‘Wherever was found what was called a paternal government was found a state education: It had been discovered that the best way to ensure implicit obedience was to commence tyranny in the nursery: There was a country in which education formed the only qualification for office: That was, therefore, a country which might be considered as a normal school and pattern society for the intended scheme of education: That country was China: These paternal governments were rather to be found in the east than in the west …’
– Benjamin Disraeli, House of Commons Education Debate, 20 June 1839 [emphasis added]
In 1839, during a House of Commons debate, Benjamin Disraeli criticized centralized education, citing China as an example of ‘tyranny in the nursery.’ He argued that British education thrived on individual enterprise rather than state intervention. Yet, the debate resulted in the approval of a £30,000 government grant for education – a small but significant step towards the system we recognize today.
Fast forward two centuries, today, over 70% of OECD countries’ citizens enjoy a state-funded education. For Britain and China, this figure is 94% and 87% respectively. Whether truly enjoyable or not, public education has become mainstream. Disraeli’s worry of centralized education commencing tyranny has largely become a thing of the past in the developed world, as students are getting gold stars for whatever they do and being dismissed in the early afternoon.
However, this method might have worsened social inequality – making education ‘easier’ can create a wider knowledge gap between the 70% and the 30%, as the wealthy continue to pay for a stricter education. In October 2024, Professors at top US universities voiced their concern in the Atlantics, finding their students unable to finish entire books in a week. In the article, this phenomenon has been attributed to the fact that many state school graduates in America have never read an entire book in high school, falling behind their more strictly educated peers from private schools.
Compared to the ethos of today’s state schools, perhaps boarding private school students are less susceptible to technological and value shifts in most children’s worlds. With adults fully managing their schedules, they are more likely to be assigned a book or activity that reflects their parents’ cultural capital. Although nowhere near a ‘tyranny,’ the underlying philosophy is similar, in that obedience and studiousness need to be cultivated from a young age.
That is, private schoolers are expected to exhibit refinement and taste, while their state school peers are not expected to embody a certain social capital. Indeed, the problem of social reproduction is not new. Yet, when the Headmaster of Warminster, a 300-year-old private school, commented in the documentary School Swap: The Class Divide that the requirement for students to put on suits for school and attend weekly formal dinners is in preparation for adult life, a more challenging divide emerges. Knowledge aside, is education preparing students for the world?
An August 2024 article from The Economist went as far as to say that Western Culture, especially the self-indulging narrative of ‘you can be whoever you want to be and hear only what you want to hear’ often found on social media and in public schools, is infantilizing. Away from ‘tyranny in the nursery,’ the developed world seems to have pushed education to another extreme. Liberalism and accessibility may have backfired, as public schools applaud not the reading of books, but the mere effort of opening a book, while private education continues to uphold elitism and gatekeep knowledge.
If so, then the value of strictness may seem easier to grapple with, for it can be a shortcut to discipline and refinement, both qualities desired for adulthood. Yet, if we go back to China, which was the subject of the ‘tyranny in the nursery’ critique 185 years ago, we still see, strangely, a state of education where adults struggle to phase out of the ‘student mentality’ characterized by hard work and book smart.
The judgement that China’s obedient culture was nurtured by ‘tyranny in the nursery’ was based on China’s 1300-year-old imperial exam, where merit in the liberal arts and political theory determine the fate of aspiring civil servants. The comment still has some truth to this day. Today, a whopping three million sit in the national civil servant exam where nearly 64 people compete for one opening.
Here, strictness and competitiveness are not something parents pay for, but a survival requirement, as teachers, parents, and students all know that, as the Chinese saying goes, one more point kills off a truckload of competitors, and there is naturally gold in the books. Contrary to the American state school graduates who cannot finish a book, their Chinese peers often self-deprecate as ‘test-taking experts’ trapped in the books.
Even with work, school analogies persist. Indeed, ‘company alumni’ is not uncommon in English, yet the analogy is nowhere near as comprehensive as it is in the Chinese context, where stages of adult life are continuously mapped onto stages of school. When being offered a job, they use the same phrase as they would if they passed an exam – ‘I’ve reached the shore (shangan).’ When quitting or getting fired from a job, it is common to say ‘I graduated (biye) from this company.’ At China’s top companies, superiors are often titled ‘teacher’; as an exchange, the most respectful title subordinates can ask for is ‘classmate.’
When starting full-time work as a new graduate, getting rid of the ‘student mentality (xuesheng siwei)’, which in the Chinese context means obedient, hardworking, and non-innovative, is always a hot topic. Used to the utmost authority of teachers, new graduates often struggle to think outside of the box, an essential skill in the workplace.
The very fact that young adults discuss how to forego the student mentality points to the fact that ‘Eastern’ culture, too, stops people from growing up, even though competition and hard work are fully acknowledged. Yet, when there are no past papers to practice, no question sets to perfect, and absolutely no marks to compare themselves against, graduates feel a loss of direction.
Perhaps the ultimate ‘direction’ of life is invisible. When Western ‘kidults’ – as The Economist puts it – persist to use the wrong spelling of the word hamster, the most sensible young adults in Chinese parents’ eyes are studying day and night for the national civil servant exam, like they did for the past 16 years. On the two extreme spectrums of the state of education, it seems hard to find maturity and sensibility.
What they have both missed, perhaps, is a critical stance on the nature of knowledge – that it is a dynamic process, rather than a fixated fact. Both practices, experiences, and theories are forms of knowledge, and their cultural capital underpins their power. Just as knowledge can be learned, this power of sophistication and sensibility can be passed on, as the hopes of social mobility.
This is by no means a question this essai attempts to conclusively answer. Nonetheless, it is uncanny to think that an insult made in the British parliament 185 years ago still echoes today – in both countries – and that education seems to continue to reproduce inequality. Indeed, knowledge will continue to be power, yet sensibility, might I define as a nuanced command of various types of knowledge, whether sociocultural, practical, or factual, is the x-factor that transcends education.
Erci Li
our aspiring realist