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Media type:
E-Article
Title:
Educational Reform and Politics in Early Republican China
Contributor:
Keenan, Barry C.
imprint:
The Association for Asian Studies, Inc., 1974
Published in:The Journal of Asian Studies
Language:
English
ISSN:
0021-9118;
1752-0401
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
<p>This study analyzes a major educational reform movement in the early Republic of China. It was led by intellectuals in conscious rebellion against the traditional alliance of education with political power. Their vision of the new republic was one of a democratic pluralism in which education would play the critical role in producing a literate, informed citizenry capable of participation in a representative political system. This meant, in their view, the clear independence of education from political control or influence.*The reformers battled to build a new democratic foundation for Chinese politics to replace the futile creation of parties, constitutions, and revolving militarist factions which characterized politics in the early republic. Their attempts were paralyzed by a dilemma unforseen by the liberal reformers. They assumed that political reform was possible only through deeper cultural reform; but cultural reform itself could not get started until political conditions were changed. This dilemma gradually became visible by the mid-twenties as the initial challenge to nonpolitical reformism--May Fourth activism--had subsided. The intense nationalism following the May Thirtieth Incident of 1925 was a sort of coup de grace to the frustrated reformers whose commitment to pluralism and decentralization of power was submerged beneath the urgent demand to save the nation.*The thesis of the article is that the educational reformers of the New Culture movement were not ineffective primarily because of their arrogant individualism learned abroad, nor because of unconscious legacy from their literati forbearers. They were men with intense dedication to strengthening China for modern survival, and for that reason consciously rejected the social role of the former literati. They made their vision of democratic education in a tolerant, pluralistic society their strategy of change. Feeling for a new social identity for themselves as professional educators all the while, they were compelled to reject political confrontation because it had only led to a superficial change of forms in the abortive republic of 1912. In trying to be influential as independent educators, however, they learned painfully that the separation of education from political power was far from a reality. Their choice of cultural reformism through democratic education was rendered ineffective first by the politicization of the reformers' audience amid the May Fourth activism, and finally by the virulent nationalism igniting in the mid-twenties. But more fundamental than these two forces was the underlying conflict with arbitrary militarist power which posed an inescapable dilemma for all cultural reformers hoping to bring about a new society and politics.</p>