History of Education

The profound heritage of ancient civilization has made Hangzhou prosper in education for millenniums. Early as the Spring and Autumn Period some 2,500 years ago the people of the Yue state had adopted he proverb of “cultivate productivity and develop education” as the nationwide policy. The written history of Hangzhou since the Tang dynasty has been filled with records about public schools of different levels as well as private schools that also prevailed. Gui Shan Academy, founded at Yuhang County in the late Northern Song Dynasty, was the earliest school in record. As the city was set as the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, the ancient Chinese education came to prevalence with the founding of state universities, exclusive schools, military academies and schools of medicine, mathematics and fine arts. The four academies named Fuwen (also named Wansong), Ziyang, Gujing and Chongwen, which started to thrive in the Ming and Qing dynasties, were the best-known ones for public education.

By 1840, when China’s seclusion to the rest of world was challenged during the Opium War, the Chinese experienced a giant leap to the social transformation that had never took place for thousands of years. Schools managed with new ideas were coming to a rise to take the place of the traditional public and private ones. Lin Qi, the then mayor of Hangzhou, founded the three new academies named Qiushi, Canxue and Yangzheng during from 1897 to 1899 and thus laid the foundation for the development of modern education in the city and the province as a whole. The city’s modern education, once growing from the stage of infancy to development, maturity, setback and revival, reached a plateau between 1947 and 1948. Local schools of nationwide reputation, such as The No.1 Normal School of Zhejiang Province, Zhijiang University (private-run), Zhejiang University(state-run), the State Art School of Hangzhou and Hangzhou High School of Zhejiang Province, have won a significant place in the history of modern education. The city was also considered by the masters of modern education as the platform to realize their educational ideals and develop their careers. The tales between Jing Hengyi and the No.1 Normal School of Zhejiang Province, between Tao Xingzhi and Xianghu Teacher’s School, between Cai Yuanpei and the Academy of Fine Arts, and between Zhu Kezhen and Zhejiang University, have been immensely popularized. Widely-revered educators like Lu Xun, Li Shutong, Xia Mianzun, Ma Xulun, Chen Wangdao, Liu Dabai, Jiang Menglin, Yu Ziyi, Zheng Xiaocang, Ye Shengtao, Yan Yangchu, Yang Xianjiang, Chen Heqin,and Jin haiguan, and the educational philosophy and ideologies they left, all enriched the treasure house of the city’s cultural profundity. The educational prosperity of the city and the province as well, as being recognized nationwide, was in supply of the best personnel and intellectual support for the social development of modern China.

As the national education system came into existence since the PRC was founded, the sacred cause has experienced a new round of prosperity for the city. Great leap forward in local education was made in particular since China began to adopt the policy of reform and opening-up and thus the city scored considerably high the in three areas. First, the universality of the nine-year compulsory education has been fulfilled by 1994, and by 1996 illiteracy was generally stamped out of people’s life. Second, the city took the lead in 2001, after well executing the popularization of the original nine-year compulsory education mechanism, by making the 15-year fundamental education from kindergarten to senior high school compulsory and universal within the province, and hence began to stride toward making education of high quality and equal availability. Third, the higher education traditionally accessible to the privileged class has been popularized since 1999, and even been available to everyone since 2007. With the rise of urbanization since 2000 the local education has been placed on a fast track. The city also took leading steps that exerted significant effect on the province and the country as well, such as the efforts to encourage creative education, the policies adopted for pre-schooling, the call for free education and the development of community-based kindergartens, primary schools and high schools, the establishment of the systems to finance students and serve for students from the immigrated families, the attempts to conglomerate schools of acknowledged reputation and open the schools’ fitness grounds to the general public, the new concept of open-and-fair enrollment and the extracurricular activity programs, the practice to apply academic findings to productivity and help college students land jobs or start their own ventures, the promotion of coupons for training programs, the availability of spring and autumn recesses, and the study and formulation of sample edition of School Constitutions. They were once, in summary, acclaimed by the People’s Daily the Hangzhou Model for the development of modern education.