Access To The Practice Of Zhangzhidong's "Chinese Learning As Principal Part, Western Learning For Use" Education Nal Thought

Zhang Zhidong, a famous educator in modern and contemporary China, devoted his lifetime to launching schools and running companies. He did not stop his undertaking until the day he died. Being a chief minister in the Qing Dynasty government, he made promoting learning and cultivating talents an important step to establish and rejuvenate our country and he was irrevocably committed to the course of education."Chinese learning as principal part, western learning for use" is the central idea of how Zhang Zhidong launches schools. But others have different opinion towards his idea. Taking a sweeping view of his activities in his lifetime together with his words and deeds, his ides of "Chinese learning as principal part" is feudal but reforming;and his "western learning for use" is to learn the advanced science and technology of the western countries to better administer our country and resist enemies. Generally speaking, Zhang Zhidong's idea belongs to such category as feudal landlord class. He has a profound knowledge of Confucian classics and is not willing to abandon his traditional feudal culture and thinking, which he considers to be the essence and treasure of our country. And this leads to his feudal ideology and standpoint. Instead of absolutely abiding by the feudal idea, he demands to abolish the decayed parts of the feudal system. He wants to refurnish and perfect it to maintain its life. He is eager to learn from the west the advanced knowledge, including partial political content and ideology, aiming at enriching our country, resisting enemies and maintaining the government of Qing Dynasty;also including loving his own country and people.Zhang Zhidong, with the aim of learning from the west and reforming China, gradually brings in all kinds of teaching contents, knowledge and educational methods, and later he breaks Chinese old educational system and imports advanced system from the imperial countries. It is the first time for a new system to appear in China, which somehow is a great achievement. During the following days more new teaching methods and teaching contents appear among Chinese teaching world, making the old system begin to change basically. This fundamentally denies the old teaching system of thousands of years in the written form.He initiated a lot of schools, such as foreign schools, railway schools and navyschools, paid much attention to normal education, and selected and sent students for studying abroad. In the late 19th century, he negotiated the imperial civil examination system and opened economic examination and. In the 20th century, he made great preparations for systematic education regulations. Together with Zhang Baixi and some others, he worked out "Kui Mao examination system" and all kinds of educational regulations. Zhang Zhidong went ahead of others in doing education, even though in the Qing Dynasty. Governor-general Zhao Eryi of Si Chuan Province once said: "what he has been doing in his lifetime is to rejuvenate education and cultivate talents in order to help build our country".From the result of Zhang Zhidong carrying on new educational system, we can see that the western natural science and part of social science are introduced to China and a group of intellectuals with imperial new culture and thinking are cultivated. Zhang Zhidong means to maintain the government of the Qing Dynasty, but on the contrary, with the development of new learning (western learning in the Qing Dynasty) western culture and political thinking are continuously brought into China, which makes people further realizes the decadence of the feudal system. People want to reform the old world and build a new one, thus causing a big change in people's mind. Certainly, what Zhang Zhidong has done has some disadvantages in itself, of which feudalism is the most preeminent. First, he wants to maintain the government of Qing Dynasty from beginning to end. Secondly, he insists on learning Confucian classics, defending the old learning and maintaining the three cardinal guides and five constant virtues. Thirdly, with the quick development of the schools, he is afraid that they will break the traditional Confucian classics, so he specially sets up some old schools opposite to the new ones.Above all, Zhang Zhidong is not only a educator of modern and contemporary times, but a vanguard in Chinese educational history.