For people today, it is not uncommon for men and women to go to the same school. In fact, in China, women have only had the right to education for a hundred years.
In 1840, Westerners opened the long-blocked gates of China with opium and cannons, and a large number of Western missionaries poured into China while bringing the Western education system to China.
It was not until nearly half a century later that the first women's school founded by Chinese, the Jingzheng Women's School, appeared in China, which opened up the trend of women's education in modern China. Since then, women in China have gradually begun to receive systematic education until they have the right to attend the same university as men.
In the land where the traditional concept of "male superiority over female inferiority" was deeply rooted at that time, it was not easy to fight for this right, and behind it, countless people resisted and pioneered the old ideas and old ideas. In this series, we will talk about the efforts made by these people to fight for equal rights to education for Chinese women.
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Jing Yuanshan and the Chinese Women's School
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Jing Yuanshan, a native of Shangyu, Zhejiang, was born into a family of high-class gentry. He was the first person in China to start a women's school. Born in the throes of great changes in modern Chinese society, Jing Yuanshan took over his father's business and actively participated in the foreign affairs movement, serving as the general office of the Shanghai Telegraph General Bureau.
At that time, Shanghai became the forefront of the Restoration Movement and the center of public opinion because Kang Youwei and others actively publicized the reform of the law. Jing Yuanshan, who was inspired by the idea of restoration, was determined to make efforts in education. In 1893, Jing Yuanshan raised funds to establish the "Jingzheng Academy" in Shanghai, which was his first attempt to run a school.
After 3 years, due to financial difficulties, Jingzheng College was discontinued. However, this attempt made Jing Yuanshan realize that it is difficult to run education based on personal appeals alone, and it requires the participation of many forces. Four years later, he decided to open a women's school, which was the germ of the Chinese women's school, Jingzheng Women's School.
Lü Bicheng and Beiyang Girls' Public School
In 1904, the Qing government promulgated the "Decameron School System", which became the first systematic system of learning in modern China promulgated by the state to be implemented nationwide, but still excluded female studies, clearly pointing out that "in the situation in China at this time, if there is a female school, there are many abuses in the meantime, and it is not appropriate." As a result, Guangdong, Hunan, Hubei, Jiangsu and other provinces have abolished, investigated, and closed a number of women's schools.
At the beginning of the last century, the road to the establishment of Chinese women's schools was obviously still full of thorns.
Lü Bicheng
Lü Bicheng is the first female editor in the history of Chinese journalism and the first female writer in China. A pioneer of chinese women's education, and a precedent set in the history of modern education for women to run school politics. She was praised as "the last female lyricist in the last three hundred years".
In 1903, at the age of 20, Lü Bicheng went to Tianjin alone to "see the world" despite her family's objections, and she wrote a long letter to ask for help from friends through the relationship of her uncle Yan Fengsheng, who was then the envoy of Tanggu Salt Transport. This letter was seen by the general manager of the "Ta Kung Pao" Yingzhi, and praised Lü Bicheng's literary talent one after another. Ying Zhizhi personally went to visit, asked for the reason, and praised Lü Bicheng's boldness. As a result, Lü Bicheng was hired by the Ta Kung Pao to become the first female editor in China.
Only a few months after Lü Bicheng arrived at the Ta Kung Pao, he repeatedly published poetry works in the newspaper, with strict discipline and praise from the predecessors in the poetry industry. She has also written articles advocating women's liberation and publicizing women's education, such as "On the Purpose of Advocating Women's Studies", "Warning to Chinese Female Compatriots", "Rejuvenating Women's Powerful People with Perseverance" and so on.
These views of Lü Bicheng have stirred up thousands of waves in the society, caused strong social repercussions, and become a hot topic of discussion in the streets and alleys. Lü Bicheng's successive articles advocating women's liberation shook Beijing and Tianjin, and Yuan Kewen, son of Yuan Shikai, and Li Jingyi, nephew of Li Hongzhang, all threw poems to cater to them, and admired them.
In order to practice his theory, Lü Bicheng actively organized a women's school, and the budding Lü Bicheng was active in the intellectual class of Tianjin and met Yan Xiu, Fu Zengxiang, Lu Muzhai, Lin Moqing and other Celebrities in Tianjin for support and help. Fu Zengxiang admired Lü Bicheng's talent and wanted her to be in charge of teaching the girls' academy. Therefore, Ying Huozhi took Lü Bicheng to visit Yang Shihua, Tang Shaoyi, Lin Moqing, Fang Ruo, Liang Shiyi, Lu Muzhai and other celebrities in Tianjin, and began to raise funds, select sites, and build schools.
Under the financial sponsorship of Tianjin Daoyin Tang Shaoyi and other officials, in September 1904, the "Beiyang Women's Public School" was established, and on November 7, the Tianjin Public Women's School was officially opened on Tianjin Hebei Erma Road.
Wu Yifang and Jinling Women's University
In 1913, the American Church of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, the American-Israeli American Church, the Council of Trustees, the Northern Baptists and the Church of Christ decided to jointly establish a women's university in the Yangtze River Basin. In 1915, Jinling Women's University opened at the former site of Li Hongzhang Garden in Southeast Embroidery Lane, Nanjing. The first headmaster, Mrs. Tokumoto Yasumi.
In 1919, the first batch of 5 students graduated, and the degree was awarded under the name of Jinling University, which was the first female college student to obtain a bachelor's degree in a Chinese higher education institution.
Church schools have brought educational resources to modern China, but China's intellectual class has always been very uneasy about the cultural penetration of Christianity. In the mid-1920s, there was a "take back the right to education" movement in China, demanding that foreigners return school management to Chinese.
During this period, the issue of the change of the right to preside over the church university was very sensitive, and some schools even caused human deaths. How is the new principal determined? The board of trustees of Golden Women's University thought of one of the first batch of graduates of Golden Women's University, Wu Yifang.
Wu Yifang (1893-1985) graduated from Jinling Women's University in 1919, and was one of the first female college students in China to receive a bachelor's degree. In 1928, he received a doctorate in biology from the University of Michigan, and in the same year he became the president of Jinling Women's University. In 1979, she was awarded the "Goddess of Peace and Wisdom" award from the University of Michigan. With her outstanding social activity ability and achievements in education, Wu Yifang has become an outstanding educator and social activist in the history of modern Education in China. It has made a significant contribution to the cause of the people's progress.
As an outstanding educator, Wu Yifang served as the president of Jinnu University for 23 years, and was well-known at home and abroad for her unique way of educating people and high-quality educational achievements, and built a church women's university into the most prestigious first-class women's university in the Republic of China period.
Bingwen Guo and Southeast University
From the establishment of the first women's school in Chinese 1898, to the first women's school run by the government in 1906, to the establishment of the first women's university in China by the Western church in 1913, from the late Qing Dynasty to the early Min, Chinese women's education finally opened up a new road under the efforts of the forerunners. If women's education is the first step to achieving gender equality for women in modern China, then the right to attend the same university as male students is a difficult second step.
In 1919, the May Fourth Movement broke out, and more and more intellectuals shouted for women's liberation. Finally, in 1920, a national university in Nanjing decided to break the "female ban" and recruit female students.
Nanjing Higher Normal School/Southeast University
It was Guo Bingwen, the principal of Nangao Normal School, who proposed and promoted this initiative. In order to reduce the resistance, Guo Bingwen, Cai Yuanpei, Jiang Menglin, Hu Shi and others agreed to act in unison between the north and the south to jointly open up the "female ban".
When the news of the acceptance of girls came out, the government and the public were in an uproar, and the gossip was unbearable, and even Zhang Xiao, who was more open-minded, and Jiang Qian, the old principal of Nangao, also clearly expressed their opposition.
After guo bingwen, Tao Xingzhi and others explained in many ways, the entrance examination for recruiting female students was finally carried out as scheduled. At that time, a girl named Zhang Peiying, at the instigation of Chen Duxiu, Zhang Guotao and others, came from Shanghai to Nanjing to take the exam.
According to her recollection, she weighed many times between Peking University and Nangao, and finally felt that "Peking University was too bureaucratic" and chose Nangao, which has a "deep learning style". The breaking of the "female ban" in higher education has promoted the democratization of education and opened a new page in the history of China's higher education.
Guo Bingwen
Deng Chunlan and Peking University
At Peking University, female auditors were recruited two months earlier than the Southern High School. However, due to the fact that the capital city, which is heavily ruled by the Beiyang government, has been more interfered with by conservative forces, Peking University has become more cautious in promoting coeducational schools. However, it is precisely because of this that Peking University's final opening of the "women's ban" has completely announced the arrival of China's modern era of equal rights in education.
In the story of Peking University, in addition to educators like principal Cai Yuanpei, there is a young woman who has to be mentioned.
Deng Chunlan
On July 3, 1898, Deng Chunlan was born in the village of Qitaibao in Daowei Township, Xunhua Sala Autonomous County, Haidong City, Qinghai Province, to a family of scholars engaged in education. In 1911, after deng Chunlan graduated from high school in his hometown, he followed his father Deng Zong to Lanzhou to study at the Provincial Girls' Normal School. After graduation, he taught at a primary school in Lanzhou.
At this time, Deng Chunlan deeply felt the unfairness of the world from the regret that he could not enter the university for further study and witnessed some inequalities between men and women. At this time, the Peking University Journal published the full text of Peking University President Cai Yuanpei's speech "The Relationship between Poor Children's Homes and Poor Children's Education". It reiterates its call for equality in the education of men and women. After Deng Chunlan saw it, she was very excited.
Soon, Beijing set off the "May Fourth" movement, and the "May Fourth" surge gave her courage and strength. She could no longer contain her enthusiasm, so she wrote a letter to Mr. Cai Yuanpei on May 19, 1919, pouring out her long-cherished wish for many years.
Who knows, as soon as the letter was sent away, Mr. Cai Yuanpei resigned indignantly in order to oppose the warlord government's shameless act of selling out to the country and suppressing the student movement internally. Therefore, Deng Chunlan's appeal did not work. Deng Chunlan, who was strong-willed in his desire to lift the ban on women, did not get discouraged, and drew up a "Letter to Comrades Who Have Transferred to the National Girls' Secondary School Graduation and Higher Primary School Graduation" and "Letter from Principal Cai of Chunlan" to the Beijing press circles, once again calling on women compatriots throughout the country to rise up and fight for the lifting of the ban on women in universities and for equality in education.
Driven by Deng Chunlan, some educational groups and young women in Shanxi, Hunan and Beijing have also called for the lifting of the ban on women through proposals or joint appeals.
Due to the promotion of public opinion and the strong support of people from all walks of life, Peking University finally enrolled 9 female students in February 1920, Deng Chunlan was one of them, and was assigned to study in the Department of Philosophy.
These 9 young women became the first female college students in the history of our country after co-educational schools. At this point, this feudal precept of "difference between men and women" that has been followed for many years -- "forbidden women in universities" -- was broken during the "May Fourth" movement, under the rising resistance of Young Women with Lofty Ideals such as Deng Chunlan.
At that time, some newspapers in Beijing reported the news in a prominent position, warmly praising the major victory of the education reform and the women's liberation movement, and praising these heroines who bravely opened up a new generation. Although some feudal widows and widows regarded it as "disobedience to the ancestral precepts" and desperately opposed it, however, the emancipation of women and the equality of education between men and women that conformed to historical development have become an irresistible torrent.
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From Unrelated To Coeducational School: A Chronicle of Women's Education in Modern China
Editors: Jenny Su, Zi Lin