Commercial Press And The Reform Of Secondary Education Textbooks In Late Qing Dynasty And Early Republic Of China

With the education reform measures enacted gradually, the new schools springup in the late Qing Dynasty. The traditional textbooks of Confucianism became notapplicable to the new schools. Some schools had to use the western textbooks to meetan urgent need, but the western textbooks were not suitable for Chinese students. Tocompile new textbooks which were applicable to Chinese students was urgent.TheQing Dynasty had to permit the private publishing house to compile and publishtextbooks. So more and more publishing house started compiling textbooks.Commercial Press was one.Among all the Commercial press textbooks, the textbooksfor middle schools were successful and important.During that period, The newest middle school textbooks was the representative ofCommercial Press’s textbooks. It includes Chinese textbook, history textbook,electrical textbook, thermal book, geometry textbook, botany textbook, mineralogytextbook and so on, almost covers all the contents of arts and sciences today.The Republic of China was found in1912.With the change of the political power,the education reform coming. The textbooks compiled in the end of Qing Qynastywere forbidden using. At this time, Zhonghua Book Company compiled TheZhonghua textbooks firstly. Unwilling to lag behind, the Commercial Pressconcentrated manpower and material resources to compile new textbooks. TheRepublic Textbooks were published soon.In addition, according to the different school students in the aspects of cultural,academic requirements, the compilers of the Commercial Press compiled the differenttextbooks especially for the students in middle industrial schools and middle normalschools. These textbooks made up the textbooks lack of industrial schools and middlenormal schools.Based on the high quality of the textbooks and the right promotional means,Commercial Press successfully occupied half of textbook publishing industry at thattime, to become the industry leader. Compared to other publishing house’s textbooks, Commercial Press’s textbookshad a distinct advantage. It followed the changing times, the reaction of the timesdemands, to learn something of fusion, and began to enter public life, attention tostudent development. These are textbook does not have before, which also representsthe overall trend and characteristics of the late Qing Dynasty secondary educationtextbook reform.There is no denying the fact that a commercial version of the latest middle schooltextbooks in such aspects as content, language, there are some of the disadvantages ofold and new measures, especially in the Yuan Shi-kai hole retro period, thecommercial press transition to cater to political needs, based on the textbook, thetextbook’s reputation is affected. But it is to promote the modernization of Chinesemiddle school education and future generation’s model of middle school teachingmaterial status is still irreplaceable.