From Literati to Modern Teachers: The Identity Transformation of the Educated Elites in Early Twentieth-Century China

Abstract

This article focuses on how part of traditional educated literati transformed into modern teachers. It argues that teachers’ schools became a tool of social transformation that recast surplus officials and old literati into public resources as educators and professional teachers. It was teachers’ schools that provided a considerable number of individuals who were trained for imperial civil service examinations with a new and independent identity, and supplied the state more manpower for the expansion of its educational activities than it ever had before in twentieth-century China.