Study On Evolution Of Rural Schooling System During The Republic Of China Period

Chinese society had long been maintaining as an agricultural society according to its ownlogic before entering into modern period. Rural education relied on traditional private schooland traditional school provided human resources in order to maintain stable agriculturecommunity and promote their reproduction. Rural schooling system had depended on ruralenvironment for a long time with a slow process of evolution. However, in modern times,Chinese society has undergone dramatic changes, the state and individuals being in acontinuous changing environment, and fighting for their sustainable development. Ruralschools in this context, under pressure from both top and bottom, transformed rapidly, anddeveloped in fusion path of Chinese and Western between traditional and modern, local andforeign. Period of Republic of China is the most dramatic period in terms of a rural schoolsystem changing as well as the most concentrated period on attention toward the rural schools.During this period, the changes of rural school system not only carried on modernizationideas of improving the quality of rural population but also accumulated experience in aparticular historical period to promote the popularization and innovation in rural schools,which laid the basis of rural school development.This dissertation examined rural schooling system and its changes in late Qing Dynastyand the Republic of China from the historical point of view. In this study various researchmethods are used, based on text of the rural schooling system, standardized date andmemories at that time, in order to depict an actual status of the system development. Bycontrasting between ideal and actual, the author tries to find the problems of rural schoolingsystem in Republic of China and to interpret the current unreasonable phenomena are thepurpose of this study.Main thesis is divided into seven chapters, the first five chapters also divided into fourstages according to the time order, and the last two chapters investigates the interaction ofrural schooling system and society from institutional selection and the school's function.Chapter I: Before modern times, rural schools were always subordinate to the personalstandard orientation; there was a high dependence on its surrounding social environment, thelow level of institutionalization. From late Qing rural schooling system, the system began tomodernize. The old school had a new look, but the updating was still very slow. This also laidthe new pattern, in which two school systems exist side by side in rural areas in theRepublican period.Chapter II: From late Qing to1920s, contradiction between goal-setting of compulsoryeducation and limited acceptance of new schools was the main external cause to promote thediverse development of the rural schooling system. New schools modifications and traditionalschools improvements to retain became the inevitable choice to popularize rural schools.These changed the rigid ideas about development of rural schools. Chapters III&IV: During1930s, in the process of the development of rural schoolingsystem, the reform of schooling system were helpful to popularize rural schools, but therewere many limiting factors, the effect is not ideal. On this basis, the Nanjing governmentcontinued to implement compulsory education, broken unfavorable factors, took simplified,short-term, diversification, flexibility and other institutional innovations to accelerate thelocalization of new schools and modernization of traditional schools, and gave legitimacy toevery methods, mobilized local and private initiative, through schooling system debugging toenhance the individualized demand of rural people. It had proved that this series of initiativesto effectively speed up the development of education in rural schools.Chapter V: In1940s, the national education system formally incorporated the adultremedial education and children education, in order to compensate for the short-term ofcompulsory education; while rural schools and local administrative systems were combinedtogether to re-establish control of the school system in rural areas. However, due to reducedflexibility, too much emphasis on community-based orientation were raised, and harm theinterests of the grassroots people, the impact of the professional status of teaching staff werecombined with the effects of war, thus education in rural schools only made progress on someindicators, still fell far from the goal.Chapter VI: In modern times, the evolution of power structure impacted the choice ofrural schooling system. That the State's and civil preferences for different schools were madeto maintain the coexistence of the basic forces of old and new school, and the controllingdegree for education in rural schools directly effect on their retaining or updating. Schoolsnationalization met with varying degrees of resistance from the private body. Local forcesmaintained traditional schools to defend their traditional territory, accepting new schools torecognize state's compromise, led by the fusion of old and new systems to show theirexisting.Chapter VII: De-ruralization of the rural schools was amplification because of ruralschools didn't match with the rural areas. In the new schools system the rural children wereabsorbed, insulated, screened, guided into city through further education andemployment-oriented. Although the state and some persons were satisfied for the result, butthe rural modernization and sustainable development of the rural human were overlooked.Rural schooling system was away from the function and value, resulting in shrinking ruralareas, thus inhibiting the development of rural schools.Conclusion: In the period of the Republic of China, the reform of rural schooling systemis based on social reform. Rural schooling system reform are impacted by state guiding, thereality of rural politics, economy, culture, and benefits structure. The changing of ruralschooling system has multiple revelations for nowadays.