The leader of President-Elect Joe Biden's education transition team has a history of praising China's state education system.
Linda Darling-Hammond is a professor at Stanford University and incumbent president of the California State Board of Education, praised the "magical work" of the Chinese Communist Party in the realm of education.
"In the Tao traditions of ritual, the phrase ‘heaven-earth-sovereign-parent-teacher' is repeated and becomes ingrained in how people see themselves holistically governed and supported," she wrote according to a new Washington Free Beacon report.
"Sovereign" as a noun refers to the ruler of a nation, which in China's case would be Xi Jinping.
In China, any schooling which does not involve direct and intrusive oversight by the state is punishable by imprisonment. Communist Party agents are routinely sent to classrooms to ensure teachers, in the words of Xi Jinping, "serve the Communist Party in its management of the country." They also ensure that teachers do not make statements considered by the CCP to be "improper."
Teachers are routinely punished in China if they defy the official Communist Party line, with lucky victims being fired while others are subject to imprisonment. In October, a Chinese Christian teacher was forced to flee the country after being accused of sharing her faith with students. In 2019, reports of a crackdown against teachers from foreign countries explained that many teachers were arrested in China's pursuit of a more "patriotic" education system. In July of this year, a professor at a Chinese university, Xu Zhangrun, was placed under house arrest after criticizing the Chinese government's response to coronavirus.
The situation is even worse for ethnic minorities. In East Turkestan, the homeland of the Uyghur people who are currently facing cultural genocide at the hands of the CCP, the education system is used as a tool to assimilate the Uyghur population into Han Chinese culture. Educators who attempt to teach Uyghurs their native language are subject to imprisonment, and students are punished for not being sufficient in Mandarin.
In a November interview with The Post Millennial, a Uyghur language activist named Abduweli Ayup explained "if kids want to go to the bathroom, for example, they have to say it in Mandarin. If they can't, they cannot go to the toilet. In some cases, kids will pee themselves because they don't know how to ask. It is a form of torture and humiliation."
Ayup noted the emotional toll such policies have on children in China. "One thing you notice is that these kids don't even smile or speak much when they meet you because they have to speak a language that is not their own," he explained. "In our culture, when you meet someone you are supposed to smile and say hi. Because of these strict rules, these kids even forget to smile."
In her book, Darling-Hammond praised China's educational investments, taking statements from the notoriously secretive Chinese government at face value. She refers to the Chinese minister of education, who claimed that the government spends "billions of yuen" to improving the "working … and living conditions" of teachers.
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