Education Of The British Youth In The Liberal Imperial Period As Reflected In The Coral Island

In the long and grand history of British history, R. M. Ballantyne(1825-1894) seems to be a famous writer who is yet not known that much by most people in China. As an adventure novelist, Ballantyne does not enjoy so much attention as that of those big names in Victorian Age like Daniel Defoe, Scott, Kipling and so on. But when the education ideology of the youth in the liberal imperial period is studied, Ballantyne is undoubtedly the one whom could never be omitted.Bearing in him the strong sense of social responsibility and participation, Ballantyne has more than eighty novels concerning the education of the youth among his total100works. He emphasizes all the time that the youth should be trained in reality so as to be a true man who can follow the guidance of God and protect the weak with chivalric spirits. In the meantime, liberal imperialism can be traced in most of his works. As a realistic writer, he writes what the reality shows with the purpose of meeting the market needs.Early studies of Ballantyne’s works were limited in the field of children literature and his plain yet profound language, while in recent years, a wider and deeper study of him is on the way for the concern about the education of the present youth is becoming more and more eye-catching. The critics all turn to be interested in the ideologies of youth education in Britain in the liberal imperial period. As a result, this thesis takes Ballantyne’s representative The Coral Island as an example to make a clear analysis of the education state of the youth in the liberal imperial period in Britain, especially the ideologies of the muscular Christianity and imperialism as contained in the education. There are all together five parts with the middle three as the body parts. The first part gives a general introduction of both The Coral Island and its author R. M. Ballantyne. It also tells the global study state of The Coral Island, its writer and the two key conceptions contained in it—imperialism and Muscular Christianity. The second part focuses on the analysing of the forms of education of the young in the liberal imperial period in Britain and the functions of those forms of youth education aided with the study of the context of the novel. The third part studies specially the main ideology of muscular Christianity as reflected from The Coral Island and part four, the ideology of liberal imperialism. These three body parts are to prove that the essential ideologies of the British youth education in the liberal imperial period are the piety following of God’s gospel and the firm upholding of liberal imperialism. Through the analysis, this paper attempts to prove that The Coral Island as a typical juvenile adventure novel has both the historical and literature function of telling the youth of that time the way of being "men", the importance of bearing imperial spirit, the significance of missionary work as well. This way of education in the liberal imperial period has proved to be of utility and can have an effect on the youth’s minds which the pure public schools’ education can not do. To some degree, the marriage of Muscular Christianity with liberal imperialism is the way Great Britain followed in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century to construct a formidable empire in the world which colonize the Others with not merely the power but also the culture or religion.