Brill’s Series on Chinese Education – serie

This is a collection of essays on China's new curriculum reforms in basic education, covering various aspects of the reforms ranging from education theory to classroom actitivity transofrmation, from teacher training to teaching quality evaluation. Prof. Zhong presents rich experiences in the reforms in the last decade as collisions between old ideas and new ones, marking the end of the Kairov Era pedagogy. This book discusses profound changes in China's basic education, propelled by both top-down designs and bottom-up innovations from grass-root teachers.

This book introduces four influential Chinese educators of the later 20th century whose writings had enormous influence on many dimensions of the educational reforms which underly China’s remarkable transformation into a global superpower. None of them published in English and only Li Bingde, a leader in educational experimentation, had studied abroad. Huang Ji at Beijing Normal University was an educational philosopher who interpreted Chinese classical texts as well as arts such as calligraphy and painting in ways that brought new life to Chinese pedagogy. Lu Jie at Nanjing Normal University and Wang Fengxian at Northeast Normal University were leaders in developing a whole new approach to moral education that highlighted subjectivity and self awakening as China became a socialist market economy.

This collection of writings traces the evolution and revolution of Chinese modern education in the early twentieth century initiated by Cai Yuanpei (1868-1940), the first Minister of Education of the Republic of China, President of Peking University (1916-1927) and the founder of Academia Sinica.This volume illustrates Cai Yuanpei’s educational thoughts, one of which is known as “freedom of thought and academic inclusiveness”(思想自由，兼容並包), through his own words from his political, social, and academic endeavors. Cai navigated the landscape of Chinese education at the time, bridging the gap between tradition and revolution, East and West, and setting the cornerstone of the Chinese modern education system. His innovative ideology remains significant in the context of Chinese education reforms in the 21st century.