The Research On Preschool Education Of The End Of Qing Dynasty And The Early Period Of The Republic Of China

Development of modern Chinese education is the history of transformation from tradition to modernization, from intra-national to inter-national. During this difficult developmental process, preschool education has come to modernization from tradition. The transformation from traditional preschool education to modern preschool education indicates the collision between Chinese and Western Political System and culture, is the process of advanced civilization assimilating laggard civilization, accommodates the inclination of West Learning Spreading to the East. Preschool education that generated at the End of Qing Dynasty and the Early Period of the Republic of China serves as an important symbol of modernization of education of China, has an extensive influence on the history of education, and attracts relative much attention from modern society. This paper illustrating from point to face, explores the backdrops, system, and significance quantity of preschool education of the End of Qing Dynasty so as to reconstruct the development process of preschool education of the End of Qing Dynasty.There has been preschool education in primitive society, but at that time pre-school education was merely survival education, and the major measures for educating infant were just Word-of-Mouth and simple simulation of action. After the slave society, entering feudal society, the traditional preschool education gradually amalgamated with feudal politics and ethnics, emphasizing"Filial Piety, Sincerity, Aspiration, Benefaction", bearing thick feudal color and hierarchy. With the cancellation of imperial examinations, this education pattern whose solo knowledge source confined to feudal home education ultimately transformed in the modern time. The environment for the thriving of preschool education at the end of Qing Dynasty includes four major parts: economics, politics, ideology and education. The preliminary development of National Capitalism provides the necessity and probability for the generation of modern preschool education after the Sino-Japanese War during 1894-1895. Precursors propagandize and advocate the thoughts of western preschool education which publicize the idea of constructing public preschool education. The fact that Mission monopolizes preschool education stimulates many persons with lofty ideas to explore the pre-school education scientific style, the Chinese path. The behavior that government enact a series of law articles and send officers to see about abroad ultimately promote the theory of preschool education turn into practice and spread through the whole country.The educational system of preschool education gradually comes to integrity at the end of Qing Dynasty and the start of the Republic of China. The publication of first modern China's educational system, Kui-Mao Educational System (1904), indicates that the collapse of traditional educational system and the establishment of the centre position of modern educational system, among which the section of《Constitution of Kindergarten and Constitution of home-education》is the first preschool educational law that formally issued by China. Preschool education was involved in preliminary education after it had experienced《Ren-Zhi-Kui-Chou Educational System》,《Ren-Xu Educational System》and became an important part of the educational system.At the End of Qing Dynasty and the Early Period of the Republic of China preschool education stressed the establishment of kindergartens. Generally speaking, the amount of kindergartens increased annually through the whole country, but the phenomena that unbalanced development between different areas still exist. Two key disadvantages that impede the development of preschool education are financial deficit and pedagogue shortage. To deal with such disadvantages, the government raised money for schooling, issued statues for normal school, originated institutions for training kindergarteners, and ensured the well development of preschool education. During the period of originating preschool education, teaching contents and methods had come through two stages, simulating Japan, simulating America, and at last began to explore the way of making preschool education ethnic and scientific.Although the preschool education that rose at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century ,lagged far behind the United States and Europe and even Japan and other advanced countries', for China itself, it is "not one big change in the ages."It relates to education concepts and theory, the educational system, and content and methods of education and so on, which promoted China's modernization of the education process, raised the quality of children's physical, mental. However, during to influences of the environment of the Late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of Republic of China, the preschool education would have some limitations.