Abstract
In the early 20th century, influenced by evangelicals in the United States, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) launched the “Four Movements” in response to the “Four Maladies” of Chinese society. Among the four movements, “livelihood education” is used to help raise productivity and save people from poverty. Research on the YMCA in modern China rarely focuses on livelihood education, and even when it does, it does not focus on educated adult civilians or explore how the YMCA has changed the course of their lives. Based on fieldwork and detailed analysis of historical documents, this paper traces the formation of three night schools that have adopted various forms of “Christianized” and “secularization” practices and sheds light on the lives of two typical students whose experiences in YMCA night school were still less known. This study will demonstrate and analyze the role of livelihood education in introducing Western civilization and Christian ideas to China’s labor class. YMCA night schools not only helped ordinary Chinese working people acquire basic livelihood skills on a secular level, which enables them to enter a higher class in society and exert influence, but also reshaped their beliefs.
Highlights
The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) was founded by George Williams in London in 1844; the mission is to promote the moral integrity of young Christians through solidarity programs and civic training and deliver projects and services focused on youth development
The livelihood educational movement was greatly expanded with the opening of what was informally known as the Night School
It seems hard to deny that the YMCA night school oriented towards Chinese civilians was, to some extent, the only philanthropic school that youths living at the bottom of society could attend during that period
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The YMCA did not limit its members to Christians Instead, it united and served people with different beliefs. The livelihood educational movement was greatly expanded with the opening of what was informally known as the Night School (officially the Evening Institute of the YMCA). The YMCA offered evening classes to working adults with low levels of education and skills. School education is usually provided for part of the people, while the YMCA aims at spreading education to every citizen. Through some cases of YMCA night schools in the three most important big cities—Peking, Shanghai, and Guangzhou—this paper is dedicated to introducing the basic status of YMCA livelihood education that once wrote an important chapter in China’s history of Christianity. The YMCA livelihood educational system ( known as night schools for workers), together with how the educational system influenced and decided the education receivers’ belief reshaping and concept changes, is examined
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