ABSTRACT
This article investigates the possibility of implementing Freire’s critical pedagogy in China’s educational system by examining a seemingly unlikely area of application – patriotic education, which is, by definition, the most obstinate component in state administration that is resistant to change due to both the determination of the regime to maintain legitimacy through ideology control and the difficulty for the subjects to break away from the thinking pattern implanted since a young age. In this chapter, we explore the linguistic nature of China’s patriotic education by examining textbooks used in elementary schools and senior high schools, respectively, to gauge the extent to which the official ideology might have been embraced by China’s young adults before they left school. Subsequently, we investigate how it may be possible to apply Freire’s educational model to China’s patriotic education by decoding the ideological work encoded into the textbooks so students recognize the background intentions and know the situations they face as a result of receiving these instructions. The aim is to ponder whether it is possible at all to introduce elements of Freire’s critical pedagogy into China’s educational system so Chinese students acquire a certain degree of independent thinking ability and put the patriotic education they receive in perspective.
