Research On The Charitable Schools Of Shandong Province In The Qing Dynasty

The charitable school in the Qing Dynasty was a kind of free educational organization which maily recruited civilian poor children. And its main aim was reading and literacy for students. The charitable school, the community school, the private school and other private schools were together charged with the initiatory education of ampliate country areas in the Qing Dynasty.Shandong was an important province which belonged to central plains and littoral in the Qing Dynasty. It included 107 states and districts. According to incomplete statistic,919 charitable schools were founded in Shandong province of the Qing Dynasty from 1644 to 1902. The development of the charitable schools of Shandong province in the Qing Dynasty came through the development from Shunzhi Dynasty to Jiaqing Dynasty. And it formed two high peaks of development in Daoguang Dynasty and Guangxu Dynasty. These charitable schools became initiatory shools or elementary schools in succession in the telophase of the Qing Dynasty. There were many changes in curriculum, teaching material, teachers, didactical management and other aspects. And then their fate came into being transition.The charitable schools of Shandong province had several characteristics as follows:Firstly, the charitable schools of Shandong province were a kind of free educational places which mainly recruited the civilian poor children of the Han nationality and helped them gain ecumenic daily sense, basal knowledge, ethical criterion and legal common sense so that they could make a living. There were four flexible and diverse types of institutional forms which were official schools, civilian schools, official schools which people helped, civilian schools which officials helped. Secondly, there were various forms of funds origin. For example, the ground rent of schools'field, governmental or personal beneficence, accrual income, revenue income and so on. The fund outlay was mainly used in following aspects: teachers'pay, students'study supplies, schoolhouses'servicing, factotums'pay and other charge. The fund management had formed the perfect control system initially. The fund was managed or drawn by the directors and it was put out by ration and season. Thirdly, there were many choices for their schoolhouses. They could be built in the new field, in the temples or monasteries, in the ancestral temples, in the public houses or personal houses, in the colleges or Confucianism palaces and so on. Fourthly, their teaching was basically divided into two stages:initiatory teaching and Confucian classics teaching. The initiatory teaching was the main stage and most charitable schools only reached the initiatory teaching. Correspondly the curriculum was divided into initiatory courses and Confucian classics courses. The initiatory courses mainly included "Three Character Classic", "Family Names", "Thousand Character Classic", "Miscellaneous Household Word", "Thousands Of Poems", "Abacu", "The DPRK imperative" and etiquette, The Confucian classics courses were mainly "Four Books and Five Classics". The teaching program usually followed the following order:literacy, reading, reciting, writing, composition. The teaching method was mainly individual teaching and it also paid attention to infusing and emphasized reciting. Fifthly, the teachers were mainly excellent clerisy and most teachers were bachelor. The teachers'income was usually sixty thousand wen for every one every year. And there was also "jie li" for them. The difference of teacher treatment was big between official schools and civilian schools. The teachers were usually retained once a year. If his exhibition is good, he will be continued retaining. Contrarily, the teacher will be fired. Because the students were basically from poor peasants'families, most students had finished studying the initiatory curriculum. Only a minority of excellent and rich students could continue studying, take civil examinations and even got fame.As the excellent representation of the charitable schools in the Qing Dynasty everywhere, the charitable schools of Shandong in the Qing Dynasty had some comparability with other charitable schools of Zhili, Henan, Shanxi, Jiangsu and Anhui. There were also some differences between the charitable schools of Shandong and the charitable schools of frontier capitals and minority areas. Therefore, the study of the charitable schools of Shandong in the Qing Dynasty has important historic meaning for us to know roundly the characteristic of the charitable schools in the Qing Dynasty and important elicitation and mirror meaning to the development of educational charity undertakings.