This paper analyzes the social background including the factors of history, economy and population, and the huge demands for a learning society. It makes a brief review of the indigenous efforts and achievements from six aspects of construction a learning society in Shanghai. Finally based on a theoretical analytic framework it gives reflection on Shanghai’s experience through four perspectives, i.e. learning value, learning system integration, driving force mechanism, and learning function.

Towards a Learning Society: Experience and Reflection from Shanghai

1 Background of building learning society in Shanghai

1.1 Historical background

Shanghai is an amazing city beside Huangpu River. Over the past 700 years, formed over the deposit of the rolling Yangtze River, the land has witnessed significant changes. Credit must be given to the hard-working and open-minded citizens of Shanghai, for it is them where the eminence of this new immigrant city stems from. Shanghai was once the cradle of national industry. As early as in the sixteenth century, it had already become the nation-wide industry center of cotton textile handicraft. In the mid-19th century, it further emerged into a bustling port attracting merchants from both home and abroad. Shanghai is also known as the birthplace of the Chinese Working Class, and is considered the pioneer of labor movement best illustrated by the famous 30 May Movement. After the founding of new China, it has become the Chinese economic heavyweight where the production of commodities once accounted for 60 per cent of the national market. Shanghai is also the place where high-grade, precision and advanced industrial products, such as airplane, large carrier rockets, satellites, supercomputers and automobiles etc., are successfully developed. Today, as the largest financial, trade and shipping center in Far East Asia, Shanghai is reckoned as the "Chinese flagship" exhibiting the great achievements of its reform and opening policy. On top of those, Shanghai is also an immigrant city with an embracing tolerance of multiculturalism. With a tinge of commercialism, creativity and its unique local culture integrating both traditional and western elements, Shanghai is on its way towards becoming a global metropolis.

1.2 Practical demands

From 1990s, the rapid economic development and transformation of Shanghai proposed new requirements for human resource supply, professionals’ competencies and labor force capacity. The significant changes in demographic indicators stimulated the learning demands on the basis of social inclusion. The great improvements in the living quality of ordinary citizens also brought a diversified learning need.

• From 2008 - 2010, the city’s demand for high-skilled workers increased with an annual growth above 5 per cent. (Xu 2008)
• The scale of resident population increased rapidly from 14.74 million in 1999 to 23.02 million in 2010, among which the immigrants accounted for 39% of the Shanghai’s total population. (Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Statistics, 2000,2011)
• The trend of aging population in Shanghai accelerated, as for the year 2010, the elderly population aged over 65 reached 2.33 million, accounting for 10.12 per cent of the total population. In 2010, the life expectancy of Shanghai household population was 82.51 years old, with male at 80.23 and female at 84.8. (Shanghai Aging Science Research Center 2011)
• The Engel coefficient dropped from 56.5 per cent in 1999 down to 33.5 per cent in 2010 (Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Statistics 2000, 2011)
• More than 80 per cent of citizens felt the urge to increase their cultural and educational consumption. They longed for a better adaptation to the changing society by constant improvement of their own caliber. (Xu 2008)

In a word, Shanghai is a dramatically expanding city which features rapid transformation of economic structure, technological advances, and growing globalization. It celebrates the convergence of Chinese and Western cultures on a daily basis, and witnesses the dramatic and complicated changes in individual lifestyles and social values. The city is brimming with vitality and challenges. For every citizen and every business in Shanghai, it has become an intrinsic and urgent need to learn for a sustainable development. At the same time, it has become an important mission of the municipal government to build a learning city and thus make the city life better than ever.

2 Exploration of Shanghai in the last decade

Shanghai's efforts to build a learning society started at the beginning of the century and already went through two important stages. The first stage was marked with The Education Conference of Meeting the 21st Century held in September 1999. At the meeting, the Mayor of Shanghai made the announcement of ‘Making great efforts to build Shanghai into a learning city adapting to the new age’.(Xu 2001) The second stage is signified by the publication of The Guideline for Promoting the Construction of Learning City in February 2006 which was the substantive prelude of the same kind of efforts. In January 2011, Shanghai promulgated The Regulations on the Promotion of Lifelong Education. From then on, the exploration of building learning society will enter into a new stage. The following paper will retrospect the experience of Shanghai from 6 different aspects over the past twelve years.

2.1 Basic concept of lifelong education 

During the process of promoting learning city, the concept Lifelong Learning as a borrowed idea gradually gained broad recognition from government, industry and public and was considered to be the guideline for educational reform and social development. The Guideline for Promoting the Construction of Learning City expressively considered it a key effort to ‘effectively improve the caliber of citizens and extent of urban civilization, promote the full development of human being, stimulate the innovation and vitality of the city, enhance the global economy competitiveness of the city, and promote a socialist harmonious society’. Published in 2010, The Long-term Educational Reform and Development Plan in Shanghai (2010-2020), for the first time, claimed it as the guideline for the future educational development to achieve the goal ‘for each student’s-including adult learner- lifelong development’. The newly issued Regulations of Promoting Lifelong Education in Shanghai, in regarded with ‘meeting the needs of lifelong learning, and promoting the comprehensive development of human being’, made it as the guiding ideological basis and developmental goal to promote lifelong education and learning society.

2.2 Policy framework for learning society

Since 1999, the Shanghai Municipal Government has made great efforts to establish a policy framework for lifelong education and building learning society as well. Promulgated in 2006, The Guideline for Promoting the Construction of Learning City was an important policy document guiding the first phase of practical promotion. It set an ambitious goal of building the framework of a learning society in Shanghai by 2010, where “everyone can learn, at anytime, and anywhere ", and also expressed the necessity of issuing the local regulations of lifelong education.

In 2010, the local government published The Long-term Educational Reform and Development Plan in Shanghai (2010-2020). The concept of lifelong learning as the guiding ideology for future educational reform, economic and social development was established. It also proposed goals and priorities in the development of lifelong education and detailed the objectives, tasks, measures, and implementation of building learning society, illuminating the direction of developing lifelong education over the next ten years in Shanghai.

Promulgated in 2011, The Regulations on the Promotion of Lifelong Education is the first substantial regulation promoting the local development of lifelong education. It made clear that the right, as well as obligations and responsibilities of the government, enterprises, organizations and individuals in lifelong education. It verbally stipulated the scope of launching lifelong learning, the type of its implementation, management and institutional settings, funding sources, learning models, as well as the requirements of its practitioners. It aimed to integrate the resources in different government departments such as education, science and technology, economy, human resources and social security, and others from the whole society. The Regulations on the Promotion of Lifelong Education established the legitimacy of lifelong education in the aspects of finance, human resources, implementing institutions, degree and certifications, and provided a quite solid guarantee for the lifelong learning for all citizens.

2.3 Providing system of Lifelong learning

Shanghai has gradually integrated and optimized the existing educational resources into four types of lifelong education providers to offer the public with a variety of lifelong learning opportunities. These providers have laid an important foundation for the learning society. The first category is institutions administrated by the Municipal Education Commission to provide adults with secondary and higher education. Among them are television schools, Further Education Colleges and Universities, and county Amateur Universities. They mainly meet the needs of young adults for receiving bachelor degree, junior degree, middle-level general education and some vocational training.

The second category is the top-tiered community educational institutions all over the city's eighteen districts/counties. They are funded by the district government according to the size of local residential population, and carry out a variety of learning activities covering the themes of recreation, fitness, health care and vocational trainings. These are the important life-classrooms for the ordinary citizens, especially the aged and the non-natives.

The third category is the staff training institutions of major industries and enterprises in Shanghai. Both large and medium state-owned enterprises, government agencies, educational institutions, health agencies and other institutions are equipped with specialized training departments and training positions, responsible for staff training and learning. The Municipal Education Commission is also actively promoting various organizations in the city to exchange experiences and practice the idea of being learning organizations.

The fourth category is composed of various non-government funded learning institutions. Their learning programs cover a wide range of various vocational skills including computer lessons, foreign languages, poetry and painting workshops, leisure and entertainment, etc., to meet the diverse learning needs of the market. The Municipal Education Commission also guided them to sustainably improve the institute management and learning service quality.

2.4 Management mechanism for promotion

One of the biggest challenges each country faces in the practice of learning society is how to create a cross-sector and comprehensive management system that can integrate all levels and kinds of the education and learning resources and implement the scientific planning, guidance and management of all the lifelong educational activities. Through years of exploration, Shanghai has gradually established an integrated management mechanism by the Municipal Education Commission.

According to The Guideline for Promoting the Construction of Learning City (2006), the Municipal Government set up a Shanghai Municipal Committee on Promoting the Construction of a Learning Society (In 2010 the Committee changed its name to Shanghai Municipal Committee on Building a Learning Society and Promoting Lifelong Education), to assume the functions of planning, coordinating, policy making, guiding and supervising the construction of a learning society in Shanghai. It is led by Shanghai Municipal Education Commission with coordination from Shanghai Municipal Committee of Spiritual Civilization, Municipal Commission of Science and Technology, Municipal Development and Reform Commission, Municipal Human Resource and Social Security Bureau, the Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau, the General Labor Union, Youth League, Women’s Federation and other relevant departments and organizations. The Committee also set up its Administrative office, affiliated to Department of Lifelong Education of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission which is responsible for building a learning society. Based on Shanghai Distant Education Group, it set up a Guide Service Center under the Office which taking the role of guidance, supervision, inspection, evaluation and other services for every district in order to help them improve the quality of their education providing service. It has been proven that this integrated management mechanism with cross-department characteristics can overcome the disadvantages of fragmentation management and finally formed the joint forces for building learning society. At present, the management mechanism is already recognized in , ensuring the legitimacy of the lifelong education system for the learning society.

2.5 Learning culture for a learning society

It is the most important inner motivation for building a learning society that the general public establishes the idea of envisions lifelong learning as a way of living. In recent years, based on the local rich cultural traditions and resources, Shanghai has well launched a series of popular and widely participated learning activities under the coordination and supervision of the above-mentioned management systems: the Week of Lifelong Learning for All, Shanghai Tourism Festival, Film Festival, Cultural Festival, the Book Fair and Reading Activities etc.

These learning activities characterized by distinct local features have changed the traditional concepts of learning which are defined as "learning is school-based activities", "learning is about gaining certificates and diplomas", and "learning is taught by a teacher" etc. A brand new learning culture has been gradually formed which emphasizes believes such as "everyone can be a teacher", "every living space can be a classroom", "learning is/for development", and "learning is life".

2.6 Digital platform for Lifelong Learning

The rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT) has also played an important role in promoting learning society in Shanghai, specifically with two main achievements. Firstly, as a preliminary high-quality resource repository for lifelong education, the lifelong education satellite network platform has been established through which an 8-hour live teaching program of broadcasting is accessible to every corner of the streets, communities, and houses/apartments. Secondly, the Shanghai Lifelong Learning Website has been launched to create inter-connections among streets, cities, counties, and villages, forming a cooperative mechanism in designing and developing web resources on this platform. In addition, a series of activities such as achievements showcase, book clubs, forums, award ceremonies etc. have been organized, creating a voluntary, flexible free and interesting learning atmosphere (Li 2010). The construction of a lifelong learning information platform has been also regarded as one of the future major projects for promoting learning society in The Long-term Educational Reform and Development Plan in Shanghai (2010-2020). In the soon future, Shanghai will make full use of mobile phones, digital TV, internet, and other learning technologies to create abundant and promising digital resources for lifelong learning.

3 Theoretic reflections on Shanghai’s Experience

When we see the smiling faces of the elderly who are learning in the community classes, the confident and assuring expressions on the faces of the strong-spirited handicapped who take delight in contributing to the society, the eyes filled with hopes of the young migrant workers who strive to acquire vocational skills, the English learning passion of both the old and young who want to provide voluntary services for the 2010 Expo, and the scene of exotic friends learning Shanghai local culture and performing on the same stage with Shanghai citizens, we cannot help but feel proud of the achievements of building learning society in Shanghai. But as instructed by our predecessor’s concept of development, ‘Worries will soon come if people give no thought to a long-term plan’. (Confucius) It is necessary to reflect on Shanghai’s experience through the theoretical framework and push forward a new round of development of learning society.

3.1 Analytic framework

In order to conduct a theoretical analysis of Shanghai’s experience, an analytic framework is created as following (See Figure 1) which consists of four factors such as learning values, learning system, learning driving mechanism and learning function as well.

• Learning value: focusing on analyzing the value-orientations of constructing a learning society, e.g., is it considered just as an idea of educational reform, or as an innovative culture which promotes both educational reform and social change?
• Learning system integration: focusing on examining the degree of integration among formal education, nonformal education and informal learning in the lifelong education system.
• Driving force mechanism: regarding government, market, civil force, and lifelong education professional organization as four key driving forces for promoting learning society, focusing on analyzing their respective functions and strengths, and the balancing status of them.
• Learning function: focusing on measuring the achievements of building a learning society with three indicators: economic achievements, improvement of individual life quality and social coherence.

Figure 1 A theoretic analysis frame for reflecting results of building a learning society

3.2 Learning values

In Shanghai, the orientation of learning value is changing in according with the developmental phases of building a learning society. In the first phase, the learning value was viewed as a unitary concept of educational reform, especially as a guiding idea for the development of adult education. In the second phase, the learning value linked more closely to the economic goal of enhancing economic competitive advantages and a little concern about individual growth. It was usually viewed as a transforming force to improve human resource quality as well as quantity, change the paradigm of economic growth, and encourage sustainable development of human beings. In the third phase, as influenced by the idea of building a harmonious society, the government has paid great attention to various emerging social contradictions and   provided more and more learning chances and resources for the disadvantage groups, e.g. immigrants, unemployed, aged and handicapped people which indicate the inclusive values of construction a learning society. However, it is worthwhile to do further investigation which should include the degree of coherence between the value presented in the policy text and the level of actualized value.

3.3 Learning system

In retrospect of Shanghai’s experience of building a learning society, great effort has been made since 2008 to encourage the development of four kinds of providing institutions of lifelong education. However, restrained by the traditional mode of stereotyped management, the substantive communication mechanism for education opening, learning resource integration, and learning outcome mutual recognition have not yet been established between various education institutions, and between schools and other kinds of social learning resources, e.g. libraries, stadium and specific facilities for aged people etc. In order to remove those fences between various educational institutions (general education, vocational education and adult education, etc.) in education system, in systematic perspective it should the multi-dimension communication mechanism among formal, non-formal education and informal learning system, and improve the utilization of various learning resource in the whole society. The recent research Project of Learning Credit Bank and Lifelong Learning Card System have potential to remove the fences inside the educational system and constitute a more open, flexible, tangible-virtual combined and accessible lifelong education system. Meanwhile the local government should enhance the integration between related governmental departments in terms of planning and resource allocation. The funding auditing and performance evaluation should be done as well.

3.4 Driving force mechanism

The building of a learning society is the basic, systematic and comprehensive social innovation. It requires not only extraordinary political intelligence, powerful governmental support, but also asks for certain dynamic mechanism constituted by some important social forces. Bushier indicated that government, market and civil forces constitute the driving mechanism which improves the development of a learning society (Boshier 2010). However, the balancing dynamics among the three will vary given the different cultural contexts in terms of time and space.

Figure 2 Dynamic mechanism of building a learning society

In reviewing a decade’s experience of building a learning society in Shanghai, we can perceive an ever strengthened role which the government and the market kept playing. In contrast to the weakest civil force, the driving power of the government has become the most prominent. Since most lifelong learning activities are organized and funded by government in a basipetal fashion, even the private educational institutions are often forced to face various survival crisis caused by biased policies.  This erodes the essence of lifelong learning, such as impartiality, integration, participation, autonomic and voluntary Spirit.

Therefore, we should actively nurture the civil force in the future efforts which will further encourage the active participation in various lifelong learning activities. Beyond this effort it’s more necessary than ever to encourage and support universities developing and providing academic program in lifelong learning that will promote more and more research work and production of professionals for lifelong learning enterprise. These initiatives will eventually form a collaborative driving mode comprising government, market, and civil as well as professional organizations.

3.5 Learning function

The achievement of building a learning society should not only reflect in the aspect of economic miracle, but more importantly also reflect in shaping the city’s spirit, improving life quality for all and gaining overall social development. In Shanghai, it’s necessary to develop a series of indicators for pursing result appraisal of building a learning society. The economic development, individual growth and life quality improvement, and social coherence should be taken into consideration as the three key categories of indicators in the appraisal system, with which the important vision, “Better City, Better Life” of 2010 Shanghai EXPO, will be achieved.

References

Boshier, R. (2010) ‘Better city, better life! Lifelong learning with Canadian characteristics’, paper presented at the 2010 Shanghai Lifelong Learning Forum,  Shanghai, May.

Confucius. The Analects of Confucius.

Shanghai Aging Science Research Center (2010) Shanghai aging population and social service monitoring statistics information, Shanghai.

Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Statistics (2000) Reporting of Shanghai Statistics in 1999. Shanghai Statistics Publishing House, Shanghai.

Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Statistics (2010) Reporting of Shanghai Statistics in 2009. Shanghai Statistics Publishing House, Shanghai.

Li, J. (2010) ‘Lifelong Learning for better city and better life’, paper presented at the 2010 Shanghai Lifelong Learning Forum, Shanghai, May.

Xu, M. (20 Octuber 2008) ‘Exploring the System of Lifelong Learning Card for Citizens’, Jiefang Daily, 04th version.

Xu, W. (2001) ‘Suggestions for Building Learning Society in Shanghai’, Exploration and Free Views, 2001 (9): 2.

Author

Dr. Jian Huang is Professor, at the Institute of Vocational and Adult Education, School of Educational Science, East China Normal University, China. Email: [email protected]

Questions

1. What do you see as the distinctive features of the Shanghai approach in building a learning society with value for other cities?
2. Do you see a convergence of Chinese and Western cultures in the Shanghai experience? In what ways?
3. What are the main lessons of the Shanghai experience for approaches to sustainable city development?
4. In what ways might the analytical framework suggested in section 3.1 above have relevance and value for other cities?  Is anything missing?