On Huang Zunxian 's Educational Thought And Its Practice

Huang Zunxian was born after the First Opium War, and died before the destruction of the Qing Dynasty. After the war the dynasty was in a period of both inner turmoil and invasion by the big powers. And it was also a period of frequently exchanging and intensely crashing between both Chinese and western culture. Huang Zunxian was one of those intellectuals,he proposed to absorb western culture to remedy the inherent shortage of Chinese traditional culture. On account of this kind of relatively rational view between Chinese and western culture, Huang Zunxian put forward his unique education views.To research the educational thoughts and practical affairs of Huang Zunxian systematically is not only a way to enrich our cognition about the history of Chinese modern educational thoughts, but also a window to dissect China’s modernization.Comprehensively analyze his life, the forming process of Huang Zunxian’s educational thoughts can be divided into three phases. The first phases was that before he diplomatically went abroad to Japan (before 1877). This period was his youth. He mainly accepted the traditional education and joined in the civil service examination system. Then he had a deep feeling about the education and tried to criticize the system. The second phase was that, after his journey to Japan and before Hundred Days’ Reform (1877-1898). In this period he personally experienced Meiji Restoration in Japan, traveled European countries and America, investigated the western educational systems, and gradually formed his unique educational reformation thoughts. The third phase is that, after the fail of Hundred Days’Reform (after 1898). After he went back, he tried hard to put his educational thoughts into practice, established elementary, secondary and normal schools.According to his introspection to traditional education, Huang Zunxian realized that the civil service exam system was wasting time and energy of scholars. It also gave them severe ideological restrains.He argued that the traditional education’s contents and methods were unreasonable. He deemed to carry through educational reformation as they did in Meiji Restoration, build the idea of saving the nation by education, popularize compulsory education, pay attention to pedagogical education, encourage scholars to study abroad, change the contents into daily and ordinary ones, absorb western culture and study the advanced educational theories and methods from western world. Not only did he put forward a whole educational thought system, but also put them into practice, as he joined in the Modernization Movement in Hunan Province. He assisted Chen Baozhen (the grand coordinator of Hunan) to establish the Practice School, the Qianshan Institution, the Officers Training Room and so on,and promoted the education modernization of Hunan.After the fail of the Hundred Days’ Reform, Huang Zunxian left back to his hometown. He flung himself to educational affairs positively, made a great contribution to the modern education of Guangdong.Huang zunxian was one of the officers who personally experienced Meiji Restoration of modern Chinese history. And he was the first scholar that roundly and systematically introduced the educational reformation of Meiji Restoration and put it into practice. His work, A History of Japan, was valued by the Reformative School which headed by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao. His educational thoughts offered referential experience to the educational reformation of Hundred Days’ Reform and the New Deal Period of late Qing Dynasty.