Education as Revolution: Theorizing Education and Learning in Xin Shiji (1907–1910)

Abstract:Xin shiji was a Chinese journal published in France by Chinese anarchists and revolutionaries from 1907 to 1910. This article examines the views of education and learning and views of Chinese language and script expressed in Xin shiji. Xin shiji presents a cosmopolitan moment of educational imagination in the late Qing and early Republican period of China that has been largely ignored in the scholarly literature on education of this period, which has focused instead on the role of education and educational transformation in state building. Dispassionate about disseminating ideas about citizenship and about exploring the role of education in creating new citizens, writers for Xin shiji emphasized the connection of an autonomous individual member of society who is not bound by the nation-state. This cosmopolitan vision of education did not situate itself within an existing tradition or presuppose the institutional and political forms through which education and learning should be implemented.