Basing On The Tradition And Melting Of The Oriental And The Western

During Xianfeng's time (the late Qing Dynasty), seeing the powerfulness of the Western Countries and deeply feeling the lack of capable personel, Guo Songtao's ideas of reforming educaton were then germinated. Among those years while he was the ambassdor in the UK and France, Guo paid a great attention to making an on ? the ?spat investigation of Western education and formed his own educational ideas gradually ripe. He thought education was the fundamental cause to strengthen a country, so the setting up of newstyle educatiion, the persuing of application of real learning, and the cultivation of the talented with practical views were speeding necessities in order to make China itself powerful. His specific measures were as follows: popularising education from business spats step by step, implementing all rounded education in schools, reforming principles of the school education, introducing western curriculum and administration methdologies, and sending more young Chinese to Europe and America for further studies. Guo's practical tradition rooting on Huxiang Culture (a famous local culture tradition of the time) made his educational ideas in favour of being practical . His education ideas primarily benefited from his education background, including much itnfluence from Confucian school and philosophy of Song and Ming dynasty, inspite of his favouring the western educational experiences. Such a conclusion can be made that his ideas were based on Confucian school and were a combination of traditional Confucian philosophy and the form of werestern educational experience. Guo's educational ideas were the radical part of education thoughts of advocating westernization movement, the part of ahead of time, which, from today's view, schould take an important position in the history of China's modern educational thoughts, though, neglected for rather a long time. Guo's educational ideas, an epitome of that time , reflects some charicteristics of the melting of China's culture and western culture earlier China's modern period.