Research On Song Shu's Education Thoughts

After the western imperialists broke open China's frontiers with their strong boats and powerful guns, China's feudal society began to walk into the end of its rope and the nature of society became accordingly semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. Then a group of patriots, cultivated by western contemporary thoughts and determined to reform, criticized the backwardness of the late Qing Dynasty's education and proposed to reform China's education so as to conform to the historical development trend. This paper is to research Song-Shu, one of contemporary educators worthy of paying attention to and researching, whose education ideology had formed a system as its own with outstanding characteristics.Song-Shu (1862 - 1910), born in Pingyan County, Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province, and in a world where nation and family met with untold disasters and misfortunes, so he moved to many places and suffered a lot, but he had written many works, so that he have been called the Master in the troubled times. As a man of letters, with great expectations and strong concern for the nation and its people, he led an uneven life and never be accepted by the government, so he concentrated on educational activities. His education ideology consisted of the followings: 1. The purpose of education was to remove people's sufferings;people's living conditions were closely connected with their low culture level, which was different from former amending group's and other reforming group's proposals. 2. The setting of contemporarily educational system: in educational management, the fees of running education should come from the folk and the parliament elected by the people had the right to set the educational system, compile the teaching books, employ teachers and supervise and evaluate the teaching, which he called people-run education;in teaching contents, he proposed to get rid of the bindings of Confucian school of idealist philosophy of the Song and Ming dynasties but restore the original Confucian thoughts proposed by Confucius and Mengzi, at the same time to study Laozi and other philosopher's philosophy, pay attention to history, economics, science of Europe and America, English, French, Japanese, which demonstrated his theory of emphasizing western sciences and Chinese traditions. 3. He called for a society education. School education was not the only means to realize the purpose of education;society education was not as intensive and objective and programmed as schooleducation, but has wider and deeper impact. In 1892, he proposed to popularize society education among all the people so as to improve national quality in his book Liu Zi Ke Zhai Bei Yi. This was a beneficial addition to then opinion that just emphasized school education. 4. He paid more attention to elite education, by which lead and civilize the people and place a foundation for political reform.This paper will discuss from Song-Shu' life, educational activities, educational objective, contemporary education system, society education theory, to elite education ideas, with a purpose to have a deep study of his educational thinking so as to find out the value in a deeper sense and demonstrate his panorama as a contemporary educator.