Educational Reform in Republican China: The Failure of Educators to Create a Modern Nation, Volume 40This study examines the history of modern education in Republican China and analyzes its interaction with China's traditional educational heritage. In the first decade of the 20th century, the Chinese government introduced a new, national system of education, hoping that doing so would produce for China the human resources it needed to save itself from foreign encroachment. The new structure, however, was designed in accordance to foreign models that were hardly suited to conditions in China, and it had to compete with a strong indigenous educational tradition that was intimately associated with important features of Chinese social structure. Ultimately, when evaluated in the reformers' own hopes and expectations the new schools were a failure. Often referred to as the foreign eight-legged essay, they contributed to the destruction of a system of schooling that had helped to integrate traditional Chinese society by providing, at minimum, an avenue for upward mobility that most people considered fair and an introduction to an intellectual and literary heritage that all Chinese could claim as their own. considered alien, and a new set of neither institutions that produced the skilled manpower that the reformers sought nor the channel for upward mobility that elite aspirants wanted. By reforming the schools, instead of saving China, the reformers contributed to the disintegration for which the Republican Period is aptly remembered. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Chinas Traditional Educational System | 19 |
Education and Ideological Control | 38 |
Copyright | |
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20th century academic argued Beijing Borthwick bureaucratic Cai Yuanpei Chinese education Chinese society Chinese Students chuban civil service examination classical Confucian cultural curriculum degree economic Education Association educational reform educational system elite Elman ethics examination system example foreign Fu Sinian gentry Huang Yanpei Ibid institutions intellectual interest Japan Japanese Jiang Menglin Jiangsu Jiaoyu yu zhiye Jiaoyu zazhi late imperial leaders learning Liang Liang Qichao literati methods Ministry of Education modern education modern schools moral Neo-Confucian officials pedagogy percent political practical pragmatic primary school provincial Qing dynasty Rawski Republican China Republican period returned students rural school system Schwintzer Shandong Shanghai Shu Xincheng shuyuan sishu social Stanford Tao Xingzhi teachers teaching Thøgersen traditional education University Press urban utilitarian village vocational education Wang WCSJ Western Xincheng yuan Yuan Shikai Zhang Zhang Zhidong zhiye jiaoyu Zhonghua ziliao