Educational Reform in Japan and China in Anticipation of Dewey: Imperialism and the Great War

• In Event: Comparative Educational Ideology in Transnational Contexts

Abstract

In 1919, American educator and philosopher John Dewey briefly visited Japan before going to China for two years. Japanese and Chinese reactions to him and his ideas were starkly different from each other: Japanese intellectuals found him shallow, whereas Chinese were energized by his ideas and inspired by his presence. We suggest that, in spite of similarities in the initial trajectories of the Meiji and Qing educational reform movements, the different subject positioning of Japan and China in the global system of imperialism and WWI conditioned the reception of Dewey and his ideas of democratic education in the two countries: Japan, growing its own colonial empire, had little use for the ideas of democratic education the colonized China found liberatory.

Authors

• Richard C. Miller, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Katrina Liu, University of Nevada - Las Vegas