Asian Education Podcast

Asian Education on Film, Episode Four

Song of the Exile (客途秋恨) (Ann Hui, Hong Kong / Taiwan, 1990)

The story of Song of the Exile revolves around the relationship between a young Hong Kong-born woman, Hueyin (or Hiuyan in Cantonese) (曉恩), and her Japanese-born mother, Aiko. Their estrangement and eventual reconciliation forms the core narrative thread. While education is a marginal theme, identity, how it is learnt and unlearnt, how it changes over time, is a central concern of the film. We see the main characters searching for a sense of belonging that’s ultimately resolved by their willing adoption of a local, Hong Kong, identity. In part, then, this is a celebration of Hongkongeseness - an identity that today, in the 2020s, the Chinese authorities are seeking to undermine or destroy as they use education to inculcate a monolithically ‘Chinese’ consciousness amongst Hong Kong’s youth.

This film was released in 1990, during an earlier period of great upheaval for Hong Kong. The 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration had set the territory on the path towards ‘reunification’ with China. In 1989, the brutal crushing of China’s Student Movement, epitomised by the Tiananmen Massacre of June 4, created huge shock. Many Hongkongers came to reexamine their loyalty to China, or at least to the regime in Beijing. Meanwhile, a sense of Hong Kong as a place with a distinctive identity of its own was steadily growing, especially amongst the young.

But Song of the Exile is far more than a political allegory; amongst other things, it’s a semi-autobiographical reflection on the director’s own life. The main character, Hueyin, is really an avatar for Ann Hui (許鞍華) herself. The film begins when Hueyin’s formal education ends, as she completes her studies in London. As the story unfolds, we’re shown in flashback various scenes from her childhood, while we follow her on a journey of self-discovery from Britain, to Hong Kong, to Japan and finally back to Hong Kong again. The result is partly a very personal coming-of-age story, and partly a meditation on the trials endured by ‘exiled’ or diaspora communities - and especially women - as they adopt or construct new identities for themselves.

The film can be viewed via this link (original Cantonese dialogue):

Further reading:

Audrey Yue (2010). Ann Hui’s ‘Song of the Exile’. (The New Hong Kong Cinema), Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Luk, Bernard Hung-Kay (1991). “Chinese Culture in the Hong Kong Curriculum: Heritage and Colonialism.” Comparative Education Review 35, no. 4: 650–68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1188110.

Twenty-four Eyes (二十四の瞳)

This film tells the story of Ōishi Hisako, a young schoolteacher assigned to teach at a primary school on the island of Shodoshima, in Japan’s inland sea. Although it’s not far from the city of Hiroshima - perhaps close enough for the residents to have seen the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb in August 1945 - Shodoshima is a rural backwater. It’s portrayed here as a rustic idyll representing many of the best aspects of Japanese tradition. At the same time, as the story takes us from the late 1920s to the late 1940s, we’re shown how Japan’s experience of militarism, war and defeat affects this remote community.

Both the film and the novel on which it is based are infused with a strong anti-war message. The novel, by the female author Tsuboi Sakae, was published in 1952, just two years before the film appeared. It embodies the anti-militarism and pacifism that were powerful currents in a Japan profoundly traumatised by the Asia-Pacific War. The incredible destruction wreaked on Japan’s cities by American bombers in the early 1940s was perhaps the most visible and dramatic aspect of this trauma, but Twenty-four Eyes gives us a different perspective. It portrays a close-knit rural community that, despite its remoteness, cannot escape the suffering of war, but which stoically persists.

This story also presents a women’s perspective on war. The spotlight falls on the experience of those far from the actually fighting, on what the British called the ‘Home Front’. The central figure, Ōishi-sensei, is by no means a passive victim, but a woman with agency and opinions of her own. She also embodies a sadder and wiser Japan rebuilding itself out of the ashes of war. In place of the ruthless military machine that had devoured so many young Japanese, many educators and intellectuals in the 1950s aspired to remodel Japan as a pacifist democracy. And just as education had fuelled wartime militarism, a new form of education, infused with an ethos of care and compassion, would be needed to bring this new Japan into being.

The film can be viewed here:

Further reading:

John Dower (1999). Embracing Defeat. New York: W.W. Norton.

Ienaga Saburo (2000). Japan’s Past, Japan’s Future: One Historian’s Odyssey. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.

Audie Bock (2008). Twenty-four Eyes: Growing Pains. The Criterion Collection.

**Asian Education on Film

Episode Two - King of the Children (孩子王) (Chen Kaige, China, 1987)

Like many of these youth, the main protagonist of King of the Children, a young man who goes by the name (or nickname) Lao Gar, is assigned to teach in a village school. The Cultural Revolution is widely regarded in China today, at least by educated urbanites, as having been an unmitigated disaster as far as education was concerned. To be sure, these years were disastrous for higher education, with high schools and colleges initially closed and educational opportunities for urban youth blocked or curtailed. Selective academic examinations were abolished. Tertiary institutions eventually reopened with programmes primarily targeted at ‘soldiers, peasants and workers’, and access determined on ‘political’ grounds (or ‘class background’). Curricula at every level of education were highly politicised.

But King of the Children offers a more complicated reflection on the cultural and educational implications of the Cultural Revolution. Village schools of the kind depicted in this film were responsible for a significant spread in basic literacy and numeracy across rural China. In this sense, the educational implications of the Cultural Revolutionary decade were far from entirely negative. However, the message Chen Kaige is seeking to communicate here is that, at a deeper level, the Cultural Revolution and the educational arrangement associated with it, far from overthrowing China’s traditions or ‘old culture’, actually epitomise some of its worst elements - elements that have endured down to this day.

The full film of King of the Children can be viewed here: youtube.com/watch?v=h4o_gaXHXp4

Further reading / viewing:

Chen Kaige and Tony Rayns (1989). King of the Children and the New Chinese Cinema. London: Faber and Faber.

Suzanne Pepper (1996). Radicalism and Education Reform in Twentieth Century China: The Search for an Ideal Developmental Model. Cambridge University Press.

Jiang Wen (1994). In the Heat of the Sun (陽光燦爛的日子).

Zhang Yimou (1999). Not One Less (一个都不能少). China: Guangxi Film Studio.

In this season of the Asian Education Podcast, Edward Vickers introduces films that deal with themes related to education or the experience of youth in Asian societies.

In the first episode, Edward discusses Aparajito, by the famous Bengali director, Satyajit Ray (1921-1992), the central film in Ray’s Apu Trilogy. This film portrays the boyhood of Apu, a child from an impoverished Bengali family of the Brahmin (priestly) caste. It deals with tensions between tradition and modernity, the rural and the urban, common to societies across Asia and beyond. We follow Apu as he enrols first in a village school, and then (as a scholarship student) in a high school in the Bengali metropolis of Calcutta. The film sensitively explores what this journey means both for Apu himself, and for his family, in particular through its depiction of his relationship with his illiterate mother.

The film can be viewed online here: https://archive.org/details/aparajito-apu-trilogy-pt.-2

Suggested further reading:

In this episode of the Asian Education Podcast, we are joined by Andy Smart, who is an education and publishing consultant with a background in teaching and educational and children's publishing - with multinational publishers as well as his own children's publishing company. Since 2000 he has worked in several countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, on textbook policy, English and Arabic-medium primary curricula, textbook planning and development, children's reading, and general publishing. This episode focuses on issues related to externally-supported education reform projects in Asia, given his long-term engagement with the World Bank and other international organizations as an external expert.

In 2023, the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (GEEAP) published a report on 'Smart Buys' for improving learning in low- and middle-income countries. The GEEAP is described as 'an independent, cross-disciplinary body composed of leading education experts from around the world' with a mandate 'to provide succinct, usable, and policy-focused recommendations to support policymakers’ decision-making on education investments in low- and middle-income countries'. We ask Andy to respond to this panel’s claim that textbooks are 'bad buys' (along with salary, libraries and other inputs) - and, more broadly, what it means to talk of 'good' or 'bad' 'buys' in education.

Andy has rich experience working on World Bank projects in Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Tonga. We ask him to explain the values or vision that informs his work, and to reflect on the challenges involved in working as a consultant for international organisations. Since the World Bank's educational work has been heavily critiqued in comparative education literature, we also ask Andy for his reaction to some of the critiques of education interventions by the World Bank as ‘neoliberal’ or ‘neocolonial’?

In 2018 Andy helped to set up NISSEM.org with other practitioners and academic colleagues to promote better use of textbooks for socio-emotional learning in low-income countries in support of Sustainable Development Goal Target 4.7. In some of their work, Yoko and Ed have warned against UNESCO’s turn to SEL. They discuss some of their concerns and ask Andy to explain NISSEM’s focus on SEL.

Finally, we ask Andy to tell us about an ongoing project he's working on in Tonga, developing teaching materials for children in local schools.

Recommended readings:

In this episode, we travel to the western end of ‘Asia’ (as conventionally defined) to discuss the internationalisation of higher education in the politically troubled context of Israel / Palestine. Our guest on this occasion is Dr. Annette Bamberger of Bar Ilan University in Israel. Annette has conducted comparative analysis of higher education internationalisation in many societies, but in this episode she and Ed primarily discuss the implications for Israeli university internationalisation (and especially ties with Asia) of the current war in Gaza.

Higher education internationalisation can take a variety of forms. In many Anglophone countries, for example, the commercialisation of universities has been accompanied by concerted efforts to expand recruitment of fee-paying Asian students. But as Annette explains, the goals of university internationalisation in Israel have tended to be less commercial and more strategic in nature - and this has influenced the evolution of the sector’s ties with Asian institutions.

As they do for many countries, China and India loom especially large in Israeli discussions of university internationalisation. After decades of hostility during the Cold War, when Chairman Mao called the Jewish state ‘a dagger pointing at the heart of the Arab people’, China’s ties with Israel have been steadily warming since diplomatic relations were established in the early 1990s. Today, Israeli universities host a number of Confucius Institutes, one has a branch campus in China, and research collaboration (especially in science and technology) has been flourishing. However, the current Gaza conflict has cast something of a shadow over ties with China, as Beijing has taken a more critical line towards Israel.

Relations with India, meanwhile, have continued to flourish regardless of the current conflict. In attempting to explain this, Annette points to ties of language (i.e. shared fluency in English) and a shared understanding of religion’s role in society. For example, Indian students and scholars tend to be readily accepting of features of Israeli life such as dietary restrictions. Rather more disturbingly, a sense of shared anti-Muslim animus may be a factor in making some Indian students - those influenced by the Hindutva ideology of Prime Minister Narendra Modi - favourably disposed towards Israel, and relatively untroubled by the strife in Gaza. This, together with interest in Israeli technology (and defence industries), is certainly a factor in reinforcing the BJP government’s interest in promoting stronger links to Israeli higher education.

What, though, of Israeli ties to universities elsewhere in Asia? In those Muslim-majority countries where ties had been improving in recent years, notably Turkey, the current conflict has caused a significant rupture. Elsewhere, prospects of developing closer partnerships have receded. Meanwhile, Vietnam and Thailand have emerged as significant new partners for overseas student exchanges (though less for research). Surveying Asia as a whole, however, and in a context where ties with European and North American partners seem under threat, India stands out as an especially promising land for internationalising Israeli universities.

Recommended readings:

This is a link to Annette’s PhD thesis, the last chapters of which detail the shift towards Asia:

In this episode, Edward Vickers talks to Evelyn Kim (Kim Min Ji), who lectures on the Comparative Education MA at the UCL Institute of Education. They discuss Evelyn’s work on policies pursued by the South Korean government since around 2012 under the rubric of ‘Happiness Education’. Various surveys have suggested that young people in Korea are particularly unhappy, by comparison with their peers elsewhere. Prominent amongst the reasons cited for this are pressures related to the education system and the culture of high-stakes testing.

Evelyn and Ed begin by discussing the reasons for the apparent unhappiness of Korean youngsters, probing beyond the features of the education system to socio-economic and structural factors (welfare provision, the labour market). It is these factors, they suggest, that are crucial to explaining the insecurity that drives the intensity of competition for qualifications.

In her paper, Evelyn argues that ‘happiness’ has been a ‘floating signifier’ in Korean public discourse. In other words, it is a term that has been assigned somewhat different meanings by actors with varying political and social agendas - notably Korea’s two major political parties. But while discussing the different approaches taken by these conservative and centre-left groupings, Evelyn notes that there have been significant similarities in their policy responses. Neither of the major parties, which have alternated in power since the early 2000s, have taken measures that fundamentally tackle the factors that make living conditions for ordinary Koreans stressful and insecure. In this context, talk of ‘happiness’ serves essentially as a rhetorical tactic, signifying that politicians feel the pain of ordinary people, without implying any concerned effort to alleviate its structural causes.

Meanwhile, a significant consequence of policies and discourse associated with ‘happiness’ talk has been what Evelyn terms ‘the skililfication of individuals’ non-cognitive domains’. What this means, she explains, is that qualities associated with the socialisation of students - values, civic consciousness, various character traits or even ‘wellbeing’ itself - are no longer seen simply as intrinsically desirable. Instead (or additionally), these characteristics are increasingly valued instrumentally, for their supposed contribution to enhancing learners' ‘human capital’. In the context of discussions of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, these so-called ‘non-cognitive skills’ are prized as the qualities that will grant humans a competitive advantage vis-à-vis robots or AI, and ensure their continuing employability.

This wider phenomenon of the ‘skillification of non-cognitive domains’ relates to the international discourse of ‘social and emotional learning’ (SEL), which has increasingly been associated with the language of ‘competencies’ and ‘skills’. Evelyn and Ed discuss other examples of this, such as ‘gratitude education’ in China. They touch on the dystopian implications of approaches that see qualities such as ‘happiness’ and ‘gratitude’ as tools for the enhancement of productivity and the preservation of social harmony and political order.

Finally, the discussion returns to the role of organisations such as the OECD in promoting or disseminating the gospel of SEL. While acknowledging the significance of OECD attempts to develop metrics for ‘non-cognitive skills’, Ed and Evelyn conclude that the direction of influence from the OECD to national policymakers has by no means been one-way. There has to some extent been a process of mutual reinforcement, with policymakers, corporations and multilateral entities borrowing and sharing concepts and slogans in pursuit of the shared goal of shoring up a human capital-intensive, low-welfare, ultra-competitive, labour-exploitative developmental model. But in the case of Korea, policy discourse under the current right-wing regime seems to have swung from an emphasis on ‘happiness’ towards greater stress on duty, stoked by fear of the threats to national security posed by an increasingly dangerous and unstable world order.

Recommended readings:

In this episode, Ed talks to Benjamin Mulvey of Glasgow University about an article Ben has recently written with Bok-Nga Lee on ‘the intellectual-state relationship and academic freedom in China’. Many observers have noted growing constraints affecting scholarly research and higher education in China over recent years. At the same time, some of the work on Chinese higher education published in prominent Western journals over recent years has sought to argue that cultural difference precludes meaningful comparison between ‘academic freedom’ in China and ‘the West’. In their article, Mulvey and Lee offer a forceful critique of this culturally relativist line of argument.

One problem they highlight is the tendency of the cultural relativists to rely on monolithic stereotypes of both ‘China’ and ‘the West’. As Mulvey observes in his paper with Lee, and as he and Ed discuss in this interview, these homogenous monoliths quickly crumble under scrutiny. While differences between cultural traditions are undeniable and significant, cultures are enormously diverse and constantly changing. Many of the authors Mulvey and Lee critique appear to take at face value the claims of the Communist authorities of the 21st-century People’s Republic of China to represent the culmination of centuries of ‘Chinese tradition’. But seldom considered are the cases of Hong Kong and Taiwan - societies whose cultural roots are undeniably Chinese, but where freedom of speech (and scholarship) and civil liberties are taken very seriously indeed. Chinese cultural purists may object that these societies have been sullied in their cultural purity by ‘imperialist’ influences from Britain, the USA or Japan. But by the same token, the influence on the PRC of Soviet ideology and institutions has been profound. Such arguments tend merely to underline the futility of attempts to isolate the pure ‘essence’ of any culture or tradition.

A prevalent representation of ‘Chinese’ culture in the literature (in English) on higher education portrays it as ‘Confucian’. But with respect to Confucianism in particular, as well as Chinese culture in general, such representations tend to be unduly monolithic and stereotyping. Typically, scholars arguing for a uniquely ‘Chinese’ interpretation of academic ethics tend to argue that Confucianism mandates subordination of scholars to the state, emphasising the duty of scholars to serve the state. They thus see the concept of scholarly autonomy, or the compulsion to ‘speak truth to power’, that underpins a liberal vision of academic freedom as somehow alien to ‘Chinese culture’. But while it may be accurate to see forms of ‘state Confucianism’, today as in the past, as emphasising the subordination of scholarship to state interests, Mulvey and Lee emphasise that there is far more to Confucianism than this. Confucian tradition itself has been subject to a highly diverse range of interpretations, and there is an important strand of Confucian scholarship that emphasises the scholar’s duty to pursue ‘the Way’ with integrity, and fearlessly criticise rulers who depart from it.

But perhaps the problem with arguments over ‘Chinese’ versus ‘Western’ conceptions of academic freedom (or anything else) is fundamentally to do with a faulty conception of ‘culture’ itself, as something fundamentally unchanging and ahistorical. Cultural traditions are, in fact, permeable and constantly changing. Ben and Ed discuss the prevalent tendency to judge ideas on the basis of their pedigree or ‘authenticity’. Even if an idea can be traced to origins in ‘China’ and ‘the West’ (a problematic task given the complex entanglement of cultural traditions), why should ‘authenticity’ matter in the first place?

The Mulvey and Lee paper concludes with the authors distancing themselves from any suggestion that Chinese higher education should adhere to ‘Western values and norms’ when it comes to academic freedom. They portray such norms as having ‘their foundations in European rationalism’, while stressing that ‘a Chinese understanding of academic freedom could take many forms’. But this implies that ‘a Chinese understanding of academic freedom’ might, in fact, embrace forms of

‘rationalism’ that some might associate with ‘the West’ - which is what we have witnessed in contemporary Hong Kong, Taiwan and in the writings of liberal Chinese scholars elsewhere.

Recommended readings:

The Philippines is one of the largest exporters of migrant workers in the world. Global shipping as well as the hospitality, medical, entertainment, domestic work and other sectors of many economies rely heavily on Filipino workers.

In this episode, Edward Vickers talks to Dr Mark Maca about his research into the relationship between education and the phenomenon of Filipino migrant labour. They discuss the significance of the educational and linguistic legacies of American colonial rule for creating the conditions in which it was possible for labour migration to ‘take off’ in the Philippines. The US colonial authorities established mass provision of basic education, leaving the mass of the Filipino population with at least a rudimentary command of English. At the same time, adoption of US educational models bequeathed a qualifications system that commanded widespread recognition abroad.

Although there was already a steady stream of Filipinos travelling overseas for work from the time of US rule, it was under the Presidency of Ferdinand Marcos (senior) in the 1970s that labour export began to be actively promoted and coordinated by the state. Mark explains how the decision of the Marcos regime to facilitate labour migration arose out of elite fears of economic and political crisis during the 1970s. Encouraging the export of labour was in part a means of creating a political ‘safety valve’, producing an outlet for the energy and ambition of young people frustrated by the economic sclerosis and pervasive clientelism of Filipino society. The movement overseas of many of the best and brightest young Filipinos has removed much of the threat they might otherwise have posed to the continued dominance of the established, feudalistic elites.

Mark’s research has shown how many aspects of the Philippines’ education system reflect or serve the interests of those elites. For example, the Philippines is rare among formerly colonised societies in using official media to praise the manifold ‘contributions’ of the country’s former colonisers (especially the USA) to its development. Textbooks, museums and other vehicles for public history make almost no attempt to deploy memories of colonial oppression to foster a sense of national unity. The positive evaluation of colonial rule is largely attributable to the collaborationist record of the dominant landowning elites, and their enduring closeness to the former colonisers.

As well as praising legacies of colonial rule, school curricula and public culture promote an image of migrant workers as patriotic ‘heroes’. In the contemporary Philippines, to love your country is to leave it! While this is an issue only touched on in this interview, it is discussed further by Mark in his published work.

Meanwhile, the 2023 election to the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos (junior), son of the autocrat who began the systematic promotion of labour export in the 1970s, testifies to the success of this strategy from the perspective of the feudalistic elite that continues to dominate society and politics in the Philippines.

Suggested readings:

NGOs and philanthropic organisations have played a growing role in the education sector in many societies over recent years. This has perhaps been especially apparent in the aid sector, with the activities of outfits such as the Gates Foundation expanding alongside the work of bilateral and multilateral aid organisations.

In this episode, Latika Gupta and Edward Vickers discuss the case of India, where NGOs and private organisations (philanthropical and otherwise) have come to play an especially significant role in influencing education policy. And, as emerges in the course of this conversation, this role has evolved and changed over the past two or three decades, in ways that Latika and others find alarming.

Perhaps the most significant NGO actor in India’s education sector is Pratham. As Latika explains, the regular ‘ASER’ reports that Pratham produces on educational outcomes across India, and the offices that they maintain in states across the country, have come to constitute almost a parallel administrative structure - penetrating educational policymaking processes and effectively performing functions that one might expect government to perform.

This growing prominence of NGOs in the Indian education sector comes in the context of a long-running sense of crisis surrounding public schooling in India. There is a widespread belief among Indian elites that the public sector is irredeemably 'broken' and that it is therefore necessary to look to the private sector for educational 'solutions'. Pervasive elite scepticism of the public sector, and a weak commitment to education as a ‘public good’, are perhaps reinforced by the lack of engagement of wealthier Indians with the public schooling system, with most sending their children to private schools. Latika and Ed discuss some of the reasons for this disengagement. These include ingrained caste prejudice and expanded educational access for poorer Indians since the 1990s, which have incentivised many elites to withdraw their children from the public sector. Meanwhile, economic growth alongside spiralling socio-economic inequality over the same period mean that more privileged Indians now have the wherewithal to pay relatively expensive private school fees.

Crucial to understanding the agenda of educational NGOs such as Pratham is to trace their funding. Much of this comes from prominent entrepreneurs within India itself, many of them involved in the technology sector. But substantial funding also comes from overseas, for example from tech entrepreneurs (including some ethnic Indians) based in the USA. And when it comes to the involvement of tech entrepreneurs in educational ‘philanthropy’, conflicts of interest potentially arise. Pratham has been particularly vociferous in promoting the expanded use of smartphones and education technology in enhancing ‘learning’. Latika explains how the ‘technicist, corporate’ approach has been associated with promotion of an increasingly narrow and instrumentalist conception of ‘learning’, to the neglect of ‘teaching’ and the social or socialising aspect of education.

Another issue that arises in the context of NGO activism in India’s education sector today relates to the political context, which is increasingly dominated by Hindu nationalist forces. As Latika has observed, this has meant that NGO involvement in educational provision, for example in tribal communities in central India, nowadays tends to go hand-in-hand with promotion of Hindutva and nationalist messaging.

Related readings: