The impressions of another diplomat whose travels began at the same time as Guo's, Huang Zunxian, were not published until 1895, when a more favourable climate of opinion existed. His Account of Japan,
written on the basis of his experiences while at the Chinese embassy there
12. Ibid., 8 : 7b-9a. The orthodox and enthusiastic tone of this passage may derive partly from the fact that it presages an appeal for funds
(for a charitable school Yung Wing proposed to set up in his native county).
13. J.D. Frodsham, The First Chinese Embassy to the West: the Journals of Kuo Sung-t’ao3 Liu Hsi-hung and Chang Te-yi (Oxford, Clarendon, 1974), p. 6.
14. Ibid., pp. lx, lxi. Guo's recall was the result of personal enmities as well as ideological outrage, but it is significant that the latter was
from 1877 to 1881, appears to be an attempt to recapture for Confucians ground lost to the latter-day Mohists (as he regarded Christians, that is, Westerners), whose hospitals and free schools bespoke their public spirit but whose achievements would be vitiated by the same competitiveness which had brought them into being.^ The Japanese, Huang writes, could never have grasped the true significance of Confucian teachings, otherwise they would not have discarded them; on the other hand, it was only because of pre vious exposure to these teachings that they had had sufficient right spirit
16
to restore the Meiji Emperor. Huang's emotional identification was with Chinese studies. His detailed, dry exposition of the Japanese education system shows little enthusiasm for its manner, though he praises its matter as being the revival of practical studies originally Chinese but long lost in their native land.^ For those seeking a blueprint, however, one could be extracted from Huang's work, which describes everything from the
18
function of the Ministry of Education to the use of blackboard and chalk.
The years between the experiences Huang recorded and his publication of them saw the continuation of piecemeal reforms in education, based on the segregation of Western studies in special schools.
By the 1890’s, it was evident that neither students nor state derived much benefit from these schools, which were obviously failing in their
raison d'etre, the repelling of foreign aggression. Hong Kong had been
ceded to Britain, the Ryukyus lost to Japan. 'Strong neighbours press in daily, and Tibet and Korea are likely to topple any minute', Zheng Guanying wrote in Shengshi weiyan, his most influential work. 'And our country's
15. Huang Zunxian, Riben guozhi (Canton, 1898), 32 : la-2b. 16. Ibid., 32 : 14a-15a.
17. Ibid., 32 : 22b-24a. This argument in particular and Huang's caution in general may have been in part rhetorical devices designed to make more palatable to his countrymen his proposals for change. One should remember, too, that until the end of 1883 Japanese education was under strong American influence; that is, the system Huang saw operating was not identical with that later taken as a model by Zhang Zhidong. 18. Ibid., 33 : 7a-13a.
schools have not been developed, our education (
jiaoyu
^ ) is incomplete, 19our technology and trade lag behind Japan's.’
Many advocates of reform had called for attention to a wider field
of Western learning than that encompassed by military technology, starting
with Feng Guifen in 1861, but Zheng appears to have been the first to locate
China's salvation in the schoolroom. He asserted that 'In ancient and
modern times, in China and abroad, every country has regulated its education
(jiaoyang
) and gained its wealth and power primarily through schools. Now Japan has taken the West's excellence in education as its model infostering talent, and the country's power has indeed risen greatly. How
can our country fail to bend all its strength to this? In a word, one can
say categorically that if we do not set up schools, no talent will emerge
and if we do not abolish Cexaminations ond set literary forms, the schools 20
will be no good to us.'
Zheng described in detail Germany's schools of medicine, technology,
science, navigation, military studies and commerce, and the comprehensive
system of compulsory education which enabled it to hold Europe 'by the ox's
ear'. In the same section, he discussed the school systems of France,
21
Germany, Russia, America, and Japan. Japan's classes in ethics were
22
singled out for mention, as was her practice of military drill and
physical exercises - tempered, in the case of women's education, into
idyllic hours spent chasing butterflies and threading flower chains, as 23
befitted their softer nature. Lin Lezhi (Young J. Allen) was quoted
on the benefits of female education, which he saw, in common with the majority
of his fellow-countrymen at that date, in terms of greater fitness for
motherhood.^
19. Zheng Guanying,
Shengshi weiyan zengding xinhian
(Taibei, 1958 C18951),Zixu, 3a. 20.
Ibid.
, 2 :: 15a. 21.Ibid
., 2 :: 3a-19a 22.Ibid
., 2 :: 2 a . 23.Ibid
., 2 :: 14a. 24.Ibid.
, 2 :: 18b.In outlining the common features of Western education Zheng spoke
of the remittance or reduction of school fees for the poor. He appears
to have seen education for the poor as a charitable enterprise for relief
of n small section of society necessitous beyond the average. Ills advoc
acy of technical schools 'for the sons and daughters of poor people with- 25
out a trade' has an urban ring to it. Zheng did not address himself
seriously to the question of the particular problems of spreading the new education in China's vast rural areas.
Zheng's proposal for a three-tier school system under which tertiary institutions were to be set up by the province, secondary by the prefecture, and primary by the county, was the same as that set out in his earlier work. At the apex of this system he now placed a Ministry of Education, to pre side over departments of infant, general, and specialized education, trans lating and editing school texts, accounting, examinations, and inspection,
on the model of the Japanese system. Money for the schools was to be found
26 through the joint efforts of local officials, gentry, and merchants.
Although Zheng did not see the state as intervening directly in elementary education (entry into 'primary school' was for those with a
few years schooling), he gave detailed suggestions for the reform of lessons in sishu, on whose present teachers - 'stale scholars and aging students of the classics' - and teaching methods - 'teaching what [childrenl don't
understand and omitting what they do' - he made a scathing attack. Children
should be taught twenty characters a day until they knew two thousand, after
which they could go on to edifying stories like Twenty-four Tales of Filial
Piety or Twenty-four Tales of Dutiful Brothers. In addition to these, suitable stories and rhymes could be brought out in an illustrated book. The characters, he observed, could be learnt in local dialect - a possible reflection of his Cantonese origin? At the end of the first year, the child would know six thousand characters and be ready for snippets on the people and customs of different countries, from which he would progress to extracts
25.
Ibid
., 2 : 3a-b. 26. Ibid.from historical texts and thence, in his fourth year, to the classics. In 27
writing, he should start with letters, stories, or items of news.
As the concept of education moved from that of an individual, private pursuit to that of an organized mass activity controlled from above, the
language mirrored the change. A new word, or rather an old one retrieved
from antiquity via Japan, came into use to describe this phenomenon: . . 2 8
jzaoyu.
Traditional Chinese discussions of education had used a wide variety
of terms, most containing the root xue ( 'a )> ’learn’. The Chinese spoke
of ’promoting learning’ (xing xue ^ )» ’learning matters’ (xuewu 3 fa )
- an administrative term), ’Ministry of Learning’ ue Bu ). All
these terms placed the emphasis on the relationship between the learner and
the thing learnt. They continued to be the most widely used terms in the
nineties, but alongside them was growing up a different concept of education
reflected in a different vocabulary. Zheng Guanying's terminology was
still fluid. He entitled the section on education in Shengshi weiyan
’Learning’(xueshu 3
Ä
), subdividing it into sections on 'Schools'27.
Ibid
., 2 : 21a-23a. Zhang's emphasis on beginning language training inthe pupil’s own dialect was not taken up by the new school system when
it was finally established; instead, the schools were used to propa
gate the national language.
28. The verbal use of jiaoyu dates back to Mencius. When ’education' in
the modern sense first came east, its nomenclature was uncertain. The
Japanese Ministry of Education (:4ombusho
jfaigf
% ) is literally the CivilMinistry. When the section on education in Chambers' encyclopaedia was
translated into Japanese, the word gakumon (
'%■ jo]
) or learning wasused; Fukuzawa Yukichi, the great popularizer of Western thought and
institutions, used the same word. By the late 1870’s, kyoiku
(
ft
)was becoming the standard equivalent in Japan of the English word
'education'. The magazine of the Ministry of Education, previously
Monibur.ho zasshi (Jc^f
$
was renamed the Kydiku zasshi ( ft Kyoiku was used in the title of translated works in 1875, 1876, and1877. By 1879, it had become naturalized, being used both in the title
of the Americanized Educational Ordinance of that year and in the works
of its conservative opponents. (See Nishihira Isao, ’Western Influence
on the Modernization of Japanese Education, 1868-1912' (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 1972), pp. 267, 274, 278, 295, 375-77.
(xuexiao) and ’Western learning' (xixue), but in the context of the state’s organization of and duty to its subjects he several times used words containing the root jiao ( (’teach'): jiaoyang -fi.
(literally 'teach and nourish', jiaohua ('teach and transform') and jiaoyu ('teach and rear'). These connoted benevolent state activity.
They had long had a verbal use in reference to the state's duty to scholars and people; they were now called in as translations of the foreign concept of education. The title of a work published in 1893, Taishi jiaoyushi
04 History of Western Education), reflects the emergence of both term and concept. Henceforth, 'education' could refer not merely to methods of study but to an object of study. It had a life of its own.
The Shengshi weiyan is written in an easy direct style, requiring for comprehension only half the number of characters Zheng wished to
impose on the beginning reader. It was a successful and influential book, running into several editions. Its readers ranged from the Guangxu emperor
29