Educational Reform in Republican China: The Failure of Educators to Create a Modern Nation
Document Type
Book
Publication Date
2005
Abstract
This 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. Meanwhile, they introduced both a new set of values that many people considered alien, and a new set of institutions that produced neither 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.
Recommended Citation
Curran, Thomas D. Educational Reform in Republican China : The Failure of Educators to Create a Modern Nation. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0773459526
Comments
Parallel title in Chinese:
Minguo shi dai de jiao yu gai ge: jiao yu jia chuang zao xian dai min zu de shi bai.