Chinese Renaissance And Educational Innovation

Hu Shih's educational thought and practice is colorful. He is a man who regards culture as the foundation of the nation and regards education as the main way to saving our country. He is not only one of the main leaders of the New Culture Movement but one of the important founders of Chinese modern education as well. In his whole life, Hu Shih has worked hard for the Chinese renaissance through the way of educational innovation. His lifelong dream is to build China into a modern nation, so that she can stand in the world. He believes building a modern country must rely on modern people while modern people must be cultivated by modern education. Therefore, He gives priority to education development in strategic position. He regards Chinese renaissance as the only principle of modern education in China. Chinese renaissance is the culture foundation of his educational thoughts but also the principle which guide him to reform Chinese educational system. Combining Chinese renaissance and education innovation closely is the important feature of Hu Shih's educational thoughts and practice. In order to make a thorough inquiry of the relationship of Chinese renaissance and education innovation, I will solve the problem through the following work:First of all, I probe into his career as a student to gain a clear idea of the formation of his educational thoughts. Hu Shih's career as a student is an experience from traditional education to modern education. During this time, he has accepted nine years'traditional education, six years'new style education in Shanghai and seven years'whole Western education. In the very period, his educational thoughts has experienced as the beginning stage, the embryonic stage and mature period. During his nine years'period of home education, he has not only laid a solid foundation of traditional education but also formed simple scientific ideas. In the stage of accepting new style education in Shanghai, deeply influenced by some scholars such as Liang Qichao etc, Hu Shih has formed the concept of saving the country through education. During the period of studying in the United States, he has consciously studied Chinese and Western culture, meanwhile, he has accepted experimentalism from John Dewey and has brewed the Chinese literary revolution. The most important thing in this period was that he has had the idea of building new style civilization for our country and ideological line of developing education—cultivating new style people—saving the country. Because he had those ideas, he decided to be a guider of our country people.Secondly, I has realized the significance of Chinese renaissance by studying Hu Shih's concept of Chinese and Western culture. At first, Starting with Chinese literary revolution, he sponsored the vernacular literature movement, which actually provided language base for the spread of education and made it possible. Another important role of the literary revolution was the ideological emancipation and personal liberation, that is to say, Hu Shih sponsored literary revolution in order to create a new national character.Hu Shih points out that any kind culture has tradition and modern. Meanwhile, he thinks any kind of civilization includes material civilization and spiritual civilization, thus, he points out that Chinese culture and Western culture are alike except for slight differences, they fundamentally are all to the liberation of human beings, and make their lives happy. He also points out that the difference between Chinese culture and Western culture is that modern Western civilization is based on the modern science which has created modern Western material civilization and spiritual civilization. He calls modern Western civilization scientific and industrial civilization because of this. Hu Shih regards science as human intelligence or mental factors, so he also regards modern Western civilization is real spiritual civilization. His profound understanding of modern Western civilization in its root was due to the Renaissance, while the Renaissance was due to the rise of medieval universities. He believes that this is the very difference between Chinese traditional civilization and modern Western civilization. In all fairness, Hu Shih doesn't think Chinese traditional civilization is without a saving grace, but is just unsuited to the development of the modern world. Meanwhile, he thinks China also has the same factor such as science and democracy which the Western has, while China and the Western are different just because science and democracy haven't been developed. He thinks Chinese renaissance is possible. So we can say modern Western civilization is the aim of Chinese renaissance, the foundational way to Chinese renaissance is to reconstruct Chinese traditional education especially higher education. That is the cultural root of education innovation.Lastly, Hu Shih has found the important role of science in the evolution of civilization. Thus, he placed particular emphasis on scientific research in the important position in higher education. Furthermore, he thinks science and talents have close relations, so he especially emphasizes the important role of talents in science research.In short, Hu Shih is the one of important founders of modern Chinese education. He has actively taken part in various educational innovation activities of modern China guided by Chinese renaissance. He emphasizes on both science and talents. In his educational thought, academic independence and freedom of thinking are very important too.