Fields of Knowledge Defined by the Late Qing School System

• In Event: Knowledge Construction and Disciplinary Specialization in Modern China

Abstract

From the 1860s to the 1890s, Chinese academies adopted aspects of “Western Learning” after the Sino-Japanese War “new style schools” with heavily Westernized curriculums. With the formation of the first Qing state school system beginning in 1902, an official conception of the realms and divisions of knowledge became explicit. The curriculums of the first decade of the twentieth century, then, specified that in primary schools about half of the school day was devoted to classical studies. The Four Books and Five Classics were not dethroned, yet they no longer represented the sum total of knowledge. They were supplemented by the new discipline of self-cultivation, which introduced civics, and the rest of the disciplines included Chinese, history, geography, and general science. At the secondary level, the emphasis on the classics was reduced slightly and that of the sciences (and foreign languages) increased. After the 1911 Revolution, the Classics disappeared as a field of knowledge in primary and secondary school, though they remained a source of knowledge for Chinese language, history, and geography. Aside from defining distinct fields of knowledge, the school system emphasized their cumulative nature from simple to complex, as new lessons built on those of the past.

Author

• Peter Zarrow, University of Connecticut