China And Colors Of The Mountain Summary

Education is the milestone to success. Education is exceptionally crucial to students today. In China and Colors of the Mountain, Da Chen describes his life growing up in a former landlord’s family at the time of the Cultural Revolution led by Mao Zedong. Da tells the story of himself persevering through the hardships and obstacles and what his discriminating teachers put him through to get a fair education. Students from a poor family have little access to education compared to the students from a wealthy family. As Nedostup, R., & Hong-Ming, L. (2001). says, “ Wang concludes, “is not education for the common people, but can be properly seen as ‘education for the rich’”. From 1900 to 1997, students had to experience the challenging and new

They always had the access to valuable education due to their good wealth. This passage from the Colors of the Mountain shows the differences between the wealthy students and Da. “ I slumped against the wall, feeling depressed. The world was unfair. Everyone in my class seemed to have young parents with money. They chatted, laughed, and socialized with the new teacher. Their manners were smooth, their clothes were nice. It was a very special occasion for them, and a milestone for the kids. Some of the parents were so influential … being the teacher for those kids could mean a lot of back-door favors.” ( Chen, 2001, p.13). This passage describes how wealthy students enjoyed school compared from Da, who is from a poor family furthermore, from a former landlords family. In China, “ Hence if a family had the money to send their sons to a good teacher who had himself passed the higher examinations with distinction, or if they ran a lineage school and hired their own private teachers of similar status, then obviously their children had a better chance of passing the examinations and entering high office.” ( Spence, J. D. 1990). For the students from a wealthy family, they lived in a progressed life since they are wealthy by having a higher chance of passing the examinations and entering high

In 1976, “ With the death of Mao (1976), … Science and technology became an important focus of educational policy. Since the rise of power of Deng Xiaoping in 1978 a number of reforms have been introduced. The shift toward socialist market economy necessitated not only an adequately trained workforce to support economic development, but a highly educated one. The transformation of the school system became a national priority. Quality of education was again preferred over the quantity, and once again, the curricula and pedagogy took to borrowing from abroad for advanced training in the scientific fields. In addition, the great revival in both Chinese and Western literature and arts in the late 1970’s and 1980’s has had effect on the curricula of the public school.” (Tao, Liqing, Margaret Berci, and Wayne He.2014). This shows that students could focus on their studies with a developed education system. And it shows a positive progress since students can learn not only from the Chinese system but the Western education system. In Colors of the Mountain, education has changed for Da. Although he still couldn’t receive fair education, Da still tried his best in his studies and Da and his brother got into a good university by their outstanding scores despite, being in a former landlords