Lei Wang researches John Dewey’s pedagogical influence on the historical context of China and compares his observations and his basic democratic approach with the concepts and practical implementation of his Chinese students. As a result, it turns out that the spread of pragmatic philosophy in China was accompanied by reductionism, misunderstandings, Confucian doctrine and nationalism and that Dewey’s reform proposals can open a democratic perspective on current challenges in Chinese society. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Dewey’s research trip to China, the author emphasizes the contemporary significance of his work. The results of her study can clarify and correct errors that continue to have effect today.
Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Yankee Confucius -- John Dewey's Visit to China -- John Dewey's Lectures in China -- Educational Reform -- The New Education Reform Movement: its Origins and Development to 1922 -- T'ao Hsing-Chih and Educational Reform, 1922-1929 -- The Denouement: Educational Reform at the End of the 1920s -- Pragmatic Politics and Reform Ideology -- Experimental Politics -- A Table of the Published Chinese Sources of John Dewey's Lectures Delivered in China, 1919-1921 -- John Dewey's Major Lecture Series, Published Articles, and Professional Activities During His Visit to China -- Translations of John Dewey's Works Into Chinese -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Glossary -- Index -- Harvard East Asian Monographs.
This book studies the Chinese government's focus on changing education as it transitioned from an imperial monarchy to a republic at the turn of the twentieth century.
This book addresses an often-ignored theme in the mission of the current Chinese education reform: cultivating students' individuality as a foundation of learning. Moreover, it tries to revive the Confucian tradition of self-cultivation while building a connection with the wes...
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. 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.