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Education History

A School in Every Village

Educational Reform in a Northeast China County, 1904-31

by (author) Elizabeth R. VanderVen

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
Feb 2012
Category
History, China
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780774821766
    Publish Date
    Feb 2012
    List Price
    $85.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780774821773
    Publish Date
    Feb 2013
    List Price
    $34.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774821780
    Publish Date
    Feb 2012
    List Price
    $34.95

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Description

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.

About the author

Contributor Notes

Elizabeth R. VanderVen is an historian of modern and late imperial China. She was on the faculty of the History Department at Rutgers University, Camden.