How To Teach Chinese: The Chinese Education Debates Of Middle School In The 1940s

Discussions on the issue of “how to teach Chinese” have not been stopped for a long time.Many educational reforms in the late Qing dynasty and the May 4th period,have changed the Chinese education of primary and secondary schools,and the most important one is the vernacular began to enter the field of Chinese education.In 1920s-30 s,education workers launched many discussions around the introduction of the syllabus,the construction of Chinese textbooks,the innovation of teaching methods and so on,and these are all related to many aspects of “how to Chinese”.In the 1940 s,two highly influential Chinese teaching publications,Chinese Monthly and Chinese Journal,had a comprehensive and deep discussion of the issues related to Chinese education in middle schools,which was of great help in directing middle school students how to learned Chinese and teachers how to taught Chinese.This paper regards these two publications as research objects,trying to sort out and research related discussions around the magazine,and hope have an overall care and understanding about the debates of “Chinese level of middle school students”,the debates between classical Chinese language and vernacular in the field of Chinese teaching and textbook compilation,and the debates between reading and writing relations in middle school Chinese education fields of the 1940 s.The paper is divided into six parts.The introduction part sorts out the evolution history and specific connotation of the related concepts such as “national language”,“Chinese language” and “Chinese”,and make a general introduction to the educational backgrounds of the western movement of the Anti-Japanese War in the 1930 s and 1940 s.The first chapter makes a detailed introductions and analysis of the founding backgrounds,the concepts,the contents and the problems of Chinese Monthly and Chinese Journal through combing historical materials.The second chapter mainly presents the discussions on if “Chinese level of middle school students” was low,the reasons of low and performance,the remedial measures in 1930 s and 1940 s,and try to get back to the specific historical context to explore the essence and practical significance of the discussion through close reading of the journals.The main contents of the third chapter are the debates between classical Chinese language and vernacular in the field of Chinese teaching and textbook compilation.Critics started from “rescuing the Chinese” and had deep discussions about whether Chinese textbooks selected classical Chinese language or vernacular,Chinese teaching paid more attention to literariness or applicability,and both these were of great practical significance.The last chapter writes from the dissensions between “reading separate from writing” and “reading promote writing”,and further presents the educators' discussions and comments on some methods problems,such as “how to read” and “how to appreciate”,“what to write” and “how to write”.On the basis of summarizing the whole paper,the conclusion further expounds the essences and influences of middle school Chinese education debates in the 1940 s.