steadily during the post-socialist era. Using the Gini coefficient as a measure of income distribution, inequality in rural areas increased significantly, with a value of around 0.2 in 1978 increasing to nearly 0.4 in 2006 (see Figure 1.3). As the market reform continues, the aggregate income distribution becomes highly concentrated towards the top quintiles of the rural population. In 2007, for example, households in the top quintile had a per capita income exceeding 9,791 RMB. Households in the middle and fourth quintiles had per capita incomes between 3,659 RMB and 5,130 RMB. However, their counterparts in the lowest quintile had per capita incomes, of less than 1,347 RMB (RDICASS, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010). Although the rapid economic growth has created and continues to create chances for rural people to earn more, with an annual average increase in income of more than 10%, the absolute increase in income for the lowest and the second quintiles is still slow (Zhang, 2008; see also Figure 1.4). Income inequality 0.5

Gini Coefficient

0.4 0.3 0.2

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0.1

Figure 1.3  Gini coefficient in rural China Source: Zhang, D. (2008). Zhong guo juming shouru fenpei nian du baogao, 2008 (Annual report of Chinese residents’ income distribution, 2008). Beijing: Economic Science Press.

Introduction  9 10,000 8,000

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lowest quintile

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Figure 1.4  Income inequality in rural China Source: Zhang, D. (2008). Zhong guo juming shouru fenpei nian du baogao, 2008 (Annual report of Chinese residents’ income distribution, 2008). Beijing: Economic Science Press.

also exists at the regional level. The China yearbook of rural household survey (National Bureau of Statistics of China 1992, 2000, 2005, 2007, 2010) shows that the eastern coastal areas continue to run ahead of the central and western regions, and regional inequality in terms of per capita income for rural people in these regions has become more and more evident since the 1980s (see Figure 1.5). The changed path to economic prosperity and the enlarging income gap recall the issue of class formation (Davis & Wang, 2009). During the socialist era, bureaucratically assigned class labels heavily determined the social and political statuses of individuals and created a social structure stratified by differences not in wealth but in political loyalty (Davis & Wang, 2009). With the market reforms, however, these class labels and commissural social stratification that had lasted more than twenty years vanished (Davis & Wang, 2009; Unger, 2002). The core elements of a new social order are rising (Davis & Wang, 2009). The first element of this emerging new social order is that the economic returns on individual-level political capital continue and the advantages of the cadres persist in the post-socialist era. Research indicates that rural cadres gained control and income rights over collective industry, exerted an influence on salaried positions for family members in TVEs, capitalized on influence networks with information from private entrepreneurs, and even started “insider privatization” to plunder collective assets (Bian & Logan, 1996; Lin, 1995; Liu, 2009). Therefore, they have achieved substantial advantages in accumulating wealth in the post-socialist era. The second

10 Introduction 10,000 9,000 8,000 7,000

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1985 The east

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The central

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The west

Figure 1.5  Rural per capita income in the east, central, and west Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China. (2010). China yearbook of rural household survey, 2010. Beijing: China Statistics Press.

element is the fact that the market reform has resulted in the emergence of new opportunity structures centering on the marketplace that have given rise to entrepreneurship. Increasing returns on capital resulted in the emergence of new economic elites in rural society: household business owners and private entrepreneurs. Some are cadres or relatives and friends of cadres who transformed their political power into sources of private income. Some gained advantages through their own skills and resources (Unger, 2002). The third element is that the return on education has increased, and professionals gained advantages because of the knowledge and skills they have acquired (Bian, 2002a; Lu, 2002, 2004).

Family strategies, parental involvement and school success For fifteen years before the opening up and the market reform, particularly during the period after the Cultural Revolution, the link between the social origins and the educational achievement of people in China has nearly been removed (Zhou, 2004). The radical reforms undertaken in the educational sector have successfully created a relatively equal system where the socialist state and the school system have become the main determinants of individuals’ educational achievement. Szelenyi (1978) and Zhou (2004) argue that resource allocation in a socialist society generally follows a political logic

Introduction  11 that expresses the political considerations and structures the political goals of the state. Under this political logic, industrial cities and organizations with higher authority are preferred in the political agenda. Therefore, they are usually favoured in the resource allocation process. Education has long been considered a kind of “resource” that is conducive to economic and social development in China, and its allocation has been heavily structured by political considerations (Yang, 2006a). Industrial cities are usually preferred in the ‘education resource’ allocation process and are more likely than rural areas to gain education investments from the central and local governments (Li et al., 2007). Key schools, located in cities and county townships with higher positions in the national hierarchical system of schools, are also more likely than others to get sufficient inputs, including high-quality teachers and sustainable finance support (Yuan, 1999). In such a system, birthplaces and the types of schools rather than family backgrounds are better predictors of the chances of school success for individuals. For example, since rural schools are less likely to get enough inputs, rural students, who are naturally disadvantaged in this system, are usually under-served in colleges and universities (Yao et al., 2006; Zhao, 2000). Now, the market reform has seen the resurgence of the influence of family on the chances of school success for ordinary Chinese people. Zhou (2004), for example, found that students from cadre families (ganbu jiating, 干部 家庭) were privileged in college access. His findings have been proved in other similar studies. Li (2003), in his research on the social backgrounds of new entrants at Peking universities, found that the number of students from cadre families has increased substantially, accompanied by a slight expansion of the population of students from professional backgrounds (zhuanye jishu renyuan, 专业技术人员) and a noticeable decrease in the percentage of students from worker and peasant families (putong gongren yu nongmin, 普通工人与农民). Children from worker and peasant families are not only under-represented in such prestigious higher education institutions (HEIs) as Peking University but are also reported to be disadvantaged in accessing ordinary HEIs (Yang, 2006b). However, their counterparts from those families of emerging economic elites (including household business owners, individual industrialists and commercialists (geti gongshanghu, 个体工 商户), and private entrepreneurs (siying qiyezhu, 私营企业主)) who have achieved great success in accumulating wealth in the market transition have gained substantial advantages in attending all types of colleges and universities. Similar surveys were conducted by other researchers, yielding similar findings (Wang & Xie, 2006; Yao, Huang, & Lu, 2006). Whereas the competition for educational achievement depends more on family status, the strategies for families to translate their advantages into school success for their children has become more and more crucial in postsocialist China. One of the most important indicators for school success is the chance of gaining access to colleges and universities. With respect to sound chances at college access by students from advantaged social groups

12 Introduction such as the cadres, professionals, and new economic elite, researchers claim that it could contribute to their family investment strategies for education (Liu, 2006). The higher their income, the greater possibility they have to invest in their children’s education. This means that parents with more money are more likely to be in a privileged position to buy for their children comfortable housing, good nutrition, and access to intellectual stimuli; they can even purchase high-quality education, private counseling services, and extra-curricular training, which improves their children’s chances of school success (Yao et al., 2006). The higher the parents’ level of education, the more likely it is that their children will gain access to HEIs. For example, researchers (Wang & Xie, 2006; Yao et al., 2006) maintain that students whose fathers are secondary school or college graduates enjoy substantial advantages in college access, particularly in going to selective colleges and universities. Wang (2005) reports a similar influence of mothers’ education on students’ chances of college access. The explanation is that parents with more education are more likely to have more knowledge of education, supervising their children’s academic progress, and providing them with more knowledge of how to navigate the school environment. What constitutes effective family strategies? As the history of the socialist era suggests, parents are more likely to succeed when their strategies are supported by state policies and the school system. For example, when the political recommendations and class labels were the primary means of determining progress in schooling during the Cultural Revolution, investment in cultural capital might not have served as the best strategy for parents to help their children to achieve school success (Unger, 1982). Thus, parents’ level of education was not a good predictor of their children’s educational achievement from the middle of the 1960s to the first few years of the 1970s (Zhou, 2004). The post-socialist education system has again reaffirmed merit-based criteria, which were taken for granted for over ten centuries and replaced by political recommendations and class labels during the radical era as the basis for student selection. Tracking systems that were abolished during the radical era, as well as key schools, have been reestablished (Rosen, 1984). The way in which education is funded has also changed; the financial burden has shifted from the state to the individual students and their family. All of this has promised that parents can capitalize on what they have and become involved in their children’s learning process in a way that differs from the era before the market reform. Parents’ involvement in education could be home-, school-, or community-based depending on the process in which parents use whatever resources are at their disposal to improve their children’s chances of school success (Bodovski, 2010; Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003; Epstein, 1987, 2001; Jiang, 2003; Kong, 2010; Stevenson & Baker, 1987). Research shows that parental involvement is positively linked to success in school and that students show better academic scores,

Introduction  13 Table 1.1  Parental involvement with definition Types of involvement Definition Parenting Communicating Volunteering Teaching at home Decision making Collaborating with the community

Providing housing, health, nutrition, safety, parenting skills in parent–children interactions, and home conditions to help schools; knowing child School–home/home–school communication Help in classroom/with events Help with homework; help with educational choices/ options Membership in PTA/governors Contributions to school

Source: Adapted from Kreider, H. (2000). The national network of partnerships schools: a model for family-school-community partnerships. Cambridge: Harvard Family Research Project.

higher graduation rates, and lower dropout rates when their parents are involved in their learning process (Schoon & Parsons, 2002; Sheldon & Epstein, 2002, 2005; Singh et al., 1995; Sui-Chu & Willms, 1996). The concept of parental involvement is helpful when thinking about how the differentiated pattern of school success for children from different social groups has been produced. It implies that those social groups who already had advantages in the increasingly stratified society may be better able to capitalize on their family resources and pass on their advantages to their children in terms of school success. Parental involvement provides children with different types of social capital that are conducive to school success. Social networks within a family, between a family and a school, and within a community are claimed to be the three places where social capital may be created by parents for advantages in school success (Bankston, 2004; Bankston & Zhou, 1996; Coleman, 1988; Schneider & Coleman, 1993; Sun, 1999; Teachman et al., 1997; Zhou & Bankston, 1994; Zhou & Kim, 2006). Coleman (1988) argues that a social network and its mobilization might help children to gain access to the human capital of their parents. According to him, children’s human capital is influenced not only by the human capital possessed by their parents but also by the social relations between children and their parents within the family. He describes the physical absence of adults and less attention given by adults to children as structural deficiencies in social capital and indicates that these deficiencies could influence children’s educational outcomes. Coleman (1988) proves, through quantitative analysis, that the physical presentation of adults in households, their formal relationship, and the number of siblings are associated with children’s educational outcomes. He also indicates that children living in traditionally structured families are more likely to achieve better educational outcomes than those from non-traditional families, since maternal employment in modern families

14 Introduction reduces the stock of social capital in the family, thus having a negative effect on children’s educational outcomes. His description and arguments to a large extent shape the tradition and agenda in researching the effects of social capital maintained in the family on educational outcomes. There are two traditions in researching the family-based resource effect on educational outcomes in terms of social capital. One tries to find structural factors that can explain educational outcomes, while the other examines process factors. While structural factors involve the number of adults in the household, their formal relationship, and the numbers of siblings, which determine opportunities for interpersonal interactions, as well as their frequency and duration, the process factors involve the level and quality of interactions inside the network of family, school, and neighbourhood, relating more to social norms and informal sanctions. Both the structure and process of family social capital are important predictors of educational outcomes. For example, researchers claim that children whose parents are both physically present and attentive are more likely to achieve better academic performance (Furstenberg & Hughes, 1995; Sun, 1999; Valenzuela & Dornbusch, 1994). Lee (1993) finds that students in traditional American families outperformed students in any non-traditional family types on standardized test scores, grades, and behaviour. Some researchers (Teachman et al., 1996) have reported that parents’ divorcing diminishes their children’s hopes of well-being and lowers their educational outcomes. Similar findings are claimed by other researchers (Downey, 1995; Gomes, 1984; Israel et al., 2001; Pong, 1998; Smith, 1992). The traditional family structure is positively associated with secondary school graduation and college enrolment, while non-traditional family structures and the number of siblings are positively related to dropout rates in middle schools. Taking into account the cultural differences in parenting, the relationship between social networks within families and educational outcomes can still be found in such places as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Israel, etc. (Hermalin et al., 1982; Marjoribanks, 1989, 1991; Patrinos & Psacharopoulos, 1997; Shavit & Pierce, 1991). Although some researchers address different relationships in researching social capital and educational outcomes, they still admit that the inconsistency could be attributed to the different mechanisms of how the family as an institution works for the children. For example, Fuller and Liang (1999) report that, in some African societies, a girl’s risk of leaving school is lowered by her father’s absence. Lloyd and Blanc (1996) also report that, in seven African countries, children in female-headed households are more likely to be enrolled in school and to have completed grade four than those in male-headed households. However, as Buchmann (2002) argues, these findings may be associated with the fact that the stronger extended kinship structures in Africa mediate the effects of single parenthood on children. The seeming inconsistency in findings highlights the importance of how parents interact with their children and what the consequences of this process are. The presence of parents at home does not ensure better parent–child

Introduction  15 interactions and advantages in school success. Social networks within families can only work for their children when they are accessed and mobilized by parents. Parents can mobilize social networks within families to deliver their educational expectations to children, thus creating advantages for their children in school success. Researchers believe that high levels of parent–child interactions usually produce high educational expectations for both parents and children, which will in turn encourage better academic performance for the children. Goyette and Conchas (2002) find that minority parents have extremely high educational aspirations for their children and that these aspirations exert a considerable influence over youth aspirations and the maintenance of these aspirations over time. Parent–child interactions can also provide parents with chances to supervise their children’s after-school activities. They can encourage their children to do more homework and control their time spent watching TV. The availability of adequate after-school supervision is positively associated with school success. For example, Muller and Kerbow (1993) find that children performed worse with the increase of unsupervised after-school time. Parents can also deliver relevant information about schooling to their children through the social networks within families. They can discuss their school experience with their children and talk with them about school plans, both of which are good predictors of students’ academic performance. Parents can also send their children to extra classes outside schools or hire private tutors, which may also improve the children’s chance of school success (Muller & Kerbow, 1993; Zhou & Kim, 2006). Social networks within schools can also be used to create advantages for school success. For example, Coleman finds that the dropout rate in Catholic secondary schools is three times lower than in public secondary schools. He and his colleagues (Coleman, 1988; Coleman et al., 1981) argue that teachers and students in Catholic secondary schools are more likely to be bound together through shared values. Norms and sanctions transferred through high-level closed networks are helpful in realizing social control over children. Coleman’s findings are supported by many other studies (Teachman et al., 1996, 1997). Researchers (Evans & Schwab, 1995; Sander, 1997; Xie, 2000) have confirmed that students in Catholic schools with more social capital are more likely to have higher mathematics and reading scores, higher secondary school and college graduation rates, and more opportunities to enter colleges. Other researchers claim that social networks between parents and key institutional agents in schools, such as teachers and counselors, can also transmit valuable institutional resources and opportunities for students. They can deliver important information about schooling when students are making college plans. Social networks among students can also bring positive outcomes. For example, Stanton-Salazar and Dornbusch (1995) find that students’ social networks play a very important role in transmitting post-secondary education aspirations and college information.

16 Introduction Interactions between teachers and parents can also provide children with a competitive edge in schools. For example, parent contact with schools may give them a chance to know about their child’s subject content in schools and intervene when needed (Muller & Kerbow, 1993). They can also improve the chances of school success for their children by actively participating in activities organized by schools, which gives them a chance to better understand the running of the school. Their participation in such organizations as the Parent–Teacher Organization (Ryan et al., 1995), attendance at PTO meetings, and taking part in PTO activities can also serve as important means of communication and information flow. Social networks within communities can also be mobilized to improve the chances of school success for children (Adams, 2006; Kim, 2007; Ross & Lin, 2006; Zhou & Kim, 2006). Coleman (1988) claims that, when the intergenerational closure is achieved in communities as parents of different children interact with each other, their children’s chances of school success increase. He claims that inter-generational closure provides opportunities for parents to understand and enforce social norms that are conducive to school success. This type of network also facilitates the exchange of information among parents and enables them to supervise one another’s children. Many studies researching the achievement of ethnic minority groups have yielded similar findings (Bankston, 2004; Bankston & Zhou, 1996, 2000, 2002b; Kim, 2007; Zhou & Bankston, 1994; Zhou & Kim, 2006). They claim that such ethnic communities as Chinese and Koreans deliver positive attitudes to the mainstream culture, which helps their children to assimilate into the mainstream culture and achieve school success. For example, in a study in an American Chinatown, Zhou (1995) claims that Chinese culture as well as communitybased support systems successfully helped children in Chinatown to overcome intense adjustment difficulties and unfavourable conditions. Many studies (Bankston, 2004; Bankston & Zhou, 1996, 2000, 2002a, 2002b; Zhou & Bankston, 1994) have reported similar findings regarding the influence of religious participation, minority language literacy, and supplementary education institutions on immigrants’ adaptation and school performance. The literature makes it clear that, when social networks within the family, between school and family, and within the community are strong, implying the closure of networks and efforts to mobilize them, parents can create social capital by bringing expectations, supervision, norms, tutoring, and information to their children, thus creating better chances at school success for them. In a schema such as this, disadvantages in social capital are created when social networks within or between these places are broken and under-invested (not mobilized).

Social capital, guanxi, and inequality and school success Researchers have found class differences in the patterns of how parents become involved in schooling. They argue that parents from the upper and

Introduction  17 middle classes take a more active role in their children’s learning process in terms of, for example, preparing children for schooling and attending school events. However, their peers from lower classes are more likely to see education as the responsibility of school professionals. Meanwhile, because of lack of time, energy, and knowledge, they show less motivation and skills in participation at school (Coleman, 1988; Epstein, 1987; Muller & Kerbow, 1993). Some of them even feel less welcomed than their counterparts from privileged backgrounds in school affairs (Connell et al., 1982; Lightfoot, 1978). A “separation” between families and schools, therefore, is created for parents from the working and lower classes. For parents from middle- and upper-class families, there is an “interconnectedness” between family life and school life. To them, education is a shared enterprise between them and teachers. They are more likely to have more information about their children in schools (home advantage). While the “interconnected” type of family-school relationships facilitates the creation of social capital, a separation between family and school is less likely to bring any form of social capital. According to Coleman (1988), a social structure with closure where people become involved and have intensive social connections to each other is more likely to be a place where social capital is produced. This is especially the case when the social ties between parents and children and between parents are strong. Children in such a social structure, referred to by Coleman as intergenerational closure, are more likely to gain access to social capital in such forms as information, supervision, and sanctions (Coleman, 1988). Social class has a powerful influence on the patterns of the family-school relationship. Parents make choices about the types of activities that they are willing to engage in at home, in school, and in the community to help their children to achieve success (Crozier, 1999; Dornbusch & Glasgow, 1996; Lareau, 1987). Those from the working and lower classes may place less value on education and be less motivated to participate at school (Nechyba et al., 1999). This “culture of poverty” may prevent them from establishing connections between family life and school life. Furthermore, schools, which are considered middle-class institutions with their own values, accept involvement only on their own terms, which are non-negotiable. Parents from privileged backgrounds may feel more welcome than their counterparts from disadvantaged social groups in schooling and are therefore more likely to maintain the interconnectedness between family and school (Connell et al., 1982; Lightfoot, 1978; Ogbu, 1974). Lareau (1987, 2001) suggests a cultural capital explanation for the interconnectedness between schools and middle-class families. She argues that parents from the middle class are more involved in schooling because their class culture gives them a pool of resources that they can use in interactions with teachers. For example, their high level of education helps them know how to comply with teachers’ requirements. Their social status is comparable to that of teachers, so they encounter fewer barriers in communicating

18 Introduction with teachers. Therefore, cultural capital associated with social class fosters the link between families and schools of parents from the middle class and yields advantages for their children in school success. Social networks are important resources in the creation of class advantages. Bourdieu (1990) argues that membership in particular networks of relations is exclusive and under strict control. Social connections are more likely to be established among people of similar social backgrounds. Social institutions favour legitimate exchanges by producing occasions, places, or practices that can bring together individuals in a homogeneous group while excluding “illegitimate” ones. Therefore, the possible “interconnectedness” between schools and families from the lower social class are hard to establish. Teachers are usually considered senior to parents from lower-class families in the emerging social system hierarchy. The establishment of crossclass social networks demands greater efforts from them and the endless investment of time, energy, and resources. In fact, the relations between families and schools can be either formal or informal. Families and schools can be linked by social networks that are established by schools, teachers, and parents’ organizations. These connections are usually defined by rules and regulations. For example, schools may set up occasions for parents to become involved in their children’s education. These occasions are formal and universal for all parents. Families and schools can also be connected to each other by guanxi, or personal, particularistic relations. For example, when there is a lack of formal social connections between families and schools, parents may try to produce informal and personal connections to teachers with the aim of creating advantages for their children in school success. When there is no such institution like a parent–teacher association to facilitate communication between parents and teachers, some parents may contact teachers themselves and maintain a certain level of interaction with the teachers to facilitate the information flow between them. Studies conducted in recent decades on market reforms in China point out the particular relevance of guanxi in researching inequality in life opportunities in post-socialist China. The strategic use of guanxi networks is considered an important tool to create social capital for life advantages (Bian 1997; Gold et al., 2002; Guthrie, 1998; Lin, 1995). In China, guanxi is a special idiom of social networks. Bian (1997) differentiates these social networks of an interpersonal nature from those with institutional support. He claims that interpersonal relations such as those with family, kinship networks, colleagues, and neighbours are informal channels for job attainment and play critical roles in social mobility in transitional China. Guanxi also refers to the basic dynamic in personalized networks of influence and is considered to lie at the heart of China’s social order, its economic structure, and its changing institutional landscape (Bian, 2009; Gold, Guthrie, & Wank, 2002). It inevitably entangles other components of

Introduction  19 Chinese sociality, such as sentiment (ganqing, 感情), human feeling (renqing, 人情), face (mianzi, 面子), and reciprocity (bao, 报). Debate is still open on whether guanxi is an integral element of Chinese culture or a strategy to cope with the institutional and historical conditions in China’s transition to a market era (Gold et al., 2002). Scholars viewing guanxi as a fundamentally Chinese phenomenon trace the term to the work of Liang Shuming and Fei Xiaotong. Liang (2005) considers Chinese society a relation-based society (guanxi benwe i, 关系本位) and guanxi as extended familial ties, characterized by a set of ethnic codes. These ethnic codes, including sentiment (qing, 情) and obligations (yi, 义), emphasize the norms in social interaction and the corresponding social ties. Every member is considered to be linked by five types of dyadic ties between the ruler and the ministers (jun chen, 君臣), fathers and sons (fu zi, 父子), husband and wife (fu fu, 夫妇), older and younger brothers (zhang you, 长幼), and friend and friend (peng you, 朋友). Every type of tie has a corresponding set of sentimental and obligation codes. It is through these ties that individuals find their coordinate points in society and develop their identities (Gold et al., 2002). Fei (1992) offers more elaborated descriptions and arguments about guanxi and its nature, which has had a wider and more lasting influence on scholarship on guanxi. He gains inspiration and insights about guanxi by comparing the fundamental distinctions in social structure between China and the West and argues that there are clearly different approaches to social relations between these two societies. While the Western social structure is an “organizational mode of association” in which individuals are connected with the whole society through groups and organizations, the Chinese social structure is a “differential mode of association” in which individuals are connected with the whole society through overlapping personalized guanxi. Under the organizational mode of association, individuals form groups or organizations. They are defined by their membership in groups or organizations, and their relationships are characterized by agreed-upon rules established before the formation of the groups or organizations. The constitutional nature of these types of social relations produces the balance between the part and the whole and thus the concept of equality among individuals. Under the differential mode of association, however, individuals are defined by their positions in the interrelated and overlapping circles of personalized guanxi and bound together by lun (伦), which characterizes their relationships with others. Fei (1992) compares the pattern of social relations to the ripples that appear on the surface of water when a stone is thrown into a lake. He argues that lun represents the order in the circles of networks and stresses differentiation among individuals. Differentiation means not only the substantial distinction between two connected parties but also the different sentiment and obligations that the two parties should have for each other. For example, that fathers are differentiated from sons means that they are not only distinct from each other in status within a family but also have different obligations to each other.

20 Introduction Fathers should show love and kindness to their sons, and the sons should show filial obedience to their fathers. Some researchers have claimed that guanxi is produced by the particular set of social institutions in China today and that there is nothing fundamentally Chinese in this phenomenon (Guthrie, 1998; Oi, 1989; Walder, 1988). They believe that the Chinese scarcity economy with a weak legal infrastructure that prevailed at the beginning of reform era increased the importance of social networks in economic transactions. Reliance on social networks will diminish with the development of social institutions in China. Thus, the use of guanxi in China has nothing to do with Chinese culture or Chinese society but is a makeshift response to the institutionally uncertain environment. For example, Walder (1988), in researching patron-client relations in the workplace, finds that the control of access to scarce necessities such as housing and non-wage benefits by the authorities created the need and opportunities for the use of guanxi. In studying foreigners’ attempts to invest in or trade with China, researchers also raise the issue of the lack of a rational and legal system in the economy and argue that the need for trust led to the role of guanxi as a defense against “unpredictable mainland Chinese” (Hsing, 1996; Smart & Smart, 1998). Wank (1995) examines the symbiotic clientelism between private business people and officials and argues that the unstable social and legal positions of businesspeople pushes them to use guanxi to compete for access to “license, resources, venues, protection and other favors” from officials. My observation on the ongoing debate about whether guanxi is a uniquely Chinese phenomenon or strategy that is used to navigate an institutionally uncertain environment proceeds from Bian’s observation that guanxi networks of interpersonal relationships are an informal mechanism that developed in response to the fast removal of hierarchical institutions and the slow growth of market institutions. Bian (1997), in his study in the labour market of Tianjin, claims that guanxi pervades every stage of the job assignment process and can be used to collect internally circulated information on jobs, to obtain influence from powerful cadres to initiate an assignment or grant a labour quota, to lobby for favourable decisions from leaders of hiring organization, to locate a work unit to be transferred to, and to influence one’s current employer to allow one to leave the work unit or job (Bian, 1994, 1997, 2009). He (Bian, 2002b) attributes the capital potentials of guanxi to the fast removal of hierarchical institutions and the slow growth of market institutions in China’s emergent labour market and argues that these types of institutional holes make interpersonal relationships an alternative mechanism for transmitting information, building trust, and creating binding obligations between prospective job seekers and employers. Meanwhile, Bian (1994, 1997, 2009) also shows his cultural orientation towards guanxi and claims that reliance on social relations is fundamentally Chinese.

Introduction  21

Research methodology This book describes a study that conceptualizes the process of rural parents’ involvement in schooling as a social capital process. It focuses on how rural parents from different social backgrounds use guanxi to maintain the interconnectedness between their families and schools to create advantages for their children in school success. The underlying theoretical framework assumes that parents’ strategies in transferring their privileges are culturally and socially bounded. Therefore, they should be understood in natural settings to discover the possible nature and significance of socio-cultural variation (Hammersley, 2004). Ethnographers are noted for their openmindness in the process of studying a group or culture (Emerson et al., 1995; Fetterman, 2000). Although there are still debates on whether research can be done in “natural settings” that are independent of the research process or not set up in particular for research purposes. The effects on the behaviour of the people being studied can be minimized, and social events and processes must be explained in terms of their relationship to the social context where they occur (Cheng, 2007). This is especially relevant to the study described in this book. The open mind permitted by ethnographic study enables the researcher to explore a rich and contextual way of school involvement that has been unreported in previous research (Gao, 2008). The region of the study was Zong County, which sits on a piedmont north of the Yangtze River in the southern part of Anhui Province south of the capital city of Hefei. It has many mountains and lakes, which are covered by fertilized farmland. Forest products and fruit are produced in the more elevated parts of Zong. The county encompasses about 1,801 square kilometres and has a population of more than 960,000. Rural residents account for more than 88% of its population, spread over 22 townships (xiang, 乡) and more than 256 villages. The demographic features of this county provided many chances to gain access to rural participants for the study. Zong was also selected because it is a typical county with a transitional economy and features social transformation, meeting the substantive research requirement to find rural parents from different social backgrounds. The economic changes and the emerging pattern of social stratification in Zong County have basic similarities to the overall situation in China. Government-initiated economic reforms began in 1978 in two steps. The first step, which occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, saw the decollectivization of agriculture and the opening up of the county to foreign investment, as well as permission for entrepreneurs to run their own businesses (Hu, 2007). The second step, launched in the late 1980s and 1990s, involved the privatization and contracting out of much state-owned industry in the county (Hu, 2007). With the market reforms, the scale of its economy and its industrial sector grew rapidly (see Figure 1.6). The private sector also developed significantly, with the number of private businesses reaching up to 4,565, which

22 Introduction accounted for as much as 81.8% of the county’s enterprises by 2002. The economic reforms also resulted in increasing income and wealth inequality (see Table 1.2). Up to 2007, over 70% of its labour force was in the agricultural sector, and 30% was in government at different levels, schools, and industry. Traditional advantaged social groups in government, stateowned companies, and government-sponsored institutions still outperform their counterparts from peasant families in income, prestige, and so on. Managers of township enterprises, private entrepreneurs, and household business owners have also gained income advantages with the growth of second and third industries. Field visits began in January 2009 and ended in January 2010. A revisit was carried out in the summer of 2013 and lasted for a month. I was born in Zong and lived in a village in the county for more than fifteen years. This membership provided me with the best ticket into different villages and townships in the county. When I conducted the fieldwork, I lived with my parents, who still live in the village. This guaranteed that I could find a balance between (a) available funds, (b) data that were actually needed, and (c) time in the field. The membership and living at the research site were of great importance, not just because of the convenience but because they helped me to become an active participant in the field site. People accepted me as a member again since I showed a willingness to live among them for a long time, breaking down barriers and establishing a rapport. To gain access to rural parents, especially for those working as migrant workers, visits to families were mainly arranged during the spring festival and harvest seasons in two townships and three villages.

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Value-added of secondary industry (100 million RMB) Value-added of primary industry (100 million RMB)

Figure 1.6  The general economy of Zong County Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China. (2009b). China statistical yearbooks, 2009. Beijing: China Statistics Press.

Introduction  23 Table 1.2  Employment and income gap in Zong County Sector

Number of employees

Agriculture, forestry, animal 303,672 husbandry and fishery Mining and quarrying 513 Manufacturing 24,487 Production and supply of 1,187 electricity gas and water Construction 26,871 Geological prospecting and 302 water conservancy Transport storage postal and 8,732 telecommunication services Wholesale and retail trades and 18,159 catering services Finance and insurance 865 Real estate 231 Social services 3,642 Health care, sports and social 3,330 welfare Education culture and arts, 9,678 radio film and television Science research and 10 polytechnic services 6,016 Government agencies, party agencies and social organizations Others 142

%ge of the labour force

Average income per year (RMB)*

74.760

4,495

0.130 6.000 0.290

4,310 5,883 11,640

6.590 0.070

3,983 9,490

2.140

6,652

4.450

3,637

0.210 0.060 0.890 0.820

9,899 9,340 7,594 10,893

2.370

9,793

0.002

10,724

1.480

10,772

0.030

5,939

Note: *The numbers represents the average income per year for employees in all sectors all over Anqing, where the county situated. These numbers were used because of the restricted access to the data at the county level. Sources: Hu, Z. (2007). Gazetteers of Zong yang County (Zong yang xianzhi) (1978–2002). Huangshan: Huangshan Press (huangshan shushe). Han, X. (2002). Anqing Economic statistical yearbook (Anqing jingji tongji nianjian). Beijing: Chinese Bureau of Statistics (Zhongguo tongjiju).

A snowball sampling strategy was used when I talked to those informants: my informants often introduced their friends or relatives to me. In the process of finding informants, I consciously established relations with those from different backgrounds to access people of more diverse social backgrounds. This approach proved helpful in setting up an informant pool for the study. As the study progressed, my focus narrowed to specific groups of informants from the pool. Access was a continuous and dynamic process in taking what could only be understood as the first step. Maintaining social relationships and

24 Introduction developing a rapport have the same importance in access since individuals often hold the key to required information, and interviews in an ethnographic study are often conducted informally, requiring more time. Trust is an essential part of developing a rapport, and it guarantees a free flow of information (Feldman et al., 2003; Magolda, 2000). Relationships are not totally controlled by either the researcher or the researched (Feldman et al., 2003). Although my identity as an insider helped in developing trust with these rural parents, it did not guarantee trust. I still remember one incident when I was trying to interview a peasant in the second village where I conducted my fieldwork. One of my informants introduced me to a villager who had a daughter studying at a senior secondary school. I rushed to ask the villager about her family’s information and her daughter’s schooling, making her suspect that I was an agent who wanted to persuade her to send her daughter to a private college. She refused to answer any of my questions and asked her husband not to provide me with any information that might hurt her daughter. Later, I slowed down when speaking informally with other parents and spent more time sharing my experiences in different cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong. I sometimes invited them to play poker and mahjong, which are the most popular games there: these were the occasions when people were most likely to share feelings with each other. Furthermore, I also tried to find activities that could facilitate rapport when I talked to rural parents at their homes. I would help to pick cotton if they were involved in that activity during the interview. Sometimes, they enquired about their children’s learning difficulties and hoped that I could help them. On these occasions, I usually spent some time with their children and discussed their homework or other issues. One of the most frequent questions that my informants asked was how to choose a college or university if one of their children or a relative happened to be a new senior secondary school graduate. This motivated me to collect information about colleges and universities to prepare for these types of questions. I found that such commitment fostered a strong rapport. Some informants even came to my home to visit me and shared their stories. Institutions may mediate access in various ways (Bian et al., 2004; Feldman et al., 2003). The process of gaining and maintaining access to officers at the county bureau of education and schoolteachers was quite different from gaining access to rural parents. The county bureau of education served as a gatekeeper to the county school system and had the right to grant access to teachers and relevant documents. This drove me to try to create good relations with them. I asked for the help of people that I was familiar with and let them introduce me to key people at the county bureau of education, as well as teachers at various schools. I also used strategies to maintain social relationships and develop a rapport with the school participants. To reproduce different social relations with them, some of my friends kindly helped me invite some interviewees to have lunch or dinner. They said that the exchange

Introduction  25 of personal experiences with each other on these occasions provided good opportunities to develop trust and rapport with them. Interviewees usually became talkative after these events. Some even invited me to have dinner with them as a response to our kindness and commitment. It should be noted that the selection of schools and teachers was not totally based on availability. Some schools were chosen based on an analysis of the interview data and relevant documents obtained by searching the library and the county government website. Six schools were visited because they typically represent two types of schools that parents might interact with (model schools with quality teachers and facilities and ordinary schools with relatively poor conditions) and were cornerstones on the pathway that rural students must take before entering any college or university (primary schools and secondary schools; see Table 1.3). Household interviews rather than participatory observations were used as the main method of data collection in the research. This method was chosen for the following reasons. First, the social backgrounds of students in most schools in Zong are diverse, with no clear pattern of parental involvement in any school. This made it impossible to select schools from different areas of a working-class community with a middle-class background and use them as the basic unit of comparison to analyze the class differences in school involvement and possible explanations and consequences, as researchers have done in a Western context. Second, as many researchers have argued, parents from different cultures may be involved in schools in different ways. Some of these ways may be hidden and cannot be observed in schools (Kong, 2008). There is a need to ask parents directly about what they have done for their children to help them achieve school success. Third, household interviews allow parents from different social backgrounds to report their school involvement experiences at different levels, and this acknowledges the fact that parental actions in school involvement are partially a result of the constant interactions between them and schools (Lareau, 2000). Interviews were also conducted with head teachers and relevant staff members in schools in this study (see Table 1.4). Teachers, especially head teachers, were the main informants in interviews since they were legally recognized as the bridge between schools and parents. A head teacher in a Table 1.3  School profiles Name of school

School type

Location

Peak Senior Secondary School Port Senior Secondary School Garden Junior Secondary School Riverside Junior Secondary School Garden Primary School Everywhere Primary School

Model school Ordinary school Central school Ordinary school Central school Ordinary school

County town Town Town Village Town Village

26 Introduction Table 1.4  Interviewees in the field Interviewee Number Topic Households 22 Teachers

12

Principals

 4

Parents’ understanding and ways of involving in children’s learning process Teachers’ attitudes towards and ways of initiating parents’ involvement Schools’ policies for parental involvement

Chinese school, unlike a school principal in the USA or UK, is the head of a class whose role is a combination of teaching, management, and leadership. Among the twelve teachers interviewed, eight were head teachers. Field notes were written, and relevant documents were also collected and analyzed. In what follows, I will unpack the use of and process of applying these methods. At the beginning of the fieldwork, interviews with different parents were conducted in a rather informal way. They mainly took the form of daily talks and conversations with parents about their children’s education and their perceptions about their roles in schooling. Although my pre-existing networks provided me with many degrees of assistance in the access process, I decided to begin my study carefully with these informal talks and conversations. This was important because access influences the sources of information and determines the types of questions that the research can answer (Feldman et al., 2003). In these conversations I introduced my study to various parents who could be potential informants (or gatekeepers to informants), to inform them of my study and prevent possible concern and fears. As well as gaining their attention and summarizing my project for them, I was also able to explain the possible benefits of my study to them and to the whole community. Once I established myself as a competent researcher and reliable insider, I employed the semi-structured interview technique to collect information such as family profile data and information on the children’s schooling from villagers I talked to every day. As I learned more about the field site, its people, and their children, the research problem became more focused. I began to select households intentionally according to their social backgrounds (see Table 1.5) and formally interviewed them. Each interview session was conducted on a Table 1.5  Family profiles Background

Number

Family yearly income (RMB)

Cadre Professional Household business owner and private entrepreneur Peasant

 3  4

30,000~40,000 20,000~30,000

 4

60,000~70,000

11

 7,000~15,000

Introduction  27 one-to-one basis. Most took place in informants’ homes, lasted a half an hour to one hour on each occasion, and was recorded with permission. I asked open-ended questions generated from the theoretical framework: 1 How do rural parents from different social backgrounds perceive their roles in their children’s learning process? 2 What strategies are used by rural parents from different social backgrounds in activating different social networks to fulfill their perceived roles? These two interview questions varied according to the context of when they were asked of the informants. All parents interviewed had their children educated in one or two of the selected schools at each level mentioned above. Although most interview sessions lasted less than one hour and were often interrupted by unexpected household visitors, the quality and quantity of the information provided by different parents could still be guaranteed since I had established trust and rapport had been developed with the parents. Most could be interviewed several times easily and were willing to share their views and experiences with me. Finally, twenty-two parents were formally interviewed to gain an understanding of their perspectives on being involved in their children’s learning process and factors that support or block school involvement (see Table 1.6). When the second or third interviews were conducted they were also asked to clarify and expand on their views and comments. The interviews with teachers and principals from different schools (see Table 1.7) were quite different from the interviews with rural parents. Teachers and principals were more likely to be occupied by their work. Therefore, most of the interviews with teachers were conducted in schools when they were available. For the teachers who were accessed through the county bureau of education, one-time interviews were mainly conducted in school offices, prearranged by their principals. For the teachers accessed through personal social networks, the interviews were more flexible, with over half of the interviews carried out in the teachers’ own offices and the others in their homes. Most of the teachers accessed through personal social networks could be interviewed two or three times. Interviews with teachers and principals were used to gather information on the following: •• •• ••

School policies on parental involvement Teachers’ perceptions of parental involvement and their ways of getting parents involved in schools Teachers’ perceptions of and response to school involvement initiated by parents

Writings, including words, texts, documents, and records, are valued elements of the social world through which we can trace some aspects of the

Table 1.6  Household heads and their children Code

Backgrounds

Education

Children’s education

 1 Niu

Cadre

3 years college

 2 Chen

Cadre

3 years college

 3 Song  4 Wu  5 Shuang  6 Chun  7 Lee  8 Hua

Cadre Professional (teacher) Professional (teacher) Professional (teacher) Professional (teacher) Household business owner (个体工商户) Household business owner Private entrepreneur (私营企业主)

4 years college 4 years college 4 years college 3 years college 3 years college Junior secondary school Junior secondary school Senior secondary school

1.* First-tier university (一本) (FtU) 1. Second-tier university (二本) (StU) 1. StU 1. FtU; 2. **FtU 1. FtU 1. FtU; 2. StU 1. FtU; 2. StU 1. FtU

11 Fan

Private entrepreneur

12 Si

Peasant (immigrant worker)

Junior secondary school Junior secondary school

13 Zhou

Peasant (immigrant worker) Peasant (immigrant worker) Peasant (immigrant worker) Peasant (immigrant worker) Peasant (immigrant worker) Peasant Peasant (immigrant worker) Peasant Peasant (immigrant worker) Peasant (immigrant worker)

 9 Qu 10 Dao

14 Shu 15 Fu 16 San 17 Hei 18 Gan 19 Ping 20 Guan 21 Yu 22 Kuan

1. StU; 2. StU 1. FtU; 2. Senior secondary school (Sss) student*** 1. StU; 2. FtU

Primary school

1. Third-tier university (三本) (TtU); 2. Vocational secondary school (Vss) 1. Junior secondary school (Jss); 2. TtU 1. Jss; 2. StU; 3. Sss student 1. FtU; 2. Sss student

Primary school

1. Jss; 2. Jss; 3. Jss

Junior secondary school Primary school No education

1. Jss; 2. Sss student

No education No education

Primary school No education No education

Notes *1 = the first child **2 = the second child ***student = children still enrolled in school

1. Vss 1. Primary school; 2. Jss; 3. Sss 1. Jss; 2. TtU; 3. Jss 1. Jss; 2. Jss; 3. Sss 1. Jss; 2. Sss student; 3. Jss student

Introduction  29 Table 1.7  Teachers and principals Code

Informants

School

Gender

 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Principal Principal Principal Principal Head teacher Head teacher Head teacher Head teacher Head teacher Head teacher Head teacher Head teacher Teacher Teacher Teacher Teacher

Zhong Senior Secondary School Garden Primary School Everywhere Primary School Port Senior Secondary School Garden Junior Secondary School Garden Primary School Zhong Senior Secondary School Zhong Senior Secondary School Peak Senior Secondary School Port Senior Secondary School Port Senior Secondary School Riverside Junior Secondary School Port Senior Secondary School Riverside Junior Secondary School Everywhere Primary School Everywhere Primary School

Male Male Male Male Male Male Female Male Male Male Male Male Male Male Male Male

world (Goodson & Sikes, 2001). To obtain basic information about the county, its education, and its changes, I examined various documents to gain an understanding of the following: •• •• •• ••

The social transformation driven by the market reform in the county The pattern of social stratification within the county The education system and relevant educational policies in the county State and school policies on parental involvement in schooling

Three types of documents were collected and analyzed. The first two types were governmental documents such as regulations, yearbooks, statistics, policy documents, and government censuses at the national and county levels. The third type included rules and policies initiated by schools to regulate parental involvement. In addition, relevant documents such as local newspapers and government websites were also used to gain a better understanding of the history, society, and educational system of the county. Extensive field notes were written throughout the research process. These were of crucial importance at the beginning stage of the study when most household interviews were conducted informally. Four types of field notes were written. Jottings were used to document the profiles of each family that I interviewed (including the parents’ careers, family incomes, number of children and their schooling, and the house conditions) in those initial informal talks with parents in each family. They were also

30 Introduction written to document important details that parents mentioned regarding their perceptions and experiences of school participation. To avoid possible violations of trust, tense encounters, discomfort, or fear of harm from the revelation of real attitudes, most jottings were written down after each talk and without the presence of interviewees (this technique discussed in Bian et al., 2001; Bian et al., 2004; Emerson et al., 1995). I also wrote diaries to record my feelings in the field and my perceptions of my relations with those around me. I wrote down emotional highs and lows and even anger, such as anger at bureaucrats who denied me access to information that should have been open to all. These writings were rather useful and served as important clues in the data analysis process. They helped me to interpret my notes and made me constantly aware of my personal biases in the research. I also used logs, to record my plan for how to spend my time and how actually I spent my time. At the beginning of each week, I usually wrote down the plan for where I should go, whom I should visit, and what I would do. At the end of each day, I usually had a record of where I went, whom I visited, and what I did that day. These records helped me in the data collection to reflect on what I had achieved, what I had not, possible explanations for any failures, and how I could improve and follow up. They also served as important clues for me to retrieve the data in the data analysis process. I usually wrote complete notes at noon and night when I returned home after ending each interview. They were written to document the following: •• ••

Parents’ actions in school involvement and their interpretation of their experience Key patterns, themes, and insights that emerged from daily talks with parents

Since most of the respondents were interviewed more than once, information that was written down was also cross-checked over time when followup interviews were done.

Structure of this book This book has five chapters. Chapter 1 briefly introduces the background, reviews the literature, and describes the methodology of this study. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 present the main findings of this study. Chapter 2 examines parent perceptions of their role in schooling, teacher attitudes to parents’ participation in schools and schools’ arrangements in getting parents involved in schools. Chapter 3 examines the strategies of parents from different social backgrounds in school involvement. Chapter 4 reports the intended and unintended consequence of parental involvement in schooling. Chapter 5 summarizes and discusses the research findings.

Introduction  31

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2 The connection between home and school The missing linkage

State schooling and school success in Zong The fieldwork of the study was carried out in Zong, a typical rural county in transition. Zong has established a relatively complete school system that resembles those of some 2,000 counties in other parts of China as a result of the state’s efforts at nation building and modernizing its education system (Thǿgersen, 2002). As a legacy of the structural reform that began in 2002, students in Zong must finish six years of primary school education, three years of junior secondary education, and three years of senior secondary school education before taking the National College Entrance Examinations. Now, there are 205 primary, 33 junior secondary, 12 senior secondary, and three vocational high schools in the county, spread over 258 villages, 9 xiang (乡),1 and 13 townships. The number of students enrolled in these schools is over 100,000. About 53,000 are in secondary schools, more than 50% of the student population in Zong. The other 50% is enrolled in primary schools. Since 2003, the student population in Zong has been shrinking because the number of school-age children is dropping as a result of the one-child policy and outbound immigration (Hu, 2007). According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the student population in Zong reached a peak of nearly 180,000 in 2003, then began to fall and decreased to around 100,000 in 2012, a nearly 45% decline in less than ten years (see Figure 2.1). In the same period, the number of students in senior secondary schools dropped by over 55% at an annual average rate of 6% (see Figure 2.1). The number of schools in the county, primary schools in particular, has also decreased dramatically in recent decades because of the rural school consolidation movement initiated by the central government at the end of the 1980s. The basic idea of rural school consolidation is to integrate two or more schools into one of a relatively large size. The challenges that many rural schools are facing, such as a shortage of students, inadequate funding, and low-quality staff members, can in theory be resolved (Xie & Wu, 2013). The records from the local newspapers in Zong show that in 1989, a year before the rural school consolidation movement began, the number of

40  The connection between home and school 200 180 160 140 120

71.0 61.9 65.2 65.2

66.6

68.1 72.6 75.7 75.1 73.9

100

66.1 60.3

80 60 40

53.3 108.9 101.9 94.6 96.4 96.9 91.5 84.7 83.2 80.4 78.1 72.4 69.9

20

48.9

0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Students in Primary Schools (thousand) Students in Secondary Schools (thousand)

Figure 2.1  The number of students in primary and secondary schools Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China. (2014). China statistical yearbooks, 2013. Beijing: China Statistics Press.

primary schools in Zong was 603. By the beginning of the 2000s, when a more radical movement was introduced, it had decreased to 358 (Hu, 2007). In 2013, a year after China’s Ministry of Education issued a document to regulate and control the policy covering rural school consolidation, the number of primary schools in Zong dropped to around 200. The decrease in the number of secondary schools has been less severe. In 1999 there were 73 secondary schools in Zong: this decreased to 67 by 2007 and to 45 by 2013. The expansion of the student population in secondary schools during this period suggests a structural change in the school system in Zong; the proportion of primary graduates being admitted into secondary schools is growing (see Figure 2.2). This is particularly evident when we look at the proportion of junior secondary graduates who can be admitted by senior secondary schools (including both regular and vocational schools) since the beginning of the 2000s (see Figure 2.2). In 2000, according to the local education publications and the statistics yearbook for the region where Zong is located, about 30% of junior secondary school graduates were able to obtain access to senior secondary schools: this percentage doubled to over 60% by the end of the 2000s. In 2013, more than 90% of junior secondary school graduates were accepted by schools at the next level, a level comparable to the national average transition rate (Li et al., 2013). The improved admissions rates at local secondary schools, together with the expansion of the higher education sector in China that began at the end of the 1990s, promises that an increasing number of students in Zong will be able to go to college and university, a chance that their fathers’

The connection between home and school   41 100 90 80

Percentage

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

2000

2004

2008

2013

Transition Rate from Primary School to Junior Secondary School Transition Rate from Junior Secondary School to Senior Secondary School

Figure 2.2  Transition rates Source: Department of Development and Planning, Ministry of Education. (2014). Educational statistics yearbook of China, 2013. Beijing: People’s Education Press.

generation did not have. In 2006, among the approximately 8,300 senior secondary school graduates, about 43% were admitted by colleges and universities (Anhui xinwen, 2006, June 30). In 2014, among the over 10,000 senior secondary school graduates, nearly 6,000 of them gained access to HEIs (Office of the Zongyang County Government, 2014, June 24). The school system in Zong is productive for local rural parents considering the fact that it is still weak and receiving less investment than school systems in urban areas of the same region. It is also staffed with teachers who are not comparable to those in urban areas in terms of quality (Wang, 2010). The overall public expenditure for primary schools in Zong has been increasing compared to other systems in the same region and nationally; however, the amount is still low. Nevertheless, Zong has a very good record in sending their students to HEIs. Since 2000, the proportion of senior school graduates that gained access to colleges and universities has ranked first most of the time in the region, where Zong has ten competitors, three of which are urban districts (Zhongan zaixian, 2009, June 26). However, schooling in Zong is not equally productive for children from all types of families. Now that many rural schools have been consolidated, small villages with fewer school-age children cannot host schools anymore. This means that the children in these villages have to travel miles each day to

42  The connection between home and school attend primary school. The increasing cost of travel has increased the financial burden for their families. Long travel also exposes them to the risks of physical abuse and accidents on the way to school, and deprives them of the energy and time that can be spent on homework in comparison to their counterparts who live closer to school. Good quality schools are also distributed unevenly across Zong. Each township in the county has a central junior secondary school and a central primary school. These schools are the terminals of the bureaucratic system of education that is responsible for the governance of other primary and junior secondary schools. They are also the best schools in the county. For example, for the year when the fieldwork was done, the statistics from the records of four local schools show that the percentage of teachers with a bachelor’s degree at central primary schools is ten times higher than at village schools. While nearly 30% of the teachers in the central primary schools we visited had a bachelor’s degree, no teacher in the village primary school that we visited had a degree (see Table 2.1). Since enrolments at primary and junior secondary schools are based on the principle of geographic proximity (jiujin ruxue, 就近入学) – that is to say, all families are required to send their children to schools nearest their homes – students whose families live in or near townships are more likely to gain access to these central schools. As a result, they gain substantial advantages in gaining admission to high schools, because central schools are more capable of producing graduates who are high-scoring achievers in the local Senior School Entrance Examinations (Zhong Kao, 中考). The twelve senior secondary schools that admit a majority of the local junior secondary school graduates are highly stratified in terms of both quality and capacities in sending their graduates to colleges and universities. The key school system, which featured differentiated investments in funding and staffing between schools, was abolished in the 1990s as a result of a national-level reform. However, its legacy persists. Although a new school classification scheme was introduced in 1997, schools that were traditionally prioritized in the old system still outperformed their counterparts in terms of investment. In the new scheme, senior secondary schools in Zong were categorized into three types: model schools at the provincial level, model schools at the city level, and ordinary schools. The lower a school’s category, the less investment it can receive. In 1997, the first year of the new model school scheme, the best school, Peak Senior Secondary School, formerly the only provincial-level key school, was labelled the first provincial-level model school in Zong. The second prestigious senior secondary school, Zhong Senior Secondary School, formerly the only city-level key school, was named the first city-level model school in 2000 and renamed the second provincial-level model school in 2006. The labelling of the model schools is an official recognition of the level of investment that each school in Zong can receive. The timeline of the labelling reflects the prestige rank of the twelve senior schools in Zong. With the increased investment from the government in senior secondary education in Zong, more ordinary schools were upgraded as model schools at

The connection between home and school   43 Table 2.1 Central and ordinary rural schools, with reference to statistics at the national level Schools Garden Junior Secondary School (central school) Riverside Junior Secondary School (ordinary rural school)

Percentage of teachers with Percentage of teachers with a bachelor’s degree (本科) an associate’s degree (大专) 41.2

52.9

4.0

81.8

Garden Primary School 28.1 (central school) Village Primary School 0 (ordinary rural school)

56.2

National average for junior secondary schools National average for primary schools

52.8

44.6

15.6

55.2

33.3

Source: Compiled from data collected from different schools in the field; National Bureau of Statistics of China. (2009). China statistical yearbooks, 2009. Beijing: China Statistics Press.

different levels. However, they were all named years after Peak and Zhong were named. For example, three years after Zhong was labelled the first city-level model school in Zong, two other ordinary schools, Hui High2 and Tree High, were named the second and third city-level model schools. Over the following five years, Port, Cloud, and Chow, former ordinary schools, were labelled city-level model schools. The “Big Two” in Zong, Peak and Zhong,3 recruit the best students in Zong. They are also the most capable of producing candidates for colleges and universities, prestigious ones in particular. Their graduates include one-third of the college freshmen that the school system in Zong produces each year. Among senior school graduates in Zong who gained access to first-tier colleges and universities, over twothirds are from the “Big Two”(Fushan Middle School, 2008, August 15; Fushan Middle School, 2014, June 24; Zongyang Middle School of Anhui, 2013, June 25; Ruwei zongyang wang, 2014, July). While admission to local primary and junior secondary schools follows the geographical proximity principle, the official admission criteria for senior secondary schools are a hybrid of meritocracy and mammonism. The national education reforms that began at the end of the 1970s has reestablished merit-based selection criteria for the admission of new students for senior secondary schools in Zong (Wang, 2010). The school system was reformed to be highly stratified, with the best resources directed towards the students

44  The connection between home and school presumed to be most gifted, who were expected to achieve school success and gain access to higher-level schools through competitive exams (Pepper, 1990). Governments sought to raise more funds from non-government sectors and parents at the beginning of the 2000s, influenced heavily by the widespread ideology of the marketization of education, to develop the educational system, but it also caused the introduction of a special quota for school-selected students among newly enrolled students nationwide. The quota allows a certain number of students with a lower examination score on the Senior Secondary School Examination to be admitted. This body of students, however, is expected to pay much higher school-choice fees, which means that only well-to-do families are able to take advantage of the quota. In the first eight years of the 2000s, when most of the children of the families we interviewed for the study were in primary school, the overall number of new students enrolled through the quota accounted for 50% of the new student body in Zong. For the subsequent five years, it fell to around 30%. In 2012, the number fell to a new low point of around 15%, which suggests an increased ability of governments to spend on education (Zhoutan Middle School, 2014, June 19; Guangyu Middle School, 2012, July 3). Each of the twelve senior secondary schools, however, set threshold scores of their own for the admission of school-selected students. This means that these schools will be able to balance the quality of the students they recruit each year and how much prestige they are willing to sacrifice to enrol school-selected students. The higher the prestige of the school, the higher the threshold scores the school can set. The threshold admission scores for school-selected students in the “Big Two” in Zong, for example, are constantly higher than those set by their counterparts. The threshold admission scores for normal routine students enrolled by ordinary schools is usually slightly higher than the threshold admission scores for schoolselected students enrolled by schools of better quality. Since 1978, a number of policies aimed at rewarding individuals’ skills, intelligence, and diligence have been introduced to China’s labour market (Pepper, 1990). The Chinese school system has also been reformed to adapt to the changes in the labour market and need for economic development (Pepper, 1990; Thǿgersen, 2002). Schooling in Zong is no exception. Furthermore, the school system in Zong is still in changing in terms of size, structure, and the opportunities that it can provide to the children within it. In this context, one of the questions of great significance is how parents from different social backgrounds in Zong perceive their roles in their children’s learning process and the extent to which they think that they can negotiate their influences over state schooling and help their children achieve school success.

The roles of parents: voices of parents regarding school involvement School has been the most important institution in providing local rural youth in Zong a chance to break away from their rural roots. However, as

The connection between home and school   45 only a small number of school graduates could gain access to colleges and universities in the early years of socialist China, the opportunities that the school system in Zong have provided for rural youth to climb the social ladder were still scarce. The underdevelopment of the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy in the early years of socialist China in the region did not promise parents in Zong that their investment in education would result in higher future salaries for their children. Now, however, the structural transformation from an agricultural to an industrial economy in China, along with the market reforms, has reestablished the link between education and life opportunities for youth. For example, fast-growing industry in the Pearl River Delta Region, which is near Zong, has created for educated rural youth in Zong opportunities for employment in thousands of factories and offered them a chance of upward social mobility. This has pushed thousands of young graduates each year from local junior secondary and senior secondary schools to migrate into such cities as Changzhou, Suzhou, and Yiwu. Most of them can easily find a job in the textile and clothing industry, which requires secondary education, and earn a salary that is much higher than their fathers’ generation could earn. The reestablishment of the link between education and life opportunities has for the first time made schools more relevant to the lives of a majority of the people living in Zong. Investing in education so that their children can obtain returns when they enter the labour market has become essential for every family. The increasing number of places in schools and the improved chances of enrolling in colleges and universities in particular have also promised rural parents in Zong that their investment in education can result in more years of training for their children and therefore long-term career success. Parents in Zong have a clear understanding of this. They are encouraged by the increasing chances of admission to senior high schools, colleges, and universities and have a great desire to help their children to achieve school success. However, their success depends not only on the perceived differences that they think they can make for their children but also the chances provided by the school to make them (Schneider & Coleman, 1993). In what follows, this chapter proceeds to evaluate this dialectical relationship between family and school. It starts by scrutinizing the roles that rural parents in Zong perceive that they can play in schooling. After that, it evaluates the chances provided by state and schools for parents from different social backgrounds to become involved in schools. Tiaojian (条件) When asked about parents’ roles in their children’s education, a rural parent said, “It is all about better tiaojian.” Parents in Zong are aware of their increasing ability to support the education of their children and suggested that tiaojian refers to the material and emotional circumstances of their

46  The connection between home and school children’s education. The parent interviewed claimed that one important aspect of school involvement for local parents lay in providing their children with an advantage in education by supplying them with sufficient funding, good nutrition, and comfortable housing. He also indicated that he was capable of doing so, an achievement that his father’s generation never reached. This was agreed upon by all the parents interviewed in Zong. For example, in discussing his roles in education, a male head of household, Fu, from a peasant family (family code number 15), said, We [parents] should create tiaojian of education for children. [By tiaojian,] I mean that we parents have to guarantee that they can successfully complete their schooling and prevent them from dropping out of school. Fu’s family lives in a village with around fifty households. The small village is divided into two parts by a road that connects the village with several other villages of similar size as well as a small town ten minutes’ drive away. Each year, buses in the small town carry thousands of residents to nearby cities to staff labour-intensive industries. Fu is one of these people. He migrates to Su, a city located a six-hour bus ride away from Zong, and earns an around-average income by working as a migrant worker. Fu has two children. One of them, a girl, has gained access to a first-tier university outside Zong, something achieved by less than 5% of her peers. Fu’s second child is a boy who was still in a local senior secondary school when the fieldwork was carried out in 2009. Fu is proud of his achievement, sending his daughter to a first-tier university in a city, and is expecting the same for his son. He compared his own school experience to that of his children and highlighted the importance of funding: I grew up in a time when university education seldom reached out to rural youth. But now, the situation is different. Children can achieve more in schools. You know, funding is always important. I dropped out of school when I was in primary school. My parents could not afford the cost of sending me out of the small village. I have to create better tiaojian for my children. Although the parents who were interviewed have varied backgrounds, they uniformly agree with Fu’s opinion and pointed out that providing their children with enough funding for education constitutes one important aspect of their involvement in education. This is understandable given the fact that most of the parents interviewed have reported substantial increases in income as a result of the market reform in recent decades. They suggested that they are more capable of providing their children with a financially safe environment than their own fathers’ generation. The increasing opportunities for rural youth in Zong to attend colleges and universities have also contributed to the willingness of their parents to

The connection between home and school   47 invest in their education. A male head of household, Hua, from an individual business owner’s family (family code number 9), said in one interview at his home that he always saw providing money for his children as the most important thing that he could do to support their education. He has two children, both of whom have been admitted by a second-tier university located in the capital city of the province. Hua owns a grocery store in the small town near Fu’s village. Hua lived in a village near the town with his family when he was young. With the support of his family, he bought a piece of land from the local government, which planned in the 1990s to enlarge the town where the xiang government is located. He built a new house on the land and opened a grocery store, which brought prosperity to his family since it is close to the biggest food market, which attracts hundreds of people from nearby villages as well as those living in the town. Hua’s family income is much higher than that of his peers from peasant families. He said that he was the first of his generation in his family to get a junior secondary school education. Inspired by the growing opportunities to pursue higher education for his children’s generation, he said that he wanted his children to be the first of their generation in his family to attend university. Hua began a family education savings plan when his children were still in junior secondary schools. He said that he wanted to create a financially safe environment for his children, by which he meant that, when there is any need for financial investment in education, he will be able to do it without hesitation. All the parents interviewed also see providing comfortable housing, accommodations, and good nutrition for their children as important aspects of their roles in education. They believe that these factors can provide their children with better intellectual stimuli and thus a competitive edge in school. In a talk with me, a peasant household head, Si (family code number 12), showed me his two-storey, red-blocked house and said, When my elder child was in primary school, my house was very old. When rainy days came, the roof leaked. Furthermore, I could not even provide her with a single study room. I thought that this was one of the reasons that my daughter could not perform as well as she could, so her mother and I decided that we should have a new house for our children, especially for our son. I did not want him to have the same experience. Si has a junior secondary school education, a level that not many of people of his age in Zong have achieved, which helped him in finding a contract job as a postal worker in a nearby eastern coastal city. Si’s job is less labourintensive but more time-consuming than others. Si said that he has no holidays and is able to return home only one or two times a year. However, Si said that he is paid well, at a level that is double the income of the village farmers. This allowed him to build a new house. The location of his new house is on land near the main road of the village, a location chosen by many of his fellow villagers. He said that he felt happy for his family, his

48  The connection between home and school son in particular, even though the new house has put the family in debt. Si explained that his son now has a room of his own and thus has a quieter and more comfortable place for studying, a situation that Si never experienced when he was in school. Si’s father was a primary school teacher who was unable to provide him with a separate room for studying when he was young. Now he is capable of doing so for his children, and that is what he can do to help his children to gain a competitive edge in school. Si’s counterparts in other families at Zong also agreed on the importance of providing good food and nutrition for their children. One parent, Niu, from a cadre’s family (code number 1), for example, said, Now, for the young generations, the standard of living is better. This means that we [their parents] can provide them with better food and nutrition. Better tiaojian will guarantee them higher achievement in education. Niu is the deputy head of a department in the xiang government of Zong and earns a fair income. His family lives in the town where the xiang government is located, and his wife is a full-time homemaker. Niu has only one daughter, who is an undergraduate student at a first-tier university located in the capital city of Anhui province. Niu graduated from a senior secondary vocational school before he got his first job in the xiang government. Then, like many of his fellows who worked for local government, he attended the Party School in the city where Zong is located, studied part-time, and obtained an associate’s degree. Niu is proud of his own accomplishments. Unlike many of his village fellows, who usually expect more from their sons in education than from their daughters, Niu said that he has very high expectations regarding the educational achievement of his daughter. He also knows well the increasing competition for an elite university education and hopes that he can help his daughter to achieve a competitive edge over her teenage peers. According to him, providing her with nutrition is a key aspect of his responsibility in her education. “When she was at the Palace School, a senior secondary boarding school at Zong,” he said, “I often went to her school, sometimes myself alone or sometimes with her mother.” Niu said that the food provided by the cafeteria in the school was not satisfactory and could not be regarded as nutritive. He visited his daughter’s school regularly and brought her meat, fish, and other foods that he thought would keep his daughter physically fit and intellectually sharp. In addition to support in more material forms, the parents interviewed also highlighted the importance of providing “spiritual” support to their children. By spiritual support they meant educational expectations as well as encouragement. Parents in Zong highlighted the importance of delivering expectations to their children. They believe that telling their children about their educational expectations as soon as they start their schooling can help them to establish

The connection between home and school   49 a clear goal, which is important for achieving academic success. Their stress on academic pursuits is not only a legacy of the Confucian culture but also a result of the increasingly clear vision that their children can achieve more in education. Parents interviewed suggested they perceive the differences between their own access to college and that of their children. The increased opportunities to access colleges and universities has elevated their expectations for their children. They hope that their children can achieve academic success and move up the social ladder. As one of the rural parents put it, “When I was young, my parents told me I should go to a university. They always said that I should aim for Beida and Tsinghua. But,” he added, “that was unrealistic, and the low chance of attending colleges and universities kept them from telling me more about what that meant for me.” Now, as the Chinese higher educational sector has expanded, the university dream has become real to all of the parents. “More and more kids are accepted by colleges and universities in cities; I think my children can achieve this, too.” All parents interviewed also agreed that it is important for them to encourage their children to achieve better academic performance; they believe this encouragement is a natural part of their responsibilities in their children’s education. For example, a female head of household from a peasant family (code number 14), Shu, said that she felt that the easiest and most important thing that she could do was to give her children encouragement. Shu has three children. She migrated with her husband to a city in Jiangsu, a nearby province that many of their village fellows migrate to, when their children were still young, leaving them behind. Shu and her husband did not receive any type of formal school education. Their oldest daughter finished her junior secondary school education and then migrated to Jiangsu as well and found a job in the textile and clothing industry. Their second daughter finished her senior secondary education, took the National College Entrance Examination twice, and was admitted by a second-tier university. The youngest, their only son, is still in a local senior secondary school. Shu said that when they were working in Jiangsu the long distance between them and their children restricted them from providing as much as they would have liked to their children. However, they were able to call their children every weekend and discuss their expectations. They told their children about the cities and encouraged them to get a degree so that they would be able to move to the outside world in a way that is different from their own. Although varied in backgrounds, parents in other families also agreed with this. Shu’s counterpart from a teacher’s family (code number 4), for example, highlighted it in a discussion about his involvement in his children’s education. Wu is a mathematics teacher at a local central junior secondary school. He has two sons, both of whom have successfully gained access to first-tier universities in Anhui. Wu graduated from a three-year college with an associate’s degree in education before he got his first job at a local junior secondary school. He studied part-time and obtained his bachelor degree years after getting his first job and then moved into a town for his second

50  The connection between home and school job at a local central junior secondary school. After moving into the town, he lived in a neighbourhood established for teachers working for the school. The neighbourhood is about a five-minute walk from his classroom. Wu has high prestige in the school for his excellent teaching in mathematics. He said he suffered from the pressures when his children were in school since many of his peers had successfully sent their children to colleges and universities. “They supposed that, as a famous teacher, I should send my sons to the best universities.” Wu said that he has invested all of his energy in the education of his children. One of the most important aspects of school involvement for him is to show encouragement to his children. When his son was in senior secondary school, [t]here was once a time [when I called him] that he told me that he felt very tired and hurt because he tried his best but still was not [the best in his class], so I told him to write down everything and send it to me. I read his letters, and he told me he felt that he was like a single powerless boat in the ocean and was at risk of being overwhelmed by the nameless fear and worries brought by the sea. I was very upset then and wrote a letter [to respond]. I told him that the aim of life is not to achieve something but to enjoy the process of achieving. I encouraged him to try his best and learn how to relax. Managing Parents interviewed in Zong also highlighted the importance of “managing” their children. They use the term “manage” to refer to supervising the after-school activities of their children and helping them to control their after-school time. Hei is the male head of household of a rural family. He has two children. One of them, the oldest daughter, like many of her rural peers migrated to a nearby city located in Zhejiang for a job after graduating from a local junior secondary school. His son was still in an ordinary senior secondary school when I was in the field. Hei, with his wife, migrated to a city to seek other sources of income when their children were still young. They left their two children to be taken care of by his grandparents, one of whom died when his daughter was in the latter years of primary school. He then sent his wife back to their hometown so that his daughter and son could be better taken care of in the absence of his grandfather. Hei is a good planner in both his work and the education of his children. He recalled, “I came back home in the harvest season” and “used the time to farm as well as build my new house.” He also has plans for the education of his two children. He maintained, “I wanted my daughter to finish her junior secondary school education and then apply for a vocational school.” His son “should aim for a university.” Hei did not deny it when I commented that he has low expectations of his daughter. Years of working in cities, however, taught him that

The connection between home and school   51 a college degree is particularly important for boys in the labour market. Hei said that he wanted to help his children, and his son in particular, to achieve school success. When asked what he did to help his children to achieve his goals, he maintained that it is important to control the after-school activities of his children. “Now, society has become quite different; schools are surrounded by game stores and Internet bars, things we have never had before . . . There are also youth gangs . . . All of these have put our children at risk of academic failure.” Like many of his village fellows, he was not able to supervise his children when he migrated to the city for a job. Hei, however, said that he tried other ways, including setting a time for his children to return home from school and having their grandmother exercise close supervision of their after-school activities. He said, “I asked their grandma to push them to finish their homework as soon as possible after they return from school. And I do not want them to play too much; that is a waste of time.” He reported that he disconnected the TV set at home every time he prepared to leave home. He thought that this would prevent the children from watching too much TV and make them focus more on their learning. I encouraged them [the children] to spend more time learning after school and to finish their homework on time. I think this could help them to achieve higher academic scores in school. Hei’s fellow villagers in Zong agreed on this despite the fact they vary in income, education, and position in the social system of Zong. For example, Niu, who works for the local xiang government, said that he also sees supervising the after-school activities of his child as one of his important roles as a parent. In a talk with me he also mentioned controlling the time that his daughter spends watching TV. Unlike Hei, however, Niu believe that some TV programs can deliver useful information to his child. Some TV programs have educational content. They can tell children about society. Children can learn the most important news about the nation as well, which provides them with advantages in examinations that test their common knowledge about the nation. Based on his evaluations, Niu has developed a sophisticated theory about controlling his child’s TV watching. He stated, I select TV programs for her. I control the time. Unlike other parents, I do not force her to stop watching TV programs. I think, then, that she can gradually develop a good habit on her own by giving her the independence to make choices. Niu was not the only one to have the idea of cultivating the independence of a child. The most widely cited old saying that I heard in discussions about

52  The connection between home and school managing children is that if you become a successful person because of the strict control of your parents, you are really a big failure. However, if you become successful because you are self-disciplined, you are really a success (guangcheng long, yidi nong, zichenglong, yitiao long, 管成龙, 一滴脓, 自成龙, 一条龙). Thus, parents highlighted the importance of helping their children to develop the ability to manage themselves and develop an intrinsic motivation to learn. Teaching Parents interviewed in Zong hope that they can create advantages for their children in school success. When asked what constitutes effective school involvement to achieve their goals, one of the factors that they often mentioned was teaching. By this, the parents by no means meant that they wanted to intervene directly in school classrooms in Zong. Instead, what they suggested involves training their children in good qualities such as hardiness, perseverance, resilience, and respect for teachers, factors that they believe are crucial to school success. Furthermore, they also indicated that, as much as their knowledge permits, they tutor their children and help them with their homework. Parents interviewed in Zong emphasized their roles in teaching their children qualities such as persistence over time to overcome challenges. They also stated that they should teach their children how to respect their teachers, because they believe this will make them teachable. They believe that these qualities influence their children’ school success. For example, a male head of household, Zhou, said, I think, as a parent, I should teach my children some good qualities. They [children] are like white paper. They will learn knowledge from schools. My role is to clean the paper and draw a framework on it so that, when they go to school, they will be teachable. They should be able to face the difficulty of life (chiku, 吃苦); they should learn how to be perseverant. Zhou is a single parent with three children. The first and second are girls. The youngest is a boy. The Zhous live in an old two-storey house in a small village surrounded by rivers. The village is far away from the town where the xiang government is located. It is one of the poorest villages in Zong. The only school it has is known for its high dropout rate. Like most of his peers, Zhou migrated to the city to seek a job when his children were still young. He said that he let his grandmother look after his children. Zhou’s oldest daughter dropped out of school before finishing junior secondary school. The youngest, the only son, migrated to a nearby city and found a job there after he graduated from a local junior secondary school. His second daughter finished her senior secondary education, took the National

The connection between home and school   53 College Entrance Examination twice, and was admitted by a vocational college in Jiangxi, a nearby province. Zhou said that he has experienced a very hard life as a single father. He said that he has learned a lot from the difficulties of his life, which cultivated in him the characteristic of resilience. He suggested that this is also an important quality for children if they are to achieve success in school. He said that he has done a lot to transmit this quality to his children. For the young generations, the standard of living has improved. They have better food, housing, and entertainment. The old people always tell us that we should know the hard life of the old times so that we treasure the life we have now [yiku sitian, 忆苦思甜]. I keep reminding of them this. Meanwhile, I think of ways to teach them such a quality. For example, I let them work with me in the harvest seasons. You know, to [let them] harvest crops by hand with me in the summer. I hope that they can develop persistence through these opportunities to challenge themselves by experiencing the difficulty of life. Other parents interviewed in Zong shared similar opinions. Wu (code number 4), for example, mentioned the same point during a talk at his home. He remembered that his second son performed poorly when he was in primary school. The reason, he suggested, was that the boy “took everything for granted” and that life was too easy for him. My family moved to the small town where my work unit [the central school] is located when he was still young. He has little connection to the rural roots we used to be proud of. He has never known the need to work hard and be persistent. Wu added, A man needs to learn that life is always hard and that only perseverance can help him succeed in the face of every challenge. He was weak then. He has no idea about the difficulty of life. To help the boy develop resilience, Wu sent him every summer to the home of his grandparents, which is in a village. I have to say that he learned fast then. Of course, his fellow kids in villages are also good examples. You know, all of them have to help their parents in the harvest season. He [my son] began to know the difficulty of life. He helped his grandparents with chores and even helped them to harvest crops. That trained him well. Besides the qualities of hardiness, perseverance, and resilience, parents interviewed in Zong also highlighted the importance of teaching their children

54  The connection between home and school to show respect for their teachers. They suggested that such respect is the essence of being teachable. All the parents interviewed also mentioned tutoring as an important part of their roles in education. This is encouraged by the fact that a majority of the parents interviewed have received an education that was not available to their fathers’ generation. Most of the parents interviewed were born in the late 1960s or early 1970s, a generation of which many have received a certain level of education. This has boosted their confidence in tutoring their children after school as far as their abilities allow. They believe that, by helping with homework and reinforcing the curriculum at home, they can create an advantage for their children in school success. Guan, a female head of household from a peasant family (code number 20), for example, said that she insisted on teaching her sons when they were in primary school. She sees this as an important form of school involvement and suggested that it has benefited them a great deal. Guan lives in a village in the western part of the county, an area in which rural residents outperformed their counterparts from the eastern part in income and education for the first twenty years after the market reform. Guan has a primary school education. Her husband has a junior secondary school education. Guan’s family lives on farming. To supplement the family’s income, she and her husband go around to different villages nearby to sell children’s food. Guan has three children. Like many of their peers, the first (girl) and the third (boy) migrated to a nearby city and found jobs there after graduating from junior secondary school. Guan’s second child is a boy. He passed the Senior Secondary School Entrance Examination with a good score, gained access to a good quality senior secondary school, took the National College Entrance Examination twice, and finally gained access to a third-tier university in Anhui. Guan taught her sons mathematics when they were in primary school. She stated that her husband also helped the children with their homework when he was free. However, she admitted that she was not long able to tutor her children when they moved into junior secondary school. She said, “The knowledge became deep then. That is out of my reach.” However, she added, “I still feel that I can do something for them to help them succeed in the competition for academic excellence.” She then tried to teach them writing skills. She asserted that she could benefit their writing by talking about her life experience, which she believes could trigger inspiration in telling stories: You know, I have life experiences. I can always give them hints in writing. She remembered that, at the end of winter holiday, her second son cried. She asked why and learned that he had a writing assignment and had not finished yet. She added, “He did not know how to begin the writing.” Guan then tried to give him clues about the rituals held during the spring festival.

The connection between home and school   55 She said, “I asked whether he could remember what we did that night.” She also told her son how they celebrated the spring festival when she was a child. Finally, with her help, her son finished his writing and “was encouraged by the truth that he could write as well as the others did.” Guan, however, also admitted that what she could do for her son lessened when her son entered higher-level schools. The subjects he was taught became more and more difficult, becoming “finally out of her realm.” All parents from peasant families similarly said that their roles in their children’s education were limited. They perceived their low level of educational attainment as a crucial defect in the family resources. For example, a peasant from family 13 said, When she [my daughter] went to secondary schools, she felt that she knew more than I then and began to distrust what I had said about her learning. I thought then that it was time for me to retreat and pass it to her teachers. Compared to Guan and her fellows from a peasant background, parents from more privileged families were more confident in teaching their children. Like Guan, they also highlighted the importance of tutoring their children and reinforcing the curriculum at home. However, these parents suggested that they are far more capable than their peasant fellows. For them, teaching is also about training their children to develop good learning and social skills. This is especially true for parents from teachers’ families. For example, when talking about his role in the education of his children, a male head of household from a teacher’s family (code number 6), Chun, saw his own expertise in education as an advantage that he could use to help his children with their homework every day. Chun was born into a peasant family. However, he successfully gained access to a teachers’ college located in Anhui. After earning an associate’s degree in education, Chun began his career at a rural junior secondary school in Zong. He met his wife there and had two children. Chun’s oldest son has gained access to a first-tier university in an eastern city. His daughter, the second child, attended a second-tier university in the capital city of Anhui. Chun is proud of his children’s achievements. In a discussion with me about the role of parents in education, Chun repeated that both he and his wife are teachers. He suggested that this has entitled them to privileges. He maintained that he tried his best to create an intellectually stimulating environment for them and to teach them good learning skills when they were young. We cultivated their learning habits and made them self-disciplined. We made them work together every night and discuss questions they came across. Sometimes, we also took part in their discussions and gave them necessary help.

56  The connection between home and school His fellows from other privileged backgrounds in Zong agreed with him. They consciously compared themselves with parents from other families and made the best use of their own advantages to help their children to gain a competitive edge. Furthermore, they agreed on the importance of teaching their children good social skills, which they believe are crucial to success in school. For example, a head of household from a cadre’s family (code number 3), Song, said, After entering secondary school, she [my daughter] came back home every weekend, and I asked her how things were in school and how she was getting along with her classmates and teachers. I told her that she could not choose and determine the school environment, but she could find ways to get used to it. I told her some ways to do this and to deal with campus life. Knowing academic scores Parents interviewed in Zong also placed a strong emphasis on awareness of the academic performance of their children in schools. They suggested this as one of their responsibilities in education and claimed that it could produce advantages for their children in school. For example, during a discussion on his roles in education, the household head Hei said, As parents, basically, we should know the academic performance of our children. Interviewees from all backgrounds agreed with him. Compared to their fathers’ generation, parents in Zong invest both more money and more time in education. They expressed concern about the achievement of their children and hope that the increasing spending on education will yield better outcomes. Dao, the household head of a private entrepreneur family (code number 10) said, I was concerned with every academic score my children achieved on tests. Dao himself grew up in a peasant family in a relatively prosperous village in the eastern part of Zong. His parents were peasants, and they supported him until he graduated from a senior secondary school. Dao farmed for a few years and then married the daughter of a teacher in a nearby village. He opened a small grocery store with support from his parents and parents-in-law. The rapid economic growth in Zong provided Dao with an increasing number of customers. With the wealth accumulated in the first decades of his career, Dao purchased land in a town newly developed in the mid-1990s and built a large wholesale mall. Over the next twenty years, his

The connection between home and school   57 wealth grew rapidly, and he already owned another wine factory when I interviewed him. Dao has two children. His son, the oldest, who was born when he opened his first grocery store, gained admission to a prestigious university in the capital city of a southern province. His daughter was still in a senior secondary school when I visited his home. Dao said that he had very high educational expectations for his children and has spent a lot of energy and money on their education. He wanted his investment to pay off and for his children to be admitted to prestigious universities, an achievement that he believes the children of people like him deserve. Knowing academic scores, of course, is not only about calculating the possible costs and benefits. Dao suggested that knowing the academic performance of his children is important because it can tell him when to intervene, for example, by hiring a private tutor. By that, I can know the rank of their academic performance in schools. I get a chance to know whether they are on the right track or not. Then I will know whether I should give them suggestions on what they can do, or, when it is necessary, I can call their teachers and ask why. Dao’s opinion is shared by interviewees from more disadvantaged backgrounds. When talking about the academic performance of her second son, the female head of household Guan, for example, said that she knew nearly all the scores of important tests that her son took. When there was a need to know detailed information, she called the teachers. By doing this, she learned that her son was performing poorly in mathematics and physics. Although she had no expertise to tutor and help him, she maintained that the information she obtained helped her to take action: I went to his teacher’s office and asked what I could do. His head teacher was very nice and asked me to hire a tutor for him. Guan said that she could not afford private tutoring, so she rejected that suggestion. However, she felt that she was fulfilling the role of parents in education. Furthermore, she maintained that the information she obtained was helpful for her and her husband in making decisions about whether they should invest more in education and whether it was worthwhile. Guan’s opinion on this point is shared by other parents. For example, the female head of household Hei said, I knew then that there would be no hope [for her to achieve success in schooling and go to college]. She did very badly, so I told her that she might consider going to Shanghai for a job. I called her aunt, who has been working in a factory in Shanghai for several years, and asked her to take my daughter to Shanghai once she finished her junior secondary school education.

58  The connection between home and school School choice The quality of schools varies tremendously in Zong. The “Big Two” recruit most of the high academic achievers and send a majority of the freshmen that Zong produces each year to the higher education system. All the parents interviewed in Zong agreed that they wanted to send their children to the “Big Two” and believe that this would increase their chances of being admitted to a university. The acceptance of over 70% of the newly enrolled students at the “Big Two” was based on the test scores they achieved on the Secondary School Entrance Examination, while the acceptance of the other 30% was based on two conditions. First, they had to pass the threshold scores set by the bureau of education, which are lower than the regular enrolment requirement. Second, they have to pay school-choice fees. To develop a large enough pool of candidates with parents who have the ability to pay the school-choice fees, the threshold scores usually allow a number of candidates that is much larger than the quota. This suggests that students in Zong must compete for the chance to be admitted by key schools. Competition for positions in the “Big Two” in Zong is fierce. All the parents interviewed stated that the competition for positions in the “Big Two” is financially and energetically demanding. However, they still see school choice as an important part of their school involvement and hope that they can create advantages for their children by sending them to one of the “Big Two”. A household business owner, Qu (code number 9), said, As parents, we have to create as many chances as possible for our children. If the Peak Senior Secondary School [the best senior secondary school in Zong] would accept him, it would be easier for him to go to a dream university. Qu has a very small grocery store in a small town located beside a main road that links two cities in Anhui. Qu himself was born in a big and prosperous village with over a thousand residents, a size that only a few villages in the county can match. His parents are peasants, and they had more than five children. He is the youngest of his brothers and sisters and entered an apprenticeship as a painter when he graduated from a local junior secondary school. Qu said he has benefited a great deal from his large family. He, with the help of his brother, earned his first pot of gold by winning a contract with a junior secondary school to provide painting services. Years later, with support from his brothers and sisters as well as his accumulated assets, he bought land in the town where he now lives with his family, built a two-storey house, and opened the grocery store. He lets his wife run the store most of the time and still works as a painter. Qu has two children, both of whom have been admitted to medical schools at second-tier universities. In a discussion about school choice, Qu said that he saw school choice as one of the most important forms of school involvement. He remembered

The connection between home and school   59 that the school-choice fees he had to pay to get a place for his son at Peak Senior Secondary School were as high as 10,000 RMB, one-fourth of his annual income. However, he stated that he could not reject that responsibility. The academic scores that his son achieved on the Senior Secondary School Entrance Examination were above the required threshold scores and only “10 marks away” from the required standard scores. He believed that this implied that his son had the academic potential to gain access to the best universities in China. If he had cared too much about the cost of school choice, then his son’s future would have been ruined. Most of the parents interviewed in Zong agreed with Qu and highlighted school choice as an important part of their school involvement. The household head Shu, from a peasant family, for example, said, As parents, we should exercise school choice. This is an important moment that can decide their [the children’s] future. Compared to Qu and other parents, Shu, however, maintained that her family was more financially vulnerable. She said that she felt economic pressure in exercising school choice: We earned only 20,000 RMB a year. If we paid more than 5,000 or 10,000 RMB for school choice, what would we live on? Although there is little documentary evidence to support it, it is well understood that Chinese parents have a long tradition of respecting education and are willing to invest a great deal of time and money in their children’s schooling even at the expense of selling their houses and going into massive debt. Recent reports also suggest that Chinese parents are showing more and more interest in school involvement (Li, 2004). Studies have maintained that Chinese parents desire school success for their children (Kipnis, 2011). They engage in their children’s learning process both visibly and invisibly to support their children’s education, even to the point of making sacrifices such as working at additional jobs or taking on additional household work (Kong, 2008). However, little is known about the key elements of parental involvement as defined by schools and what roles teachers expect of parents in education. More importantly, there is also a lack of knowledge about the opportunities that schools and teachers provide for parents to become involved in schools. The understanding of these issues is important because they affect the chance of success for parents in getting involved in their children’s learning process. The following sections examine these issues by looking at what policy and teachers say about the roles of parents in schools and what opportunities schools and teachers provide for parents in Zong to help their children to achieve school success.

60  The connection between home and school

Policy discourses: missing the link between family and school Rural schools represent an important type of state institution, and their expansion in rural areas was considered the inevitable penetration of the state into rural society (Thøgersen, 1990). They run according to the rules, laws, and regulations issued by the governments (Zhu, 2007). The rules, laws, and regulations that are relevant to family and community education, therefore, set the formal rules of the game for parents to become involved in schools. In these rules, laws, and regulations, families, schools, and communities have long been seen as three indispensable parts of education. Regulations Regarding Primary School Management, for example, states that [t]he advantages of schools, families, and societies in education should be united; therefore, the resources of the society can be fully made use of and the integration of school education, family education, and community education thus can be achieved. This means that parents as well as schools are responsible for their children’s education. However, this does not imply that parents can claim control over schooling. Although a discourse of “trinity and becoming one force” (san jiehe, 三结合) is put forth in these documents, the divisions between family, school, and community are quite clear-cut. State schooling is presumed to play the most important role in children’s education. As item 4 in article 33 of Regulations Regarding Primary School Management (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 1996) states, it “should play the dominant role in education.” “Dominance” means that the state is given legitimacy and that its form of outreach, the school, is the only legitimate and most professional institution in education. Families and communities are considered supplements to schools. In the Framework for Chinese Education Reform and Development (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 1993), for example, it is stated in item 12, section 2 that [m]ore social forces can be encouraged and participate in school education. More ways of caring and educating youth can thus be achieved. The term “participate” implies that there is interdependence among families, schools, and communities in education. However, this kind of interdependence is not like a partnership between equals where power and control are evenly distributed. The state wants a relationship with both a “professionalclient” and “governor and governed” nature where schools have expertise in education and parents know this and are expected to support teachers (Lareau, 1987). Therefore, there is a need to, as stated in item 17, article 3 of Framework for Chinese Education Reform and Development:

The connection between home and school   61 encourage and mobilize all people to support the work of schools and improve the educational environment for schools. Parents are required to work as supplements to school education, and they are expected to perform their role properly. They are claimed to be responsible for preparing children for schooling, in equipping them with good moral norms such as willingness to work hard and obedience to authority. Parents are also required to “support” teachers when their children break the school rules, laws, or regulations. Schools, on the other hand, are assumed to be responsible for all aspects of a child’s education, and their role focuses on the intellectual development of children. To help parents accomplish their role properly, schools are even required to undertake initiatives to encourage interaction between families and schools. It is stated, for example, in item 12 of article 3 of Regulations Regarding the Management of Head Teachers in Primary and Secondary schools (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2009), that “Teachers should actively contact parents.” Families are even stereotyped as potential troublemakers in education, and schools are encouraged to teach parents the knowledge of correct school involvement. For example, article 49 of Compulsory Law of Education in China (The Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China, 2006) states that [f]amily education should be emphasized and improved. Much more knowledge on family education should be produced through research. There is also a need to open parents’ schools and give parents scientific knowledge on caring for children, the right idea of education, and the scientific knowledge and methods of education. Indolent parents and guardians should cooperate with schools and other educational institutions to educate their children. Schools and teachers can provide guidance to parents in family education. In item 12 of article 2 of Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Protection of Minors, (The Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China, 1991) it is stated that [p]arents and guardians should learn knowledge of education, perform their guardianship duties correctly, and shoulder responsibilities in caring for and educating minors. Relevant state bureaus and social organizations should provide parents and guardians with guidance in family education. Despite the articulated interconnectedness of home, school, and community, these rules, laws, and regulations state less about the ways in which

62  The connection between home and school schools can interact with parents. In Regulations Regarding Primary School Management, it is weakly argued that [i]n primary school, parents’ boards can be established. Parents can be allowed to work in schools. They can help teachers to solve their problems in running schools. It can also serve as a platform to collect suggestions and ideas from parents. According to this rule, parents’ boards can be established in schools to serve as platforms for parents and teachers to exchange information. However, it is also stated that the aim of information exchange is to improve the management of schools. Therefore, teachers, as experts in education, are more responsible for collecting information from parents, and parents are expected to provide information to teachers in response to their requests. In most cases, rules, regulations, and other relevant documents are subtler in the strategies that schools could use to initiate connections with homes. For example, concerning the exchange of information between parents and teachers, teachers are only supposed to provide convenient conditions for guardians to know the academic performance and other relevant information of their children in a proper way. (Compulsory Law of Education in China, 1995, article 29, issue 4) The words “convenient conditions” imply nothing clear about how information exchange between home and school can be achieved. This kind of ambivalence can also be found in the Law on the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, 1999): Parents and other guardians of juveniles shall take direct responsibility for giving legal education to juveniles. Schools that conduct education among students in the prevention of crimes shall make their plans for such education known to the parents and other guardians of the juveniles, who shall carry out the education in combination with the school’s plans and according to specific conditions.  . . . where middle or primary school students play truant, the school shall contact their parents or guardians without delay.  . . . Where juveniles stay out at night without permission, their parents or other guardians, or the boarding school concerned, shall look for them without delay or approach a public security organization for help. Whoever allows a juvenile to stay at his or her home at night shall obtain permission of the juvenile’s parents or other guardians in advance, inform them or the school concerned of the matter within 24 hours, or report to a public security organ without delay.

The connection between home and school   63

Teachers’ voices: restricted access to schooling Although the state regulates how schools are run, it does not detail their daily operations. Teachers are practitioners of school policies, and school agents are institutionally linked with parents. Their perceptions of parents’ roles in education and the strategies they use to get parents involved in schooling are important forces that shape the extent to which rural parents from different social backgrounds can successfully transmit their advantages to their children. Providing information When a teacher at Peak Senior Secondary School (code number 9) was asked what he wanted from parents, he said that he wanted parents to provide him with information about how their children behave at home. He maintained that information provided by parents can help him in knowing the backgrounds of students, working with students with learning and behaviour problems, and improving the academic performance of both individual students and the class as a whole: The main thing that pushed me to ask parents to get involved was the changes in academic performance. . . . Usually after the mid-term or final semester test, I would get in touch with some [parents] to ask what had happened to their children and their families if their children’s test scores were lower [than expected]. Although they varied in work experience, gender, and education, all the teachers interviewed in Zong agreed with this statement. They also established themselves as experts in education and claimed that information provided by parents could held them to do their job better. When asked about the role that parents should play in children’s learning process, one teacher (code number 5) from Garden Junior Secondary School, a central junior secondary school located in a township, said, When I found that the academic performance of students decreased rapidly on tests, I would ask their parents to notice and wanted them to work with me to find the reasons. I usually asked parents questions about whether their children did not have enough rest at home or watch too much TV. Sometimes, I even asked whether there was something wrong with their marriage [which could distract children from their learning]. He maintained that such information could help him to uncover why some students perform better while others perform worse. He could use the information wisely to improve his teaching or the methods of managing his students.

64  The connection between home and school He also maintained that, as an expert in education, he provides suggestions on how to improve children’s academic performance to parents based on the information gathered. All the teachers in Zong maintained that they were able to make suggestions in this way. In a discussion about parents’ role in education, a teacher at the Port Senior Secondary School (code number 10) said that he sometimes recommended that parents keep in touch with him and listen to his suggestions. He stated that he is a professional with expertise in education and claimed that parents could prepare their children better for schooling if they would take his advice. Similarly, another teacher from the Zhong Senior Secondary School (code number 7) said that she encouraged parents to talk with their children about their learning and experience in schools if they found that their children did not do as well as usual. She expected that parents would pass the information they collected to her so that she could find a way to help their children to improve their academic performance. Supervising after-class activities In various schools in Zong, teachers who were interviewed were particularly concerned about the importance of supervising children’s behaviour after class and highlighted parents’ role in doing so. They have a clear construct of the division of labour between parents and themselves and maintained that parents should be responsible for after-class time. In a discussion about parents’ roles in education, one teacher from Garden Junior Secondary School said, Parents should do more about after-class time. They have to be responsible for it. I am the teacher. I will not be able to check on students 24 hours a day. Regarding after-class activities, teachers mentioned encouraging parents to push their children to finish their homework on time and, in particular, prevent them from playing too much. They claimed that they do not expect too much from parents in education. They see parents’ primary role as managing their children and having them focus more on learning. One teacher from Water Junior, for example, said, Most of the parents are villagers. The level of education they have is low. I think their roles are easy to define: that is, to control their children, to have them spend more time doing homework, and to prevent them from playing too much. This view is shared by teachers at other schools. They also agreed that controlling deviant tendencies and keeping their children out of gangs are important parts of parental supervision. Teachers suggested that this has

The connection between home and school   65 become particularly crucial under the circumstances – i.e. that a majority of parents in Zong have migrated to cities to seek jobs. Many of the children who were left behind were left unsupervised. These children, they said, are at risk and are more likely than their peers to get involved in gangs and engage in deviant behaviour. They suggested that these children need to be taken care of and that their after-class activities should be under control. One teacher from a village primary school, for example, suggested that there should be at least one parent in each household present at home to supervise their child’s after-class activities. We cannot do everything for parents. Parents need to be more careful about their after-class time. They should not place everything on our shoulders. Rural society is quite different now. There are deviant youth around schools. Many of them are those who could not find a job after they graduated from senior high schools. They formed a group and wanted to recruit new members from our schools. If parents do not control their [childrens’] after-class activities, they may become members of this group. Managing exceptional cases In addition to providing information and supervising children’s after-class activities, there are other occasions when teachers want parents to become involved. When asked when he encouraged and required parents to get involved, a teacher from Port Senior Secondary School (code number 13) responded, If children broke rules and regulations in school or they are are at risk of dropping out of school because of such problems as indulging in the Internet, experiencing premature romance, or engaging in mob fighting and gang involvement, we would usually want their parents to get involved. This view is shared by all the teachers interviewed in Zong. They stated that the schools they work for have issued rules and regulations requiring students not to go to Internet bars, join gangs, and engage in mob fighting. They ask parents to come to the school if their children break any of these rules and regulations. They referred to such situations as “exceptional cases” and indicated that they expect parents to be good partners in managing these cases. They expressed hope that parents will listen to their suggestions, help them to manage their children, and make them obey all of the rules issued by schools. As one of the teachers said, We ask them to control their children’s behaviour, you know, to tell them how they can deal with such cases. We hope they will implement our suggestions.

66  The connection between home and school Teachers interviewed in Zong also mentioned that they hoped that parents would accept most of the decisions they make about their children. For example, in some extreme cases, they asked children involved in mob fights to leave schools. The teachers maintained that they would usually require parents to come to school to listen to their explanations. However, they do not see parents as equals in power and indicated that decisions are usually made before parents come to the school. One of the teachers from Port Senior Secondary School, for example, said, We called and asked them to come to the school. The decision has already been made. They just come and listen. In some cases, however, they maintained that there is still space for parents to negotiate. They claimed that this depends on the parents’ economic and social resources.

Formal channels allowed by schools: limited interconnectedness Schools in Zong set up two channels by which parents can formally participate at school: (1) short home visits (jiafang, 家访) and (2) parent meetings (jiazhang hui, 家长会). Parents in Zong can also learn about their children’s performance in school by looking at the academic performance reports (chengjidan, 成绩单) issued by schools. Short home visits Most of the teachers interviewed in Zong highlighted that their short visits to their students’ homes provide parents with one of the few formal occasions to interact with them and, thus, a chance to become involved in education. A teacher from the Zong senior school said, We do not have too many chances to get parents involved formally in school. We rely heavily on short home visits. This view is shared by teachers from other schools. They maintained that, through the short visits to their students’ homes, they can gather important information from parents about their children and their family backgrounds. However, only a small number of student families can be visited. The chances provided for parents to become involved in education are therefore few. The head teachers of classes are often the organizers of the home visits. They make decisions about whose families they would like to visit and what they want to achieve by visiting students’ homes. Head teachers interviewed in Zong agreed that they had special aims in conducting these home visits.

The connection between home and school   67 Two types of families, which are in small number, are usually prioritized. The first type, as one head teacher maintained, includes “those with children who achieved the best academic scores in classes.” To him, home visits transmit honour and encouragement to these families and their children. He also added that, through such activities, he is able to collect more information about these students and their family backgrounds. This information could, as he suggested, enable him to help these high achievers to achieve better academic performance. This view is shared by teachers from other schools in Zong. One teacher from the Peak Senior Secondary School (code number 9) described one of his visits to a family: I did not know that he [my student] had lost his father when he was only two or three years old. He was a very hard-working and excellent student. I visited his family because he achieved high academic scores every time. I visited his family one Saturday and was shocked when I learned from his mother that she was the only parent at home and had little education. I talked to his mother and discovered more stories about him. For example, he lacked accommodation fees but did not tell us about it because, according to his mother, he had high self-esteem. To help him overcome this problem and protect him from distractions in his studies, I told the principal of the school about it and asked that he be exempted from tuition fees. The second type of family that head teachers usually choose to visit includes those with children whose academic performance has decreased dramatically over a certain period. Head teachers interviewed saw students from such families as potential problems and believed that short home visits could serve as an effective problem-solving method. In discussing his home visit practices a head teacher from Port Senior Secondary School said, During such visits, I can discuss with their parents their performance in school. I also ask their parents to tell me about their behaviour at home. By doing this, I can figure out the reasons for their under-performance in school. Then solutions come. This view is shared by all head teachers interviewed in Zong. Compared to their counterparts in primary school, secondary school teachers reported fewer experiences in visiting students’ homes. One teacher from the Everywhere Primary School (code number 16) said, I have a motorbike, and most of their [students’] homes are quite near. I drove to their homes and asked their grandparents about their situations at home.

68  The connection between home and school He described the number of the home visits to students’ home as “usual”, by which he meant visiting “a few students’ homes one or two times a month”. Few teachers, however, said that they could make such visits. Teachers, particularly those from secondary schools, stated that the long distance between schools and students’ homes is a barrier for them to visit. One of the teachers interviewed said, We have rare chances to visit our students’ homes. The distance between their homes and our school is too far. We cannot spend a day and just visit the homes of one or two students. We cannot afford to waste too much time on the road. You know we have very heavy workloads. Most of the head teachers in secondary schools agreed, especially teachers at senior secondary schools. One of the teachers added that the expansion of the secondary school system and the enlargement of class sizes has dramatically increased their workloads. This has “deprived him of time to schedule and conduct home visits”. Parent meetings In addition to home visits, parent meetings provide another important occasion where parents can participate in schools. One head teacher (code number 8) mentioned, It is through the meetings I get to know some of my students’ parents and their backgrounds. Some of the parents attending the meetings are very active and try to talk to me about their children. This view is shared by all teachers interviewed. They indicated that parent meetings give them important opportunities to interact with parents and thus to exchange information about the children. Teachers agreed that the primary goal of organizing parent meetings is to improve students’ academic performance. Two types of parents are usually invited to attend the meetings. The first type is those with the bestperforming children. Teachers maintained that these events served as encouragement to these parents and their children since the invitation itself is seen as a source of honour and pride. One teacher, for example, said, These events and the invitations are a signal to all the rest of the families. We show them that these best students and their parents are good examples. They [the rest of them] can learn from them. This view is shared by most of the teachers interviewed in Zong. One teacher at the Zhong Senior Secondary School (code number 7) stated,

The connection between home and school   69 Last year, we organized two parent meetings for parents whose children were in grade one. We invited forty parents to attend. One head teacher was asked to explain to the parents why some students achieved high academic performance while the others were left behind or did worse in school. Two students made tremendous progress over the semester. We invited them and their parents to attend the meetings and asked these two students make speeches. They felt quite honoured and were very talkative at the meetings. We thought that this would encourage other parents to push their children to work harder and, at the same time, help them to understand why their children did not do as well as usual. The other type of parent invited to attend the parent meetings is those whose children experienced dramatic decreases in academic performance. For the teachers interviewed in Zong, these parent meetings provide them with important opportunities to have discussions with parents about their children. The information collected through such occasions can help them form strategies to help the children. As one of the teachers stated, The meetings usually have two parts in our school. The main activity for the first part is the principal’s talk. Then, in the second part, parents are asked to talk with teachers about their children. On such occasions, parents whose children are experiencing learning difficulties will come to me and talk. We exchange ideas and discuss the possible reasons. Only a small proportion of parents are involved in parent meetings. The number of opportunities for parents to participate at school is therefore still small. Parent meetings are usually held once or twice at the beginning or end of each semester or after important tests. The symbolic meaning of these meetings, as one of the teachers maintained, is “overwhelming”: All were about honour and less about the effects. Only a small number of parents can be involved. For example, in grade one of our school, there were actually twelve classes with a student population of over 700, but only 40 parents were invited. Academic performance report The opportunities for information flow between teachers and parents created through activities such as home visits and parent meetings are usually rare. Only a small number of parents can be involved in such activities. Most of the parents in Zong, therefore, are unable to communicate fully with teachers about their children through such occasions. Another formal information channel that teachers frequently mentioned is the academic performance report (APR). All the teachers interviewed agreed that the APR is the most widely used method to facilitate the information flow between families and schools.

70  The connection between home and school An APR is a piece of paper or a pamphlet that lists the scores that each student achieved in the final examination at the end of each semester. It also includes a few sentences written by the head teachers, usually containing evaluations of the student’s overall performance. It also usually includes head teachers’ comments on students’ progress each semester as well as their expectations for the coming semester. Teachers interviewed in Zong admitted, however, that the information flow achieved by issuing APRs to parents is rather one-directional. They send these reports to all parents to inform them about their children’s school performance, but few teachers know exactly how parents will respond to the evaluation of their children. As one teacher at the Everywhere Primary School (code number 15) said, It sounds like a real notice. I mean that it is a top-down process, and parents usually have to listen what the teachers say in the academic performance report.

Summary and discussion Education has become more relevant to a majority of the people living in Zong over the last two decades. The structural transformation from an agricultural to an industrial economy in China, along with the market reforms, has reestablished the link between education and life opportunities for rural youth. The increasing number of places in senior secondary schools and the improved chances of attending colleges and universities in particular have also promised rural parents in Zong that their investment in education can result in more years of training for their children and therefore long-term success in their future careers. Parents in Zong have a clear understanding of this. The data suggest that they are more confident than their fathers’ generation in becoming involved in schools. They are more capable than their parents of creating better learning environments for their children in terms of supplying them with enough funding, good nutrition, and comfortable housing. They also, compared to their fathers’ generation, have a higher level of education, understand the need to supervise their children’s after-school activities, and help them to control their after-school time. As their knowledge allows, they try to teach their children and hope that they can create advantages for their children in school success. They are concerned with the achievement of their children and hope that the increasing spending on education will yield better outcomes. They monitor the academic performance of their children and choose schools for them even if they have to pay school-choice fees. State schools in Zong, however, provide few formal channels for parents to get involved in education. The state recognizes the influence of parents on schooling and the interdependence among family, school, and community in education. However, it legitimizes school as the most important

The connection between home and school   71 and professional institution in education and claims that the relationship between parents and teachers is not a partnership but has both a “professional-client” and “governor and governed” nature. Parents are required to supplement school education by preparing children better for schooling and equipping them with good moral norms such as willingness to work hard and obedience to authority. Despite the articulated interconnectedness of home, school, and community, the rules, laws, and regulations governing education state little about how partnerships between families and schools can be set up. The picture of teachers’ perceptions of parents’ roles in schooling and how they engage rural parents in education suggests that few occasions are provided to foster partnerships between families and schools. Parents are assumed to be teachers’ followers rather than partners who see education as a shared enterprise. Teachers want them to provide information about the home life of their children when there is a need. They also expect parents to control their children’s after-class time and engage in schooling when their children break school rules, laws, and regulations. Schools in Zong provide two channels by which parents can participate formally in school: (1) short home visits (jiangfang, 家访) and (2) parent meetings (jiazhang hui, 家长会). While having the potential to become important bridges between schools and families, these two channels currently engage only a small number of parents. Schools set specific agendas for these activities, so the opportunities provided for parents to attend these events are usually non-negotiable and few.

Notes 1 Xiang is a township-level political division of China. However, it is different from a town (镇) because a xiang usually has more residents with rural hukou (户口) (over 90% of the residents live in the core area where the local government is located). According to the Adjustment of Standard of Townships Report that was issued by the State Council of the People’s Republic of China in 2009, a town is defined as having a population (living in its core areas where the local government is located) of more than 20,000, with at least 10% having urban Hukou. 2 In 2012, Hui was renamed a provincial-level model school. 3 Two former key schools, Peak Senior Secondary School, which is located in a town, and Zhong Senior Secondary School, located in a county township.

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3 Parents’ strategies Guanxi as a response

The blurring division between home and school When the new semester began in the autumn of 2009, I was in the field and visiting Port, a senior secondary school located in one of the biggest towns in the eastern part of Zong. One morning I was interviewing a head teacher, Su, working at Port, and he was interrupted by a call. After answering the phone, he told me that he had been invited to lunch by a parent of a student in his class. Su felt a little embarrassed and insisted that he did not want to accept the invitation. The problem, Su explained, was that he had to go because the parent had mentioned on the phone that he had also invited the head of a department of the town government. Su said that he was supposed to give face to the government department head. He believed that the man mentioned was a relative of the parent who invited him. Su invited me to join them so that I might learn more about teachers’ interactions with parents. At noon, we were picked up by a car at the school gate. The driver was the parent who had invited Su. We arrived at a restaurant located off the main street of the town in less than ten minutes and were led to a large guest room. When we entered the room, we saw eight people. All of them stood up and began to say hello to us. The parent who was hosting the lunch introduced each of the guests to us, including the department head he had mentioned on the phone. Then he invited all of us to be seated around a round table. The seating was arranged by the parent. The department head, the teacher, and I were seated together, and the ranks of our seats were the highest in honour. After the dishes were served, the parent began to talk to Su about his son. He mentioned his characteristics, school experiences, and academic performance when he was in primary and secondary school. He said he hoped that Su could pay more attention to his son and contact him if there was any need. Su said yes. Su told him about the recent progress of his son. He also suggested that the parent hire a tutor to teach his son mathematics, which he believed his son was weak in. We spent nearly two hours talking and eating. Before leaving, the parent said that he hoped that he could keep regular contact with Su, and Su said yes. He also asked Su to

Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response  75 introduce other teachers of his son to him in the near future and let them take care of his son. On the way back to Port, Su told me that the number of parents who invite teachers to lunch/dinner has been increasing in recent years. He suggested that parents care more about their children’s school success than ever before. They try to establish guanxi with teachers because they believe that it can create advantages for their children in school. He admitted that the social networks produced between him and the parents had indeed helped in ways such as facilitating the information flow between them. Su is just one of around 1,200 senior high school teachers in Zong. He also has more than 2,000 counterparts in junior secondary schools and another 3,000 in primary schools. Parents in Zong rely heavily on Su and his colleagues in education. Parents see teachers as experts in education and recognize them as the professionals who are the most capable of helping their children to achieve school success. In discussions about teachers, parents in Zong often referred to them as those who had knowledge in the subjects they teach as well as expertise in methods of teaching children. As the peasant household head Si said, They are teachers. They have received formal training and know how to use their knowledge to teach. Si maintained that he said this because he, like most parents of his generation, only attended school for a few years and was not capable of teaching his children on his own. Although he had tried to teach his children when they were young, Si added, “The knowledge they learned in high school was something I could never have taught.” According to Si as well as his rural fellows of similar backgrounds, academic success was also a result of their children’s intelligence and effort. This notion is supported by the fact that the physical distance between home and school increases as their children grow and move on to the next level of education. Household head Ping, a peasant, mentioned, We think that our children have to make it by themselves. If he is not clever or hard-working, then school will not work out for him. However, this does not mean that parents in Zong will remain silent and outside of the arena of education. Si’s generation believes, more than previous generations did, that education can help their children to achieve success in life. As indicated in Chapter 2, this generation is more confident in helping their children to succeed in school. They believe in the expertise of teachers but still want to make a difference for their children by getting involved in schooling. For example, Niu, one of the cadres we interviewed, said,

76  Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response I have an associate’s degree. I think I can help [my daughter] as much as I can. Parents in Zong have developed strategies to help their children. As the story conveyed at the beginning of this chapter suggests, their strategies have given them chances to become involved in their children’s learning, chances which have seldom been provided by schools. In the following, we will look at the strategies that different parents have used and the differences among parents from different social groups.

Peasants: family and kinship Family and skip-generational closures Parents interviewed in Zong highlighted the role that they can play in education. They believe in the importance of providing enough funding, good nutrition, and comfortable accommodation for their children. They also emphasized supervising their children’s after-school activities, conveying expectations and encouragement to their children, and teaching their children as long as they are capable. By providing opportunities to their children through access to resources in various forms, they believe that they can create advantages for their children in school success. However, they also admitted that these factors could be irrelevant to their children’s educational outcomes if they cannot be present at home and maintain the social connections between their children and themselves. Parents from peasant families agreed that they are less capable of being present at home and interacting with their children regularly. Among the interviewees from eleven peasant families, only two reported that they and their spouses were at home and maintained strong social connections with their children most of the time when the children were of school age. The household heads from the other nine families reported that they migrated to cities to seek jobs and that their children were left behind. Compared to their counterparts from privileged backgrounds, peasants talked more about the financial pressures of being present at home and taking care of their children by themselves. Household head Shu (code number 14), for example, told me, I have to work [away from home] for a better income since my children may need more money when they go to senior secondary school. If I have to pay the school-choice fees, then they will need more for education. Because of the need for more income, parents from a peasant background usually left female household heads at home to take care of and supervise their children when the children were young. Some of them chose to leave their children to be looked after by their grandparents. Male household

Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response  77 head Si (code number 12) maintained that, when he worked as a mail carrier in an eastern coastal city, he could visit home only one or two times a year. He said that he missed his children all the time, but he had to work away from home since he needed to earn a living to raise his family. Si said that he could earn around 2,000 RMB per month, which enabled him to provide material support for his family. Si was aware of the importance of being present at home, but as he mentioned in the discussion, I could not. I have two children, and they need money for schooling. Si said that his own father had passed away and that his mother was not in good health, so he had his wife take care of his children at home. He stated that his wife was a careful woman who could provide his children with sufficient nutrition, comfortable housing, and at least a minimum level of supervision. Other parents from similar backgrounds had their own parents look after their children if their parents were still in good health. Take Zhou’s case (code number 13), for example. Zhou is a single parent. He suggested that he felt huge economic pressure when his children were still young and enrolled in school. He had to work away from home most of the time because “what the land yielded could barely support the whole family”. Zhou migrated to different cities for temporary jobs and left his children behind. He had their grandmother take care of them and believed that she was capable of providing them with basic nutrition. Zhou suggested that, by doing so, he was able to secure the financial resources that the family needed. Meanwhile, he also guaranteed that the children were taken care of by someone he trusted. In Zhou’s terms, That is a balance between the children’s needs and the whole family’s. Zhou and his villager fellows saw their grandparents as being even more able to take care of their children when the children enrolled in senior secondary school, because most of the children live on campus and only return home once a week or month. Parents from a peasant background suggested that the work of parenting became simple enough for the grandparents. Peasant household head Ping (code number 19), for example, said that when his children were young, of primary and junior secondary school age, he left his wife to take care of them. When his youngest son was accepted by a senior secondary school, he brought his wife to the city where he had a job and she worked along with him. He said that his son returned home only a few times a month and that his grandmother was able to take care of him when he was home: My son came back home every weekend for a break. His grandmother provided him with delicious food as compensation for suffering the poor and inedible food [at school]. I usually asked his grandmother to buy and cook meat and fish for him. Furthermore, his grandmother also did the laundry [for him].

78  Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response Rural parents who have gone to cities and worked as migrant workers seldom took their children with them. Most of the jobs they found were temporary and could not guarantee them a stable and safe income. They indicated that they did not want their children to keep moving with them to different cities and different jobs. They also pointed out that their children would be discriminated against in access to public schools in cities. As Zhou put it, I would have to pay more, but what would the result be? They would only be allowed to go to schools that are not comparable to those attended by local students. Peasants in Zong were aware of the structural deficiency of the family when they left their children behind and were physically absent. They had the female household heads physically present at home or had their children taken care of by their grandparents. The strong social connections between children and the female household heads or grandparents, they believe, provide material or spiritual support for their children. However, they admitted that disadvantages could still be produced for their children because of their physical absence. As household head Hei (code number 17) maintained, The children were less likely to accept all [their grandmother’s] controls. You know that grandparents were more likely to spoil children. For example, she let them watch TV and did not try to control them. This view is shared by all the peasants interviewed in Zong. They indicated that grandparents could not provide supervision comparable to what they could have provided if they had stayed at home. Meanwhile, grandparents were less likely to convey high expectations and enough emotional support to their children. Household head Zhou, for example, stated, My grandmother was over 60 [years old] without any education. She was very feudal and backward and had a very low level of expectations of my daughter. She was very old and sometimes did not have any idea about what my daughter was thinking. My daughter told me [on the phone] that she was often down in spirits and felt alone at home. She said that her grandmother did not understand her. All peasants who had their children taken care of by grandparents shared similar stories. They said that they have a clear understanding of this and tried their best to overcome them. For example, they tried to call their children as often as possible and maintained necessary connections with them. Hei said that when he left his children at home to be taken care of by their grandparents, he tried to call his daughter as many times as possible to convey his expectations to her:

Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response  79 I told [my daughter] that I got lost and wandered the streets for a whole day when I went to Shanghai for the first time. [I went to Shanghai because] her uncle gave me a call and promised that I could find a job there and be well paid, so I left home and took a train to Shanghai. After arriving and getting off the train, I found that things were more complicated than I had imagined. The city was too big, and I could not tell one road from the other since I was illiterate and could not recognize the names of the roads. I often called her [when I was in Shanghai] and told her about this and hoped that she can learn from my experience. I hoped that she could go to college and have a better life. Hei also maintained that he would tell his children about his difficult life in the city and hoped that they could obtain a different life by working hard in school: I told my son how hard life was when I worked on construction sites. I told him that there were also some people who could avoid this hard life. They worked in offices and giant buildings equipped with good facilities, such as air conditioners. They worked less but had higher wages. I told my son that, if he gained access to a very good university, he could become one of them. Kinship Parents from a peasant background also went to their kin for help if nobody was available in the family to take care of their children. When asked who took care of the children when she and her husband migrated to a city, female peasant household head Kuan (code number 22), for example, said that she had her brother take care of her children when she was working with her husband outside of Zong: My second daughter spent nearly all her childhood with her uncle. She was in her uncle’s home for over four years and studied in a school near his home. Kuan lives in the same village as Hei. She lived with her husband on a farm when their children were young. Like many of her peers in Zong, she kept having babies until a boy was born. Kuan said that both she and her husband had to migrate to a city to work there. “The financing of the family was very tough then.” And she added, “We have three children. [My husband’s] grandparents left us nothing but an old house.” Kuan was left at home to take care of her children until the first girl graduated from a local junior secondary school. Then she moved with her oldest daughter to the same city where her husband worked. She found a job there. Her oldest daughter worked for a small sewing factory there. Kuan said that she sent

80  Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response her second and third children to her brother’s home and had him and his wife look after them. She stated that she could save more money by working with her husband. She said that she trusted her brother because he was close enough in terms of relations. He is my brother, and I felt that he could treat my daughter as his own and take care of her well. Kuan’s view was shared by other parents from similar backgrounds. Yu, a household head from a peasant family (code number 22), for example, said that when he decided to move with his wife to the city for a job, he sent his son to the home of his wife’s elder sister. He said, [My sister-in-law] was at home and taking care of her grandparents then. Therefore, she could not go to the city to find a job. I asked my wife to send my daughter to her family. She was nice. My daughter loved her very much since she gave her much love and care. Yu said that he trusted his sister-in-law because the relationship is close enough. In terms of kin, however, peasants relied on them more for information flow and teaching rather than accommodating and supervising their children. Most of their kin have to migrate to cities for jobs too, which makes it difficult for their kin to take over their roles. Furthermore, as the families in Zong shifted from a traditional extended family structure to a nuclear family structure, similar to what has happened in other parts of China, the patterns of obligation towards extended kin have weakened. As Yu put it, To let your children be taken care of by a brother is okay, but they also have their families. If their wives do not want to do so, there will be no chance. Yu suggested that he could rely on his kin to provide information about schools as well as ask those who are most educated among his kin to tutor his children when they were free. However, they could not always ensure that their kin could help them with such time- and energy-consuming activities as looking after children. This view was shared by all parents interviewed in Zong. Parents use their social networks among their kin to obtain information about schools. This is particularly true for parents from peasant backgrounds. All the parents from peasant families maintained that they relied on kin in exchanging information about their children’s schools. Hei, for example, said, Relatives, you know, would always be good informants. They have kids in school too.

Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response  81 When asked to elaborate on what information they could get from kin, Hei mentioned two types. First, he exchanged information with his kin about the academic performance of each other’s children in school. Second, he discussed with them his plans for helping his children if they have difficulties in learning. As Hei put it, Yes, I could talk to my neighbours about schooling when my children were still in primary school, but later, when they went to secondary schools, the situation became different. I was away [from Zong] for a job. I could not talk to my neighbours any more. Meanwhile, I knew less about the parents of the children in secondary school. They were from different villages. We could not talk since we might never have a chance to meet each other. Then I began to exchange information with my wife’s brother. He had a son in school, too. I asked him about his children’s performance in school so I knew what was good or not. When I found that my son had difficulties in learning, I asked whether his son had experienced similar things and what he did to help his son. Hei indicated that the information obtained through the social networks among his kin were helpful. What Hei stated about the types of information he could obtain and its role were also mentioned by other peasant parents. Shu, the female household head of a peasant family (code number 14), for example, mentioned her experience when her second child was in school: I was in Jiangsu [province] with his father [and working there] when [my second daughter] was in senior secondary school. She was totally independent of us then. When she was in grade three, I began to pay attention to her academic performance in school. There was a time when I found that she really performed poorly on exams. I called her aunt and asked what I could do. She suggested, first of all, I should to go to her school and find out the reasons. The aunt that Shu mentioned was her sister-in-law, who lived in the capital city of Anhui Province. Shu stated that her sister-in-law had received a “higher level of” education and “had more knowledge in education”. She said that she usually called her sister and consulted her if she found that her children were having trouble at school. Shu said that she believed in her sister-in-law. She, as Shu suggested, was close enough to her family in relations. The obligations of kinship, she claimed, guaranteed that her sister-in-law would help her and give her credible answers when she needed them. That is why, Shu stated, she also went to her sister-in-law for help when her daughters passed the National College Entrance Examination and had to make choices about which universities to attend. She claimed that her sister-in-law gave her very valuable advice:

82  Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response My sister-in-law is the only one in our family who has been to college. She was great. She had a job in the city. I trusted her, so when it came to the time when my daughter had to make a decision about which university to go and what major she could select, I called her. She said that she must choose one that will help her find a job easily four years later. I agreed. She knew the situation in the cities, you know. She knew what majors give better chances of being employed. We discussed it several times over the phone, and she made good suggestions to my daughter. Parents interviewed from peasant families also went to their kin when they needed someone to tutor their children. They would ask directly their kin or their kin’s children to tutor their own children if they thought that they were qualified. The household head of a peasant family (code number 18), Gan, for example, said that he often asked his brother-in-law’s son to tutor his son when he was in junior secondary school. Gan said that his brotherin-law’s son was a college student, and he believed that he was very capable of tutoring his son. My son was weak in mathematics. I asked [my brother-in-law’s son] to tutor my son when he was on holiday. Gan’s family lived on the farm. Gan stated that his income was not high and that he could only keep his head above water. Unlike many of his villager fellows, Gan did not migrate to a city for a job. He stated that he had only one child to raise, so his financial burden was not as high as that of other villagers. To increase the family income, Gan worked for his fellow villagers in the off-season from farming. Gan said that he hoped his only son could achieve success in school. Because he has only a primary school education and could not teach his son on his own, he sought the help of his brother-in-law. Gan maintained that his brother-in-law’s son had helped his son a lot: [My brother-in-law’s son] is clever. You know, he was a good tutor for my son. My son’s mathematics improved with his help. Gan also maintained that he was strongly motivated to seek this kind of help since he did not have to pay for it. Furthermore, for him, “asking a favour from relatives is always easy.” All the peasant parents interviewed agreed with this. Four of the eleven reported that they had asked relatives or children of their relatives for help by tutoring their children, but they also maintained that this could not be always guaranteed in terms of time. As Gan put it, I could only ask him to come to my home or send my son to his home every summer. He was in college in a city [and not able to be present at home all the time].

Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response  83 Parents from peasant families were aware of the importance of the link to teachers and maintained that they could get information from teachers about their children’s performance through such ties. These social connections, they suggested, could also help them to seek intervention or help from teachers. However, chances provided by schools to get in contact with teachers were scarce. It is also unlikely that they will have their own extensive ties to teachers or other school staff members. As Hei mentioned, I feel that I am just a peasant without knowledge [gongnong dalaocu, 工 农大老粗], but teachers are cultivated [wenhuaren, 文化人]. Hei suggested that the increasing gaps in terms of income and prestige between him and the teachers have drawn a line between them. The chance for him to get to know teachers in person is low. All parents from peasant families agreed on this point. However, they did suggest the potential for relatives to help them to get to know their children’s teachers. Two of the peasant household heads, for example, reported that they and their children’s teachers knew each other and that their kin had served as an important bridge in linking them together. Guan, a peasant household head, has three children. The oldest is a girl. The second and youngest are boys. The eldest girl and youngest boy migrated to a nearby city to seek jobs after they graduated from local junior secondary schools. The second boy performed well all the time when he was in school, passed the Senior Secondary School Entrance Examination with a good score, gained access to a good quality senior secondary school, took the National College Entrance Examination twice, and finally gained access to a thirdtier university in Anhui. Guan herself has a primary school education. Her husband had a junior secondary school education. Guan’s family lives on the farm. Guan began to contact her second son’s teachers when he was in the final year of junior secondary school. When asked to describe the process of contacting teachers, Guan stated that it was because of her brother that she was able to maintain guanxi with her son’s teachers. She explained that her brother is the principal of a local primary school. When her son was in school, she asked her brother to introduce her to her son’s teachers. Like her villager peers, Guan stated that she perceived the social distance between her and her son’s teachers. To her, teachers are part of the upper class of rural society. She said her brother was one member of that group, so he could serve as a good bridge between her and them. The process by which Guan established social networks with her son’s teachers was similar to that reported by Gen. Gen is the male household head of a peasant family. He has three children, two daughters and a son. The first daughter dropped out of school when she was in the second year of junior secondary school. The second daughter graduated from a junior secondary school. She and her older sister moved to Wenzhou, a city with prosperous clothing factories that was supposed to offer chances for teenage girls without senior secondary school

84  Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response certificates. Like his fellow villagers, Gen said that the whole family experienced financial difficulties when all the children were in school. He left his hometown to work in construction in different cities to support his family when his children were in primary school. Gen paid a great deal of attention to his son’s education. He pushed him to finish his junior secondary education, paid a school-choice fee, and purchased a school position in a secondary school for him. However, his son experienced too many learning difficulties and finally dropped out of school when he was in the final year of senior secondary school. When asked about his experiences interacting with teachers about his children’s education, Gen reported having occasional contacts with his son’s teachers. He admitted that he had a gender bias and expected more from his son than from his daughters. When asked to detail his social connections to the teachers, Gen described them as indirect ties of relatives. He believed that only guanxi of this type can deliver obligations to teachers. Like many of his peers, Gen paid much more attention to his son’s education when he entered senior secondary school because that is when momentum is built for the transition to a university, and it is a key moment for investment. He described his experiences creating guanxi with his son’s teachers as “complex”: When [my son] was in the senior secondary school, the school principal happened to be Cheng’s sister’s husband. Cheng is a distant relative of mine. I met Cheng and got the principal’s phone numbers. Gen then called the school principal, introduced himself as a relative of Cheng, and established guanxi with him. When asked about what they discussed when he met with or called the school principal, Gen said that they usually talked about his son’s academic performance. However, he stated that the guanxi between him and the principal was not close enough, which prevented him from asking for more favours from him. For example, when his son experienced a dramatic decrease in academic performance during the second year of senior secondary school, he did not choose to consult the principal about how to help his son. When asked why, Gen responded, We never considered that. We are not very close. I said, “You know, I am a relative of Cheng’s.” He is also a relative of Cheng’s, but we are not close relatives.

Cadres and professionals: community, colleagues, and friends Intergenerational closures and community Unlike parents from peasant backgrounds, cadres and professionals in Zong have more stable careers and incomes. Compared to their counterparts in

Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response  85 peasant families, cadres and professionals mentioned less often the financial burden and the motivations for migration to urban areas. In terms of education, they consciously compared the situations of peasants with their own, who try to be present at home, and agreed that their interactions with their children provided the children with chances to gain access to such resources as better nutrition, accommodation, quality supervision, and tutoring. As cadre family household head Chen (code number 2) mentioned, I found that many of my neighbours went away to work. Their children were left home unsupervised. Sometimes, I found that these kids played poker until midnight. Many failed to gain access to college since they played with other children every day. I thought then that I should stay at home, pay more attention to my child’s learning, supervise him, and make sure that he finished all his homework every day. Chen has an associate’s degree and worked for the finance department of a xiang government in Zong. His parents are both peasants. Chen has four siblings, all of whom are working for different xiang governments in Zong. He insisted that he benefited greatly from his oldest brother, who was the first in his family to have a secondary vocational education and find a position in one of the xiang governments in Zong. After graduating from college, Chen was introduced by his oldest brother to the department where he was working. Chen said that his oldest brother was highly respected by his fellows. All of his siblings worked in different xiang governments, which has gained “influence” for his family. This influence has brought Chen pride as well as pressure. Chen indicated that he held much higher expectations for his only daughter’s education since “all of his fellows looked at” him and expected that he “would pass his advantage to” his daughter. Chen was aware of the advantages he held. I have a stable career. I could stay at home with my child when I left the office. I have more education. I know how to teach [my daughter]. It is not only about supervising her academic progress, you know, but also about tutoring her. In addition, he stated that his interactions with his children at home also helped him to pass his social and learning skills to the children. Chen’s view was shared by all of his fellows from cadre and professional backgrounds. Male household head Niu, for example, emphasized that his regular interactions with his daughter helped her to learn from him the skills she needed in school. After entering secondary school, [my daughter] came home every weekend. I asked her how things went in school and how she got along with her classmates and teachers. I told her that she could not choose the school environment, but she could find ways to get used to it. I told her about some ways to do this and to deal with school life.

86  Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response Niu also stated that his daughter has benefited from the links between them in terms of better emotional support. He related a story about his daughter when she was in primary school: One day, she came home, burst into tears, and said she was no longer the student monitor of her class. I asked why, and she said that she did not know the reason. I comforted her and said that the teachers must be wrong since she was such a qualified monitor. I also told her that she should focus on her academic performance and that I would not judge her by whether she had the title of student monitor. She was finally convinced. Cadres and professionals also talked about the social networks within the communities where they lived. Most of the cadres and professionals in Zong live in small towns, joined by an increasing number of small business owners. They usually inhabit special areas in towns with people of the same backgrounds. For example, cadres, those working for the xiang government in particular, usually live in the government employees’ residences, which are usually near the government offices and separate from other areas of town. The relative independence of the communities of these groups of people cause them to be less influenced by rural-to-urban immigration. Most of them stay in their communities all the time, and there is a high degree of closure among them. They exchange information about their children’s schooling, help each other to supervise their children’s activities in the community, and have developed a set of shared values and beliefs that are conducive for school success. Regarding the information flow among peers from the same community about their children in school, a cadre household head, Song, said, We often talked to each other about our kids. We discussed their academic performance in school. Song is the deputy head of one department of the same xiang government where the household head Chen worked. He has a college degree, and his first job upon graduation was that of a junior secondary school teacher. Song worked for the school for years and was promoted continuously because of his excellent work in teaching and in managing his colleagues. In the five years before Song was reallocated to the xiang government, he had been promoted to become the principal of a local junior secondary school. Song has very high expectations for his only daughter’s education. When “she began her first day in school,” Song “began to discuss [the schoolchildren] with [his] peers in the community.” He suggested that, through the social networks among his peers, he learned more about his daughter’s performance in school. Song said,

Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response  87 I got to know more. I knew more not only about my child’s academic performance but also about other children’s. In this way, I compared [the achievements of my daughter and the other children] and began to see the overall picture of the school. That helped when I tried to discuss with my daughter her performance in school. Cadres and professionals reported similar cases in the interviews. They suggested that the relative homogeneity and small size of their communities had facilitated the flow of information through the social networks among the people in the communities. The information helped them to learn about the academic strengths and weaknesses of their children. It also helped them in making important decisions about their children’s education. This was also true for the new economic elites who moved into townships and lived close to the communities of the cadres and professionals. Household head Qu (code number 9), for example, explained how the information he obtained through the social networks among his neighbourhoods helped him when he exercised school choice for his daughter. When it came to the end of my daughter’s junior secondary school, I had to decide which school [to send her to]. She was good, and her academic scores guaranteed that she would be accepted by an ordinary senior secondary school, but I wanted to send her to a better one. There were two choices for us: sending her to a better public school but paying the school-choice fee or sending her to a private boarding school in the nearest city. Qu’s house was on the street but close to the residences for the employees of the Garden Primary School. Qu said that he could talk to teachers every day since they were mostly in the same “living circle”. He said that, when the time came for him to make a decision, I did not know how to decide and discussed this with my neighbours. Some also had the same problem. We heard from them that one of our friends, a famous middle school principal, had decided to send his son to the private school. I asked one of his colleagues and found that the quality of the school was good. Furthermore, I had heard that there were also preferential policies for students like my daughter. She was qualified to be accepted by public schools and thus would be exempt from tuition fees if she chose the private school. Furthermore, the school promised that students of her quality would be placed in a special class with better and high-quality teachers, so, finally, some friends and I decided to send our children to this school. Qu’s fellows from the cadre and professional families suggested a similar role of the social networks within their communities. Furthermore, they also

88  Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response indicated that these strong types of social ties have helped them to determine when and how they should intervene in their children’s classroom. Household head Chen, for example, reported, One day, when my son was in primary school, he came home and said to me that the voice of his English teacher was too low in class. He could not hear clearly what the teacher said in class. I thought this was terrible, so I discussed this with my neighbours. Finally, the complaints were heard by the teacher. He improved. Parents from cadre and professional backgrounds also mentioned that the presence of strong ties within their communities had facilitated the control and supervision of their children. Teacher household head Wu (code number 4) stated in a discussion about the community forces, We live in the same courtyard and know each other’s children. Sometimes, I would stop others’ children from playing wildly and asked them to go home and study when occasionally I found them wandering on the street. Wu worked for a junior secondary school located in a small but fast-growing town. His home was in a building near the school he worked for. All of the school employees lived in the same building, which is in the schoolyard five minutes away from the town’s main street. The schoolyard was relatively independent from the outside world. The teachers, as indicated by Wu, were quite familiar with their colleagues and their children. They helped each other to supervise their children. As Wu said, I knew everybody in the yard. I felt the obligation to [help those in my community to supervise their children]. He also agreed that his actions would pay off in the future and that his children would be under the eyes of their neighbours. The communities where the cadres and professionals lived are still a part of rural society in Zong. The most important common cultural heritage of Zong still inspires children in Zong to work hard. The local newspapers, for example, recorded some successful legends, which were also widely circulated among families and schools in Zong. Among these stories, there was one about the important politician Zuo Guangdou (左光斗) in the Ming Dynasty. Zuo was said to have been born to a very poor family in a village in Zong. However, he became one of the most powerful men in China at the end of Wanli era (万历年间) in the Ming Dynasty. The most important factor that was believed to explain his success was his hard work and passion for school success. For rural parents in Zong who internalized these values, studying hard to prepare for examinations was seen as the best way to help their children achieve their goals and permanently break away from their rural roots.

Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response  89 However, only the strong social ties in the communities where the cadres and professionals lived could help to maintain shared values and attitudes towards education. Peasants interviewed in Zong sometimes talked about these values, too. However, as more and more rural neighbours have moved away from their villages and return home only a few times a year, villages in Zong have been gradually emptied. The social structure of closure across generations can hardly be maintained as it has been in the cadre and professional communities. Important traditional values can hardly be effectively passed from one generation to the next. Parents from cadre and professional backgrounds were aware of this fact. Compared to their counterparts from a peasant background, they talked more about widespread values towards education in Zong. They also suggested that these values have been successfully translated into the spirits of their communities. For example, in a discussion with Wu about the community force, he mentioned the stereotypes in rural society about children from more affluent backgrounds: Children from families of advantaged backgrounds were often described as “lazy and indolent children” [wukuzidi, 纨绔子弟] who were easily corrupted by their good housing and accommodation. Good living makes them not want to work hard. Even worse, they may think that their parents can find jobs for them after graduation. Everything in their lives will be handled by their parents. They usually do not work hard and perform rather badly in school. Wu suggested that this stereotype was widely believed in the community where he lived. However, it is not a negative asset for children from families similar to Wu’s. Wu insisted that he used the stereotype to warn his daughter and encourage her to keep working hard. The expansion of higher education in recent decades has channeled a larger proportion of children from these communities into colleges and universities, compared to children from rural communities. The successful stories of children from these communities have also become important resources for parents and their children. Cadres and professionals often mentioned that they would tell their children stories in which their neighbours’ children achieved great success in college access. They believed that this could encourage their own children to work hard and achieve school success. These important types of resources for children, however, were seldom mentioned by parents from a peasant background. Colleagues and friends Unlike peasants, whose school involvement was more home-based and invisible to teachers, cadres and professionals in Zong tried to get involved in school more visibly. They tried to establish interpersonal ties between themselves and the teachers, crossing the lines drawn by schools and teachers

90  Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response between home and school and creating advantages for their children in school success. In regard to the process of establishing such ties, parents from cadre and professional backgrounds were more likely to mention the roles of their colleagues and friends. For cadres and professionals, most of whom lived in a small xiang, the primary and junior secondary schools were usually not far from their homes. Teachers’ residences were therefore usually near their homes. Social networks were forged in daily communications. For parents from these two groups, information about their children’s performance in school could flow directly to them through the ties that linked them to the teachers. As cadre household head Niu (code number 1) pointed out, when his daughter was in primary school and junior secondary school, much of the information about her performance was obtained through daily talks: I got it through talking. Niu explained that he was able to engage in these discussions because the physical distance between the school and his home was short. As he stated, “teachers were easily known” by him: For example, sometimes, I walked across the courtyard and found her teachers standing there. I went to them, talked, and then left. That is enough to know about my daughter’s performance in school. Niu’s view was shared by most parents from similar backgrounds. They indicated that they could collect important information about their children through daily talks with teachers since they lived close together and were in a closed social network. For those whose neighbourhoods were far away from that of the teachers, they asked their colleagues or friends to introduce them to teachers, established social ties with them, and gained chances for information exchange. For them, the establishment of such extensive social networks was easy. Cadres and professionals stated that they all worked in the state-owned sector. So did their children’s teachers. Because the number of people in this circle was small, they could easily be linked through various ties. As household head Song (code number 3) said, Only a small number of people belonged to our system. Therefore, it was very easy for us to find common friends and be linked together. This view was shared by Wu. For example, in discussing his social ties to teachers, Wu said, I was a teacher. Many of my colleagues and friends are still teachers now. We are linked together directly and indirectly through various ties [among colleagues and friends].

Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response  91 For Wu as well as other parents from similar backgrounds, the costs of establishing social ties to teachers were much lower than it was for others. They indicated that they were in the same social circles with teachers and could easily find a colleague or friend who knew their children’s teachers well and could help by introducing teachers to them. As Wu put it, We have the same identity. All of us worked for the government and ate public rice [chi gongjia fan, 吃公家饭]. Unlike parents from a peasant background, they believed that they were capable of doing favours in the future for their colleagues and friends as repayment (bao, 报). Thus there is no need for them to send gifts to teachers or host banquets for them to produce and maintain guanxi. Household head Niu, for example, stated, It was easy for me to get information about my children. I never considered sending the teacher gifts. I thought they would need me one day. I could pay them back [in the future]. In some cases, cadres and professionals reported sending gifts and hosting banquets for teachers. However, they also mentioned more than once their differences from peasants and claimed that they could afford the necessary costs of maintaining social relations with teachers. As cadre household head Chen said, We are not like peasants. They might not be able to do so. For example, we invited each other for dinner sometimes. Other parents from cadre and professional families made similar statements. The social connections with teachers produced and maintained by parents from cadre and professional backgrounds helped the information flow between their families and schools. It is through these links that teachers get to know more about their students from these families, such as their characteristics and academic strengths and weaknesses. Household head Wu, for example, recounted his experience in establishing ties to his children’s teachers. When his oldest son entered senior secondary school, he “did not know any of his teachers personally.” However, with the help of a colleague, he got to know the head teacher: I went to Mr. Liu [my colleague] to ask him to call my children’s head teacher. Then I went to the teacher’s home and said that Mr. Liu had given him a call. We got to know each other. Having built social connections, he began to “exchange information” about his son with the head teacher:

92  Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response I told [the teacher] that he was a little bit stubborn. He was good at mathematics and loved to use his head when he was still young, but he was weak in English and needed special care. It was also through these links that Wu effectively conveyed his educational expectations for his child to the teachers. He believed that this would help the teachers to form expectations regarding his son’s performance and accommodate his learning needs. Parents from cadre and professional backgrounds used their social connections with teachers to gain information about their children’s performance in school as well. Once established, personalized social connections would produce obligations between them and their children’s teachers. When they requested information from the teachers about their children’s performance in school, the teachers would usually help. With a good rapport established, the teachers would even actively provide information about children’s performance by calling the parents and initiating personal meetings. Household head Shen, from a teacher’s family (code number 5), for example, said that he was able to learn about his only son’s academic performance in school. He explained that the social connections established between him and his children’s teachers had helped him greatly. Shen was a teacher working in a village primary school when I visited Zong. He was born in Zong to a rural family. After graduating from a local junior secondary school, he gained access to a secondary vocational school that prepares teachers for primary and junior secondary schools. Three years later, he returned to Zong and got his first job as a mathematics teacher at a village primary school. Years later, he earned an associate’s degree and then a college degree by enrolling in part-time programs run by a teacher’s college in a nearby city. He was then gradually promoted and finally became the head of the school he was serving “because of the degree” that he held. Shen has one son, who was in his second year of university studies when I visited Zong. Shen described the schooling of his son as “smooth sailing”. He achieved success and fulfilled my expectations for him at every single stage when he was in school. It seems quite natural that he gained access to a first-tier university. When asked to elaborate on the nature of his connections to son’s teachers, Shen described them as personal. Regarding the establishment of links with teachers in senior secondary schools, for example, he stated, I asked a favour of my colleagues. He knows the principal of [my son’s] school. Then he introduced me to my son’s head teacher. We came to know each other. Then I visited his home sometimes, and we became friends. These ties are quite personal.

Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response  93 Shen commented that he benefited greatly from such personalized ties created with the help of his colleagues: The social connections were so strong that the head teacher would give me a call after any test and tell me about any progress or regression that had taken place. Cadres and professionals also claimed advantages in finding qualified private tutoring services for their children. They maintained that social connections with colleagues and friends helped them a great deal in the process. In 2009 in Zong, the market for private tutoring services was still underdeveloped. In-service teachers were the main providers of private tutoring. However, they were not allowed to publicly provide paid lessons or advertise through the media. Information about potential private tutoring provided by teachers, therefore, passed only through social networks linking teachers together. Parents usually went to their children’s teachers for information if they planned to hire tutors. Cadres and professionals had advantages in gaining such information as they were more capable of creating social connections with teachers. As cadre household head Chen (code number 2) said, Sometimes, I asked the head teacher directly to give me the names of teachers who could possibly provide private tutoring services. He commented that those suggestions from teachers were very useful since they could help him to gain accurate information about which types of private tutoring his children needed: We not only asked [our children’s teachers] whether we needed a tutor but also what kinds of tutors we needed. Chen argued that social connections with teachers could also guarantee that the information provided by them was reliable. Besides facilitating information flow, ties to teachers created with the help of colleagues and friends could also guarantee that parents from cadre and professional backgrounds could hire the desired teachers. In 2009 in Zong, only a small number of in-service teachers were involved in the private tutoring business. The number of senior secondary school teachers involved in private the tutoring business was even smaller, as they are usually better paid and have a larger workload than teachers in primary and junior secondary schools. Parents usually went to their children’s teachers to ask for help in hiring private tutors for their children. They asked the teachers to search for and secure potential candidates for them. These targeted private tutors were usually colleagues and friends of their children’s teachers. The close relations, as parents suggested, make it difficult for the

94  Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response targeted private tutors to refuse their offers. As one of the parents that I talked to in the autumn of 2009 commented, This could also make it hard for the [referred] teacher to refuse my offer.

The new economic elites: peidu and guanxi producing with teachers Peidu (accompany studying, 陪读) Eleven of the twelve senior secondary schools in Zong are located in townships of different types. Most of the rural children in Zong have to live on campus once they are accepted by any of these schools. Parents in Zong usually described the distance between home and school as “long” and claimed that the long distance prevented them from maintaining close links with their children. To maintain inter-generational closure, parents sought to accompany (peidu, 陪读) their children while they were in senior secondary school. By accompanying, they mean renting a dormitory room or an apartment near the school and having one of the parents, usually the mother, live with their children to house and supervise them. Parent participants from a new economic elite background mentioned the experience of peidu more than others. Three of the four participants from this background pointed out that they had family members rent a dormitory room or an apartment near the school and accompany their children while they were in senior secondary school. No parents from a peasant background reported accompanying their children, and only one set of parents from a cadre family reported that they have done so. Compared to parents from other backgrounds, parents from the new economic elite background agreed that they were more capable of peidu. They consciously compared their financial situation with those of their fellows from other backgrounds and pointed that their “economic ability” allowed them to do this. As female household head Hua, from a household business owner’s family (code number 8), said, It was okay for me to accompany my son. At least we were better off than those peasants. When asked what she meant by “okay”, Hua explained that her family could afford the costs. When she was asked to describe the basic elements of the costs for peidu, Hua mentioned the money she had to pay to rent the dorm room and the opportunity cost, the possible income that she could have made if she had worked at home. Hua and her husband owned a grocery store in the same town where Qu lived. She moved with her husband to the town from a village located

Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response  95 in the western part of Zong. Like many of her fellow household business owners in the small town where she lived, Hua and her husband named their grocery store after the village they came from. Hua mentioned their family origins. One of the words she used when I asked about her family background was “affluent”. By “affluent”, she meant that her father-in-law owned a grocery store before she married her husband. They then inherited the store at the beginning of the 1990s and began to run the family business. In the mid-1990s, they purchased a small plot of land beside one of main streets in the town where they now live, built a two-storey house and opened a new grocery store. Hua referred to her family income as “above the average” in the town where she lived. She had very high educational expectations for her only son and mentioned more than once that her family had the “ability” to create better learning circumstances for him. When the time came to make a decision about whether she should accompany her son during his final year of senior secondary school, the decision was “easy”. She recounted the costs of peidu and commented that they were very high: More and more parents in our county decided to accompany their children once they were accepted by senior secondary schools. You know what that means. We had to pay more to rent dormitory rooms/apartments. I paid three thousand [RMB] a year. That was not the most important cost. The most important one was the chances I gave up. I mean that if I had worked at home with my husband we could have earned more. However, she also mentioned that her family had enough money, a situation that parents from peasant families were never able to experience. Parents from peasant families reported that they could not afford the cost of peidu. Household head Yu (code number 21), for example, told me that the decision on “whether he should accompany his son was hard to make”: When [my son] was accepted by a senior high school, I found that some of my fellows began to consider peidu. I discussed this with my son and asked him whether it would be better if I rented a room near his school and accompanied him. By this, I mean that I would be able to provide him with more support, better nutrition and accommodation in particular. That sounds nice. But I realized when I talked to him that life could became very hard if I did so. He added, His mother and I earned only around ten thousand [RMB] that year. If one of us had accompanied him, our income would have been lower, for example, the land we could farm would have been smaller. I estimated that I could only earn a few thousand if his mother was not at home

96  Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response with me, but the living expense for the whole family was as high as a few thousand, which meant that we might not have been able to save any money and continue to pay for his tuition. He told his son this and asked about his idea. Yu said that his son understood him and knew about the family’s financial situation. His son told him that “he could manage all of those things in school by himself, and there was no need for him to accompany him.” Yu’s son ultimately failed to gain access to college. Yu blamed himself when I interviewed him about his son’s education. He said that his son’s failure in school was his fault: [My son] is clever. I thought he just lacked nutrition. He told me that he was sleepy every day. I felt guilty. By accompanying their children, parents from the new economic elite background provided their children with better nutrition and accommodation. Household head Qu (code number 9), for example, stated that his decision to have his wife accompany his second son was “right”: You know, when he graduated from junior secondary school, he was still young. I think that, if we had just let him go, then life could have been very hard for him. Besides, you know, the [senior secondary] school [he enrolled in] could not provide him with good nutrition. The conditions of his dormitory were also very bad. I thought that, if his mother rented a room near his school, then she could provide home-like conditions. She could cook for him. Nutrition, I think, is important for his intellectual development. Accommodation is important, too. If we expected him to succeed in school and finally gain access to a university, we had to do something. I mean having his mother undertake peidu. Qu stated that his wife provided their son with better nutrition, accommodation, and advantages that other parents could never provide. Intergenerational closure also provided parents with opportunities to supervise their children’s after-school activities. Female household head Hua, for example (code number 8), stated, [My son] failed when he took the National College Entrance Examination after graduating from secondary school. I knew that one of the reasons was that he indulged in reading novels and did not manage his studying time. One time when I went to his dormitory, I found that there were many novels under his pillow. I told him to stop reading these books, but that did not work. Otherwise, he would not have failed in the National College Entrance Examination. His father discussed it with me, and we finally made the decision that I should accompany him. Therefore, we rented a room under the teachers’ dormitory at Peak

Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response  97 Senior Secondary School, where he prepared for the NCEE. I lived there with my son for a whole year. One of the most important tasks for me was to control his after-school activities, especially the time he spent reading novels. It proved useful since he got rid of this ‘bad habit’ and performed better in school. Other parents from similar backgrounds had similar views. Parents from the new economic elite background also mentioned the unexpected benefits of accompanying their children. The dorms/apartments they rent are usually near the schools. Some of those rooms they rent are teachers’ dorms. As a result, they created social networks that linked them to teachers. These social networks facilitated the information flow among them. This gave them more chances to learn about their children’s performance. As a peidu mother I encountered while visiting Port stated, I walked on the campus every day after dinner, as my room was near the school. I came across his teacher nearly every day. I asked him about my child, and he was very nice and became very friendly with me. We then had many more chances to talk about my son. Producing guanxi with teachers Like their counterparts from other backgrounds, parents from the new economic elite background highlighted the importance of connections between home and school. They believe that the social ties between home and school could facilitate both the flow of information about their children’s performance and finding private tutoring for their children. They also believe that social connections could help them to effectively convey their educational expectations for their children to the teachers. However, like their counterparts from other backgrounds, they indicated that the chances provided by the schools to become involved are rare. As a result, they tried to establish interpersonal ties between themselves and teachers. Unlike the cadres and the professionals, who usually referred to teachers as their fellows who were in the same social circles, new economic elites usually pointed out their differences from teachers in terms of prestige. They argued that, for them, the establishment of interpersonal ties with teachers was “not as easy” as it was for their counterparts from the cadre and professional backgrounds. As household head Qu (code number 9) explained, [Teachers] are in a social group with cadres. If cadres want to ask teachers to help them, they just need to call them. I have one friend who works as the head of department in a xiang government. He told me that he just called the principal of the target school and said that he wanted to send his daughter to the school when exercising school choice

98  Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response for his daughter. He, of course, successfully sent his daughter to that school, but this seems quite impossible for us. We are different from teachers. They work for the state and earn a salary from the government [chi huangliang, 吃皇粮]. All the parents from the new economic elite background agreed with this view. They typically used two strategies to overcome the differences and produce interpersonal types of social connections with teachers: giving gifts and hosting banquets. The establishment of interpersonal social connections with teachers, according to these parents, usually begins with finding someone with close social relations with both sides. As household head Dao (code number 10) put it, At the very beginning, I did not know [my daughter’s] head teacher, but I knew the school principal. He was once my classmate in senior secondary school, so I found him and asked him to introduce me to my daughter’s head teacher. I then met all of my daughter’s teachers through the head teacher. Giving gifts to and hosting banquets for teachers are the second stage in producing interpersonal social connections with teachers. The timing of when gifts are sent, the gifts chosen, and procedures in giving gifts are important rituals for understanding the nature of the social connections produced between teachers and parents. Parents usually give gifts to teachers during Spring Festivals. In one or two cases, they also did this on other occasions, such as the beginning or the end of a semester. Cigarettes and wine are common gifts. Gifts are often given at teachers’ homes and wrapped in red plastic bags. All of these factors indicate that the social relations produced between parents and teachers were interpersonal: their social ties with teachers (and their maintenance of them) is quite similar to their social relationships with relatives. Hosting banquets is another important way for parents to create social relations with teachers. Parents from new economic elite families usually host banquets in hotels near schools. Their children’s teachers were not the only guests of the events. In matching teachers (i.e. when inviting someone to accompany the teacher, to perform introductions), parents also invited some other host representatives (peike, a person who accompanies guests). The people who introduced the parents to teachers were usually assigned as host representatives. In addition to these people, village leaders or others of similar prestige that the host parents knew could also be invited as the host representatives. For parents in Zong, this arrangement showed that they respected the teachers and produced feelings (ganqing, 感情) through such occasions, a basic element that embodies guanxi. As a head of household from a private entrepreneur background (code number 11) said,

Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response  99 I would usually invite the Party Secretary of our village to attend the banquets held for teachers. I wanted the teachers to know that I respected them. The maintenance of such interpersonal types of social connections with teachers requires the endless efforts of parents. Giving gifts and hosting banquets also constitutes the basic elements of the practices in maintaining guanxi. The cost of producing and reproducing guanxi is, of course, out of reach for most parents from a peasant background. Peasant parents, for example, usually reported that they could not afford to give gifts or host banquets. As head of household Zhou (code number 13) illustrated in discussing guanxi with teachers, At least you have to bring something to teachers when you go to teachers and ask for information. I thought cigarettes were necessary. I only smoke Shengtang [a brand of low-class cigarettes in Zong]. If I wanted to visit teachers, I had to buy better ones, which takes money. If you wanted to maintain social connections with teachers, you had to do that. For parents of backgrounds similar to that of Zhou, chances to create interpersonal social relations with teachers were rare. They maintained that it was difficult for them to find someone who could introduce them to teachers since most of their neighbours and relatives were outside the social circles of teachers. Because of the costs, they seldom managed to establish interpersonal social relations with teachers without the help of relatives. In one case, a peasant (code number 21) reported that he tried to create social connections with teachers but ultimately failed in maintaining these connections. He said that he felt too much economic pressure to do so: I brought two packages of cigarettes every time I visited my daughter’s head teachers when she was in senior secondary school, but I failed in doing that when I encountered some financial difficulties. Two packages of cigarettes cost over 500 RMB, which really meant something at that time.

Summary and discussion State schools in Zong provide few formal channels for rural parents to become involved in education. Parents in Zong, however, see school teachers as experts in education and recognize them as the professionals who are most capable of helping their children to achieve school success. For them, their children’s academic success is also a result of their children’s intelligence and endeavour. However, this does not mean that parents in Zong will stand silently outside of the arena of education. Parents of Si’s generation believe, more than previous generations did, that education can help

100  Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response their children to achieve success in life. Parents have developed strategies to help their children to achieve school success. The findings suggest that parents from different social backgrounds use two strategies to negotiate their influence over their children’s school success. First, they reclaim their influence over schooling by actively engaging in their children’s learning process at home and in their communities. They do not passively accept the roles that state schooling assigned to them in the learning process but construct their own understanding of their roles in their children’s education and how they can help the children fulfil these roles. Although the state wants to establish school as the only legitimate institution in education and requires parents to be involved in schooling only when their children break school rules or experience difficulties in learning, parents seek to provide additional help to their children. They see social networks within the home as an important structure that can allow them to transform their economic and cultural resources into social capital in terms of better nutrition, information about school, etc., and they actively use these social networks. They activate the social networks within their communities to help them gain access to important information about their children’s performance in school and seek their peers’ help in supervising their children in the community to create advantages for their children in college access. All of these activities have changed the nature of the link between family and school that was claimed by state schooling. The professional roles of teachers in schooling have been changed by the practices of parents. The second strategy that parents use in negotiating their influence over their children’s schooling is to replace the pre-existing formal and weak social connections between themselves and teachers with strong interpersonal ones and use them to gain access to such important information as their children’s performance in school, the names of teachers who could provide quality private tutoring, and the chance to purchase school positions. Parents’ chances of success in negotiating their influence over schooling through these two strategies, however, are shaped by how they capitalize on them in the market transition era. The findings suggest that parents from peasant families perceive greater financial pressure and thus are motivated to move away from their communities to seek jobs in cities. The social networks within their families and communities are thus altered and their potential minimized. Their counterparts from cadre, professional, and new economic elite families, however, perceive less economic pressure and are more motivated to be present at home and in the community. They also have more knowledge of how and how much they can help their children; therefore, they are more confident and see education as a shared enterprise between themselves and teachers. Producing and reproducing interpersonal social connections with teachers also requires extra cost, which indicates the importance of the volume of

Parents’ strategies: guanxi as a response  101 capital that parents have accumulated. The study findings suggest that peasants usually do not have extensive ties with their children’s teachers and feel greater financial pressure in producing social ties with teachers, since this requires endless investment in sending gifts, hosting banquets, and so on. Their counterparts from privileged families, however, perceive less difficulty in producing and reproducing interpersonal social connections with teachers. For example, cadres and professionals perceive themselves as being in the same social circle as teachers. The cost of reaffirming their social connections with teachers is thus very low. The current research therefore claims that peasants are substantially excluded from important interpersonal social networks (guanxi). However, it also highlights the agency of parents from these families. For example, it found that, in some cases, peasants actively use their kin, successfully create opportunities for school involvement, and help their children achieve school success. This argument poses a central question for the next chapter: what is the influence of the different strategies used, and how did the use of guanxi become associated with school success? The answer to this question is of great significance since it concerns whether the goal-oriented actions of parents from different social backgrounds will be successful.

4 Consequences Intended and unintended

Intended consequences School engagement The strategies used by parents in Zong to get involved in their children’s schooling were associated with the learning outcomes of their children in different ways. They influenced students’ engagement in schooling and their promotion. This can be seen clearly from decisions made by rural families to let their children drop out of or stay in school. San is the male household head of a peasant family (code number 16) in Zong. He was born to a rural family and is the third boy among twelve siblings. According to San, he inherited nothing from his father, who migrated to the village in the 1960s from a more impoverished area of Anhui. Like many of his peers in the village, San wanted to have a son and continued to have babies until he had three girls. After that, he felt that the family would never be able to afford to have another baby. “The life of the Sans was very hard” for years after his third daughter was born. Before his oldest daughter dropped out of school the family income was low; they could only “keep their heads above water”. San decided then to leave his wife and daughter at home and migrate to a more developed city in Jiangsu Province for a job. He worked there as a construction worker for years and had his wife migrate to the same city when his third daughter entered primary school. His daughters were then all left at home and looked after by their grandparents. Years later, his first daughter dropped out of a junior secondary school. She then took over the care of her two younger sisters. Unfortunately, San’s second and third daughters also dropped out of school in the following years. For San and his wife, their daughters’ education was never a rewarding experience. “When the financial situation of the family improved” after San’s first daughter found a job in the same city where he worked, San had higher expectations regarding the education of his youngest daughter: I was in a coastal city and did well as a worker there. I earned enough money and thought I could pay for her education. Her older sisters both failed, and I hoped that she at least could go to college.

Consequences: intended and unintended  103 The fact that his third daughter also dropped out of school made San “very disappointed”. He claimed that his daughters’ school failure was caused by “accumulated problems”. All his daughters began to disengage from school at a very early stage of their schooling. San stated that his daughters “disliked school and had no interest in learning”. He claimed that this “started from the very fact that they encountered learning difficulties in school”. San and his wife “were far away from home” and could not give their children support in any form, such as tutoring and encouragement. As a result, they “lost any interest in learning” since they “could not understand what teachers said” in class. They “skipped lessons” and “did not turn in homework on time”. Because the social connections between San and his daughters were weak, San could not supervise them effectively. His oldest daughter stated, My parents left home then, and I did not get any supervision and support from them anymore . . . I was a child then and did not know how to control myself. I loved watching TV. Sometimes, I did not go to school and played at home. San’s daughters were eventually left far behind by their classmates in academic performance and no longer had any interest in attending classes. Most of the time they were in class, they “just sat there and waited for the last bell to ring”. They could not see any hope of going to college and wanted to leave school as soon as possible. Their statements were supported by San and his wife. Their daughters ultimately ended their education with a junior secondary school graduation certificate and left their hometown for jobs in labour-intensive factories located in the city where San worked. What happened to San’s three daughters also happened to most of the children from the other eleven peasant families that participated in the study. While highlighting the role that they were able to play in education, their parents were less capable than their counterparts from other backgrounds of being present at home as well as in the community. They were unable to convey their expectations or to provide quality tutoring and encouragement for their children. When their children encountered learning difficulties they could not help them, as San’s case revealed. They could not provide their children with effective supervision, which is critical for school engagement. A former principal of a junior secondary school told me that children from peasant families were more likely than their classmates from other social backgrounds to become involved in gangs and mob fighting because of a lack of supervision: These children did not have to go back home since their parents were not there (they usually migrated to the city to seek jobs, and their children lacked supervision).

104  Consequences: intended and unintended The result is that, as a rural child maintained, they “were more likely to be involved in gangs and mob fighting, and dropped out of school”. He was once a member of a youth gang and said, My parents did not know what I was doing then. [My father] never called my teachers. Actually, I hung out with my peers after class, but my parents did not know that. If they had called the teachers, they might have known. You know, I spent a lot of money those days on making friends. I usually told my parents that I needed money since the school needed us to pay some [fees]. They never asked why we needed to pay again and just gave me money. If they had called the teachers, they might have known about that and known that I was with some bad guys. The child ultimately dropped out of school before graduation. For children from other backgrounds, the story appears to be quite different. Fan (code number 11), for example, has two children, both of whom gained access to universities. Regarding his children’s school success, Fan insisted that his children had benefited a great deal from the well-maintained social networks within the family. Fan himself was born to a peasant family. He had a junior secondary school education and worked as a carpenter. He was a hard-working man, and his life changed dramatically when he married a woman whose father had a very wide web of social connections in a small town in Zong. Fan “began to have a lot of business in the town” since “everybody knows” his father-in-law. Later, after obtaining enough financial capital, Fan started his own small construction company. Fan considered himself a successful businessperson. He was proud of his own achievement in educating his children as well. He indicated that the “learning career” of his first child, a girl, was not “smooth”. However, because “he always worked closely together with her” and could “always intervene in time,” his daughter “overcame the barriers she encountered” and finally succeeded in school, gaining access to a second-tier university. When asked to explain the barriers and how they overcame them, Fan stated, I could not say that she was good when she was in school. I mean, she always made trouble, but I think she was lucky to have a parent like me [different from my villager fellows]. I was able to be present at home all the time even though I was quite busy with my business. I could talk to her every day and intervene when there was a need. That helped. I still remember that, when she was in junior primary school, she started to learn physics and encountered problems learning it. As I asked her regularly about her academic progress, I found out about it. I knew then that she was kind of disliking school because of her learning difficulties in physics. To help her, I thought that the first step would be helping her to reestablish her confidence in learning. I hired a tutor for

Consequences: intended and unintended  105 her. Meanwhile, I decided to check her homework and looked at any problems she might have. I was not good at physics, but I could help with it. Then, after a few months, she achieved a high score on a physics test. She was encouraged by the results and began to do better. In addition, I supervised her when she came home from school every day. That ensured that she would spend enough time [on learning]. Parents from similar backgrounds in Zong reported similar cases. Because they were capable of being present at home and maintaining the social connections between their children and themselves, they were better able to create advantages for their children in different forms, such as supervision, tutoring, and encouragement. When their children encountered learning difficulties, they were also more likely to intervene in time and have a greater capacity to engage with their children in school. Access to model schools and key classes Parents’ strategic use of guanxi increased their children’s likelihood of being accepted by the best schools and in key classes in different schools in Zong. I approach this use of guanxi by introducing two rough mechanisms by which this happens. First, guanxi helped parents gain access to important information about schools and classes. Hua (code number 8), for example, talked about how he helped his daughter to be assigned to a key class when she was accepted by a senior secondary school: Every year, there would be one or two key classes. Although the bureau of education prohibited schools from doing so, some classes were still equipped with better teachers. This is an open secret. We all knew this . . .  When his daughter got the notice that she had been accepted by the Zhong Senior Secondary School, Hua said that he then asked one of his friends, a teacher at the school, for help: I heard [from him] then that classes five and eight were both under two famous head teachers, and class five had a very good mathematics teacher. However, class eight had a better English teacher. He was said to be very responsible . . . I eventually chose class five since my daughter was weak in mathematics. Hua maintained that the information that flowed through the guanxi networks he had created was helpful since it helped him consider the benefits of different plans more systematically. Unlike their counterparts from privileged backgrounds, peasants contended that they knew little about the running of schools and the differences between different classes. As household head Zhou (code number 13) stated,

106  Consequences: intended and unintended I knew that there were better classes, but I had no guanxi with the teachers and could not get information about different classes. For me, it was difficult to judge which one was better. Guanxi could also help parents to gain access to key decision-makers in schools, which improved their chance of success in helping their children gain access to better-quality schools. One teacher reported his experience in helping an entrepreneur send his son to a model senior secondary school: One of my friends was an entrepreneur. His son was good enough. He achieved a very high academic score on the Senior Secondary School Entrance Examination. Fewer than twenty students in our school were able to do so, but his son was still a few marks away from being accepted by Peak [Senior Secondary School]. He came to me and asked for help. I happened to know the son of the former principal of Peak. He was a close friend of mine. I called him and asked for help. His father was in the hospital and had just had surgery. I asked the entrepreneur to buy some gifts and went to the hospital to visit him. I thought it was a good occasion to establish social relations between them. We went to the hospital and visited the former principal with gifts. He was happy about that. We told him about our concern and asked whether he could do us a favour. He said yes and called someone at Peak. He soon got an affirmative answer, and Peak eventually accepted the entrepreneur’s son. All the parents interviewed agreed that it was crucial for them to connect with key agents in schools if they wanted to secure their children’s positions in model senior secondary schools. Household head Chun (code number 6), for example, said, I heard that one school outside our county was very good, so I asked one of my former students who worked there to do me a favour and help my child be accepted as a guest student [jiedu sheng, 借读生]. In fact, my child’s academic performance was so high that he could be exempted from paying tuition fees. However, I soon found that he could not adapt to the learning environment there. Therefore, I asked for help from one of my former students at Peak Senior Secondary School. He helped me to transfer my child there. Peasants encountered difficult connecting with key agents. According to them, their children’s academic performance was the only indictor of their chances of being accepted by any type of school. As a female household head from a peasant family (code number 22) said,

Consequences: intended and unintended  107 If I had known somebody at school, it might have helped my daughter to get into a senior secondary school. However, I did not know anybody, and she was unwilling to take the [senior secondary school] admission examination. She said that she felt no hope of earning high scores on the examination, so she finally gave up and moved away for work. Teachers’ care (关照) One of the advantages that different parents frequently mentioned as resulting from their strategies was “teachers’ care”. When teachers were asked to elaborate and interpret what the parents meant, they mentioned several forms of care that they would provide to students. They said that they sensed higher expectations from parents who produced and maintained guanxi with them. In class, they engaged these parents’ children more in the process of teaching. As one teacher (code number 13) said, I felt that their parents were keeping an eye on their performance, which made me feel that I should pay more attention to them. Through communication, I knew that their parents have real and high expectations of them. I thought that I should help them fulfill those expectations. Teachers also said that they gave more personalized teaching to children from these families. They maintained that they know more about these children since their parents provide much more information about them. One teacher (code number 8) told me a story: [The father of one of my students] came to me when he was in my class. We became friendly with each other after he invited me to have dinner together several times. On these occasions, he told me about his son. Of course, his son was not there. He said that [his son] was shy and was not confident in himself. He asked me whether I had ways to deal with this. I said that I might nominate him as the monitor of our class so that he would be forced to communicate with others. His abilities could also be honed. I made him the monitor of our class, he became rather confident, and this made him confident in his learning. I was very happy then since I had achieved another success.

Unintended consequences Complaints and distrust Peasants realized that the higher involvement of privileged families in schooling brought advantages for children from these backgrounds and worried that it might increase their children’s disadvantages in school.

108  Consequences: intended and unintended Kuan (code number 22) complained in an interview that the interpersonal social networks between teachers and privileged families had destroyed her confidence regarding whether her children could enjoy fair and quality schooling: My children were never treated like those from families of high status. You know what the results would be! If you could have guanxi with teachers, that would be better. Peasants also complained that there were few ways to participate in schooling. If they wanted to get involved in school, they had to create and maintain interpersonal social relations with the teachers, which require endless costly efforts. This view was shared even by parents from privileged families. Qu, for example, said that education is a game that only those with power and money can play. He told me his story: When my daughter was in primary and junior secondary school, I often went to her schools. I sent her teachers gifts, usually cigarettes or something. By doing this, I hoped that her teacher would take better care of her. This was especially true when she was in senior secondary school. You know, the school was far away, and she was alone. Each package of cigarettes cost over 500 RMB. That was not so much for me, but if you want to visit teachers regularly, that means something. I reduced the number of teachers I visited later, especially when my business was not going well and I was earning less. Peasants also perceived sending gifts and attending banquets for teachers as “backdoor” strategies used by parents from privileged social groups and said that teachers were “bought” by these parents. The peasants’ children agreed with this view. They said that they often felt cynical when their teachers showed extra care for students without any good reason. Zhou, a graduate of Peak whom I encountered in my fieldwork, said, Every time a teacher put a classmate at the front of the classroom because of guanxi, we felt very unhappy about that. He said that his classmates often showed scorn toward these students, which usually highlighted the tension between students from different social groups: I thought then that I was different from them and that they were from privileged backgrounds. I did not even want to talk to them. He also maintained that this hurt his motivation to learn.

Consequences: intended and unintended  109 Some parents even began to distrust teachers’ commitment to their professional ethics and one of the interviewees said that the society and gifts from parents poisoned teachers: I thought that the social environment worsened and that teachers were polluted. They became driven by money. Otherwise, they would not accept gifts and invitations from parents. In more critical comments, a peasant (code number: 18) said, They were not qualified as teachers. You did not know what teachers looked like. They became snobbish. Complaints, distrust, and scorn brought great pressure to teachers and schools. The local bureau of education issued several notices to schools and prohibited teachers from attending banquets. Each school held meetings to discuss this issue with teachers. Teachers were required to be at school and could not attend any social activities held during the workday. As the principal at Port Senior Secondary School (code number 4) said, More and more parents were willing to send teachers gifts or invite them to banquets. I thought at least we could persuade teachers not to attend these banquets. That was what we could control. Teachers also felt embarrassed. They maintained that they tried their best to refuse invitations to banquets, but there were still some that could not be refused. They saw sending gifts and hosting banquets as part of the reproduction of interpersonal social networks and maintained that feelings (renqing, 人情) were produced and that it was hard for them to refuse gifts and invitations from parents. As one of the teachers interviewed said, Some parents have very good friends at school. Some were also very good friends of mine; therefore, it was hard for me to refuse. Guanxi reproduced Once social relations were established with teachers, some parents said, they maintained good social relations with teachers even after their children graduated. For example, one teacher (code number 7) related this story about a cadre: His young son was in my class when he was in senior secondary school. He knew me through one of my colleagues. He was a cadre in his town and usually attended conferences held in the county town, which gave him many opportunities to visit me and his son. He brought me gifts

110  Consequences: intended and unintended and invited me to banquets sometimes. We became friends. I usually phoned him when his son made progress. He often asked me about his son. We thought that we should cooperate to help his son get into the best college. It happened. We were both happy about that. He became a very good friend of mine. He called me even after his son had graduated from the school. We were happy that we could maintain this kind of connection. All the teachers had interpersonal social connections with students’ parents, reporting similar experiences.

Summary and discussion Studying hard and achieving school success are greatly appreciated by parents in Zong since they are considered the most important channel for upward social mobility. For rural parents in Zong who have internalized these values, studying hard to prepare for examinations is seen as the best way to help their children achieve their goals and permanently break away from their rural roots (Zhou, 2004). However, research has shown that social class influences a child’s school success. Students’ hard work and intelligence are not always powerful predictors of their educational achievement (Bourdieu, 1990; Li, 2003, 2006; Yang, 2006; Zhou, 2004). Parental involvement in schooling is an important process through which the influences of social class on schooling can be understood (Lareau, 1987, 2000, 2001). Parents in Zong try to influence their children’s schooling and create advantages for them in school success through engagement in their children’s learning process. The differences in parents’ ability to activate interpersonal social networks, however, results in unequal access to social capital in various forms. This differential access to social capital brings varying consequences, both intended and unintended, for children from different social backgrounds. My findings suggest that students from peasant families report disengaging from schooling and difficulties in promotion because they have less access to such important forms of social capital as quality supervision, expectations regarding schooling, and academic support. They are also susceptible to joining gangs and fighting because their after-school time is usually unsupervised. Parents from privileged backgrounds also creat advantages for their children in gaining access to key classes and quality schooling, as their social connections with teachers provid them with more opportunities to obtain important information about the running of schools and to influence key decision-makers. They also get more care from teachers for their children because their interpersonal social connections with teachers provide important channels for information exchange with them. Teachers also feel that renqing has been created between them and the parents. Therefore, they feel that they have to reciprocate the favours of the parents they were linked to through those strong social connections.

Consequences: intended and unintended  111 However, the use of interpersonal social networks and differential access to social capital also brings some unintended consequences. Some peasants begin to worry about the disadvantaged situations that they and their children experience. They even complain that the interpersonal social networks between teachers and privileged families worsens the situations their children confronted and argue for more formal access to schooling for parents. The distrust between teachers and parents increases as a result of these issues. The constant reproduction of the social networks between teachers and parents and the reaffirming of membership in these social networks is another unintended consequence.

References Bourdieu, P. (1990). Reproduction. London: Sage. Lareau, A. (1987). Social class differences in family-school relationships: The importance of cultural capital. Sociology of Education, 60(2), 73–85. Lareau, A. (2000). Home advantage: social class and parental intervention in elementary education. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publisher. Lareau, A. (2001). Linking Bourdieu’s concept of capital to the broader field: the case of family-school relationships. In B. J. Biddle (Ed.), Social class, poverty and education: policy and practice. New York; London: RoutledgeFalmer. Li, C. (2003). Institutional changes and the mechanisms of educational inequality: children’s education attainment in urban areas (1966–2003) (zhidu bianqian yu jiaoyu bupingdeng de chansheng jizhi: zhongguo chengshi znǚ de jiaoyu huode). Chinese Social Socience (zhongguo shehui keuxe), 4, 97–109. Li, C. (2006). Sociopolitical change and inequality in educational opportunity: impact of family background and institutional factors on educational attainment (1940–2001). Chinese Sociology & Anthropology, 38(4), 6–36 Yang, D. (2006). “Gaodeng jiaoyu ruxue jihui: kuoda zhong de jieceng chayu” (Access to higher education: widening social class disparities). Qinghua jiaoyu yanjiu (Tsinghua journal of education), 27(1), 19–25. Zhou, X. (2004). The state and life chances in urban China: redistribution and stratification, 1949–1994. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.

5 Discussion and conclusions

Introduction Great efforts have been made over the past few decades by the Chinese government to improve the quality of rural schools and to provide quality education to rural children. The new policies and practices have had pronounced effects on rural children’s achievement levels. For example, driven by the great expansion of the higher education system, the absolute number of rural students in China’s colleges and universities is increasing. The economic reform has also begun to cause the student bodies of rural schools to become more diversified. As the reforms deepened, it became increasingly clear that the chance of school success is different for children from different social groups. Research has shown that students from cadre and professional families have constantly outperformed their peers from other backgrounds. Their counterparts from emerging economic elite families have also gained substantial advantages in school success. While the stratified pattern of school success for rural students from diverse social backgrounds has become increasingly clear, research is still lacking on how this differentiated pattern emerged and on the influence of the market forces on the process. Most of the current literature on rural students’ school success looks at their families as a homogeneous group and views the quality of rural schooling as the main determinant of their chances of success in education (Jiang, 2007; Wei, 2004; Wei & Yang, 2004; Xie et al., 2008). The strategies employed by rural families from different social backgrounds to create a learning environment that is conducive for school success are still less likely to be the focus of research. This book attempts to unpack this process by examining the school involvement experiences of parents in Zong, a county located in the province of Anhui. Parental involvement is conceptualized in terms of social networks within a family, between a family and a school, and within a community, and these networks have been used as part of families’ strategies to support their children’s schooling within the increasingly stratified social context of rural China. The research highlights the importance of “interconnectedness” between family life and school life in the education of rural children

Discussion and conclusions  113 and examines how guanxi networks have been used by rural parents to gain advantages for their children in school success. Household interviews and field notes were used as the main methods of data collection, and a range of parents and teachers were involved in this ethnographic study. This chapter summarizes and discusses the main findings of this research.

Growing school involvement and the weak formal linkage between family and school China’s market transition since the late 1970s has been accompanied by the increasing importance of school success to the life opportunities of individuals (Hannum et al., 2007). Research has shown that the growth of a more open labour market in China has increased the economic returns on investment in human capital, highlighting the rising importance of earning a college degree in achieving a higher social status (Debrauw & Rozelle, 2007; Zhao & Zhou, 2007). This was especially true when the education system was restructured to support and sustain China’s rapid economic development (Pepper, 1990). School has been the most important institution in giving local rural youth in Zong a chance to break away from their rural roots. However, because only a small number of school graduates were able to gain access to colleges and universities in the early years of socialist China, the opportunities provided by the school system in Zong for rural youth to scale the social ladder were still scarce. The underdevelopment of the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy in the early years of socialist China in the region did not promise parents in Zong that their investment in education would result in a better standard of living for their children. Now, however, the structural transformation from an agricultural to an industrial economy in China, along with the market reforms, has reestablished the link between education and life opportunities for youth. For example, the fast-growing industry in the Pearl River Delta Region, which is near Zong, has created employment opportunities for educated rural youth at thousands of factories and offered them a chance at upward social mobility. This has driven thousands of young graduates each year from local junior secondary and senior secondary schools to migrate to such cities as Changzhou, Suzhou, and Yiwu. Most of them can easily find a job in the textile and clothing industry, which requires a secondary education, and earn a much higher salary than those of their fathers’ generation were able to earn. The reestablishment of the link between education and life opportunities has made schools more relevant to the lives of a majority of the people living in Zong. Investing in education so that their children will obtain returns when they enter the labour market has become essential for every family. The increasing number of school admissions and the improved chances of enrolling in colleges and universities have also promised rural parents in

114  Discussion and conclusions Zong that their investment in education can result in more years of training for their children and therefore long-term career success. Parents in Zong have a clear understanding of the situation. They are encouraged by the increasing chances of admission to senior high schools, colleges, and universities and have a great desire to help their children to achieve school success. Parents in Zong are aware of their increasing ability to support their children’s education and suggested that they can create better tiaojian for their children. They uniformly agree that they should support (zhichi, 支持) their children with sufficient funding, good nutrition, and comfortable housing so their children can attend school without difficulty back at home (hougu zhiyou, 后顾之忧). Although the parents’ backgrounds, personalities, and parenting styles vary, they agree on the importance of providing “spiritual” support to their children. They highlighted the importance of conveying expectations to their children and believe that telling their children about their educational expectations as soon as they start their schooling can help them to establish a clear goal, which is important in achieving academic success. They also agree that it is important for them to encourage their children to achieve better academic performance, which they believe is a natural part of their responsibilities in their children’s education. Parents interviewed in Zong from different families also highlighted the importance of “managing” their children. They thought that their children’s after-school activities should be controlled so the children can focus more on learning and obtain better academic results. Although they differ in their philosophies of effective management and how children can be managed, parents from all social backgrounds were willing to devote time to managing their children and helping them to make more time for their studies. They also highlighted the importance of teaching (jiao, 教) as a role that they should fulfil. By this, the parents by no means meant that they want to intervene directly in school classrooms. Instead, they suggested training their children with good qualities such as hardiness, perseverance, resilience, and respect for teachers, factors that they believe are crucial to school success. Furthermore, they also indicated that, as much as their knowledge permits, they tutor their children and help them with their homework. This is supported by the fact that a majority of the parents interviewed have received an education that was not available to their fathers’ generation. Parents also wanted to know about their children’s academic performance. They expressed concern about their children’s levels of achievement and said that information about their children’s school performance could help them to make decisions on whether there was a need to intervene in the learning process. Most of the parents interviewed also highlighted school choice as an important part of their school involvement. As the quality of schools varies tremendously in Zong and the best schools are more attractive, they agree that they wanted to send their children to those schools and believe that this will increase their children’s chances of being admitted to a university.

Discussion and conclusions  115 These findings are both unsurprising and surprising. They are unsurprising because, throughout Chinese history, school success has long been seen as a path, as Confucian teaching indicates, to a glorious career, particularly in officialdom. Most rural parents in this study believe this notion and think that access to colleges and universities is the most direct way to help their children permanently break away from their rural roots (Hayhoe, 1992; Zhou, 2004). This utilitarianism belief in education is further enforced by the contemporary patterns of the relationship between school achievement and economic success in China: the economic returns of education have increased over time in both the rural and urban labour markets (Debrauw & Rozelle, 2007; Parish et al., 1995; Zhao & Zhou, 2007; Zhou, 2009). These findings are surprising in that those economically at the bottom of the rural society do not, as researchers have suggested, fall into a culture of poverty and downplay the value of school success as the market reforms deepened and the new social order gradually solidified (Zhou, 2009). My interviews indicated that those at the bottom of rural society still express optimism about their children’s future and school success. They refuse to see schooling as useless even though they know to some extent that college degrees could now no longer guarantee success in the urban labour market for their children. This is partially a result of the fact that rural children still have opportunities to access the urban labour market if they have college degrees. Furthermore, multiple opportunities for social mobility have been created and continue to be created by China’s rapid economic growth (Davis & Wang, 2009). Although parents from different social backgrounds want to help their children to achieve school success, state schools in Zong provide few formal channels for parents to become involved in education. The state recognizes the influence of parents on schooling and the interdependence among the family, school, and community in education. However, it legitimizes school as the most important and professional institution in education and claims that the relationship between parents and teachers is not a partnership but has both a “professional client” and “governor and governed” nature. Parents are required to supplement school education by preparing children better for schooling and equipping them with good moral norms, such as willingness to work hard and obedience to authority. Despite the articulated interconnectedness among home, school, and community, the rules, laws, and regulations governing education state little about how partnerships between families and schools should be set up. Teachers in Zong have established themselves as experts in education and allow parents to participate in schooling only in restricted and formal ways. They see the interdependence between parents and teachers but welcome parents’ support in school education only in accepted ways, such as supplying them with relevant information about children’s behaviour and activities at home and controlling their after-school time. Teachers decide when and how parents should be formally involved in schooling. Although

116  Discussion and conclusions their work experience, the types of schools served, and their gender vary, teachers usually perceive parents’ formal involvement as a problem-solving strategy. For example, they expect parents whose children are experiencing learning difficulties to provide information about their children to them so that they can understand why the children are struggling. They want parents to get involved when their children break school rules and regulations. Schools in Zong provide few opportunities for parents to participate in schooling. Formal activities such as home visits and parent meetings usually serve special purposes and involve only a small number of parents. Teachers often use these occasions to convey their appreciation to students with the best academic scores and their families. They also use these events to tell parents that their children are having problems in school and push them to intervene. The number of parents involved in these activities is very small. Schools in Zong also send academic performance reports to parents. Although these notices are sent to all parents of schoolchildren, the information that they can deliver is limited.

Market reform, social stratification, guanxi exclusion, and access to social capital Although state schools provide few chances for parents to participate formally in schools, parents have developed strategies to help their children achieve school success. Parents from privileged families try to maintain family network ties. They have stable careers and incomes, sense little need to move away from their hometown, and feel no pressure to leave their children behind at home. When their children are accepted by senior secondary schools, parents from the new economic elite families can even afford to rent apartments/dormitory rooms and accompany their children in the towns where they attend school, to re-invent family social ties. Their counterparts from peasant families, however, experience difficulties in maintaining family network ties. They are motivated to move to the city to earn money for a better quality of life and pay for their children’s tuition fees. Peasants’ limited education also hurts their confidence in helping their children. They see teachers as the experts in education and recognize them as those who are most capable of helping their children achieve school success. As a result, they have turned over all educational responsibilities to teachers. Parents from privileged families, however, have received more education and had more school experience, and feel more competent in managing and tutoring their children. The efforts of privileged families to maintain family social ties gives their children opportunities to access social capital in terms of better nutrition, housing, and, in particular, better supervision and tutoring. Although immigrant peasants sought the help of their own parents and asked for their support in managing their children when they left home, they were in fact substantially disadvantaged in creating social capital in terms of supervision

Discussion and conclusions  117 and tutoring for their children, since their parents usually suffered from a more frustrating lack of educational skills. Parents from privileged families also try to maintain informal interpersonal social connections with teachers and other school staff. Cadres usually live in the same neighbourhoods as teachers and other professionals in townships and thus perceive the teachers as their fellows. They also recognize teachers as having the same social status as themselves and as members of their social circle. Peasants, however, do not show extensive ties to teachers. They feel that they are inferior in social status to the teachers, and it is hard for them to be recognized by teachers as members of their social network. Their privileged counterparts are also capable of producing and reproducing social relations with their children’s teachers. The intensity of the networks within the cadre and professional social groups makes it easy for them to gain access to teachers, via the help of their colleagues and friends. Peasants, however, hesitate in attempting to produce social relations with teachers, which requires endless effort and investment. They maintain that they have a substantial lack of social skills in communicating with teachers. They cannot afford the cost of creating social relations with teachers by giving gifts and hosting banquets for them. Their counterparts from the new economic elite background, however, are far more capable of doing so. Informal connections with teachers give parents from privileged backgrounds opportunities to create social capital for their children. They seek to exchange information with teachers, tell teachers about their children’s academic strengths and weaknesses, and explain their expectations of their children. They also collect information about their children’s school performance and take steps to intervene if necessary. For example, if their children perform badly in school, they ask teachers for explanations and suggestions. Their counterparts from peasant backgrounds are less capable of doing so. Connections with teachers also enable parents from privileged backgrounds easily to gain access to key agents in schools. Although peasants also talked about using kinship networks to help establish social connections with teachers, these social connections, surprisingly, did not always serve as transformative forces (Fei, 1992; Liang, 2005). Peasants report that they seldom have relatives working as teachers or kin who could introduce them to teachers. Therefore, they have few chances to learn more about their children’s school performance or to get suggestions from teachers about how to help their children achieve school success. Parents from privileged backgrounds are also advantaged in maintaining inter-generational ties within communities. Cadres and professionals usually live in townships, inhabit special regions, and live close together. Their communities are less influenced by peasant immigration. The social networks within their communities are intensive. Peasants, however, complain that their communities are adversely affected by the seasonal flow of immigrant peasants.

118  Discussion and conclusions The social ties within communities of privileged social backgrounds give parents in these communities chances to create social capital for their children. They nurture information exchange among parents. The community members therefore work together to supervise the children. The intensive social networks also helps parents to pass on their common cultural heritage in terms of shared values and beliefs regarding education to their children. Peasants, however, are substantially disadvantaged in this respect. These findings highlight that the absence of formal and routine channels for parents to become involved in schools has established a reliance on strong interpersonal social networks (guanxi). Peasants were excluded from these interpersonal social networks. Therefore, they were substantially disadvantaged in creating social capital for their children. This finding differs from the claims of many researchers about guanxi and its transformative uses. According to these researchers, strong and interpersonal social networks can cross class lines and link the privileged and the underprivileged (guanxi wuji, 关系无界; see Liang, 2005), making it possible for those from underprivileged social groups to achieve success by actively mobilizing their guanxi and connecting with those from privileged backgrounds. However, my findings suggest that it is difficult for peasants to create social connections with teachers. Guanxi, therefore, serves as an empowering force as well as a constraint for peasants. It empowers them in particular when they, for example, actively mobilize their kin to create social connections with their children’s teachers, but it constrains them when such social connections could not be created. The constraints become especially daunting when their well-capitalized and more capable counterparts from privileged backgrounds actively employ their guanxi with the aim of creating advantages for their children. These findings highlight the importance of understanding social capital as a process. They suggest that rural parents can successfully convert their economic and cultural capital into social capital in different forms only when social networks within families, within communities, and between the family and school are strategically activated. This confirms that social class has significant influences on the formation of social networks. The structure of social networks therefore shapes the opportunity structure for people from different social groups in capital conversion and the competition for the possession of social capital (Lin, 2000, 2002).

Inequality in social capital and its consequence There is a need to relate individual or family actions to collective effects – exclusion, social connections, and class advantage – because the examination of family strategies is important in understanding how society changes and reproduces itself (Ball, 2003; Morgan, 1989). Peasants in Zong are excluded from the important social networks that were of crucial importance in the social capital process. Their children are substantially

Discussion and conclusions  119 disadvantaged in accessing different forms of social capital that the parents want to create. Unequal access to social capital affected children’s school engagement and promotion. Peasants report that their children disengage from schooling because of lack of supervision. Their children’s disengagement is worsened by learning difficulties that they experience in school. Children said that they cannot gain access to quality support and tutoring from their parents, which usually leads them to end their schooling. Peasants’ children are also more likely to become involved in gangs and mob fighting because they lack supervision. Their parents have few connections with schools, and their after-school activities are not controlled. Parents from privileged backgrounds are substantially privileged in creating other advantages for their children with respect to school success. Their privileges in access to information and key agents in schools increase their children’s likelihood of being accepted by model schools and assigned to key classes. Social connections with teachers also increase the level of teachers’ care (guanzhao, 关照) for their children. Teachers said that they pay more attention to children whose parents maintained social connections with them. For example, in class, they ask students whose parents participate more in schooling to answer questions to engage them more in learning. They provide more personalized teaching to these children because they have obtained more information about the students from their parents. They talk with these children about their learning and convey their expectations to them. The differential access to social capital has also led to unintended consequences. Many peasants realize that the increasing involvement of privileged families in schooling has brought advantages for children from these backgrounds and complain that this might further increase their children’s disadvantage in school. They also complain that there are only a few ways to participate in schooling and said that the maintenance of interpersonal social relations with teachers requires endless effort and costly investment. This view is shared by parents from privileged families. One parent from an individual business owner’s family said that education is a game that only those with power and money can play. Peasants perceive the sending of gifts and hosting of banquets as backdoor strategies used by parents from privileged social groups and said that teachers were bought by these parents. Parental attitudes and teacher actions have also intensified the distrust of students towards teachers. Some students report that they often feel cynical and unhappy when their teachers show extra care for students whose parents maintain social connections with teachers. They even blame their peers from privileged backgrounds for playing unfair games. Some report that they interact less with children from these backgrounds. These findings are not surprising given that all efforts that made by parents to maintain guanxi with teachers are in fact

120  Discussion and conclusions endeavours to gain privileges for their own children. Neither peasants nor their counterparts from privileged backgrounds try to negotiate their influence on schooling publically or for public purposes. This rising individualism in exerting family influence on schools has dramatically challenged the longstanding image held by parents about schools as a great equalizer in Chinese society. Complaints, distrust, and even scorn have caused great pressure for teachers and schools. The local bureau of education issued several notices to schools and prohibited teachers from attending banquets held by parents, yet teachers still feel obliged to attend. They maintain that they have tried their best to refuse invitations to banquets but that some were still hard to refuse. They said that declining these invitations could make them look unsympathetic. Another unintended consequence has been the production of long-lasting social relations between parents and teachers. Some parents have maintained social connections with teachers even after their children graduated. Both the parents and teachers involved are happy about this. They see these social connections as expressive rather than purely instrumental and indicate that the relationships could be reproduced through further emotional and material exchanges (Bourdieu, 1986). These findings confirm that social networks within families, within communities, and between the school and family can be used strategically to create advantages in school success for children (Bankston, 2004; Bankston & Zhou, 1996; Coleman, 1988; Schneider & Coleman, 1993; Sun, 1999; Teachman, et al., 1997; Zhou & Bankston, 1994; Zhou & Kim, 2006). They highlight the fact that how parents interact with their children in their learning process affects whether they can successfully help their children gain access to their economic and cultural capital. The different structural patterns of social networks within and between different institutions therefore explain the different school outcomes for students from different social groups.

References Ball, S. J. (2003). Class strategies and the education market: the middle classes and social advantage. London and New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Bankston, C. L. (2004). Social capital, cultural values, immigration, and academic achievement: the host country context and contradictory consequences. Sociology of Education, 77(2), 176–179. Bankston, C. L., & Zhou, M. (1996). The ethnic church, ethnic identifcation, and the social adjustment of Vietnamese adolescents. Review of Religious Research, 38(1), 18–37. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. E. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). New York: Greenwood Press. Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. The American Journal of Sociology, 94(Supplement), 95–120.

Discussion and conclusions  121 Davis, D., & Wang, F. (2009). Poverty and wealth in postsocialist China: an overview. In D. Deborah & F. Wang (Eds), Creating wealth and poverty in postsocialist China (pp. 3–19). California: Stanford University Press. Debrauw, A., & Rozelle, S. (2007). Returns to education in rural China In E. Hannum & A. Park (Eds), Education and reform in China (pp. 207–223). London; New York: Routledge. Fei, X. (1992). From the soil, the foundations of Chinese society: a translation of Fei Xiaotong’s Xiangtu Zhongguo, with an introduction and epilogue. Berkley: University of California Press. Hannum, E., Park, A., & Cheng, K. (2007). Introduction: market reforms and educational opportunity in China. In E. Hannum & A. Park (Eds), Education and reform in China (pp. 1–24). London, New York: Routledge. Hayhoe, R. (1992). Education and modernization: the Chinese experience. Oxford, England; New York: Pergamon Press. Jiang, G. (2007). “Dangqian woguo gaodengjiaoyu ruxue jihui de chengxiang chayi: jiyu dui jiangxi, tianjin gaoxiao de shizheng diaocha fenxi” (The urban and rural gap in college access: a empirical study in HEIs in Jiangxi and Tianjin). Xiandai daxue jiaoyu (Modern university education), (6), 57–62. Liang, S. (2005). “Zhongguo wenhua yaoyi” (Key elements in Chinese cultures). Shanghai: Shanghai shiji chuban jituan (Shanghai Century Publishing Group ). Lin, N. (2000). Inequality in social capital. Contemporary Sociology, 29(6), 785–795. Lin, N. (2002). Social capital: A theory of social structure and action. New York: Cambridge University Press. Morgan, D. (1989). Strategies and sociologists: a comment on crow. Sociology, 23(1), 25–29. Parish, W. L., Zhe, X., & Li, F. (1995). Nonfarm work and marketization of the Chinese countryside. The China Quarterly, 143(1), 697–730. Pepper, S. (1990). China’s education reform in the 1980s: policies, issues, and historical perspectives. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies. Schneider, B., & Coleman, J. S. (1993). Parents, their children, and schools. Boulder: Westview Press. Sun, Y. (1999). The contextual effects of community social capital on academic performance. Social Science Research, 28(4), 403–426. Teachman, J. D., Paasch, K., & Carver, K. (1997). Social capital and the generation of human capital. Social Force, 75(4), 1343–1359. Wei, H. (2004). “Woguo chengxiang gaodengjiaoyu jihui jundeng de shizheng yanjiu”(A empirical study on the college access gap between urban and rural China). Unpublished MPhil thesis, Beijing Normal University, Beijing. Wei, H., & Yang, Y. (2004). “Woguo chengxiang gaodengjiaoyujihui jundeng de shengzhengyanjiu” (A empirical study on the higher education opportunity equality between urban and rural residents). Bijiao jiaoyu yanjiu (Comparative education research), 25(8), 96–96. Xie, Z., Wang, W., & Chen, X. (2008). “Woguo nvxing gaodeng jiaoyu ruxue jihui de chengxiang chayi yanjiu”(Research on the difference between urban and rural areas for female’s opportunity of higher education in China – based on the analysis of different types of universities). Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition), 8(6), 78–82. Zhao, W., & Zhou, X. (2007). Returns to education in urban China’s transitional economy: reassessment and reconceptualization. In E. Hannum & A. Park. (Eds), Education and reform in China (pp. 224–247). London; New York Routledge.

122  Discussion and conclusions Zhou, X. (2004). The state and life chances in urban China: redistribution and stratification, 1949–1994. Cambridge, UK & New York: Cambridge University Press. Zhou, M., & Bankston, C. L. (1994). Social capital and the adaptation of the second generation: the case of Vietnamese youth in New Orleans. International Migration Review, 28(4), 821–845. Zhou, M., & Kim, S. (2006). Community forces, social capital, and educational achievement: the case of supplementary education in the Chinese and Korean immigrant communities. Harvard Educational Review, 76(1), 1–29. Zhou, Y. (2009). “Zhongguo nongcun shouru fenpei chaju, pingkun yu laodongli feinong jiuye wenti yanjiu” (Income inequality, poverty and laborers’ non-farm employment in China’s rural areas). Beijing: Ecnomic Science Press.

Index

academic excellence 54 academic failure 51 academic performance 14–5, 49, 56–7, 62–4, 67–70, 74, 81, 84, 87, 103, 106, 114 academic performance reports 66, 116 academic progress 12, 85, 104 academic results 114; see also academic scores academic scores 12, 51, 56–7, 59, 67, 87, 116 academic strengths 81, 97, 117 academic success 2, 49, 75, 99, 114 access to universities 104 accompany studying 94; see also peidu after-school activities 15, 50–1, 70, 76, 96–7, 114, 119 after-school time 15, 50, 70, 110, 115 Anhui 41, 43, 49, 54–5, 58, 83, 102, 112; see also Anhui province Anhui province 21, 48, 81 associate’s degree 43, 48–9, 55, 76, 85, 92 bachelor’s degree 42–3 backdoor 108, 119 banquets 91, 98, 99, 101, 108–110, 117, 119–120 barriers 17, 22, 104 best-performing children 68 best schools 42, 105, 114 cadres and professionals 3, 84–91, 93, 101, 117 cadre’s family 48, 56 campus life 56

career success 45, 114 Changzhou 45, 113 characteristics 74, 91 Chinese culture 16, 19–20 Chinese society 19–20 classmates 56, 85, 103, 108 Coleman 13, 15–7, 45, 120 colleagues 15, 18, 75, 84, 86–93, 109, 117 college degree 51, 86, 92, 113, 115 communities 16, 60, 86–9, 100, 117–8, 120 community education 60 complaints 88, 107, 109, 120 Confucian culture 49 control 4–5, 9, 15, 18, 20, 24, 40, 50–2, 60, 64, 65, 70, 71, 78, 88, 97, 103, 109, 114–5, 119 costs and benefits 57 county bureau of education 24, 27 courtyard 88, 90 curriculum 54, 55 daily communications 90 daily operation 63 daily talks 26, 30, 90 debt 48, 59 decision-makers 106, 110 delicious food 77 deviant youth 65 difficulties in learning 81, 100 difficulty of life 52, 53 disadvantages 3, 16, 78, 107 distance 49, 68, 75, 83, 90, 94 distractions 67 dormitory room 94–5, 116 dropping out 46, 65

124 Index eastern coastal city 47, 77 economic ability 94 economic development 44, 113 economic growth 2, 7, 8, 56, 115 economic reform 2, 21–2, 112 economic returns 3, 9, 113, 115 edge, competitive 16, 47–8, 56 educational attainment 55 educational outcomes 13–4, 76 elite university 48 emotional support 78, 86 employment 6, 13, 45, 113 enlargement of class 68 environments, financially safe 46–7 ethnographic study 21, 24, 113 evaluation 51, 70 exceptional cases 65 expectations 15–6, 48–50, 57, 70, 76, 78, 85–6, 92, 95, 97, 102–3, 107, 110, 114, 117, 119 experts in education 62–3, 75, 99, 115–6 families’ strategies 112 family education 47, 60, 61 family income 29, 47, 82, 95, 102 family origins 95 family resource 13, 55 family structure 14, 80 father’s generation 46 favors 20 field notes 26, 29, 113 fieldwork 22, 24, 26, 39, 42, 46, 108 financial capital 104 financial burden 12, 42, 82, 85; see also financial pressures financial pressures 76 first-tier university 28, 46, 48, 55, 92 fit, physically 48 formal channels 18, 66, 70, 99, 115 formal rule 60 formal training 75 future career 70 game stores 51 ganqing 19, 98 gender bias 84 gifts 91, 98–9, 101, 106, 108–9, 117, 119 good examples 53, 68

grade 14, 69 grandparents 3, 50, 53, 67, 76–80, 102 grocery store 47, 56–8, 94–5 guanxi 16, 18–21, 74–5, 83–4, 91, 94, 97–9, 101, 105–9, 113, 116, 118–9; see also interpersonal social relations guardians 61–2 guidance 61 hardiness 52–3, 114 harvest season 22, 50, 53 head teachers 25–6, 61, 66–70, 99, 105 holiday 47, 54, 82 hometown 50, 84, 103, 116 homework 13, 15, 24, 42, 51–2, 54–5, 64, 85, 103, 105, 114 host representatives 98 household heads 28, 76, 78, 83 household interviews 25, 29, 113 housing, comfortable 12, 46–8, 70, 76–7, 114 human capital 2–3, 13, 113 identity 24, 91 illiterate 79 immigration 39, 86, 117 important tests 57, 69 income 2, 5–10, 12, 22–3, 26, 29, 46–8, 50–1, 54, 59, 76, 78, 82–3, 84, 94, 95, 102, 116 informants 23–7, 29, 80 information exchange 62, 90, 110, 118 information flow 16, 18, 69, 70, 75, 80, 86, 91, 93, 97 institutional holes 20 integration 60 intelligence and effort 75 interaction between families and schools 61 interconnectedness 17–8, 21, 61, 66, 71, 112, 115 interdependence 60, 70, 115 intergenerational closures 84 internet bars 51, 65 interview data 25 intrinsic motivation 52 investment 2–3, 11–2, 18, 21, 41–2, 45, 47, 57, 70, 84, 101, 113–4, 117, 119 invitation 68, 74, 109, 120

Index  125 Jiangsu 49; see also Jiangsu province Jiangsu province 49, 81, 102 Jiangxi 53 jobs in cities 100

obedience to authority 61, 71, 115 on campus 77, 94 opportunity cost 94 ordinary schools 25, 42–4

key classes 105, 110, 119 kinship 14, 18, 76, 79, 81, 117

parent meeting 66, 68–9, 71, 116 parental actions 25 parental supervision 64 parenting styles 114 parent’s involvement 12, 21, 26 parents’ strategies 21, 74 peak senior secondary school 25, 29, 42, 58–9, 63, 67, 71, 106 Pearl River Delta region 45, 113 peasant family 46, 49, 54–6, 59, 80–3, 102, 104, 106 peidu 94–7 performance in school 57, 66–7, 81, 86–7, 90, 92, 100 perseverance, 52–3, 114 physical absence 13, 78 playing 64, 88 power and money 108, 119 preferential policies 87 premature romance 65 prestigious university 57 primary education 1 primary school 1–2, 25, 28, 29, 39–44, 46–8, 50, 53–4, 60, 62, 65, 67, 70, 75, 81–4, 86–8, 90, 92, 102, 104 principal 26–7, 29, 67, 69, 83–4, 86–7, 92, 97–8, 103, 106, 109 private boarding schools 87 private tutor 15, 57, 93–4 private tutoring services 93 privileged backgrounds 17, 56, 76, 105, 108, 110, 117, 118–120 problem-solving method 67 problem-solving strategy 116 professional ethics 109 public expenditures 1 public schools 3, 78, 87 physical distance 75, 90

labour-intensive factories 103 labour market 2, 6, 20, 44, 45, 51, 113, 115 laundry 77 learning and behavior problems 63 learning and social skills 55 learning difficulties 24, 69, 84, 103–5, 116, 119 learning environments 70 learning habits 55 learning outcomes 102 learning process 12–3, 17, 26–7, 44, 59, 63, 100, 110, 114, 120 left behind 6, 8, 65, 69, 76 life in the city 79 living expense 96 local government 1, 6, 11, 47, 48, 71 look after 52, 77, 80 major 82 management of schools 62 market reforms 2–6, 8– 9, 18, 21, 45, 70, 113, 115 market transition 1, 3–4, 11, 100, 113 material support 77 mathematics 15, 49–50, 54, 57, 74, 82, 92, 105 middle-class 17, 25 migrant workers 6, 22, 78 Ming dynasty 88 mob fighting and gang 65 model schools 25, 42, 43, 105, 119 monitor 70, 86, 107 moral norms 61, 71, 115 motivation 17, 52, 85, 108 national college entrance examination 39, 49, 54, 81, 83, 96 neighbours 18, 81, 85, 87, 88–9, 99 new economic elites 10, 87, 94, 97 nutrition, good 2, 12, 46–7, 70, 76, 96, 114

renqing 19, 109–110 repayment 91 residents 5–9, 21, 46, 54, 58, 71 resilience 52–3, 114 respect for teachers 52, 114

126 Index rough mechanisms 105 rule 18–9, 29, 60–2, 65, 71, 100, 115–6 rural county 39 rural parents 3, 21–2, 24, 27, 41, 45, 49, 63, 70–1, 78, 88, 99, 110, 113, 115, 118 rural roots 44, 53, 88, 110, 113, 115 rural school 1–2, 11, 39–41, 43, 60, 112 rural society 3–4, 8, 10, 60, 65, 83, 88, 89, 115 rural youth 44–6, 70, 113 sacrifices 59 school admission 113 school age 39, 41, 76–7 school education 2, 39, 47, 49–50, 54, 57, 60–1, 71, 82–3, 104, 115 school engagement 102–3, 119 school environment 12, 56, 85 school experience 14, 46, 74, 116 school experiences 74 school involvement 21, 25, 27, 30, 44, 46, 50, 52, 54, 58–9, 61, 89, 101, 112–4 school policies 27, 29, 63 school success 1, 3, 10–3, 15–6, 18, 21, 25, 39, 44–5, 51–2, 54, 59, 70, 75, 76, 86, 88–9, 90, 99–101, 104, 110, 112–7, 120 school system 1, 10, 12, 24, 39–45, 68, 113 school-choice fees 44, 58–9, 70, 76 schooling 2–3 12, 15–7, 21, 24, 26, 29–30, 39, 41, 44, 45–6, 48, 57, 59–61, 63–4, 70–1, 75, 77, 81, 86, 92, 100, 102–3, 107–8, 110–1, 112, 114–6, 119–120 schoolyard 88 secondary education 45, 113 second-tier university 28, 47, 49, 55, 104 self-discipline 52, 55 semester 63, 69–70, 74, 98 senior school entrance examinations 42 short home visits 66–7, 71 siblings 13–4, 85 skip-generational closure 76 small business owners 86 social activities 109

social capital 13–8, 21, 110–1, 116–9 social circles 91, 97, 99 social connections 17–8, 76, 78, 83–4, 91–3, 97–101, 103–5, 110, 117–120; see also social networks social groups 3, 11, 13, 17, 22, 76, 108, 112, 117–120 social ladder 45, 49, 113 social mobility 18, 45, 110, 113, 115 social networks 13–6, 18, 20, 27, 75, 80, 81, 83, 86–7, 90, 93, 97, 100, 104, 111–2, 117–8, 120 social status 17, 113, 117 social ties 17, 19, 88–9, 90–1, 97–8, 101, 116, 118 socialist china 45, 113 special care 92 spiritual support 48, 78, 114 spring festivals 98 standard of living 48, 53, 113 stereotypes 89 structural deficiency 78 structural reform 39 students’ engagement 102 successful legends 88 supervision 15–7, 51, 64, 77, 78, 85, 88, 103, 105, 110, 116, 119 Suzhou 45, 113 teachers 1, 11, 15–8, 24–7, 29, 41–3, 50, 52, 54–7, 59–71, 74–5, 83–96, 98–101, 103–120 teaching 13, 26, 50, 52–6, 63, 75, 76, 80, 86, 107, 114–5, 119 textile and clothing industry 45, 49, 113 third-tier university 28, 45, 54, 83 tiaojian 45, 46, 48, 114 ties of relatives 84 town government 74 traditional values 89 trust 20, 24–5, 27, 30, 55, 77, 80, 82, 107, 109, 111, 119–120 tuition fees 67, 87, 106, 116 TV programs 51 university dream 49 upper class 17, 83 urban areas 1, 41, 85

Index  127 villager 24, 26, 47, 51, 64, 77, 82–4, 104 villages 5, 6, 21–2, 39, 41, 46–7, 52–4, 58, 81, 89 vocational education 85 vocational schools 40

xiang government 47, 48, 51–2, 85–6, 97

wages, higher 79 Wanli era 88 willingness to work hard 61, 71, 115 work experience 63, 116 work hard 53, 61, 69, 71, 88–9, 115 working-class 25 workloads 68

Zhejiang 50 zhichi 114 Zong 21–3, 25, 39–48, 50–3, 55–6, 58–9, 63–71, 74–6, 78–81, 84–6, 88–9, 92–5, 98–9, 102, 104–5, 110, 112–6, 118 Zuo Guangdou 88

Yiwu 45, 113 youth gangs 51