Research On Cultural Inheritance And Innovation Of Women’s Textbook In Late Qing Dynasty And Early Republic Of China

The period of late Qing Dynasty to the early Republic of China is the era with social unrest frequent wars,frequently internal problems and continuously foreign aggressions which lead to the worsening of our Chinese crisis.Then,fighting for the survival and salvation of nation and making our country rich and building up our military power become the theme of this times.At the same time,with incoming of the Western concept of civilization of "gender equality","female education"and so on,women’s education with modern meaning in China slowly germinated in this period.The women’s school run by China itself gradually set up together in the folk.Thus,a series of teaching textbooks specifically for women’s school to shape the new woman are born.Although the decadent and declining Qing government has resisted the new women’s education again and again,the government had issued the "Women’s Preliminary School Chart"and the"Women’s Normal School Charf"in1907under the pressure of public opinion,which put the women’s education into the official schooling system.In order to control the teaching textbooks which used for girls’school, the Qing government established the Faculty Compilation and Translation Bureau to compile teaching textbooks for girls and to strictly validate all kinds of the textbooks published by folk organizations.After the founding of the Republic,women’s education further developed,improved and formed a certain size and system.Meanwhile,the compilation of woman’s textbooks to be standard, mature and prosperous.With the May Fourth Movement to advocate "gender equality" as well as expansion of coeducational movement,textbooks for girls gradually fade out the stage of history.In1922,the ROC government established monorail system with coeducational schooling disregard of gender discrimination.Therefore, textbooks for girls finished its historic mission,and disappeared in the history of upheaval.Modern China has been described as a "globalized" era. with the expansion of capitalism, invasion of imperialism,and the global circulation of knowledge and practice,China has been "thrown" into the world to frequently contact with,fight against and interact with different cultures. At this situation, the country,the nation,and the personal identity are being at a fundamental"re-structure".Textbooks for girls,as a production of culture,are direct "re-structure"and a effective tool to "re-structure" as well as an integral part of it, change with the harmony of modern Chinese society and culture, and actively participate in shaping the history and culture. Based on this understanding, this study mainly uses a method of textual analysis to review the twenty years textbooks for girls in the period of the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China.Then study the cultural heritage and innovation among the textbooks. This paper is divided into five parts:The introduction is a fundamental work which involves the origin and meaning of research,the definition key concepts related,combing and commenting of relevant research literature. On this basis,researcher finds out research ideas,research content of this paper and selects the appropriate research methods.The second part is the second chapter of this thesis.It combs the background of the origin of textbooks for girls and their development process from a historical perspective.The origin and development of textbooks can be divided four periods:the startup of textbooks (1895-1906),the gradual standardization of textbooks (1907-1911),the gradual maturity of textbooks(1912-1919),the declining of textbooks (1919-1922).This paper gives a panoramic overview of the textbooks.The third part is the third chapter of the paper.This part as a theoretical section of the article,builds a bridge between the textbooks and culture.First,the researcher explains the nature and function of textbook culture.It regards the textbooks as a carrier of human culture and an object-oriented culture existence.It has a function of cultural choice, cultural heritage and cultural innovation.Secondly,the targeted cultural objects,cultural transformation of era and culture confliction between Western and China are the cultural characteristics of the late Qing Dynasty textbooks.The fourth part is the body of the paper,including the fourth and fifth chapters.Through reading all kinds of textbooks produced in the twenty years of late Qing and early Republic of China to study the cultural heritage and innovation in these textbooks.Researcher expresses that cultural heritage of the textbooks embodied in the following four areas:(1)It adheres to the traditional "moral education prior to the scholarship training"notion.It still follows the traditional cultural habits-take the development of women’s moral priority over their scholarship development,Despite the notion of culture female only,female virtue with some variation in the textbooks of the late of the Qing and early Republic of China, when dealing with the relationship between the two;(2)The textbooks always reflect the traditional concept of home for the country"both in written form and in content selection;(3)Textbooks reflect the heritage of respect Confucius, worship Confucianism and inherit Filial,Virtue,Benevolence, and Justice;(4)In the ideal of female gender, it is still with the traditional shadow of "men outside, women inside".The cultural innovation of textbooks are mainly reflected in four aspects:(1)the concept of body changed from "home" to "country";(2)introducing the concept of "national","society",and shaping the modern"female citizen"image;(3)advocating the educational view of’democracy"and"science";(4)advocating freedom,equality,self-reliance and self-improvement.The fifth part is the sixth chapter of the paper which reconsiders the cultural heritage and innovation of Qing Dynasty textbooks,and finds out the implications on the inheriting and innovating function of current textbook from the study.Researcher suggests that the active role of the late Qing Dynasty textbooks in cultural heritage and innovation is reflected in following:promoted the reform of women’s education;promoted women’s liberation;promoted the modernization of traditional Chinese society.The historical limitations of the textbooks: First, the starting point of the inheritance and innovation of the textbooks is not the real emancipation of women.The promotion of the degree of women’s self-awareness is still very limited.Secondly,the reason for the emergence of various types of female-centric textbook is to meet the needs of girls’school teaching rather than to change the situation of the textbook culture dominated by male. Thirdly, the choice essence of textbooks culture is the moral. The cultural heritage and innovation of the textbooks takes the moral development of women into primary consideration,rather than the personality development of women.Fourthly,the woman textbooks is for strengthening the nation and conserving of cultural requirements.So in the process of cultural heritage and innovation,it pays attention to strengthening women’s traditional qualities, which limited self-awareness of female. On the other hand,through the inductive method which rises from the special to the general and from the textbooks for girls to the general modern textbooks.lt suggests that to realize the function of the cultural heritage and innovative in textbooks, we must make it combined with the realities,including the combination of the students’realities and the actualities of socially historical development, remaining openness of culture and broadly absorbing the advantages of all kinds of culture from ancient and modern, foreign and home, when inherits and innovates culture, and keeping pace with the times, performing a fully new image of women and reflecting women personality。The last part summarizes the whole paper,and sums up the basic model of the late Qing Dynasty Women’s textbook in constructing the image of women and the core connotation of the deep culture.At the same time,future researches are discussed. Meanwhile,it proposed that to compile textbooks should have an inclusive and open-minded hearts and take the essence of traditional culture and a new culture which contribute to steady development of Chinese culture.