On New Chinese Education

The modem philological education of China has a history of almost a century. We review the one hundred-year history only to find that it is a winded way of development. During the century, a bundle of questions has been perplexing philological educators such as what the design features of the discipline of? philology are, what the supreme goal of philological education, the relations between the modem and the traditional philological education are, how to look at the relationship between the philological education in China and those in foreign countries and so on. Philological education has been developing through frustrations and suffering frustrations in its development, which led to a countrywide debating over philological education in the end of the 20th century in China. There are even in society such criticisms on philological education as 揓eopardizing the nation and endangering the people?and ~Completely ruining the life of the people? Criticisms of the kind sound a little extreme, but it has not meddled with our profound reflection and deep exploration on the matter of philological education. It is under such a circumstance that the notion of ~~New Philological Education?is proposed in this paper of mine in hope of discussing the philological education in the new century with this notion as the beginning point. In terms of its methodology, the discussion is conducted through double perceptions, namely, one perception on the philological education in the 20th century and the other on that in the 2l~~ century. It puts stress on both the investigation into the history of philological education and its present and future instructive significance; it does not neglect proofs during the course of theoretical explanations and seeks theoretical bases in the concrete measures of philological education, combining theories and realities as much as possible. The paper consists of four parts of discussion: the background of new philological education, the nature of new philological education, the orientations of new philological education and the implement tactics of new philological education. When we take a penetrating perception into philological education, we find that the problems in philological education are deep ones, some of which even have lasted a century. Therefore, in the first passage of Part I 揟he Appeal of the III MASTER S THESIS Centennial Modem Philological Education?,the stormy history of the philological education sandwiched between the whirls of the Chinese politicalization and the tides of westernization in the 2O~ century is reviewed. The Chinese politicalization rendered the country抯 philological education the tool for its propaganda. The philological education thus lost its scientific characteristic and renounced its scientific calling. On the other hand, the westernization dragged the philological education away from its mother tongue cradle, rendering it against the laws of the philological education. The second passage of this part is a general description of the fruitful teaching reformation experiments conducted by some Chinese renowned extraordinary-rate teachers in the latest two decades, with which the teachers tried to prove the existence of the preparatory bases for the 搉ew philological education? In the third passage, the series of debating over philological education since 1978 are combed through to seek the power for the advancement...