PhD. ceremony. Y. Zhou, M. Education and politics in China: civic education in times of reform, 1901-1937

From the turn of the twentieth-century onward, especially after 1905, the conviction that democracy as a political system would save and strengthen China was widely accepted in the government and in society. This conviction stimulated several initiatives for institutional change in Chinese society. Institutional reforms in education and politics entangled with each other at the outset of fundamental changes that took place in China at the beginning of the twentieth century. This entanglement required the renovated educational system to accord itself with more democratic politics and anticipated a physically, mentally, and spiritually qualified citizenry that would be produced through modern-style schooling. This study on the development of democratic education in primary and secondary schooling in China during 1901-1937 focuses on the relationship between education, citizenship, and democracy. The research on the institutional changes in education and their relation to the broader socio-political circumstances in search for and in pursuit of political democracy was based on state provisions on education, proposals and resolutions on crucial educational issues presented at educational meetings and conferences, and journal and newspaper articles. Its examination of the development of education for citizenship in relation to various democratic ideals and political practices was based on textbooks for primary and secondary schooling. This study deals with the impetuses, developments, and problems of democratic education, reveals the triadic interrelationship between education, citizenship, and democracy in a context of constant changes, and sheds new light on the initial stage of democratic education in a crucial period of modern China.

Dissertation: http://hdl.handle.net/(...)f0-8f08-28828f911ca8