中國近世地方教育的發展－徽州文人、塾師與初級教育(1100-1800)

Abstract

This paper, by focusing on elementary education in Hui-chou from the Sung to mid Ch'ing dynasties, examines the development of Chinese society in the late imperial period. First, it addresses local scholars' participation in both elementary and advanced education during the Sung (960-1279) and Yuan (1279-1368) dynasties. Second, it examines the development of public and private institutions of elementary education, including household schools run by schoolmasters (chia-shu or ssu-shu), lineage schools, community and charitable schools. Third, it considers the relationships between these public and private institutions in late imperial China. More specifically, the first part of the paper concentrates on how the civil service examinations starting from the Sung dynasty influenced local society and the development of local education. The second part focuses on the contribution of local scholars to local and Neo-Confucian education during the Yuan dynasty. The evolution of private and public institutions, as well as the question of why scholars continued to devote their time and energy to writing and compiling children's primers as well as the relation of these developments to the ever-growing number of printed textbooks are also addressed. The third part concentrates on (1) why the community school system failed in the Ming and Ch'ing period, despite the state’s efforts to restore it time and again, and (2) the factors that contributed to the prosperous growth of education in the private sector. The wealth of sources for studying these questions in the Hui-chou allows us to deepen our understanding of changes and continuities in Chinese local society in the late imperial period.