Unequal Learning: Education and Society in Contemporary China

Inequality has been soaring across the globe in the past decades. And the reproduction of inequality begins early in the life cycle: in homes and schools.

In Unequal Learning, Xin Xiang analyzes the different kinds of learning that goes on in four drastically different Chinese schools: a rural school in a mountainous area; a public school in an impoverished region of an emerging city; a low-cost private school serving rural migrants; and a prestigious metropolitan public school that attracts the children of elite professionals and government officials. As she shows, the different learning opportunities available in these four communities contribute to the widening gulf between the rising metropolitan middle class and China's working classes. Within classrooms, children in urban elite schools experience pedagogies drastically different from those in less privileged communities, despite the common preoccupation with preparing for exams. Outside classrooms, urban elite children learn to lead, collaborate, and compete through a variety of organized activities while rural children acquire competency in farm and household work.

Though these particular schools are located in China, Xiang demonstrates how these four Chinese schools and communities reflect global trends as much as local peculiarities. Ultimately, addressing these pervasive and deep-rooted educational inequalities requires moving beyond the paradigms of closing 'achievement gaps' and reducing 'learning poverty'. Xiang calls for a thorough rethinking of "whose knowledge and contribution counts" and "what good schools look like," in China and beyond. Powerfully argued and deeply researched, this will be essential reading not just for scholars of China, but anyone interested in how education systems both reproduce and exacerbate inequality.