A Research On Development Of Chinese Education In The Philippines

What is known as"wherever there is seawater there is Chinese, where there are Chinese there are Chinese education". Chinese people have the tradition of attaching great importance to education. Where there live Chinese, there must be different forms of Chinese education activities. From the early private school, the free school to the later Chinese School, though it experienced ups and downs, the overseas Chinese education obtains continuing development and becomes the cultural cornerstone and the spiritual prop of Chinese community. The traditional Chinese education refers to the education of Chinese language and culture mainly towards overseas Chinese. But as China implements its reform and opening to the outside world, especially with its rapid economic growth, national power increase and international standing rise in recent years, Chinese has gradually become a powerful language given more and more attention by people thus"Chinese fever"and"Chinese language heat"are grown up in the world. Chinese education has subsequently undergone a great change. It has not only belonged to the children who are foreign citizen of Chinese origin with its scope gradually expanding and presenting a wide range of development trend. Today's Chinese education includes both Chinese language and culture study by overseas Chinese and Chinese learning as a second language by foreigners. This thesis chooses the Chinese education in the Philippines as the research subject which is in a various forms, including the Chinese language and culture education towards Philippine Chinese, the Chinese language and culture course opened in Philippine national education system and the Chinese language promotion projects (such as the Confucius Institute, etc.) in the Philippines carried out by the Chinese government.According to statistics, the total population of overseas Chinese is about 30 million currently, among them 24 million are living in Southeast Asia accounting for about 80% of the global Chinese population. Chinese education in this region has a glorious with rich experience and should be the research focus. Chinese education in the Philippines has a 111-year history since the establishment of Tong Se Academy College in 1899. The establishment and development of Chinese education has always been affected by the complicated political situation as well as the local government's national policy, especially the overseas Chinese policy. Like that in the other countries, the development process of Chinese education in the Philippines has been filled with winding. It was founded in the beginning of the 20th century and reached a peak period in the 1950s. The Philippines obtained independence soon and pursued national independence policy resulted in more and more limitation on Chinese education. With the effect of the policies of a comprehensive inspecting at first and education Filipinization policy and national assimilation policy later, Chinese school was gradually reduced and Chinese education began to enter the low tide period from the mid 1950s. Since 1976, the nature of Chinese education in the Philippines has taken place fundamental changes– from overseas Chinese education into a Chinese-language education because most Chinese schools were filipinized and most Chinese became Philippine citizen. During to no change made along with the situation, Chinese education in the transition period could not keep pace with the times and moved toward the decline in afterward near 20 years. In the 1990s, the situation of Chinese education caused the great concerns and worries of Philippine Chinese community. They played active roles in the revival of Chinese education by offering advice and financial support. The efforts made by all the Philippine Chinese helped Chinese education go out the trough gradually, present the vitality and enter into a new development period. Chinese education obtains the promotion, also changes along with the time development. Particularly in the 21st century, the world-wide popularity of Chinese language learning and the continuous development and change of overseas Chinese community has had the very tremendous influence upon the Philippine Chinese education. A lot of new changes have taken place and many problems occurred simultaneously that hinder its development.On the basis of previous relevant research and lots of valuable information collected by the author, by means of adopting the methods of historical analysis, induction and comparison and so on, the paper first reviews the development history of the Chinese Education in the Philippines before 1990s, analyzing the historical background of every development period and generalizing the main feature of it. Based on this, the author then summarizes the current situation of the Philippine Chinese education and analyzes the influence factors of its current rapid development. By comparison of new and old period, the author sums up the new changes of Chinese Education occurred in the new century in the following aspects: diversification of school runners and language learners, specialization of teaching staff and complication of language environment. Meanwhile, the author points out the problems that are blocking up the further development of the Chinese education in the Philippines. In term of external environment, Chinese education has not been really integrated into Philippines'mainstream education. In term of Chinese language education itself, the innovation in teaching methods, language used in classroom teaching, textbooks and teachers still have a long way to go. After the studies both on history and present situation, aiming at the main existing problems, the paper stresses on the corresponding practical solutions and the development strategies of Chinese language education in the Philippines from both macroscopical and microcosmic view such as idea renewal and change, policy support, the role of the Chinese community as well as Chinese language teaching itself and so on, with the consideration of the Philippine local conditions and the successful experiences of other countries, particularly southeastern Asian countries as a reference. Finally, the paper draws such a conclusion that Chinese-language education in the Philippines has a good prospect, broad market and the potential for tremendous cooperation. At an end, some suggestions are given by the author that more efforts should be made in the breadth and depth of Chinese language promotion work in the Philippines. At the same time, education exchanges and cooperation between China and the Philippines should be further strengthened.