Prof. Fengshu Liu
Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Oslo (UiO), Norway
Title: Daxue as the norm: The rise of the Chinese ‘schooled society’ over three generations
Abstract:
Drawing on life-history interviews (N=98) with Beijing young men and women in their last upper secondary school year, their parents and their grandparents, this presentation is about how young people’s educational experiences have changed over the three generations. With the young generation, a prime example of the ‘schooled society’ emerged in urban China. All the families interviewed showed a strong desire to maximize education for the ‘priceless child’ (Liu, 2016, 2020), who was—or at least supposed to be, aspiring for high education achievement. There is much evidence of a strong norm of going to university/college, of parental involvement, of daily striving for academic excellence, of efforts to maximize productivity in studying, of a strong preoccupation with educational success and dread of failure by both parents and young people alike. This intense centrality of education contrasts sharply with their grandparents’ discourse of lack and irrelevance of schooling, and with their parents’ narratives about a childhood and youth when education was much less important. Besides globalization, this reflects China’s century-old and widespread reverence for education and its exemplary norm. It also has to do with the fierce competition for a ‘worthy’ livelihood in the post-Mao era without a state-provided safety net, the higher education credentials inflation, and the urban family’s strong desire to maximize human capital for the ‘priceless child’, also the ‘aspiring individual’, of the young generation. The three generations’ educational experiences are in keeping with the rise of a ‘maximization desire’ with the young generation (Liu, 2020).
This work is part of a larger project on three generations of young men and women in China and Norway, funded by the Research Council of Norway (2011-2016).
Biography:
Fengshu Liu (bio) Fengshu Liu is Professor at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Oslo (UiO), Norway. She is the director for the new international Mphil. program in ‘Education and Social Change: Childhood and Youth Studies’ at UiO. She also coordinated the UiO’s international Mphil. program in Comparative and International Education until 2020. Liu’s research cuts across childhood and youth studies, sociology of education, comparative and international education, and China studies. Much of her work examines the interplay between socio-cultural and institutional changes and children and young people in contemporary societies, with special, but not exclusive, regard to China. More specifically, it studies children’s and young people’s experiences of ‘global modernization’ and how current political, economic, cultural, technological, educational, socio-spatial and demographic processes shape various forms of challenges as well as opportunities for young people. Besides, her work also touches upon such kindred themes as culture and education, Confucian self-cultivation, school culture and gender, and teaching and learning in higher education. In addition to articles published in highly reputed international journals, she has also authored two books: Urban youth in China: Modernity, the Internet and the self (2011, Routledge), and Modernization as lived experiences: Three generations of young men and women in China (2020, Routledge) as part of her larger project on three generations of young men and women in China and Norway.