A school in every village : educational reform in a Northeast China county, 1904-31

Author / Creator

VanderVen, Elizabeth, 1966-

Available as

Online

Summary

In the early 1900s, the Qing dynasty implemented a nationwide school system to buttress its power. Although the Communists, contemporary observers, and more recent scholarship have all depicted rur...

In the early 1900s, the Qing dynasty implemented a nationwide school system to buttress its power. Although the Communists, contemporary observers, and more recent scholarship have all depicted rural society as feudal and these educational reforms a failure, Elizabeth VanderVen draws on untapped archival materials to show that villagers and local officials capably integrated foreign ideas and models into a system that was at once traditional and modern, Chinese and Western. Her portrait of education reform both challenges received notions about the modernity-tradition binary in Chinese history, and addresses topics central to debates on modern China, including state-making and the impact of global ideas on local society.

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