Schooling and society in late Qing China

Abstract

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 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'.