Logos Review · Issue 1 (Spring 2026) · Special Topic: Education
Zheng Yajun
Abstract: While current quantitative studies on China and East Asian societies suggest a “flattening” trend in educational attitudes across different social classes, this article, based on in-depth interviews and field observations in two distinct educational settings—elite universities and county-level high schools—reveals profound differences in the relational logic between different social classes and the school education system. The study finds that urban middle-class families often adopt the posture of a “consumer-style/entrepreneurial learner,” selectively mobilizing educational resources and employing highly rational, autonomous strategies to serve their own goals. In contrast, for non-advantaged classes, school education is more like an “other” system—external, scarce, and a foreign territory one is only qualified to enter after rounds of competition. Due to a lack of choice and weak mobility, they are firmly attached to the educational system, their posture more akin to that of a pious apprentice before a powerful master, where autonomy and individuality are suppressed and surrendered. Understanding this difference in subjectivity not only deepens the discussion on educational equity but also helps to understand the deep socio-psychological mechanisms behind why some public education policies (such as the “Double Reduction” and the “New Gaokao”) deviate from their intended goals during implementation. The study calls for moving beyond the preconception of students as a uniform whole and incorporating the “heterogeneous educational subjectivities” of different social groups into the considerations of academic research, policy-making, and evaluation.
https://doi.org/10.64053/QZAM3553
“Although class is still widely disavowed, it remains at the heart of the individual’s relationship to education. A key sociological task is to reveal and understand the changing manifestations of class—only then can the profound educational inequalities class generates begin to be addressed.”
—Diane Reay (2009, p. 402)
I Introduction
As Diane Reay states, exploring the relationship between the education system and social class is a classic theme in the sociology of education, attracting generations of scholars to ask in different social contexts: Is school education the “great equalizer” that promotes social mobility, or a hidden mechanism that imposes social control and maintains the reproduction of social structure? (Bernardi and Plavgo 2019). If scholars in the Western world, based on their critique of the capitalist order, feel more justified in agreeing with the latter (Bourdieu, 1967; Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Coleman et al., 1966; Willis, 1977), this issue is perhaps more contentious in the context of contemporary China. China’s pivotal educational institution—the gaokao (college entrance examination)—and its associated examination systems are considered a relatively fair screening system for all classes (Hu, Kao, and Wu 2020; Hu & Wu, 2021), and are thus widely regarded as the “least bad” channel for class mobility. The fervent attention of social media to educational topics, the educational anxiety felt by all classes, and the ubiquitous educational institutions on every street corner make it easy for anyone to sense the universal importance that members of society place on school education—as if this “social elevator” is open to all, and all each family and child has to do is to invest their best efforts to prepare for this fair tournament.
The findings of some researchers, to a certain extent, support this perception—the importance and investment that the Chinese public places on education are generally high, with class disparities being weaker than in Western societies. In a comparative study, Li and Xie (2020) pointed out that educational expectations in East Asian societies are significantly less dependent on family background; even in families with lower socioeconomic status, the recognition of and expectation for education remain pretty strong. In terms of educational expenditure, Hu et al. (2023), using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), found that the proportion of total income spent on education by Chinese families is much higher than in other countries, and the proportion for rural families is even larger than for urban families. Even low-income families’ educational expenditure as a proportion of their income is significantly higher than that of similar families in Western countries. Some scholars attribute this widespread “education fever” to the acculturation of East Asian cultural traditions (Hawkins, 2012; Stevenson & Stigler, 1994). Li and Xie (2020) argue that East Asian cultural tradition endows education with a highly positive meaning, leading to a universal recognition of its value among urban and rural families of all classes. Hawkins (2012) points out that the historical legacy of Confucianism and the imperial examination system has shaped a national consensus that “education changes one’s destiny.” High academic achievement has profound social meaning in East Asia, often seen as an important path to achieving personal success, family glory, and practicing filial piety, and is universally recognized by all classes. Andrew Kipnis (2019), in his fieldwork in Shandong, China, also glimpsed this collective educational desire, noting it as a cultural consensus transcending individual rationality, co-created by Confucian ethics, public policy, and market forces. Correspondingly, empirical research has also found that the influence of family socioeconomic background on Chinese students’ academic achievement is relatively more minor than in Western countries (Lyu, Li, and Xie 2019) and is even found to be not significantly correlated with family wealth (Liu & Xie, 2015).
From this perspective, the above studies seem to collectively suggest that there is a relatively universal, homogeneous attitude towards education among the Chinese public, presenting a “de-classed” or homogenized relationship. In other words, researchers convey an impression that the ways different classes understand and treat education seem to have a formal convergence—a high value is placed on education, regardless of origin. It can be inferred from this that the universality and flatness of educational expectations in East Asian societies may form a protective buffer for the educational achievements of lower-class families, thereby mitigating the adverse effects of socioeconomic status (SES) disadvantages on educational outcomes (Li & Xie, 2020).
However, this relatively “flattened” relationship between various classes and school education is often based on large-sample survey methods and discovered through comparative means. Due to methodological limitations, existing research is mostly confined to quantitative assessments of subjective attitudes or external behaviors, rarely delving into the subjectivities of different classes to understand their underlying motivations, expectations, feelings, and practices. As researchers simplify the attitudes or behaviors of the general populace towards education into a numerical value or an attitudinal indicator, there is a subtle risk: researchers only obtain fragmented numerical values, while the context behind these values—the structural positions, experiential logics, and emotional structures of each class in their educational practices—is quietly obscured. In other words, the “de-classed” family educational expectations and investments presented by survey data may only be a superficial conclusion of “de-classing” because of the inability to capture those differences in deep-seated mentalities, action pathways, and emotional experiences that are difficult to quantify.
Cultural reproduction theory offers a more profound explanatory framework for this. Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) argue that the school education system is not, as mainstream educational policy discourse claims, a fair and merit-based neutral ground. Beneath its neutral appearance, the education system actually implicitly legitimizes elite culture, thereby systematically maintaining the cultural advantages and social status of the elite class (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990). This “symbolic violence,” through specific educational practices such as curriculum design, teaching methods, and examination standards, quietly transforms the preferences and norms of the elite class into expectations and requirements for everyone, thus excluding or marginalizing the cultural experiences and practices of the lower classes (Bourdieu, 1977; Lareau, 2011; Reay, 2017). Studies based on observation and interviews have found that the middle class is more likely to actively mobilize institutional resources, interact with teachers, and shape favorable situations, while working-class families tend to remain submissive and distant, lacking the institutional agency that cultural capital provides (Calarco, 2011; Calarco, 2014; Lareau, 2015). This difference does not stem from individual attitudes or ideologies but is embedded in social position and cultural experience. Reay & Lucey (2003) also point out that the “appearance of equality” in the education market often conceals profound class-based experiences. Students on seemingly identical educational tracks (such as attending the same low-reputation school) exhibit completely different subjective understandings and self-perceptions: middle-class children tend to view the low-reputation school as an “other” and try to avoid the stigma of association through transferring schools or psychological distancing; whereas working-class children have to confront the identity conflict that arises when the “demonized other” becomes equated with “people like me.”
Therefore, superficial educational expectations or high investment cannot be equated with an equal recognition of or participation in education among classes. To understand the hidden social mechanisms and differential logics behind them, it is necessary to start from the subjective world or subjectivity of each class, and deeply analyze their feelings, understandings, judgments, and coping strategies during the educational process. In other words, we must ask: What does “going to school” actually mean for Chinese people of different classes? Based on data collected from ongoing interviews with university students at elite institutions over the past decade and an ongoing ethnography in a western county-level high school, this article comparatively analyzes the systematic differences exhibited by non-advantaged classes and the urban middle class in their participation in school education. It points out that these differences are common to both elite higher education and county-level secondary education, and that they persist over time.
II. Class, the Education System, and Human Subjectivity
The interplay between class and subjectivity profoundly reveals the core role of the education system as a mechanism of social stratification. Subjectivity refers to the self-perception, emotional experience, and logic of action that an individual forms within a social structure, which is both constrained by structural factors and embodies individual agency (Reay, 2001; Sayer, 2005). In Western sociology of education research, class differences in subjectivity are often depicted within a binary framework of “middle class as ‘planners’ vs. working class as ‘survivors’.” In the education market, the middle class, with their abundant economic capital, cultural capital, and social network resources, can adopt proactive “planner” strategies. They construct competitive advantages for their children through meticulous educational investments (such as purchasing property in good school districts, selecting after-school tutoring, applying to international schools, etc.) (Ball et al., 2002). This subjectivity is manifested in a deep understanding and skillful application of “cultural knowledge” about “how the school system works,” which helps in obtaining educational advantages and opportunities (Lareau, 2015). By gaining institutional recognition from the education system (such as diplomas and awards), the middle class reinforces its self-confidence and self-worth.
In contrast, the educational participation of working-class families, due to resource constraints, often presents a “survivor” logic oriented towards short-term existence. Parents tend to raise their children less intensively, and children are naturally more likely to encounter devaluation and exclusion by the “rules of the game” at school (Lareau, 2011). They are either forced to accept low-quality education and internalize the label of “incompetence” (Sayer, 2005) or they develop subcultures to resist school authority (Willis, 1977). They tend to choose non-elite universities with a strong “sense of community,” and their educational success often comes at the cost of losing their class identity (Reay, 2001; Reay, Crozier, and Clayton, 2009). This differentiation is further amplified by the wave of educational marketization, where the middle class consolidates its advantages through strategies like choosing schools via property purchase and private tutoring. In contrast, the working class is squeezed to the bottom of the educational resource chain (Ball, 2003).
This classed subjectivity is not only reflected at the level of behavioral strategies but is more profoundly manifested in the dimensions of emotional structure and moral cognition. Sayer (2005) argues that subjectivity is not an abstract “self-awareness” but the embodiment of class position at the emotional and moral levels. The middle class, benefiting from their array of capital, planning, and strategies, feels entitled to their success, perhaps occasionally accompanied by a particular moral anxiety about their privileges. In contrast, the educational experience of the working class is often accompanied by a tension between dignity and humiliation, anger at systemic exclusion, and doubt about their self-worth (Reay, 2001; 2015). Especially for working-class students entering elite universities, this class mobility is intertwined with complex emotional experiences, including pride, inferiority, shame, and fear. It is also accompanied by an “imposter syndrome” stemming from worries about their own capabilities, and they face the anxiety of class betrayal and a fractured identity (Lehmann, 2007; 2009; Reay, Crozier, and Clayton, 2010; Cheng Meng, 2018; Liao Qing, 2019).
In the Chinese context, this framework needs to be re-examined in conjunction with local realities such as the urban-rural divide and the exam-oriented culture. After all, China adheres to a path of socialism with Chinese characteristics and has established an education system dominated by public schools with low tuition fees. China’s status allocation system also has its own distinct features—positions within the state system almost always require an examination for entry, achieving at least formal fairness. In such a society, which aims for shared prosperity and is built on the foundation of public schools, what is the relationship between members of different classes and the school education system?
III. Data and Methods
This article draws on in-depth interview data from 95 graduating students collected over the past decade at three “Double First-Class” universities in China, as well as ethnographic observation data from an ongoing study at two ordinary county-level high schools in western China. The interview data span a considerable period and geographical range: first, 38 graduating students were interviewed in 2015-2016 at two universities in Beijing and Shanghai (hereafter “Northern University” and “Southern University”). This was followed by an additional 25 interviews at Southern University in 2017. During the pandemic (2020-2022), 13 more students were interviewed at Southern University, and the data collection was expanded to a “Double First-Class” university in a western provincial capital (hereafter “Western University”), where 19 students were interviewed. The interviewees mainly were recruited through the “snowball” method, with care taken to balance diversity in academic achievement, discipline, and family socioeconomic background. Among the 95 interviewees, 42 were from rural backgrounds, all first-generation university students, with parents primarily engaged in farming, migrant work, self-employment, or service industries; 43 were from urban backgrounds, of whom 28 were not first-generation university students, with parents working as professionals, government officials, or business managers. The purpose of the interviews was to understand the experiences of students from different family backgrounds attending elite universities and the context of their post-graduation destinations. Data was collected from different universities to grasp the common effects of family background on students amidst China’s vast regional characteristics and developmental disparities. All interviews were conducted by me, mostly one-on-one and face-to-face (5 were conducted online during the pandemic). Interviews lasted an average of about 3 hours and used the “progressive focusing method” to gradually delve into topics (Yang Shanhua & Sun Feiyu, 2005). They typically began with the interviewee’s family environment and childhood memories, then moved to their entire school experience, followed by an in-depth discussion of their higher education journey and graduation choices. Throughout the interviews, I strove to convey my sincerity as a listener, to achieve empathy with the interviewees, and to understand their thoughts, feelings, and logic of action. With the consent of the interviewees, all interviews were recorded and transcribed.
Considering that students who enter “Double First-Class” universities represent a tiny fraction of the population, I also turned my gaze beyond the walls of top institutions to county-level high schools in underdeveloped western regions. Since mid-March 2025 [Note: The original text states 2025, which is likely a typo for 2023 or 2024. The translation retains the original year. I began fieldwork at two county-level high schools in the west. Both schools are located in county-level districts under the same municipal jurisdiction and are designated “Provincial Model High Schools,” with their quality ranking at the forefront of the city. The difference is that one is in a county where agriculture is the pillar industry and is the only ordinary senior high school in the county, with over 7,000 students, 80% of whom are from rural backgrounds (hereafter “County No. 1 High School”). The other is in the county-level district where the municipal government is located and is one of four ordinary high schools in the jurisdiction, with a student body of around 3,800, about 30% of whom are from rural backgrounds, and whose families are on average slightly better off than those at County No. 1 High School (hereafter “District No. 1 High School”). My role in both schools was as an assistant to the head teacher (ban zhu ren), conducting participatory observation in a first-year high school class at an average frequency of 2 days per week. I observed the daily work of teachers in the grade-level office and classroom, and maintained communication with students and school leaders. I recorded my observations by hand and wrote field notes when inspired.
For me, still new to the world, the process of data collection was also a process of gaining a real sense of class differences. After witnessing the daily reality of the county high schools and reflecting on the interviews conducted at elite universities, I increasingly understood that the relationship between different groups and school education has profound differences. These differences transcend the divisions imposed by educational stages, regions, and school tiers, and exist stably among groups of similar class status. In the following, I elaborate on the systematic differences IN perceived. Given the vastness of the data, I focus on cases that are common and typical within their respective groups.
IV. “Controllers” and “Dependents”
Among the students I interviewed from well-off families, there were no children from the super-rich or top-level elite. These students are different from the elite children tracked by Yi-Lin Chiang in her book Study Gods (2022), whose cohort often aims for top international universities for their undergraduate studies, cultivating a “global citizen” identity through overseas summer schools, international competitions, and personalized tutoring to prepare for global elite competition. In contrast, the well-off students I interviewed at domestic elite universities were more like the ordinary urban middle and newly wealthy classes. Their parents mostly had a good higher education and worked in business management, government, private enterprise, or as teachers, doctors, or university professors. The schools they attended from a young age were often carefully selected, local, high-quality resources. These students share a common trait: from a young age, they were given space by teachers and parents, accustomed to arranging their own studies and lives, and tended to have a clear sense of purpose. They actively engaged in competition, mobilized economic, cultural, and social capital to gain advantages, derived confidence and a sense of entitlement from good grades, and naturally formed a controlling self—understanding themselves as “purchasers of educational services” or “investors in human capital,” dedicated to self-enhancement through education, and viewing making the best choices for themselves as a moral responsibility. This resonates with Stephen Ball’s recent observations of the “entrepreneurial learners” cultivated by global neoliberal education policies (Ball, 2021). Ball argues that the neoliberal governance of education shifts the responsibility for educational success from the state to the individual, while simultaneously masking structural inequalities—the “entrepreneurial learner” is the product of this “individualization of responsibility.”
Looking at the parent-child relationships and parental roles described by the interviewees, it becomes clearer how this “controlling self” is formed. Their parents are often very invested in their children’s education, but this investment is carried out in a way that is subtle to the child. They ensure their child attends a good school and enroll them in tutoring classes when necessary, but they rarely manage their child’s studies directly. Instead, they delegate self-management and a degree of decision-making freedom to the child. Hao Wen from Western University grew up in a western provincial capital; his father and many relatives hold senior positions in the banking system. In his view, many parents give their children the freedom to choose:
My dad is quite supportive of what I like to do; he feels it makes me happy. He is the type of parent who cares more about whether I like something. He does not impose much of his will on me, but in the actual execution, he requires me to do it seriously. Moreover, actually, he controls the “general direction.” However, in specific choices, he lets me choose for myself. Many parents today are like this, especially those who are well-educated.
However, in reality, his “general direction” was always guided by someone. The primary and secondary schools he attended were all top-ranked in the area. The role his parents played was to ensure that he was already prepared when he had to face competition and decisions alone. Ning Xuan from Southern University is from a first-tier city in the east. Both his parents have master’s degrees and work in management in private and foreign companies. In his memory, his parents were busy with work and did not ask much about his studies, but he actually had a “built-in advantage” at every stage:
Ning Xuan: My parents are very busy; they do not manage me much. However, I am also quite self-disciplined.
Yajun: Were your grades excellent from a young age?
Ning Xuan: Not exactly, it usually took me two or three years to get to the top tier. I needed some time to adjust to the new environment, but my parents had been sending me to after-school tutoring classes since kindergarten.
Yajun: Do you remember what you learned in tutoring?
Ning Xuan: I remember learning two-digit multiplication. In kindergarten, it was mainly math. In elementary school, I learned English, supplemented by subject-specific English. My elementary school was also a pilot for quality-oriented education, with less homework and more entertainment. By attending some tutoring classes outside, I could achieve excellent grades.
Yajun: What is your impression of your high school? What were your classmates like?
Ning Xuan: I have noticed many of them became my university classmates (laughs). In junior high, everyone was in parallel classes after entering, but in high school, we were divided into more outstanding “science and technology innovation classes” and parallel classes. I was in an innovation class. In my first and second years of high school, I did two “projects,” which were research projects. I did two related to biology, which felt quite similar to university courses. We reviewed the literature, conducted experiments, and wrote reports.
Having become familiar with the basic training model for researchers in high school, he naturally found the transition to university easy. In his words, it was “satisfaction as expected, just needed to adapt to residential life.” This satisfaction was actually the result of years of cultivation by his parents. For Ning Xuan, going to university was never a “pursuit” but an inevitable event; the only question was which one to choose. When he needed to make a choice, his parents also shared their insights, explaining their judgment of the future market to him:
They had their life experiences, telling me that in this era, studying science and engineering would definitely not be a problem for employment. They also foresaw that the boom in economics and finance might be coming to an end, and undergraduates in these fields might see a decline in their competitiveness in the job market, as the market might be saturated. So they recommended that I study science and engineering. At that time, I felt Southern University had an advantage in computer science, which interested me, so I applied.
When parents have trained their child’s autonomy for years by “grasping the big picture while letting go of the details and giving enough space,” gradually cultivating self-management skills and confidence, the child is naturally more likely to excel in the competition of school and the workplace—because autonomous choice and proactive preparation are what the current university and job markets implicitly demand (Zheng Yajun, 2023). This autonomous control and planning of life and study aligns with the “neoliberal self” that has emerged in the tide of educational marketization: confident, autonomous, independent, proactive, with clear goals, and good at self-management and planning (Vassallo, 2020). Many, when discussing their good grades, spoke with a tone of indifference, because good grades themselves are meaningless unless they serve some “use”:
When I was a child, I did not think having good grades was that amazing. If I did not do well, I would not have a say when playing with my friends. If I did well, everyone was happy, and there was less trouble. However, actually, I have always felt that it is more important for life to have meaning. You cannot live a life that is too instrumentally rational, meaning you keep doing something, but you do not know what it is for. When grades become the purpose of doing something, that is particularly strange. (Shouzhi, Northern University, not a first-generation student, father is a university professor)
In contrast, non-advantaged classes, represented by rural students, have a completely different relational model with school education. If urban middle-class families are “consumers” and “controllers” in the face of education, farming, and laboring families are more often “pursuers” and “dependents.” The rural students I interviewed at elite universities are actually the cream of the crop among their peers. A closer look at their basic education experience reveals that their success was propped up by a series of low-probability events external to their families, such as being precocious and receiving special cultivation from a teacher, having their exceptional grades discovered by a principal who deemed them “material for studying” and gave them extra attention, being appreciated by a teacher and receiving free tutoring, dropping out to work and then being strongly supported by relatives to return to school, or being exceptionally admitted to a provincial key high school.
For their communities, a good school stands in a superior position; it is an external object to be pursued. “Going to university” embodies their hope for a better life, and “getting into university” means the ecstasy of “being chosen” and the expectation of being further selected by “the organization.” Children with exceptional talent who get into elite universities are rare. However, when one emerges in the area, their story spreads far and wide, serving as a model for subsequent “material for studying” and stimulating others to hope for ancestral blessings to have such a good child. Many of my interviewees were famous “figures” in their local areas. Their academic achievements brought far more than just opportunities for further education; they were imbued with profound social meanings like bringing glory to their ancestors, “earning face” for their family, and even winning honor for their school and hometown.
The hope that “studying can change one’s destiny” is indeed widespread. However, unlike the instrumental attitude of the urban middle class towards schools, for rural families, school education is a platform to demonstrate self-worth, and grades are the proof of that self-worth. More importantly, as long as one is successfully selected and enters an excellent platform, the responsibility for self-development is also handed over to the school, or rather, can only be handed over to the school. The academic performance of top students carries the expectations of the entire family, school, and even the entire county, so grades naturally become the purpose of learning. Many interviewees felt they had already succeeded upon being admitted to university—they had won the gaokao, been successfully selected, yet they failed to realize that elite universities today do not automatically pave the way for their future. They tightly attached their hopes for the future to the vast education system, surrendering control over their lives—or rather, never having had it—and placing their hopes in the school and their major. Such cases are abundant. For example, Miao Qing, from a rural area in central China, whose parents were migrant workers and she was a left-behind child, showed outstanding talent from preschool. She entered primary school early and ranked first in her town in the junior high school entrance exam. This achievement brought her family significant financial benefits and immense psychological satisfaction:
I was thrilled then, and my parents, my grandparents, and my whole family were very proud. Later, I also received an excellent admission offer from a private school, which included waiving all three years of junior high expenses and providing my family with a sum of financial compensation; I do not remember the exact amount. For all three years of junior high, I lived a relatively comfortable life. Teachers, the principal, and classmates all looked at me differently. This was also the first time I realized that “studying can bring me some benefits.” Before primary school, I was probably studying and taking exams aimlessly like a normal person. After this junior high entrance exam, I began to consider what studying could bring me and my family.
When it was time to move from junior to senior high, she was again recruited by a private key high school with generous terms as a “top student.” The school not only waived all fees but also gave her family a “bonus” of 30,000 yuan and provided free housing for her mother to accompany her in the city. She joked, “I probably did not spend much of my family’s money during my studies; I even earned a little.” However, she later recalled that the intense competition and pressure in high school quickly made her realize what a heavy responsibility she was carrying—to aim for Tsinghua or Peking University. This was a project “jointly managed” by school leaders, teachers, and students, which brought her a heavy psychological burden to the point that she began to loathe studying:
We had so many exams, weekly and monthly. I remember one time very clearly, I ranked around 20th or 30th in a monthly exam. After the exam, our principal would hold a results analysis meeting. The principal would invite the teachers of our class (13) in the first year, a few key students, and their parents to have a meal together. Moreover, it was at the dinner table that the results were analyzed. For example, so-and-so did well this time, improved by so many ranks; so-and-so did poorly, fell back by so many. I did not do well that time, and I cried throughout the meal. Because I felt so guilty, not just embarrassed for myself, but I felt like I had made my mother lose face…. From high school, my aversion to studying became very severe. I felt like I was not studying for myself, but was being forced by others to do this. I had utterly lost my freedom; I had to get into Tsinghua or Peking, and sometimes I felt oppressed to the point of suffocation.
At that time, she did not realize that she and the school had formed a community of shared interests. Getting into Tsinghua or Peking was the task the school had given her, and ironically, she herself had never had the opportunity to choose a goal for herself. Her gaokao score ranked 12th in the school, but only the top 5 could secure a spot at Tsinghua or Peking. However, the school’s desire to produce Tsinghua/Peking students was so strong that she still applied for the special program for impoverished counties in the early admission round, with Peking University’s nursing department as her first choice. She was admitted to the nursing department at Southern University. She told me that she knew nothing about filling out applications back then and basically just listened to her teachers, whose advice was mixed with their own interests:
The teachers cared more about whether your university was good. When they hang banners, they will say, “So-and-so student got into such-and-such university,” without mentioning your major. For instance, if you are accepted into Peking or Tsinghua, the school rewards its teachers with a bonus. Similarly, if you are accepted into one of the top 10 universities, you will receive another bonus. That is how the calculation works. So my application might not have been filled out very well. I just casually filled in the early admission round, and then I got in… My family was still pleased, after all, in our entire town, I was the first to get into such a prestigious university. However, upon arrival, I discovered that many students were hesitant to join the nursing school. The high number of students seeking to transfer majors led the school to stop accepting transfers altogether.
Hijacked by exams, she finally had the freedom to make her own decisions after entering university. However, after being caged for so long, she was no longer willing to ignite her desire for knowledge, nor did she have the will to take control of her own life. Adapting to university was also not easy; she found it hard to find a sense of belonging. Unlike many of her classmates who desperately wanted to escape the nursing school, she was content to drift, dealing with her studies perfunctorily, with her GPA in the middle range. She was sure she had no interest in medicine and chose to join the “Go West” program upon graduation, teaching in an impoverished area for a year before pursuing a master’s degree. She imagined she might be able to enter a government department through the targeted recruitment program for graduates, but after experiencing it, she found it boring:
Miao Qing: I have never made a life plan or set any life goals for myself. I never thought about changing my major. Since I am here, I’ll study according to the school and major’s requirements. For instance, now that it is afternoon, the furthest I think ahead is what I am going to eat for dinner. I probably do not care much about tomorrow or even the distant future. I think life’s uncertainty is too great, and I do not have high material demands. Anyway, whether you live a rich or a poor life, everyone’s final destination is a pile of dust!
Yajun: Then what kind of life do you aspire to?
Miao Qing: I have only had one wish since I was a child, a kind of life I have always wanted to live, which is the life of a “rice worm” (mǐchóng). You often see these insects in rice; they live surrounded by much rice every day. They wake up and nibble a few bites when they want to eat, and sleep when they do not—that kind of life. I hope my future life will not be filled with many things that make me think or worry, that it will not require much effort, and that I can be free and not be forced to do anything. So I am actually quite satisfied with a job in the state system, it is just too dull.
From her longing for a “rice worm” life, I could feel the lingering rebellious sentiment bred by the high school’s college admission targets hijacking her life goals. At the most critical juncture when she needed to make her own decisions, she had neither the ability nor the power to control herself. Moreover, as the journey has gone on, the things she can control have gradually diminished, while the cost of making choices has grown ever larger. From depending on grades to depending on the school, and then to depending on a unit within the state system, this is a common path for many interviewees from similar backgrounds.
V. Class in the County High School
Suppose the scope of elite university students can only reflect the class differences of a small portion of “the chosen,” and may not represent the majority. In that case, the county-level high school is a space that can reveal the class differences of most ordinary people. Before I entered the field, considering the lower level of economic development in underdeveloped county areas, I had wondered if I would observe significant class differences in such a small place. However, the observed facts proved my assumptions wrong. Class is such a prominent theme in the county high school that teachers cannot talk about students and the school for three sentences without bringing up family background.
For instance, school leaders, grade-level directors, and teachers from both schools mentioned in different conversations with me a piece of their “common knowledge”: the quality of a school’s education depends largely on the supply of high-achieving students; students’ academic ability mainly depends on their “brains” (intelligence); and “intelligence” is closely related to family background, which is also closely related to the difficulty of a head teacher’s work. A piece of background information is that in both schools, it is common practice to group students into classes based on their academic ability. Starting from the previous year, the admission rate for ordinary senior high schools in the province was raised from the previous 50% to 85%, leading to a sharp drop in the admission scores for both schools. Many students who previously could not get into high school were admitted due to this expansion. This was especially true for County No. 1 High School, as it is the only ordinary high school in the county and had to accept all qualified students. The school had been on high alert since learning of this expansion last year, worried that these “extra” underperforming students would drag down the school’s teaching and management. They had been discussing whether to group them into separate classes or “disperse and dilute” them. In the end, considering that managing a separate “underperforming class” would be too tricky and teacher assessment would also be problematic, both schools adopted the “disperse and dilute” approach: the top-performing students were selected to form six key classes, and the remaining parallel classes absorbed these bottom-tier students evenly. The parallel and key classes were kept separate, not having classes in the same building. This meant that the expansion had no impact on the key classes, while the average “intelligence” of the students in the lower-tier parallel classes was significantly reduced. The grade-level director who taught math sighed one day at his desk: “Sigh, what worries me is not teaching, but that you teach for half a day and he still doesn’t get it!” Another teacher responded, “Don’t you know what kind of bunch you’re teaching? Previously, we admitted 30% and sent them all to university. Later, we increased this to 50%, and we continued to send them all to university. Now, we are admitting 85%, and next year, it will be 95%. Are we still supposed to send them all to university?”
At County No. 1 High School, the class I observed was one of these parallel classes, and all the teachers in the office taught parallel classes. The office was filled with smoke, caused by many male teachers smoking, and the other teachers seemed accustomed to it. During breaks and self-study periods, many students were “summoned” by teachers for reprimands. The reasons for being “summoned” were mostly for disciplinary violations caught by the teacher on duty, such as hair being too long, talking during the lunch break, reading non-textbook books, smoking, etc. If the head teacher considered the infraction serious, the parents would be called in to be informed of their child’s misbehavior at school, in order to get the parents’ attention and also to punish the child. The head teacher at the desk next to mine was a strict male teacher who “summoned” students almost non-stop from morning to night. In the pauses, I could often hear him sigh, take a deep drag from his cigarette, and lament, “These kids are getting harder and harder to manage!” Then he would continue with the next round of “summons.” Maintaining class discipline and strengthening management to ensure “no incidents” seemed to be what these head teachers spent the most time and energy on.
When discussing the reasons for the poor performance of students in the parallel classes, the teachers most frequently cited family background as the primary factor. Through years of observation, the teachers concluded that those who could enter the key classes were often the children of county government employees, teachers, doctors, and other public sector workers.
In contrast, rural children from low-income families were concentrated in the parallel classes. “The kids from the city have better foundational skills from primary and junior high than the kids from the countryside, for one. Moreover, for another, parents with official jobs in the city are more conscious of its importance. They know how to curry favor with teachers since kindergarten to get more attention. How can they be the same?”—this was the teachers’ “common knowledge.” Another factor the teachers often attributed it to was family relations and structure: the proportion of children from special families (parents with disabilities, divorced, orphans, or parents working away from home year-round) in the parallel classes was much higher than in the key classes. “These students are simply not managed by anyone, and are more likely to have problems (psychological crises and self-harm).” The teachers generally felt helpless about this, not believing it was something they could change through their own teaching efforts. The words of the first-year grade director at District No. 1 High School also confirmed this:
Our grade is divided into three levels: science and technology innovation classes, elite classes, and enrichment classes. Students in the innovation classes have no discipline problems; what they need is to improve their self-directed learning skills. However, the further down you go (in class level), the more problems the students have, and the more complex the situations become. The classes at the bottom, not to mention being economically worse off, more importantly, have more complex family structures—blended families, single-parent families, left-behind children, those raised by grandparents, all kinds of situations. Many kids cannot get the support they need from home. For some kids, you cannot even find their parents; it is like the kid has been handed over to you, the teacher, and you are just not supposed to cause them any trouble. In fact, for the kids in these bottom classes, the school is just a “fire brigade.” All the complexities of society and family are finally concentrated in this kid, leaving the school scared and exhausted as it tries to cope.
Here, family background becomes a more complex concept, encompassing factors such as the family structure’s integrity, the harmony of family relations, the ability to provide psychological support, and the presence of relatives with criminal records. It is not limited to socioeconomic status, but is closely linked to it. Teachers were clearly more willing to deal with educated, reasonable, and easy-to-communicate-with parents, because these parents were more likely to cooperate with the teachers, not only not causing trouble for the teachers, but also helping to share some responsibilities (such as organizing parent committees, providing the necessary conditions for their children without relying on the teachers). Uneducated parents were the opposite: they often completely shifted the responsibility of education to the school, expecting the teachers to send their children to university, while at the same time not fully trusting the school, yet in reality having no choice but to entrust their children to the school. The strong dependence of lower-class families on the school was vividly demonstrated in the game between parents and the school.
According to my observations, uneducated parents, under this tangled and conflicting mentality, usually exhibit two types of behavior, both rooted in dependence. One type involves being obsequious and fawning towards teachers, stating that the child’s affairs are entirely the teacher’s responsibility, thereby completely handing over the child’s education to the teacher. This type of parent has existed for many years, and they have a classic line that teachers often mock: “Teacher, you can just beat him to death for me!” Teachers, however, often hold a contemptuous attitude towards this. “Beat your kid to death for you? Am I crazy?” In the teachers’ view, this sentence, while on the surface handing over all disciplinary power to the teacher, is actually a shirking of responsibility, as if to say, “I’ve handed the child over to you; if he’s not taught well, it’s your fault.” The teachers at County No. 1 High School are known for their diligence and responsibility.
Sometimes, a few scoldings or beatings are commonplace, but for the children of these parents, the teachers are more cautious. Mr. Zhang, a history teacher and head teacher, said on this matter: “If I’m going to hit your kid, I have to spend my energy, and I also have to bear the responsibility. Do you think I have nothing better to do?” Therefore, teachers see hitting students as a sign of their dedication and responsibility, a responsibility they are not willing to take on for just anyone. In stark contrast to the teachers’ assertiveness is the parents’ submissiveness. In the cases I observed of teachers dealing with disciplined students, teachers would often use “suspension for reflection” as a trump card to intimidate students and parents—“If you keep this up, do not come to my class anymore, go home and reflect.” Parents, upon hearing this, would often turn pale and say that it is absolutely not an option: “What will happen if the kid is left at home with no one to watch him?” Then they would beg the teacher to be lenient and give them another chance.
In Mr. Mei’s class, a boy was ordered to be suspended for talking back and insulting a teacher. The parents, unable to bear it, came to the school to plead. First, the mother came and staged a scene of kneeling at the school gate, and the next day, the father came to plead with Mr. Mei. Mr. Mei said that this student had transferred initially to his class because he was afraid of his previous head teacher. He had reluctantly agreed at the time, but who knew he would be such an unruly brat. He was not satisfied with the student’s apology and was very impolite to the parent: “Even a kindergarten kid knows you cannot eat in class. Your son was eating in class, and when the teacher criticized him, he cursed the teacher with foul language. And when asked to write a self-criticism, he wrote only these few words? What kind of kid is this? Where do you find such a student?” After a stalemate for the whole morning, it ended with a written guarantee signed and witnessed by the subject teacher: “I, XXX, if I ever violate school rules and regulations again, will voluntarily return to my original class. I hereby guarantee.” I heard that for some students who made mistakes, the teacher would not only send them home but also cancel their eligibility to take exams, which would also help prevent the class average from being negatively impacted.
The other type of parent is what the teachers call “unruly parents” (diāomín). They would find all sorts of “faults” with the teachers (such as on the grounds of corporal punishment, verbal abuse, or discrimination), use official channels to complain about the school, or use the child’s own personal safety as a bargaining chip to threaten the school, forcing the school to meet their demands. These demands essentially meant not being expelled for serious disciplinary violations, or being allowed to return to school after suspension for reflection. This type of parent is more common in District No. 1 High School because it is more heavily regulated than the school in the county seat. A grade-level director at District No. 1 told me:
The parents say, ‘You can just go ahead and hit him,’ but in reality, would you try hitting one? Let alone the teacher hitting them, even now, if the school has done nothing non-compliant, and the student has clearly violated school rules, the school has to do much work beforehand to ensure the family can accept the punishment. Otherwise, they might threaten you with their life. What can the school do? Usually, we give them a demerit to scare them, and then remove the record before graduation.
In order to ensure their successful dependence, parents do not hesitate to use threats or even framing to coerce the school. At County No. 1 High School, complaints from “unruly parents” also happen from time to time, but because there is only one high school in the entire county, the cost of a parent complaining is huge—after angering the school and teachers, who will be responsible for the child? So the “unruly parents” are not as rampant as in District No. 1. Once, I asked the teachers: “After you hit a student, do you worry about being reported?” The teachers had their own logic. One said, “I use this roll of white paper to hit them, it does not leave marks on the body.” Another said, “If his kid doesn’t want to study anymore, let him go and report it. I will just never manage your kid again.” The reason teachers dare to hit students is also because of the parents’ dependence, as they have no other choice.
V. Conclusion and Discussion
This article attempts to challenge the prevailing argument among researchers in recent years about the “flattening of educational attitudes” in East Asian societies, which largely stems from the survey results of quantitative research on family educational attitudes. Such research typically finds no significant difference in the importance placed on education across different social classes, thus concluding a “convergence of educational concepts” or a “de-classing of educational attitudes” (Li & Xie, 2020; Liu & Xie, 2015; Lyu, Li, and Xie, 2019). However, through in-depth interviews and field observations of students from different social backgrounds at elite universities and county-level high schools, this paper re-examines the relationship between social class and the school education system from the starting point of individual subjective feelings and daily practices. The study finds that although there is a formal expression of “valuing education,” beneath this common appearance, the relational logic between students of different classes and the education system presents a fundamental difference—as the saying goes, “alike in form, but different in spirit.” Measurement indicators may not capture the origins and contexts of these attitudes, but they are clearly discernible in the interviewees’ narratives and in the field. Therefore, this quantitative analysis of “flattened” educational attitudes may obscure the deeper, more subtle, yet quite robust differences between the school education system and different social classes.
This article argues that, as revealed by the aforementioned Western research, social class and the school education system do not maintain an equidistant or homogeneous structural relationship.
However, unlike the “planner/survivor” difference outlined in those studies, the social class difference in our country is more manifested as a difference between “consumers/dependents.” However, our exam-based promotion system means that non-advantaged classes are also to a large extent “survivors” of the educational competition; their more essential characteristic lies in their deep dependence on and entrustment to the school education system, and even to the broader state power system. For students from the middle and upper classes, school education is a tool that can be deployed, a commodity of service that belongs to them and is available for their choice. They are learners adept at self-control, adopting a consumer-style or even entrepreneurial mentality to autonomously set goals and mobilize resources to reproduce their advantages and realize their educational needs. In stark contrast, for students from working and farming classes, education is more like an “other” system—it is external, scarce, and an opportunity that can only be obtained by excelling in layers of competition. Being admitted to a good school is itself seen as an achievement, even a favor. This relationship does not generate a sense of entitlement, but instead inspires an almost pious “standing in the snow at Cheng’s door” attitude, that is, a dependence on and gratitude towards the school, a deep desire to be “chosen by the system,” and a profound entrustment of one’s personal destiny. This high degree of dependence demonstrates a “subordinate agency,” which stands in sharp contrast to “entrepreneurial agency.” The following table summarizes the typical differences in the subjectivity of elite and working/farming class students within the education system, which can serve as an analytical framework for future researchers to understand the educational experience differences of different social groups:
| Dimension | Middle/Upper-Class Students | Working/Farming-Class Students |
| Relationship with Education System | Internalized, strong sense of affinity | Externalized, strong sense of distance |
| Perception of Education’s Nature: | A resource one owns, a commodity to be freely deployed. | A scarce opportunity, a favor to be striven for |
| Learner Identity | “Consumer-style/Entrepreneurial learner,” active controller | “Pious apprentice-style learner,” passive dependent |
| Manifestation of Agency | Proactively chooses and deploys educational resources to strengthen advantages, desires “I have a choice | Highly dependent on the education system, less self-directed, desires “I am chosen” |
| Understanding of Education’s Function: | A tool for continuing advantage, | A channel for upward mobility |
| Emotional Attitude & Mentality | Confident, controlling, highly strategic | Pious, grateful, self-sacrificing |
Fig. 1 – Differences in perceptions of education amongst Middle/Upper-class and Working/Framing-Class Students
The findings of this study deepen the theoretical discussion in academia about the relationship between school education and class in non-capitalist societies. Although the Chinese education system on the surface aims for “common prosperity” and “equal opportunity,” in reality, the role played by schools reflects a classed structure of symbolic interaction. This structure exists not only in teachers’ attitudes towards students and parents of different classes. However, it is more embodied in the students’ perceptions, postures, and practices towards the school—that is, the classed subjectivities of education. This perspective engages in a dialogue with the findings of Western scholars in different national educational fields (e.g., Reay et al., 2009; Lehmann, 2007; Archer, Hutchings, Ross, 2002), and also responds to the critiques of early cultural Marxist theorists on the symbolic violence function of the education system (Bernstein, 1962; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). A teacher at a county high school lamented to me with heartfelt emotion: “You can tell the city kids are from the city just by looking at their faces. There is a light in their eyes. The rural students do not have that light in their eyes.” Class, in fact, profoundly shapes the social interactions that occur in school and also shapes students’ emotional attitudes towards themselves and the world. For those children who can only plead for dependence on the school, the teachers are both helpless and contemptuous. Moreover, for the children themselves, what they feel is perhaps more of a lack of self-dignity. When the family and the school shirk responsibility from each other, the real needs of the individual life are left unarticulated and forgotten in this choiceless dependence.
By deeply depicting the class-differentiated educational experiences, this article not only provides a new path based on subjectivity for understanding the formation mechanism of social inequality in China’s educational field but also helps to provide a more realistic socio-psychological basis for policy practice. Taking the “Double Reduction” policy as an example, the original intention was to curb the expansion of the tutoring industry, reduce students’ academic pressure, and narrow the education gap. However, in practice, it has produced a “policy drift”: urban middle-class families quickly shifted to “underground” or personalized private tutoring services to maintain their competitive advantage, while ordinary working and farming families, due to a lack of alternative resources, lost their opportunity to participate in the competition (Ball, 2021; Jin & Sun, 2022; Pan Yunhua, 2024). Another example is the continuously promoted “New Gaokao” reform in recent years. The original intention of the policy was to empower students by increasing the flexibility and freedom of examinations, encouraging students to follow diversified development paths according to their own talents. However, after implementation, the goals of the New Gaokao were quickly subverted by students’ utilitarian subject selection strategies in developed eastern provinces—in order to gain an advantage, students would choose easier subjects and avoid more difficult ones like physics and chemistry, which are important for future professional studies and national industrial development. In the central and western regions, the New Gaokao has become a formality due to insufficient resources, with subject selection and course-based classes being simplified into several fixed classes, and exam-taking strategies have not substantially changed (Xu Dongbo & Pang Ying, 2024). As Xu &Pang show, if the class differences in educational subjectivity are ignored, any policy may reproduce the logic of inequality under the guise of “universal benefit.” If policymakers had a grasp of the educational subjectivity characteristics of the urban middle class and non-advantaged groups, they would find that these unintended policy outcomes were actually predictable: the self-controlling urban middle class will find ways to actively mobilize resources to maintain their advantages regardless of policy changes, and the increase in freedom is a “timely rain” for them; whereas the non-advantaged groups, who are strongly dependent on the school system, are accustomed to relying on the school’s unified arrangements from the beginning, so that when freedom is equally distributed to them, it becomes an unmanageable, superfluous burden, exacerbating the difficulty for them to gain an advantage.
Therefore, understanding and incorporating the perspective of classed subjectivity is a prerequisite for any policy aimed at promoting educational equity to be genuinely effective. Educational equality is not only a matter of resource redistribution but also a matter of re-understanding the subjective world. This is not only a challenge to the system but also a re-questioning of our understanding of “what it means to be a learner.”
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This is the English version of an article published in Chinese in Logos Review (汉语学志). Read the Chinese original (中文原文) · All English articles
