Chinese students are known worldwide for their accomplishment and ambition, and education is profoundly valued in China. But these facts do not tell the whole story. Intellectuals were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and only recently has a college education been accessible to a majority of Chinese high-school graduates. Things are changing rapidly. China s higher-education system is now the largest in the world, and the number of Chinese students in the United States is growing at twenty-five percent annually. Collaboration with Western scholars and universities is increasing. Governmental and philanthropic agencies are working to provide better education to students in the margins, including minority, poor, disabled, and rural students. This Berkshire Essentials volume, Education in China, includes contributions by seventy-four international experts on Chinese education and provides unique coverage of learning at all levels.The Berkshire Essentials Series Berkshire China Essentials are accessible, compact volumes designed for use in teaching. Some are distilled from the Berkshire Encyclopedia of China. Others, like this volume on education in China, provide original articles on an emerging field. Each Berkshire China Essentials book is authored by dozens of experts in different countries and carefully edited for clarity and coherence. The result is a set of books that are truly essential in the twenty-first-century global classroom and library.
