Raising cosmopolitan children: Chinese middle-class parents’ educational strategies

Abstract

This article examines the educational strategies of Shanghai Chinese middle-class parents who intend to raise their children to be cosmopolitans. It is based on a 2-year interview study of a group of Chinese parents who send their children to accredited international bilingual schools in Shanghai. Drawing on the concept of ordinary cosmopolitanism, I identify the promotion of extra-curricular activities and frequent travel within China and internationally as two central family practices used to foster a cosmopolitan orientation to improve their children's future. Although cosmopolitanism has a strong appeal to them, my analysis challenges both their concept of cosmopolitan parenting and whether a meaningful cosmopolitan education can take place through parenting strategies. I argue that a transpositional understanding of Chinese middle-class cultural logic of parenting involves a new thinking about the risks, compromises and complex interactions between culture, class and education, as inherent in their parenting strategies for ‘principled’, ‘fluid’ and ‘universal’ cosmopolitanism.