New Books in Education cover art

New Books in Education

By: Marshall Poe
  • Summary

  • Interviews with Scholars of Education about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education
    New Books Network
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Episodes
  • Jennifer Liu, "Indoctrinating the Youth: Secondary Education in Wartime China and Postwar Taiwan, 1937-1960" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
    May 18 2024
    Indoctrinating the Youth: Secondary Education in Wartime China and Postwar Taiwan, 1937-1960 (U Hawaii Press, 2024) examines how the Guomindang (GMD or Nationalists) sought to maintain control of middle-school students and cultivate their political loyalty over the trajectory of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Civil War, and postwar Taiwan. During the Sino-Japanese War the Nationalists managed middle-school refugee students by merging schools, publishing and distributing updated textbooks, and assisting students as they migrated to the interior with their principals and teachers. In Taiwan, the China Youth Corps (CYC) became a symbol of the regime’s successful establishment. Tracing Nationalist efforts to indoctrinate ideology and martial spirit, Jennifer Liu investigates how GMD leaders Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo tried to build support among young people in their efforts to stabilize Taiwanese society under their rule. By comparing two key youth organizations—the Three People’s Principles Youth Corps in China, and the CYC on Taiwan—Liu uses education as a lens to analyze state-building in modern China. Liu’s careful analysis of the inner workings of GMD youth organizations also illuminates the day-to-day operations of military training in gender-segregated upper-middle schools—including how the government selected instructors and the skills taught to students. According to Liu, mandatory military training contributed to preventing major protest against the government but the policy was not without critics. Intellectuals, parents, and students voiced their dissent at what they perceived as excessive control by a repressive government and a waste of resources interfering with academics. The government-mandated civics curriculum, including government-approved textbooks and standards, reveals the characteristics and duties GMD officials believed modern citizens of the next generation should possess. Through provisions for refugee students, youth organizations, military training, and civics classes, GMD secondary education policy played a critical role in the process of state building in both modern China and Taiwan. Skillfully combining archival work in Nanjing and Taipei, along with oral interviews with former students and CYC administrators, instructors, and members, Liu offers a unique perspective toward a balanced assessment of Nationalist Party rule. Jennifer Liu is associate professor of East Asian history at Central Michigan University. She specializes in the political and social history of twentieth-century China, particularly education, youth culture, studen​t protest, and ethnic identity. Li-Ping Chen is a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education
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    1 hr and 10 mins
  • En Li, "Betting on the Civil Service Examinations: The Lottery in Late Qing China" (Harvard UP, 2023)
    May 17 2024
    During the Qing dynasty in China, a wide variety of people participated in a lottery game named weixing (“surname guessing”), which had participants placing bets on the surnames of civil service examination candidates. A fiercely competitive process, those who passed the various levels of the civil service and military examinations could climb the social ladder and obtain status in their communities and be considered for important positions in the government and military. The results of these examinations were not only highly anticipated by the exam takers themselves but also–with the introduction of weixing–by an enthusiastic community of players who bet on the success of candidates with less common surnames. In this episode, En Li, assistant professor of modern East Asian history at the University of Texas at Dallas and author of Betting on the Civil Service Exmaninations: The Lottery in Late Qing China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2023), explores the fascinating history of this lottery game–from the longer history of games and betting in China and the origin of weixing to its regulation by the government to raise revenue and the spread of the game beyond China’s borders through Chinese diasporic communities to Southeast Asia and North America. The book considers the game from multiple perspectives–government officials, players, and lottery game runners. En Li thoughtfully reflects on the book and the process of producing it and points to the larger significance of both weixing and the civil service examinations in Chinese society and life and the risk, reward, and loss involved. Laurie Dickmeyer is an Assistant Professor of History at Angelo State University, where she teaches courses in Asian and US history. Her research concerns nineteenth century US-China relations. She can be reached at laurie.dickmeyer@angelo.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education
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    39 mins
  • Matthew Berland and Antero Garcia, "The Left Hand of Data: Designing Education Data for Justice" (MIT Press, 2024)
    May 15 2024
    Educational analytics tend toward aggregation, asking what a “normative” learner does. In The Left Hand of Data: Designing Education Data for Justice (MIT Press, 2024, open access at this link), educational researchers Matthew Berland and Antero Garcia start from a different assumption—that outliers are, and must be treated as, valued individuals. Berland and Garcia argue that the aim of analytics should not be about enforcing and entrenching norms but about using data science to break new ground and enable play and creativity. From this speculative vantage point, they ask how we can go about living alongside data in a better way, in a more just way, while also building on the existing technologies and our knowledge of the present. The Left Hand of Data explores the many ways in which we use data to shape the possible futures of young people—in schools, in informal learning environments, in colleges, in libraries, and with educational games. It considers the processes by which students are sorted, labeled, categorized, and intervened upon using the bevy of data extracted and collected from individuals and groups, anonymously or identifiably. When, how, and with what biases are these data collected and utilized? What decisions must educational researchers make around data in an era of high-stakes assessment, surveillance, and rising inequities tied to race, class, gender, and other intersectional factors? How are these complex considerations around data changing in the rapidly evolving world of machine learning, AI, and emerging fields of educational data science? The surprising answers the authors discover in their research make clear that we do not need to wait for a hazy tomorrow to do better today. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education
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    53 mins

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