Being Heir To Ancient Sages And The Teacher Of Posterity

Wu Rulun was a famous litterateur and educationist in the late Qing Dynasty. He followed Zeng Guofan to learn and work in Zeng's office in his young ages. After that, he held the post of chiefs of Shenzhou and Jizhou, and worked as an advisor in Zhang Shusheng's and Li Hongzhang's offices. His rich experience of life widened his field of vision, enlightened his thought. Being influenced by his family, homeland and the age, he was always interested in culture and education. In 1889, he resigned from his post and was invited to be the administrator of Lianchi School.In the earlier stage of teaching at Lianchi, Wu took a series of measures to improve the system of the school, and made the school widely known. After 1895, Wu began to learn the science, technology and education knowledge from Western countries. He changed the curricula in the school and promoted people to learn Western learning . He wanted to develop the new education system learned from Western countries in order to make Chinese civilized, and great talents appear successively, then China would rise and meet the challenge, and be able to overcome the crisis which was facing eventually.After the war and chaos in 1901, Wu helped his student Zhongdacaizhi found a Japanese language school in Beijing. Recommended by Zhang Baixi, the administrator of Beijing University, in 1902,Wu was appointed as the dean of studies of Beijing University by the Qing government, in order to help Zhang administer Beijing University and map up the education system of the whole country. Then Wu requested to let him visit Japan and study the Japanese education system, he wrote a book named The Record of Visiting East after the visit, he explained his opinions on developing education systems in the book, and this indicated his education thought was completed.In Wu's opinion, education could make a society civilized, enlighten people, and let Chinese get away from poverty and ignorance, so he held the view that China should develop compulsory education, set up primary schools everywhere, and establish a large number of universities, middle schools and junior colleges to raise all kinds of talents. The theme of education should contain the knowledge from China and Western countries, and promote students to develop on ethics intelligence and physical constitution all-round, the government should supply enough money on education and abolish the civil service examination system.For the purpose of realizing his education plan, he founded Tongcheng School. He attempted to test his education thoughts by this new style education experiment, but the plan was not accomplished because of his death.