Scottish Centre for China Research

3 May 2018 (Thursday), 4-5.30pm

Location: Room 139, 29 Bute Gardens (Urban Studies Boardroom), University of Glasgow

Abstract: In the first half of the twentieth century, France was regarded as the ideal embodiment of modernity by many Chinese intellectuals. A series of intellectual movements based in France were initiated to experiment and look for the recipe of “being modern”. Education and learning is at the heart of this experiment and this talk will look at three intellectual and educational movements. First, the anarchist movement starting from 1907 which placed education at the centre of their revolutionary project and claimed “there is no morality other than learning”. Next, the “work-study” movement (1921-1927), an educational experiment that the anarchists sponsored and developed in France which combined labour and learning to shape Chinese workers into hard-working citizens and finally, the Sino-French Institute (1925-1946), another educational experiment that acted as an institutionalised educational model for learning. We will examine how the ideas of education and learning have been raised, theorised, debated and reshaped by the Francophile Chinese intellectuals.

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First published: 10 January 2018