The Beginning Of The Dream Of Saving The Country Through Science

Modern China was facing unprecedented national crisis because of those wars inside and outside of China. Some open-minded intellectuals realized that the tragic situation that lagging behind means exposure to invasion was due to the huge gap between backward science and technology in China and advanced science and technology in the western world. In order to turn things around, a group of intellectuals advocated to save the country through science, hoping to realize the ideals of nation’s wealthy and prosperousness through learning western science. This idea inspired people to take science as the powerful weapon to get rid of ignorance, at the same time this idea promoted the development of China’s science education effectively.In about thirty years after the opium war of1840, the westernizationists made important contributions to the development of modern science education by establishing some schools including technical schools, introducing western advanced equipment, hiring some technology talents, sending abroad students to western countries. However, the guiding ideology of "Chinese Body and Western Usage" has a certain incompleteness and limitations. The disastrous defeat of China in the Sino-Japanese war of1894-1895compelled the Chinese people to realize that learning the western skills was not far enough and we must learn the western system. So, the Hundred Days Reform begun. The Qing begun to implement the New Deal and establish the new education. The number of schools all over the country increased sharply. The issue of new educational system made physics become the middle school teaching subjects in the legal form. Then, the high school physics textbooks which met the requirements of the new educational system and the teenagers started to board the stage of history.The object of the paper is those middle school physics textbooks of the late Qing dynasty. The author adopt these research methods including Document Analysis, Textual Analysis, Case Study method and Comparative Method during the research. On the one hand, this article intends to expound China actual conditions especially the conditions of seeking to save the country through science in the late Qing dynasty from macro perspectives, and to analyze the important historical significance of the birth of middle school physics textbooks of the late Qing dynasty. That is: First of all, the generation of high school physics textbooks in the late Qing dynasty is the beginning of scientific salvation dream, which is the inevitable outcome of the ideological trend of the "saving country through science"; Secondly, the high school physics textbooks in the late Qing dynasty enlightened the rational thinking of the Chinese people and promoted the development of Chinese modern physics education and science education.On the other hand, this article deeply analyzes the contents of the textbooks and summarizes the main features of high school physics textbooks in the late Qing dynasty and the enlightenment for the contemporary high school physics textbooks through the comparative analysis with current high school physics textbooks. Combined with reflection on the lack and progress the contemporary physics textbooks and in consideration of the new era tasks and realistic conditions, the author provides a reference to the reform of high school physics textbooks in the future. That is:First of all, considering that the high school education reform tends to abolish science-humanities division, we should make high school physics textbooks to meet the needs of all students; secondly, the high school physics textbooks should demonstrate its educational functions of science and educational functions of humanistic literacy as well.