Reform And Inheritance:Rural Education Of Modern Shandong(1901—1937)

The rural education reform which started from the early20th century to the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War is regarded as the initial stage of the modernization of rural education. The great significance of the reform to the entire rural education transformation has been acknowledged by the academic circles. Past researches have shown that modern development of rural education displays significant geographical differences, so area studies also need to be focused while overall researches are conducted. This dissertation chooses Shandong, the birthplace of Confucianism as the study area, and picks the reform of Shandong rural education (from1901to1937) as the research object. From the perspective of national-local society relationship, this study attempts to explore the internal logic along the localization of the modern education refonrm started at the national level by careful inspection of the complex phenomena of the regional education and the in-depth analysis of the typical cases.Shandong province has a good reputation for the traditional education. Then, with the opening of treaty ports since the1860s, religious schools featured with modern education had gradually emerged from the Shandong coastal cities to the inland areas, thus activating the educational modernization of Shandong. The basis of traditional education and the enlightenment of western Christian way of teaching together laid a solid foundation for the transformation of modern Shandong' rural education. At the beginning of the20th century, the education reform had begun in Shandong rural areas, following the national education reform of the Late Qing Dynasty. However, in more than ten years, the modern education in Shandong countryside was still in its infancy. Until the founding of the Republic of China, education then had received a great deal of attention from the government. But the development of the modern rural education in Shandong kept its slow pace for the reason that traditional education forces were too powerful, and constant fighting remained among warlords. Not until the end of the warlord disputes in1930did the development of rural education in Shandong return to the right track and enjoy a short-lived glory.This top-down education reform can be described as a grand project. In promoting the rural education reform in Shandong, local official spokesmen served as dominators, numerous gentries and ordinary people as active participants, and many school graduates as practitioners to employed modern scientific knowledge to help the country. With various background, these people played different roles in the course of education reform. Though the motivations participants held in running schools were very complex, their actions were considerably a continuation of the donating tradition kept in Shandong regions.The course of rural education reform was full of hardship. Its impact on rural society was also very profound. The emergence of modern education in the countryside was not only the reform within the education itself, but also a trigger leading to the competition for the education controlling power, which was expanded in the local society. With the new school system introduced to the countryside, the allocation of educational resources between the urban and rural areas had been changed, which resulted in a greater gap between the urban and rural education. Although a number of rural intellectuals were fostered by the new school system, they had failed to devote themselves to the rural society in return. In the perspective of gender, we find that the emergence and development of rural women's education enables women living in the rural areas to have an access to the schools, and thus help promote the civilization of the rural society. During the1920s and1930s, rural education had been granted the great mission to transform the entire rural area. In this period, a number of rural education experimental zones had been set up in Shandong province. The experimental zone eventually failed to achieve the goal of transforming the countryside by the power of education, but it did leave a gold opportunity for the rural schools to promote their development in the process.The30-year tortuous and complex course of Shandong rural education reform can be regarded as an epitome of the modern transformation of Chinese rural education. The challenges and problems appeared in this transition period have deeply affected the development of rural education, and also today's ordinary people who still live in the rural areas.