Chang Chien And The Rise Of Chinese Modern Folk Museum Education

As a famous industrialist and educator in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, Chang Chien once had played an important role in Modern Chinese political, economic and educational reforms. Educational theory circle has made a large amount of researches on Chang Chien’s education ideas, but has not paid enough attention yet to his first innovation on Modern Chinese folk museum education. Nowadays, Chinese is encouraging folk force to take part in museum construction and education because it needs far-sighted personage like Chang Chien to prompt effectively. So this paper chooses the title of Chang Chien and the rise of modern Chinese folk museum education from the views of academic and reality to enrich Chang Chien research in education field and afford references to the development of Chinese contemporary museum education.This paper mainly adopts historic document analysis, based on Nantong Museum, focusing on these questions:why Chang Chien built museum on his own, what education did he want to do with museum, how did he construct internal and external systems in order to realize his education dream and what’s the relationship between his pioneering museum education efforts and the rise of Chinese modern folk museum education.After historic survey centering on these questions, this paper found Chang Chien formed the idea of saving the Nation by Education since Hundred-Day Political Reform. Except attaching importance to developing school education, social education like museum education and library were also taken into his consideration. His understandings on museum education function also surpassed William Martin’s perception when he founded museum affiliated with Peking Tungwen College. Nantong Museum not only offered assistance to school education, but also turned into an independent museum or natural education organization and native traditional culture and modern science culture education organization faced to the social masses. In order to exert these several education functions of Nantong Museum, Chang Chien constructed internal operation mechanism from the levels of talents, management and audience, and perfected hard on external supporting mechanism from the levels of artifact collection, funds support and publicity.Chang Chien’s above theory and practice not only facilitated the rise of modern Chinese folk museum education in the late Qing Dynasty, but also had a positive influence on the official museum education in the Republican period. Through researching Chang Chien’s museum education from construction on Nantong Museum, not only highlights Chang Chien’s pioneer role in modern Chinese museum education history that has not been attached importance to by education theory circle, but also is beneficial to perfect the development of contemporary Chinese museum education.