ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises the major findings of this book on Yuwen education and the author's views on the future direction of Yuwen education and research on the Yuwen curriculum. Based on the substantial findings in the Yuwen curriculum, this book makes a theoretical contribution to literacy studies, which have hitherto been mainly grounded in the Western contexts. The author argues that China and its Western counterparts are faced with differing priorities in language and literacy. While Western literacy studies are more concerned with issues of “equity of access”, Chinese scholars and educationalists still have to come to terms with the State's control and subject's autonomy. This book also testifies to the dual conflicting aspects of literacy: Its liberating aspect enabling people to access knowledge and to initiate critical and creative thinking, and its monopolising aspect in which the State stipulates what authors and what texts are selected, taught and memorised, and therefore, what values, history and ideology are State approved and perpetuated, as I report in this book.
