Research On The History Of Mongolian Education Development

Located in Central Asia, with a territory area of 1.5665 million square kilometers and a population of 2.6351 million, Mongolia had been in the state of national autonomy supported by the tsarist Russia before 1921. After gaining the victory of the People's Revolution in 1921, she declared her independence and founded a government of constitutional monarchy until it was abolished in 1924 when the People's Republic of Mongolia (PRM) was founded. In 1992 she was renamed Mongolia and issued the new constitution.Before 1921, there were no regular schools but private schools, community or short-term schools which were only for privileged nobilities, not for the vast majority of population who could only be nurtured religiously or schooled by families. As a result, the overall illiteracy accounted for 99.1%. After the victory of the People's Revolution in 1921, the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) and the government have made every effort to set up schools at all levels and promote their educations exemplified by those in the former USSR, by taking various effective measures under such difficult conditions as underdeveloped economy, religious disruptions, poor awareness of public education and the nomadic life to the disadvantage of educational development. After about ninety years'endeavor, the comprehensive multilayered and multi-typed educational system has been established and developed in Mongolia while the popularizing rate of education has amounted to a substantial high level, with one third of the population being the present student enrollment.The Mongolia's educational development has approximately undergone four periods since 1921. The first period was from 1921 to 1939, when the educational system was initially established after the victory of the democratic revolution and the founding of the PRM. Given the poor bases of economy and educational facilities, primary education, secondary education, technical education, normal education, as well as literacy-for-all education started to take shape in succession. In the second period of 1940 to 1960, the comprehensive educational system took hold coupled with the Mongolia's transition of socialism from democratic revolution. The primary education became basically universal; the secondary education in capital and provincial cities was developed on quite a large scale, National University of Mongolia founded, the technical education further expanded, the normal education developed compatibly, and literacy education climaxed. The third period of 1961 to 1989 witnessed the constant improvement of educational system with the acceleration of socialist construction. Modeled by ex-Soviet education, primary and secondary educational systems got readjusted, higher education greatly expanded, technical and normal education pushed forward rapidly and literacy education basically drawing to a close. The last period of 1990 to the present includes the retuning and expansion of the educational system with the deepening of the democratic reform. Primary and secondary educations have reemerged after some short twists, with the booming of public and private higher education and advances in normal education as well as the gradual extinction of the secondary technical school as a result of proliferation of higher educational institutions.After ninety years' development, Mongolia's educational reform has made great achievements on the basis of the originally underdeveloped economy. The reasons contributing to those accomplishments are as follows:they learn hard from educational experiences in the former USSR, China, and North Korea; the government gives full play to the role of educational leadership; the MPRP attaches great importance to education by tailoring educational measures to suit local conditions. Nevertheless, compared with those in developed countries, Mongolia's education has a couple of shortcomings largely caused by such reasons as originally vulnerable economy and educational infrastructures, heavy interference of religious forces, the tough reform of the writing system and overdependence upon the ex-Soviet educational patterns.