Borthwick, Sally
Description
In the years 1901-1905 a school system modelled on those of Japan
and Europe was introduced in China, after much debate, by a government
anxious to use education to strengthen the country internally against the
foreign threat. Contradictions unforeseen by its sponsors arose between
the new system and the society to which it was introduced. Deep-rooted
indigenous educational institutions, especially the sishu or traditional
private school, showed surprising powers of resilience. The new...[Show more] schooling
was intended to be universal but did not reach the masses, who merely
provided the money for the new schools through taxes. Instead, it retained
the elite associations of its predecessors. Access to the elite was
altered by the predominantly urban location of the new schools, which
demanded a level of professional expertise and material equipment unknown
to the old. Urban gentry and business families were able to use the
schools as a vehicle for social mobility; in addition, the foundation
of schools afforded immediate advantage in terms of finance and prestige
for the men who operated them. Confidence gained through school management
fuelled demands for self government among the gentry, while the visible
ineffectiveness of attempted centralization brought out the weakness of
the government. Where the old schooling had been flexible and, at the upper levels,
had made the student responsible for his own progress (I use 'his' deliberately,
since both the old and the new schooling made little provision
for women), the new imposed unfamiliar standards of punctuality, uniformity
and external direction by impersonal rules. Much of the turbulence of late
Qing schools can be traced back to the clash between their rigid discipline,
derived from the demands of modern industrial society, and the mores of
the society in which they were set. As with calls by the gentry for greater
autonomy vis-a-vis the government, the dissatisfaction of students and
staff was frequently expressed in political language acquired from the
West. A significant minority espoused revolution.
The system of schooling in force under the Qing and the Republican
government was more a divisive than a unifying force: it marked off its beneficiaries from the mass of the population. It was not until the
establishment of the People's Republic that a beginning was made in
extending an understanding and acceptance of the concepts, values, and habits
of modern industrial society to the mass of people, and to resolving the
contradiction between 'foreign' and 'Chinese'.
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