The study of suzhi 素质 (human quality) in general and suzhi jiaoyu 素质教育 (education for quality) in particular have evoked an accumulative interest. As an amorphous concept on the one handFootnote ¹ and a technology of “government of self and others”Footnote ² on the other, suzhi (jiaoyu) has been analysed within the framework of neoliberalism.Footnote ³ However, this body of literature has been criticized for its lack of evidence, and for a careless examination of the constituents of contemporary Chinese governance that incorporate various non- or anti-liberal elements in particular terms of (neo)liberalization of the market.Footnote ⁴ Instead, present Chinese governance is considered as a hybrid combining “earlier Maoist socialism, nationalist and developmentalist practices and the discourses of the Communist Party with the more recent market logic,” against which an oligarchic corporate state or neo-socialism is emerging.Footnote ⁵ Following Nikolas Rose regarding the three foci of neoliberal governmentality (governing from a distance, calculability, and the promotion of self-activating, disciplined, individuated subjects), Kipnis documents that these three elements have been found in China's various historical periods, such as Chinese Legalist “governmentality” in the third century BCE, and the Confucian idea of self-discipline and self-cultivation.Footnote ⁶ These findings demonstrate a Chinese governmentality that shares commonalities with neoliberal governmentality of the West whilst inventing itself independently.

Challenging the idea of a neoliberal Chinese governance partly reflects a shift in debates about China and partly reflects new policy directions. These move in tandem with the re-differentiation of people along class lines that has resulted in the formation of the cadre-capitalist class, the middle class and the dispossessed.Footnote ⁷ In this class restructuring, suzhi as an expanding discourse has gained a sacredness that reinforces the hierarchical structure of Chinese society.Footnote ⁸ One of the fields in which suzhi is adopted to illustrate and/or defend disadvantaged socio-cultural groups is education (for quality).Footnote ⁹ Built on the existing literature and drawing upon fieldwork conducted in a public school of largely migrant children in suburban Xiamen 厦门, south-east China, this article first looks into the formation of class lines between people with different backgrounds – migrant, urban or rural – against the suzhi jiaoyu programme of the school. This programme particularly targets the rural populace with a carefully and specifically selected curriculum and quantifiable techniques, in order to turn them into what Woronov illustrates as both the self-individuated and homogenized subjectsFootnote ¹⁰ of China's modernization project.

Field Setting

The education of rural-urban migrant children did not become a salient issue until the 1990s when the 1980s’ pattern of rural-urban migration in which men migrated to the city alone for a better-paid job was replaced by one in which couples moved together to the city, bringing a growing number of young children. Owing to restrictions from both the household registration (hukou 户口) system and the educational system that were tailored merely for urban residents,Footnote ¹¹ an immediate difficulty facing migrant families concerned the public (particularly compulsory) education of their children,Footnote ¹² including exclusion from public schools, much higher tuition fees for migrant children and mental maladjustment for many.Footnote ¹³ However, government at all levels has been increasingly concerned with the education of migrant children since the late 1990s. At the centre of state policies lies the principle, gradually formed in the early 2000s, that both the government and public schools of receiving cities should play a key role in safeguarding the education of migrant children (liangweizhu zhengce 两为主政策). As a consequence, an increasing number of migrant children entered urban public schools.Footnote ¹⁴

As one of the four earliest Special Economic Zones (SEZs) set up in 1980, Xiamen has enjoyed economic prosperity over the past three decades. Although it is not a major city, it has been among the main destinations for migrants. By 2007, almost 40 per cent of the population of Xiamen was registered as “temporary residents,” of whom the vast majority were labour migrants.Footnote ¹⁵ In attempting to accommodate migrant children, the Xiamen government initiated a number of policies to follow the liangweizhu policy of the central government. These ranged from opening more public schools to migrant children to cancelling the jiedu fei (借读费, the fee for a place in public schools that are “borrowed” by migrant families to allow their children to study) for officially identified rural migrant children.Footnote ¹⁶ To maintain the transparency of the policy's implementation, in a 2007 document the Xiamen government stipulated the principle of four publicities regarding the admission scheme, admission methods, the time for application and the result of admission.Footnote ¹⁷ For the admission of migrant children, public schools have been encouraged to adopt the random method of computer allocation of places (diannao paiwei 电脑派位).

Xiamen city has six administrative districts; Haicang 海沧 administrative district (HCAD) occupies a half-way position both geographically and socioeconomically between the two ends of the spectrum, having a suburban location and being the investment zone for Taiwanese entrepreneurs. HCAD mirrors a nationwide trend of making suburbs of Chinese cities an economic or industrial attraction, followed by the arrival of a growing number of (especially manual) migrants to work in various enterprises in these areas. In response to the local government policy of promoting the education of migrant children, HCAD took the lead recently to improve the infrastructure of all schools under its administration, both urban and rural. By the time of this fieldwork, amongst other improvements, each classroom in all public schools was equipped with a multimedia system, and every school had a high quality sports ground.

HCAD has four elementary schools under the direct administration of its Education Bureau (qu zhishu 区直属), forming the first-class group of elementary schools in the district. The XX elementary school in this study is located in a suburban village whose residents were granted urban hukou and made a living from the rental of their houses as a result of compensation for their land expropriated by the local government in the early 1990s. Eighty per cent of the students in the XX school are migrants, according to the school authority, giving it the highest proportion of migrant children among the four qu zhishu. The other three schools primarily take either urban or local-rural children. Different patterns of student composition embody the government policy of “attending the neighbourhood school” (jiujin ruxue 就近入学) on the one hand, and on the other, reflect a rural-urban continuum with the XX school being located in the middle.Footnote ¹⁸

The XX school was promoted from a rural village school at the bottom of the league table to one of the four qu zhishu in 2002 when the restructuring of local schools commenced. The promotion first involved the appointment of a new headmaster, followed by the recruitment of more than ten new teachers as “brought-in talents” (yinjin rencai 引进人才) from outside the region under a “brain-gain” campaign in HCAD. These yinjin teachers usually possessed a higher degree and/or a higher academic title, coupled with extensive teaching and/or administrative experience. This was in contrast to local teachers, who possessed relatively low educational degrees, and lacked experience or “ability” (some yinjin teachers claimed). Of the local teachers, those who were presumed mediocre were relocated in other (usually more remote rural) schools.

This promotion was meant to provide a model school for other suburban and rural schools of lower academic performance, whilst targeting the growing number of migrant children in the area. In fact, the XX school started to top the league table of local schools just a few years after its promotion, and remained in that position in terms of both high test scores and its achievement in a wide range of extracurricular activities organized by state agencies, such as singing contests and games. Meanwhile, a decline in the number of local students, primarily as a consequence of the one-child policy, has meant more places available for migrant children; thus the school has been transformed from one exclusively for local village children to one with 80 per cent migrant children. About 30 per cent of the students are from families with an urban hukou, either from urban citizenship in their hometowns, or because the local government has granted them urban citizenship in line with the government policy in favour of rich or educated migrantsFootnote ¹⁹ or as compensation for their requisitioned land. Students in this school therefore incorporate three categories: urban citizens of migrants, urban citizens of locals and rural citizens of migrants. However, urban citizens of locals were still perceived by many teachers as rural, and the term “urban students” was exclusively used for urban citizens of migrants as documented in detail below.

An intensive period of fieldwork was conducted for three months in the spring of 2009, followed by continuing communication with some people until the spring of 2010. The methodology included observations both inside and outside classrooms, semi-structured or in-depth interviews with 18 teachers in the school (nearly one-third of the teachers), 12 parents and an educational official from the local government, as well as other forms of interaction with these educators. In addition, this study also draws upon publications, reports or other forms of writing by teachers.

Suzhi Jiaoyu and Rural-Urban Divide

The restructuring of the local schools in HCAD was in tandem with the national curriculum reform (kecheng gaige 课程改革), oriented to raising the suzhi of the citizenry to enhance the competitiveness of the nation – in the Social Darwinist sense – and moral quality – in the Confucian senseFootnote ²⁰ – largely through cultivating (peiyang 培养)Footnote ²¹ all-round younger generations with morality, innovation spirit and practical skills, and humanistic and scientific spirit.Footnote ²² Furthermore, the national curriculum provided space for accommodating the curriculum compiled by the local education bureau (difang kecheng 地方课程) and the school (xiaoben kecheng 校本课程) that supposedly focuses on local “characteristics.” This reform is a direct reaction to an increasingly knowledge/economy-driven global competition, and also reflects a longstanding concern with the conventional paradigm of the examination-oriented Chinese educational system that has largely emphasized rote learning at the expense of practicality, plurality and innovativeness of education.Footnote ²³

This concern is the driving force behind the idea of emphasizing suzhi jiaoyu over examination-oriented education (yingshi jiaoyu 应试教育).Footnote ²⁴ As an ardently hailed progressive ideology, suzhi jiaoyu has received popular support nationwide from both the public and educators, despite its amorphous connotation. However, there has been far less enthusiasm among schools to put it in practice when they have to “dance to the music of college entrance examinations (gaokao 高考).” This even holds true, though to a lesser degree, for elementary schools which have to deal with various local examinations to prepare children for gaokao from a very early stage.

Unlike their counterparts in many other schools, the teachers in XX school agreed that suzhi jiaoyu rather than yingshi jiaoyu is the firm foundation of a quality education, in that the high quality derived from the former will lead in the long term to high academic achievement, while the latter can only temporarily bring high achievement in some cases. That is, suzhi jiaoyu can extend students’ achievement and provide a solid foundation for lifelong sustainable development. However, their emphasis on suzhi jiaoyu was also driven by potential rewards, such as a better chance to present the school in highly rated activities organized by government agencies. This would in turn enhance its public profile to attract more resources from various institutions or individuals, and more students of high quality.

In the process of cultivating suzhi in its students, yinjin teachers in particular observed that children with a rural background, despite having some virtues such as being friendly, were deemed to be of “low quality” in comparison with their urban counterparts, a minority in the school. This description was particularly used to refer to the former local-rural children, as they were classified several years earlier when the school started its restructuring. Children with a rural background were regarded negatively in relation to all attributes including manner, attitude, mental ability, aptitude and physical appearance: they were said to be “brutal,” “impolite,” “retarded,” “self-abased,” “dirty” and “dark.” Teachers attributed these negative features to a lack of family education or discipline as a consequence of the low educational level of their parents. Most parents, too, expressed regret at their lack of educational capital to help with their children's work or the proper methods to discipline them. These deficits, according to the teachers, have caused the children to lack good habits, broad horizons, self-esteem and high academic achievement, at which suzhi jiaoyu was targeted.

Therefore, whilst proudly recounting achievements the school had made through suzhi jiaoyu over the past years – turning undereducated rural children into disciplined students of high achievement – teachers still could not help expressing their admiration of the “perfect” high quality family education that urban children can receive from their parents. In addition, as the number of applicants began to exceed the school's intake capacity, largely as a result of its rapidly elitizing status, it started to select students. In the selection process, those who had the “lower quality” of migrant status were most likely to be excluded, as shown below. Meanwhile, some teachers were worried about a possible “brain drain” among the high quality urban students, for a new public school was to be established shortly in the urban residential area.

For similar reasons, the top leadership of the school was deeply concerned about the lack of professionalism (although no interviewee used this term) of its workforce – the crucial factor to sustain its development – and primarily attributed this to the local-rural roots of many teachers. For the headmaster, the school's achievements so far were largely a result of the high levels of enthusiasm and hard work of teachers over past years. This was mainly driven by their lofty ideal of building a model school together with rewards for their achievement. The school was now facing a severe problem referred to by the top leadership as a “bottleneck” that was precluding it from reaching new heights.

Lack of professionalism among many local-rural teachers meant that they had become “a teacher through practical apprenticeship, and one improved as a teacher by individual trial-and-error,”Footnote ²⁵ which had led the school to reach “a plateau of achievement,” an expression employed by several top leaders. Many local-rural teachers were said to be unaware of the importance of spending time on careful preparation for class using professional techniques, but instead worked in a very mechanical and arbitrary, though hard-working, way. The headmaster considered that these less effective local-rural teachers lacked intelligence or suzhi, and were closer to labourers than to intellectuals. For this reason, the school embarked upon a teacher workshop system in which a key teacher – usually a yinjin teacher – prepared classes with three or four non-key teachers, in the hope of developing a professional learning community. However, the goal of breaking through the bottleneck was difficult to achieve immediately, given the problems of finding proper ways to raise teachers’ suzhi, as well as the suburban status of the school which meant it was unlikely to attract a sufficient number of top teachers of urban background.

Migration as an Advantage

In this rural-urban debate, a nuanced differentiation between rural communities was made by the teachers in their description of their students and colleagues. The local children of families recently granted urban hukou were said by yinjin teachers not only to have the shortcomings shared widely by the rural populace mentioned above, but also to lack motivation for studying hard as a result of their families now living on rental income that gave them financial security. In other words, despite gradually improved habits and appearances resulting from several years’ suzhi jiaoyu, local students were still thought not to reach the required level; instead, a counterforce arising from their better-off life was apparently undermining the efforts the school had made to enhance their suzhi. The migrant children from rural areas of other regions, on the other hand, having observed and experienced hardship in daily life and with parents who tended to educate them with reference to the successful people around them,Footnote ²⁶ were said to be more likely to show a desire to study hard at school, in the hope of changing their destiny in the future.Footnote ²⁷ This view of local and migrant children was also confirmed by local teachers.

By the same token, a number of yinjin teachers thought that HCAD was a nouveau riche town primarily characterized by a rapidly changing appearance in the reform era, but inherently still a place of peasantry.Footnote ²⁸ Despite a continuing influx of migrants, the local people still led an insular life, which, according to a yinjin teacher, was the main reason why the local students could not perform well, even compared to their rural migrant counterparts who were usually thought to be disadvantaged:

Almost all teachers I interviewed, local or yinjin, confirmed this view by telling me that the poorest performers were primarily local. Regardless of the truth regarding the relation of genetics to learning capability of the village children, in this context migration was thought to be a positive characteristic in relation to quality. The relatively high level of motivation and education among migrants would presumably lead to their children performing better in school than local formerly rural children, despite the latter families’ urban hukou. Therefore, an urban hukou would not automatically endow rural people with high quality. For a majority of teachers, quality should be viewed as synonymous with human modernization (ren de xiandaihua 人的现代化), an inner quality that the school had been striving to cultivate among its students and teachers.

Human modernization, as compared with “peasant thinking” (nongmin yishi 农民意识) is widely accepted in China as both the foundation and the essence of socioeconomic modernization.Footnote ²⁹ Therefore, when urban dwellers are regarded as high quality and rural ones as low quality, the way to improve or modernize the rural populace lies in either education or mobility. In terms of mobility, especially in the reform era, being stuck to one's (usually rural) home place (antu zhongqian 安土重迁) as is traditional in Chinese agrarian society will lead to losing opportunities to improve one's status both socially and personally. Students as well as teachers can be limited by this way of thinking. Clearly, when rurality and modernity are regarded as two separate domains, migration is believed to be a major route to make people more adventurous, open-minded and entrepreneurial, and is hence the way to modernize the rural population. A yinjin teacher described local colleagues in a similar tone:

This negative portrayal of the local teachers was undoubtedly reinforced by negative stereotypes of local children, who by dint of an accident of history can now claim urban hukou. It also implied a pre-professional working style by the local teachers. For their critics, a professional teacher should be substantially engaged in “professional cultures of collaboration to develop common purpose,” “to create a climate which values risk-taking and continuous improvement, to develop stronger senses of teacher efficacy.”Footnote ³⁰ According to the top leadership of the school, at the very centre of this low suzhi of local teachers was their unconsciousness as opposed to “intendedness” towards the object of professionalism.Footnote ³¹ By the same token, the headmaster – who had himself migrated to HCAD from a rural village – claimed that local people would only ever be able to become employees of migrants in the future if they continued as they were. Given difficulties in access to some of their working settings, I do not feel fully capable of assessing whether or to what extent this criticism of local teachers holds true. However, in conversations with local teachers their lack of “intendedness” towards professionalism and/or lack of confidence in delivering effective teaching in comparison to their migrant counterparts were clearly observable.

By this criterion, migration is associated with modern moral values, and represents an adventurous, entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism. In this light, local teachers and local students were regarded by their yinjin teachers or colleagues as of low quality both in terms of migration and education, even in comparison with rural migrants. In this sense, rurality is not necessarily associated with rural hukou (and vice versa), but is an attitude or way of thinking and living. This was thought to demonstrate that the ultimate goal of (suzhi) jiaoyu was to transform the state of mind to enable an intrinsic or fundamental transformation of a person, an idea informed by the traditional Chinese way of cultivation detailed below. Therefore, the people who were blamed for hampering the enhancement of the school were largely local teachers and students. An interviewee of local rural origin agreed that she could not see why it was migrant children, but not the local students of former ruralites, who were treated as the only or more disadvantaged group.

Physical Education and Reading the Classics

Kipnis distinguishes two forms of suzhi, singular and plural. As an overarching judgment of human quality, the singular or capital Q Quality gains its emergent value “that is greater than the sum of the parts.”Footnote ³² Plural qualities are thought to “mutually restrict, promote and permeate one another to form a unified body.”Footnote ³³ Officially, the package of suzhi jiaoyu has gradually developed to include five major components, de 德 (moral), zhi 智 (intellectual), ti 体 (physical), mei 美 (aesthetic or music and art) and lao 劳 (manual dexterity), to bring it more into line with the idea of practicality, plurality and innovativeness promoted by the national curriculum reform.Footnote ³⁴ This package was primarily the way in which teachers in the XX school understood suzhi jiaoyu and cultivated it among students, with carefully and specifically designed activities running throughout and outside the curriculum. Two activities were particularly highly regarded by the school and were thought to be the most essential ways to cultivate comprehensive suzhi: physical exercise and reading the classics.

To foster a robust physique is the first task prior to all other concerns of the school. The headmaster observed that among Chinese children, there were far more “little glasses” (near-sighted and glasses-wearing children) than in the US, where his impression was (during a three-week visit in 2006) that Americans were physically robust.Footnote ³⁵ His conclusion was that “since we are physically inferior to Americans, we cannot win anyway no matter how hard we strive.” This comment is an inevitable reminder of the notion of “racial improvement” (renzhong gailiang 人种改良) promoted by Republican elites in China in the early 20th century, and its conceptual continuity in the recent population control policy that encourages parents to “bear and rear superior” children.Footnote ³⁶ As a eugenic idea, “racial improvement” has long been promoted and carried out under the concept of building a strong Chinese nation despite its controversial nature in the West.Footnote ³⁷ By the same token, a teacher who claimed the local students were mentally retarded bluntly told me the criteria used to select students from an increasingly large pool of applicants: those who look “stupid, ugly, too small or too tall” – that is, “defective” – will usually be excluded from the shortlist entered into the computer for “random” selection. As a predictable result, “brutal,” “retarded” or “dirty” rural migrant children are more likely to be eliminated in the first round of selection.

The school made an effort to enhance the physique of those admitted. To guarantee efficiency and effectiveness, it initiated a long break (30 minute) programme in the mid-morning of every school day for all students to participate in organized physical exercises. The school also emphasized that physical wellbeing was not only important for physique per se; more importantly, it aided co-ordination between different parts of the body and the body and the mind. Skipping, given its low requirement for space and cost and high value for training co-ordination, was prescribed as the school-wide activity. This training was supposedly particularly pertinent to the students of rural background, as the headmaster said:

To make skipping more attractive and effective, and hence sustainable for the well-rounded development of students, the school put a lot of effort into varying the experience. For instance, for a school-wide skipping competition, students were asked to make up their performance essentially by themselves. The benefits of this kind of activity, as a top leader wrote in a report, were comprehensive:

Physical exercise was thought basically to be connected to one's external development, while reading the classics was supposedly able to cultivate inner abilities and thus was employed by the school authority as a primary activity in its suzhi jiaoyu. Indeed, reading has historically been treated as the major method of personal transformation, as the Chinese word wenhua 文化 or “culture,” implies. Wen, translated as “literary, literature, script, inscription,” is the central part of the idea of culture, and hua, translated as “change, transform,” is the process of culturing people.Footnote ³⁸ The recent reading classics campaign (dujing re 读经热) among Chinese children emerged in Taiwan in the mid-1990s and then spread to domestic and overseas Chinese communities.Footnote ³⁹ It was thought to be particularly important for children with a rural background who were considered not to have been exposed to a wide range of reading, as one school document suggests:

The school thus embarked upon a programme of “building a book-fragrant campus,” in which all teachers were mobilized to participate, and parents and communities invited to contribute in various ways. The school recommended 60 books, most being Chinese or Western literary classics. Students were required to read the books within six years of their elementary education, an average of ten books each year. Those who finished had to pass tests and then received credits. Students were expected to allocate their own time wisely and to read regularly, that is, to develop good habits. Among other initiatives, the school allocated one session in the afternoon of each school day for students to read the classics. To demonstrate its effect, one teacher offered an example in which reading turned a formerly, in her words, “annoying and stupid rural girl” into an “intelligent, good-mannered and knowledgeable young lady.”

Despite an ostensibly traditional approach to education for the historic elite, and its potential philosophy of blind loyalty to the regime and neglect of the role law plays in modern society, the high culture represented by especially Chinese classics was particularly regarded by teachers as a foundation for children's cognitive and moral development and their understanding of other (modern) knowledge. It was thus the core of suzhi jiaoyu, a belief promoted by the dujing campaign. The emphasis on suzhi jiaoyu in this case partly implies limited direct pressure from gaokao on elementary education, and partly reflects an age-long Chinese tradition of cultivating young generations from a very early stage.Footnote ⁴⁰ This cultivation developed into a more comprehensive body-and-mind education package after physical education was also emphasized.

Discipline and Responsibility

The most essential pedagogy for the XX school was to cultivate good habits through discipline as revealed briefly above. Habit cultivation was particularly thought to be necessary for rural children who, as one teacher remarked, had appeared to be

When asked why current students looked clean and “civilized” in their eyes, many teachers stated that good habits were cultivated through external discipline in various activities inside and outside the classroom, and students had developed internalized disciplinary values promoted by the teachers. A major method the school adopted to discipline students was a form of self-rating grid – Class Four Items Rating Publicity Bar – renewed on a weekly basis. The Bar covered four major domains regarding schooling, xuexi 学习 (study), jilü 纪律 (discipline), wenming 文明 (civilization) and weisheng 卫生 (hygiene), with each being further classified into four specific items with credit points allocated to each to make up 100 points in total.Footnote ⁴¹ This way of governing students confirmed Foucault's analysis of power in the modern institution of education. Power exists increasingly in the form of surveillance that is largely achieved through the classification and documentation of individuals.Footnote ⁴² This is further manifested by the case of Teacher Hao.

Teacher Hao (a pseudonym), a female at her mid-20s, was recommended by the school authority for my research. In continued communication with her, I gradually became aware of the reason behind the school's recommendation. Teacher Hao said that she was very keen to teach poor school performers, because every time she saw their apparent progress under her devoted and hard work, she became more aware of the value of education. To make her work effective she aimed to help students become reflexive in relation to their conduct. Teacher Hao devised a jinbu ben 进步本 (progress book) alongside the school-designed parent-school book to monitor children's conduct and progress in all aspects.

In the first week, Teacher Hao guided students to think of and write down their ideas in their jinbu ben in relation to a few aspects of their overall conduct: their merits and shortcomings, the starting point for them to make progress, and the help their parents can offer. She then asked them to show their parents the ideas and asked the parents to write down their feedback too. On that basis, Teacher Hao asked students on the following Monday to write down their ideas of where they thought they could start making progress in a reasonable number of (usually three) aspects that were related either to their daily habits or to their school subjects. On the Friday, students needed to report to Teacher Hao, and show their parents, what they had or had not achieved as summed up in jinbu ben. They then found another three aspects on which they would like to make progress the following week.

To make students’ conduct and progress accountable, Teacher Hao converted the three aspects in which they planned to make progress into three credit points, which would be added up at the end of the semester to examine their “attitudes, behaviour and willingness to act morally,” educational governance Woronov similarly observed in her study of schooling in Beijing.Footnote ⁴³ This quantified way appeared to be auditable and “convincing” and thereby able to educate students, as Teacher Hao explained:

To help students to achieve effectively and confidently what they had planned, Teacher Hao thought it was very important for them to plan with a good sense of timing:

Guided by a specific and time-sensitive self-designed plan, students were cultivated to become “self-individuated, quantified and disciplined” high-quality subjects, in Woronov's words,Footnote ⁴⁴ who would consequently find themselves standing at the door leading to success, as Teacher Hao positively predicted in one of her self-improvement doggerels written for students:

Under Teacher Hao's careful and specific guidance, students were becoming both the subject and object of their own knowledge, created through completing jinbu ben tasks on a weekly basis.Footnote ⁴⁵ However, some students became reluctant and/or perfunctory in the process. Teacher Hao would tell them that this was a moral deficit, because to make oneself progress

The idea of responsibility was further strengthened in Teacher Hao's summary of her work, or in her words, “the essence of education” that was “awakened.” She wrote: “Education is about awakening, [it] awakens in teachers [a sense of] responsibility for their work, in students [a sense of] responsibility for their development and in parents [a sense of] responsibility about their role.”

Good habits achieved through daily routine were believed by most teachers to foster a sense of “responsibility” (zeren xin 责任心) among children, which in turn was believed to promote disciplined behaviour and moral conduct. Like Teacher Hao, many interviewees insisted that lack of responsibility was similar to the lack of power for the golden touch. Without responsibility, students cannot eventually achieve high academic standards in the school, nor have a “sustainable development” after “stepping into society” in the future. Moreover, self-cultivation is not only associated with responsibility for oneself, more importantly, it is for society and the world, as the governmental official of education said when commenting on the ideal students they would like to cultivate:

This is undoubtedly partly a response to a globalizing era, and also embedded in the Chinese idea of self-cultivation. Thus the school established an exemplary model for students: Zhou Enlai 周恩来, a modern Confucian patriot adored nationwide. The school took Enlai jingshen 恩来精神 (the spirit of Enlai) as the main theme of the school-compiled curriculum that aimed to educate students to become a responsible person for themselves, for society and the world. Enlai jingshen supposedly reflects the classical Chinese concept of xiushen 修身 (cultivate oneself), qijia 齐家 (regulate the family), zhiguo 治国 (rule the country) and ping tianxia 平天下 (unify the world in peace).Footnote ⁴⁶ This philosophy connected individual cultivation in moral and literary matters to the ruling of the country and the world, and also regarded the management of family (private) life and political (public) life as inseparable. This self-cultivation pattern that historically integrates the four levels to comprise the ideal package of intellectual accomplishment is Confucian as much as it is neoliberal, as many have argued.Footnote ⁴⁷

In summary, the school carried out a substantial suzhi jiaoyu that in particular targeted its majority of rural children. For teachers, to discipline and educate these rural children through cultivating good habits and innate quality was far more difficult and required much more patience as they utilized “scientifically” designed techniques, a substantial, close and long-term monitoring of children's conduct, and specifically and carefully devised assessment methods. The amount of effort was thus evidence of how much rural children needed to be cultivated.