Description: This book offers a rich ethnographic account that meticulously portrays teachers' life and work, hopes and despairs, and daily struggles within and beyond a Chinese rural school. Through a vivid narrative, the book elucidates little by little the structural, systemic causes fo...
Review Quotes: After seven months of fieldwork at Chaoyang Elementary School, one of a myriad of rural schools in China, Dr. Wang Dan wrote an ethnography depicting teachers' demoralization in terms of a prevailing sense of despair, cynicism, moral anxiety, concern over salary and general loss of professional dignity among rural teachers. She explored 'the structural mechanisms that have dampened these teachers' passions, eroded their professional ethics, and finally demoralized and alienated them from their work'. The majority of literature on rural teachers focuses on teachers' professionalization, resource shortages in terms of finance and availability of qualified teachers, and curriculum reform. Most research takes a single perspective rather than a multi dimensional approach. Dr. Wang, however, was ambitious enough to select an understudied but important topic and try to unearth the mechanisms causing teachers' demoralization by looking at cultural, economic, and bureaucratic factors in the organizational and social context of their work. With a sound training in anthropology, Wang did her fieldwork carefully and tactically, displaying a passionate empathy with the teachers. The excellent quality of the narrative bought "the story" alive to this reader. For Western readers who may not be familiar with rural China, this book serves as an engaging introduction.The reader will clearly sense Wang's passion for China's rural education and her devotion to academic research.