A Study Of Guangdong's Elementary Education In Republican China, 1912-1949

Elementary education in Republican China consisted of modern primary schools and Sishu (single-class tutor schools, private schools). The education policy of the Guangdong Government was to promote modern primary schools so that they could replace the role of Sishu in elementary education. Because of the disorder of society and the lack of resouses, it was hard to achieve this purpose. The competition between primary schools and Sishu varied with different social situations and different education policies in different times. According to the changing proportion between primary schools and Sishu, the development of Guangdong's elementary education in Republican China went through 5 periods. In the early time of Republican China, primary school was too immature to compete with Sishu. The latter had been the most important organ for a long time of elementary education in China. In this period, the government's policy to develop primary school and restrain Sishu got its embryonic form. The second period was the 1920s. Social situation was more steady than that of the early years. With the increased expenses and the improvement of education administration, primary school began to grow. From 1930 to 1937, before the Japanese invasion of China, Guangdong's primary schools developed further. There were some Sishu that had been transformed to Primary schools. This was the third period. The prospect was cheering. But then the Sino-Japanese War broke out. Many public primary schools were dismissed. And so Sishu got a chance to recover. This is the forth period. Then came the fifth period. After the war, the Guangdong government tried to renew the elementary education that had been destroyed in the war. It resumed the education policy to develop primary school and ban Sishu. But soon the civil war broke out. Primary school could hardly replace Sishu under such conditions. Sishu had been existing in Guangdong province until 1949. This owed to the outside conditions and the different characteristics of the two kinds of schools. They represent different ideals of culture and education. This decided people's view on them and then influenced their selection between them. With the development of primary school, Sishu and the traditional culture carried with it lost their places in the elementary education.The course of primary school replacing Sishu can be viewed as the modernization of Guangdong's elementary education in Republican China. We can understand the modernizationof elementary education in China better through it. And it can also make us reconsider the role of traditional culture in education. Moreover, the Guangdong government's way of taking advantage of the nongovernmental power to develop education can be the source of thought.