| At the end of the Qing Dynasty, western culture started streaming into China closely followed by western powers’gunboats. By the late 19th century and early 20th century, traditional Chinese culture revealed its own awkward and conservative traits more and more obviously in the fierce engagement between Chinese and western cultures, and was defeated by the "Europeanization" and "Westernization" trends. So to speak, the decay of traditional Chinese culture under the attack from western culture could be seen throughout the whole modernization process in China. Especially after the New Culture Movement, Chinese learning seemed to be gradually neglected by the social mainstream culture due to its inability to adapt to the trends of the times. However, there were still a large number of far-sighted personages, such as Kang Youwei, Tang Wenzhi, Zhang Taiyan, Wang Guowei, Wu Mi, etc., who not only positively affirmed the value of Chinese learning, but also made practical actions to carry out Chinese learning education and cultivate successors for Chinese learning education and research. By taking Mr. Wu Mi as an individual case, this thesis started from Mr. Wu Mi’s experience of Chinese learning education in his life, and focused on studying Mr. Wu Mi’s thought on Chinese learning education. Mr. Wu Mi was born in the late Qing Dynasty when western learning was spreading to the east and Chinese learning was fading away. Throughout his growing stages, China was experiencing torrential social changes. At that time, Chinese people, with insufficient understanding of cultural competition, gradually lost their own cultural standpoint under the impact of western learning. Seeing this situation, Wu Mi realized the importance of Chinese learning education and elucidated his viewpoints on Chinese learning and Chinese learning education in various ways.Based on investigating Wu Mi’s practice in Chinese learning education, this thesis expounded Wu Mi’s thought on Chinese learning education from three aspects:respectively, Wu Mi’s viewpoints on Chinese learning, his viewpoints on Chinese learning education, and his methods of Chinese learning education, then studied the significance of Wu Mi’s thought on Chinese learning education to China’s Chinese learning education in the early 20th century and its limitations, and, at last, explored the contemporary value of Wu Mi’s thought on Chinese learning education.Wu Mi was a famous master of Chinese culture, an educator, and one of the founders of Chinese comparative literature. The generation, development, and maturity of his thought on Chinese learning education were deeply rooted in his beloved traditional Chinese culture. Since the publication of his On the New Culture Movement in 1919, Wu Mi had devoted himself in protecting Chinese learning and promoting Chinese learning education. As it were, Wu Mi by himself made great contributions in preserving Chinese learning and training talents for Chinese learning education. After going through the high oppressive political force 17 years after the foundation of the new China and through the questioning, lashing, and persecution during the 10-year Cultural Revolution, Wu Mi returned back to the academic world in the 1980s of "cultural fever", and attracted wide attention from scholars. At that time, the public also hoped to rebuild national cultural psychology and update social value orientation through studying the connotation and education of Chinese learning. Wu Mi’s road of Chinese learning education was bumpy and rough, and his firm strides on this bumpy road were inseparable from the dangerous situation in which Chinese learning was caught in his times. This thesis includes five chapters:The first two chapters mainly studied Wu Mi’s viewpoints on Chinese learning. It clarified the evolution of the concept "Chinese learning" from ancient times to modern times, and generalized modern scholars’ several different views and attitudes towards "Chinese learning" in the context of modern times respectively from the perspectives of axiology and epistemology, and then introduced Wu Mi’s interpretation of the concept "Chinese learning". Wu Mi’s attitude towards Chinese learning and his devotion to Chinese learning education were inseparable from the practical context he was facing. In the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, western culture invaded into China violently. The status of Chinese national culture was on the wane with the eastward transmission of western learning, and the activities of learning from Europe and the United States, initiated by the Qing Regime, prevailed after the Opium Wars. Meanwhile, some big powers began to encourage missionaries to run newspapers and schools within the sphere of their influence and actively carry out Chinese-culture-eliminating education. In addition, the Europeanization of intellectuals at that time, especially the young students who were accessible to the advanced thought, was increasing day by day. It is worth mentioning that, when the development of Chinese learning encountered difficulties in China, foreign Chinese Studies was experiencing a new peak of prosperity and achieved a big success. Particularly, the archaeological team consisting of members from western countries attracted worldwide attention for its achievements obtained during their investigation in northwest China. Meanwhile, the society had never stopped expounding the connotation of Chinese learning and its value. Under this context, Wu Mi started to reflect on Chinese learning and Chinese learning education. He firmly believed that Chinese learning is of great significance both for individuals and the state, and that the inheritance and popularization of Chinese learning could not only supplement western culture, but also enable common people to save the state by using the moral essence contained in Chinese learning. He not only actively participated into the argument on the new and old cultures, but also tried to find a chance of survival for Chinese learning through his personal practice.The third chapter discussed several core concepts of Wu Mi’s viewpoints on Chinese learning education. Wu Mi’s views towards Chinese learning education can be generalized by three words:first, inheritance, namely inheriting traditional Chinese culture and making it long-lasting; second, dialogue, namely linking up Chinese and western reasons and integrating Chinese and western cultures; third, reestablishment, reestablishing ideal moral environment and restoring the traditional system of cultural value by using the moral essence in traditional Chinese culture. Leaving aside Chinese learning education’s value in the development of individuals, its role in inheriting national material civilization and spiritual civilization cannot be erased and it also plays an extraordinary positive role in the international communication and exchanges of knowledge and academic studies, in reshaping the countrymen’s personalities and rebuilding the state’s spiritual civilization. As a steadfast defender of "Chinese-centered cultural theory", Wu Mi broke open a way through brambles and thorns, just hoping to wipe off the historical dust on the outstanding traditional Chinese culture, reinvigorate it, and protect it from being abandoned, and also hoping to make it send out the light of wisdom and civilization and serve as a spiritual lighthouse, which will indicate the forward direction for China forever and help this state, which has five thousand years of civilization, to recover her magnitude of a great nation.Good educational and teaching methods are crucial to the realization of educational objectives. Thus, chapter four studied Wu Mi’s methods to achieve the objective of Chinese learning education. In Wu Mi’s view, Chinese learning education shall be not merely aimed at popularizing Chinese learning but also aimed at enabling learners to inherit human wisdom by integrating modern education and traditional education. This thesis believes that Wu Mi’s methods of Chinese learning education were formed in the process of his studying traditional Chinese culture, during which Wu Mi was influenced by ancient Confucians’educational methods, and then combined, accepted and rejected these methods on basis of his own studying and reflecting, and finally figured out a new systematic method system. The education methods adopted by Wu Mi were based on students’ personalities. In his teaching practice, he guided students to internalize the knowledge of Chinese learning, improved students comprehensive quality from knowing and behaving simultaneously, helped students to establish the cognition system of Chinese learning, and finally made students obtain the abilities for producing, living, and studying to meet the society’s requirements. The investigation on Wu Mi’s methods of Chinese learning education was divided into three aspects:first, course design of Chinese learning; second, Wu Mi’s standards of selecting and appointing teachers for Chinese learning education; third, the selected teaching approaches for smoothly developing Chinese learning education.Based on Wu Mi’s viewpoints on Chinese learning, the fifth chapter studied the practical influence of Wu Mi’s thought on Chinese learning education on Chinese learning education in the early 20th century. The epochal significance of Wu Mi’s thought on Chinese learning education lies in the innovations on ideas for pursuing studies and academic system construction. In addition, because there were some conflicts between Wu Mi’s academic vision and value selection and the society at that time, even in those days, Wu Mi’s educational views were bound to contain some subjectivity, which thus resulted in the historical limitations of his thought on Chinese learning education.The sixth chapter mainly expounded the enlightening significance of Wu Mi’s thought on Chinese learning education to current Chinese learning education. Nowadays, it is impossible to reproduce the brilliance of the Academy of Chinese Learning, Tsinghua University at the time of the four masters teaching there and also impossible to establish a new Chinese Learning Department, Beijing University, but it should be remembered that the current Chinese learning would have been out of question if these had been no such institutes and their Chinese learning education. These institutes not only led the Chinese learning movement in the early 20th century, but also had significant meaning to current Chinese learning education and research. As the founder of China’s first institute of Chinese learning education and research, Wu Mi’s thought on Chinese learning education is of great reference significance for the current Chinese learning education. Wu Mi’s practice in Chinese learning education and the systematic thought on Chinese learning education, reflected in his practice, present a relatively successful model for the inheritance of Chinese learning and talent cultivation in the current society, and are worth being used for reference by people of our era. Meanwhile, mistakes were inevitable in Wu Mi’s practice in Chinese learning education due to his own limitations, and thus his judgment and layout about Chinese learning in the stages of China’s higher education at that time were influenced by the mistakes. We should take notice of this and learn a lesson from it. To understand and study Wu Mi’s thought on Chinese learning education and then to apply his thought on Chinese learning education to the current practice of Chinese learning education intentionally will certainly bring an unexpected promotion to the current Chinese learning education.
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