Create "national": Qing Dynasty History Textbooks In Primary And Secondary National Education

Textbook plays a very important role in school teaching. It is not only the tool of spreading knowledge but also the carrier of the Enlightenment. The end of the Qing Dynasty is an important transition period of modern Chinese ideology and culture. Shaping the people’s modern consciousness has become an important content of modern thinking revolution. In this process, charged with an important mission, textbook has become not only an important carrier for the transmission of knowledge, but an important tool to shape the national outlook on life and values.History textbooks as a wide range of audiences specific text, in the case of relatively weak political influence, became an important field for the government and the intellectual elite to enforce the national education during that period.At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the national salvation became the most pressing themes of the times. Training people’s patriotism became the primary goal of the history textbooks of that time. Training people’s national identity, civil rights awareness, the concept of equality, historical awareness and consciousness of the world was penetrated into the tenet and the content of the history textbook editing, with the purpose of making the traditional people into the modern ones with the sense of nation and national spirit. This is called saving the country by history-teaching. Early Republic of China, with the form of government republican,"developing a Republic-minded nation" became a fundamental aspiration of history textbook education. In this period, the history textbook includes training people’s Ethnic national identity, democracy and political awareness, independent sound personality, world and scientific consciousness and as well as other consciousness education. Training to make the people of Republic of China who can take the right and also bear the responsibility, has the self-identity with the country and develop with the world.The textbook is a product of the times. At the end of the Qing dynasty, history textbook of national education has a distinctive character. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, influenced by the purpose of salvation and survival, national education in the history textbooks was focused on the shaping of the national groups, highlighting the concept of nation state and the cultivation of the national spirit, and containing a strong national and ethnic consciousness. At the same time, subject to an absolute monarchy, national education in the history textbooks contained certain feudal subjects. In the early Republic, National education in the history textbooks started to pay attention to the cultivation of national sound independent personality, emphasizing both national rights and obligations. At the same time, influenced by the nationalist thought and ideas of cosmopolitanism, national education in the history textbooks showed a blend of nationalism and world consciousness, monarch history narrative category also began to break through in the content, concern on the life and customs of ordinary people and other statements, showing the civilian education.Through the penetration of national awareness in the history textbooks, national education, promoted by the late Qing government and the intellectual elite, was widely absorbed and digested by students and ordinary people, with the consequence of promoting the enlightenment of the general public and the modernization process. Therefore, the enlightened group of students and ordinary people were initiated to participate in modern democratic struggle and became an important force in the modern democratic revolutionary movement.