Page 141 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

128 STEPHANIE HEMELRYK DONALD
In the Chinese context, then, these local sites have regional but in the past more
specifically political literacy at their core. Regional location is very important in film
education, where locally relevant socialisation projects are tied to wider aesthetic and
narrative practices of appreciation. Politics as a topical theme has been more centralised
and is less easy to administer in a period of localisation. Teachers in 2002 are still trained
in political communications and in ideology, but whereas in the 1949–78 period this role
informed the modality of transmission and reception of most of the curriculum, now
there is a sense that politics are harder to embed in the literacies of modern China.
Teachers say (off the record) that the history of revolution, taught as grounding for
contemporary socialisation, has less and less currency with the young. The contradictions
between modernised aspirations and pressures and the controlled development of a
socialist economy is too stark and incomprehensible. Multi-literacy in the revolutionary/
post-Liberation classroom consisted of texts, posters, campaigns and modelled social
behaviours. These do continue—for instance, in educational campaigns on the
environment (Sayers and Sternfeld 2001)—but in a spirit of accelerated learning: the
socialist mentor of past years is under review.

The status of the revolutionary teacher

The importance of education to Confucian Chinese society is well documented (Zhu 1992).
So too, is the position of the teacher as a guide and mentor to the student. The
laoshiljiaoshi [both terms mean ‘teacher’] title enshrines both a descriptive title ‘teacher’
but also an expectation of moral integrity, and a sense of continuity in culture and social
behaviours. The assumption of this role by the teacher is important as in revolutionary
culture more generally, leadership was a role generally ascribed to men.
Esther Yau made this point very convincingly in her doctoral thesis (1990), showing
how—in cinematic explorations of new post-1949 China—women learned from inspiring
male models, rather than the other way round. There were inspiring cinematic women
too (and roles taken by the actresses Tian Hua and Yu Lan are the best examples), but
they tended to look up to male counterparts and thereby model the modelling process for
the audience. The model citizens held up as examples to adults and children were men
and women, but it was the menx—especially of course Lei Feng (1990)—who
benchmarked the moral order of a revolutionary society. Yet the status of the teacher is
also clear in films spanning the period 1949–80, where children’s or family films in
particular concentrated far more on the idealised teacher than on the parent-child
relationship. Furthermore, the teacher in question is quite often a female. The narrative
typically introduces children with an inspirational educator who has some kind of personal
problem (an illness), and whom the children assist, thus demonstrating the successful
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application of moral guidance learnt initially from the laoshi. Masculinised versions of the
genre also deal with sporting excellence; these focus on the leadership and—again—the
inspirational quality of sports coaches (Woman Basketball Player no 5, nulan wuhao, 1957,
Director Xie Jin). In the 1950s and 1960s such generic adaptations tended to emphasise
the teacher as at the forefront of Chinese determination to succeed on a national, and