From Yuhong Ban to You'Er Yuan: Preschools in the People"s Commune (1975-1983)

Jing Zhai, University of Texas at Austin

Traditionally, it was mothers or other female family members that raised toddlers in rural China. However, the last decade of agricultural collectivization transformed this norm. An educational institution for preschooler called Yuhong Ban (“cultivating the red generation” class) was set up in rural communes during the epilogue of the Culture Revolution. Later on, the early 1980s witnessed a national campaign promoting preschool education, which transferred original Yuhong Ban into You’er Yuan (kindergarten) and set up more institutions on a large scale. Former scholarships usually perceive these preschools either from the perspective of education history or treat them as minor aspects to discuss women’s liberation. Both approaches delimitate the subjectivity of children and ignore the experiences, emotions, and mindset attached to these new initiatives. To remedy this gap, my research borrows methods from cultural studies to scrutinize different experiences and memories of the party state, village cadres, teachers, parents, and most importantly the children. I maintain that the initiating of these preschools belonged to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s project of politicization rural society through connecting everyday lives with public agenda. These rural preschools participated in an emerging discourse that happens at the last phase of the People’s commune to connect socialist supremacy with modern institutions. With the dismantling of collective farming, promotion of one-child policy, and the propaganda of “four modernization”, the everyday experiences attached to these preschools displayed a continuous negotiation between the CCP and peasantry on various concepts including production, reproduction, motherhood, childhood, family roles, and social responsibilities.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 20. Childhood and Nationalism