A fragmentation of Dewey: Dewey in the political and educational reforms of China, 1910s–1920s

ABSTRACT

Dewey’s influence on Chinese education has been described as a prime example of the transfer of knowledge from the West to the East. This article investigates the precise process of this transfer by re-examining two themes stressed in current scholarship: Dewey’s thoughts on education and democracy and his incremental approach to educational and social reform. In doing so, it explores the many roles Dewey played in both radical and moderate reforms and in an educational discourse that shifted its focus from democratic education to education informed by the scientific attitude. As a result, it raises further theoretical questions about the conceptualisation, unity and diversity, and ‘influence’ of Dewey in transfer processes. In this article, we argue that Dewey’s ideas were subject to constant reinvention in Republican China and that the received Dewey was largely a fragmented Dewey born out of its ever-shifting socio-political and cultural context.

摘要

杜威对中国教育的影响被视作‘西学东渐’的一个典范。本文通过重新审视当前学术界关注的两个主题——杜威的教育和民主思想、杜威渐进式的教育和社会变革路径——考查了杜威思想迁移的确切过程。在此过程中，笔者探究了杜威在激进变革和渐进变革中的多种角色，以及其在由民主的教育向以科学态度为依据的教育这一教育话语转变中的作用。由此，提出迁移过程中有关杜威的概念化、一致性和多样性以及‘影响’等更深刻的理论问题。在本文中，笔者认为杜威思想在民国时期不断被重新创造，同时，人们所熟知的杜威大体上是一个产生于变动不居的社会政治文化背景中的碎片式的杜威。

KEYWORDS:

• Dewey
• progressive education
• the New Education Movement
• democracy
• China

关键词:

• 杜威
• 进步主义教育
• 新教育运动
• 民主
• 中国

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the Editors and three anonymous reviewers, who gave many thoughtful suggestions and additional references.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As recently as 2021 there was a commemoration for the saluting of Dewey’s departure from China, see e.g. the five articles in Journal of East China Normal University (Educational Sciences Edition) 39, no. 6 (2021): 17–81.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fujian Provincial Federation of Social Sciences (Fujiansheng sheke lian) under Grant FJ2022C023.

Notes on contributors

Ying Zhou

Ying Zhou obtained her PhD at the University of Groningen, trained in both Educational Studies and Sinology. Currently, she is an assistant professor at the Institute of Education, Xiamen University. Her research interests include the history of east Asian education, citizenship studies, progressive education, and the intellectual history of modern China.

Johannes Westberg

Johannes Westberg is Professor of Theory and History of Education, and Chair of Pedagogy at the University of Groningen. He is the organiser of the Nordic network in the history of education and ISCHE 42, senior editor of the Nordic Journal of Educational History and is member of the editorial boards of History of Education and History of Education Quarterly. He has paid particular interest to the rise of mass schooling in the nineteenth century and the expansion of early childhood care and education since the 1960s.