A Study On Primary Education In Anhui Province From1927to1937

"The rise and fall of a nation relies on education". Primary education is primarily important in the national education. The modern primary school of Anhui province began at the end of nineteenth century and the development and reform of primary education in Anhui province made big progress in the period of the republic of China. However, the economy developed slowly in the modern Anhui province due to the political chaos and neglect. It made the primary education of Anhui province fall behind other provinces so that it disturbed the economic development of Anhui in a vicious cycle. The investigation of the republican Anhui’s primary education can be regarded as a reference and experience for the present primary education.The primary education of Anhui province develops in the complex environment during the period of the republic of China. Anhui province developed rapidly from1927to1937. The agriculture and industry are developed slowly due to frequent natural disasters. The people’s life is very poor due to the conservative feudal society. The gambling, opium and going whoring, etc are very common. As the limited funding and the conservatives, the general public showed little interest on education because they can’t afford to it.Taking the primary education of Anqing city as an example, every school treated three principles of the people as the purpose of establishing the principles of the school and "633reform of educational system". The time-schedule of primary school is decreased to one year of compulsory education and short-term primary education. There is a quantitative selection criterion in order to strengthen education administration from the structure of the provincial department of education to select the director of education bureau. Every school establishes a complete administrative organization and the management system of fund to supervise the school. In the micro-teaching, every school should observe the curriculum standard provided by the national government and reform the teaching contents. They abolished the courses of the Confucian classics and adopted the new-style primary curriculum. The school also combined the arrangement of schoolbook with the structure of the practice on basis of the educational system in western countries. Teachers are trained to take the new method with the more scientific evaluation mechanism.The primary education of Anhui province in the period of the republic of China showed some disadvantages, such as the intricacy, the mal-conformation, the transitivity and the practicability. The intricacy means that the comparison of the macro dates and the micro curriculum falls behind other provinces. The primary education in Anhui province was small in size with the tortuous development. On the other hand, the ten-year development of education is not well distributed throughout the whole Anhui province, which means that the educational funding was not well distributed with the different attitudes on education. The low efficiency on reform of the private schools and the instability of primary teachers made the primary education of Anhui province show transitivity in the process of the educational modernization. The development of the primary education in Anhui province shows stronger practicability in the rein xu educational system, educational administration and the arrangement of the curriculum in the special historical period.The development of primary education in Anhui province during the period of the republic of China changed the education thought of children from feudalism. On the other hand, the slow development of education makes the graduates enter the middle schools after the primary school promoting that the development of economy and the reformation. Moreover, the contradiction between the high positioning of education and the limited educational fund is obvious to the rapid development of primary education in the educational implementation.