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Distributed for University of British Columbia Press

A School in Every Village

Educational Reform in a Northeast China County, 1904-31

In the early 1900s, the Qing dynasty implemented a nationwide school system to buttress its power. Although the Communists, contemporary observers, and more recent scholarship have all depicted rural society as feudal and these educational reforms a failure, Elizabeth VanderVen draws on untapped archival materials to show that villagers and local officials capably integrated foreign ideas and models into a system that was at once traditional and modern, Chinese and Western. Her portrait of education reform both challenges received notions about the modernity-tradition binary in Chinese history, and addresses topics central to debates on modern China, including state making and the impact of global ideas on local society.


Table of Contents

Introduction

1   The Setting: Northeast China, Fengtian Province, and Haicheng County

2   Educational Transformation: Abolishing and Reforming the Sishu

3   Administering the New Educational System: Educational Promotion Bureaus

4   Funding the New Community Schools

5   Establishing Girls’ Schools in Haicheng County

6   Old and New in the Village Community Schools

Conclusion

Notes

Glossary of Chinese Terms and Place Names

Bibliography

Index

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