Page 144 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

WOMEN AND TECHNOLOGY IN TEACHING 131
compulsory continuing education for teachers is significant in understanding the shift in
how the teacher figures in contemporary China, as an ongoing subject of improvement
rather than a static symbol of state power and leadership.

The overall targets [of continuing education] are to establish a [training] network…
with full use of means of modern information technology and all kinds of education
resources…to develop a modern system of curriculum design and textbook
compilation (etc).
(China Education and Research Network, 2000)

The professional educator is not without detractors, however, and the fears associated
with modernisation are played out in films questioning the right of a moral leader to a
career structure. These films are not vastly dissimilar to the earlier films where teachers
are the locus for political allegiance and socialisation (see, for example, Four Buddies, sige
xiao huoban, 1981, Director Qiqing Gaowa, and a much earlier version Flowers of the
Motherland, zuguo de huaduo, 1955, Director Yan Gong). In both these films—made at
either end of an era—individualistic children are trying to skirt the small duties of
socialism. As a result they have failed to become ‘Red Flowers’ (as in the 1981 film), or to
gain membership (and the red scarves) of the Young Pioneers (as in the 1955 prototype).
Guidance from teachers and classmates helps them to overcome their aversion to self-
discipline. However, the continuities in these narratives (the teacher as moral guide) are
matched by differences in newer films (redness tends to be associated with the national
flag rather than directly with Party iconography), indicating where society is de-investing
in the rhetoric of politics and re-investing in strategic statements of national achievement.
The move away from this version of the classroom teacher is evident in a genre shift in
the children’s film industry. Baseball Boy (2002, Director Qi Jian) won the Golden Calf
award for a children’s feature in 2002. The film begins with a tussle over real estate, as a
baseball pitch on a sporting field is re-developed as a soccer ground to please local
property owners. The film ends with a heroic stance by a wounded boy, and the last shot
pulls out on an image of him standing on the reclaimed pitch. This same shot also sports
an extra-diegetic national flag, which covers the entire sports field and a text rolls over
the credits describing the film’s young heroes as future Olympic champions in 2008.
There is a teacher figure in the film: the young baseball coach, trapped between the need
to make a living for himself in adult sports, and his commitment to the boys’ baseball
team, which he has created from scratch. He is pitted against one boy’s entrepreneurial
father, who demands that his son quit baseball and take up soccer. These several moral
strands running through the film intersect on a vanishing point of selflessness and national
priorities. The coach must forego his professional career, and apparently marriage
prospects, if he is to support the aspirations of his young team.
The development of the team is predicated on the development of a good relationship
between a boy and his father, the latter epitomising modern capital and real estate
interests. For our purposes here it is noticeable that the shift from political socialisation to
national socialisation through sport (gaining a red scarf, becoming a ‘red flower’) is
matched by a shift from the gentle leadership of a female teacher to the angst-driven