“International fame” came to ECTTS in the spring of 1914 when it hosted an educational commission from the recently founded Republic of China. The commission, known in the Western press as the Chinese Educational Commission to Europe and America, was studying institutions of learning and teacher training in search of “the best educational ideas of the western world.” In working with the Chinese group, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Dr. Philander P. Claxton (1862-1957), former superintendent of schools in North Carolina, suggested that it visit ECTTS as well as other state schools. Reportedly, Claxton praised ECTTS as “one of the best teachers training schools of the country.” Aware of the national and international prestige brought, the Wilmington Morning Star judged that it was “a high tribute” for ECTTS to be included in the Chinese itinerary.
In welcoming the Chinese commission to campus, President Robert H. Wright subverted, perhaps inadvertently, the 1907 Jim Crow charter that defined the school as one for the education of “young white men and women.” While the Chinese commission had the sanction of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, its tour of American campuses was conducted just a dozen years after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1885 forbidding Chinese laborers from entry to the U.S., was made – until its repeal in 1943 – permanent. Even in the heyday of Yellow Peril prejudice, ECTTS hosted the Chinese educators rather than respond with bigotry and exclusion as was apparently more characteristic at the national level.
The Chinese commission was originally scheduled for a one-day visit on Monday, March 16, but “found so much of interest [at ECTTS that] they prolonged their stay.” Prior to North Carolina, the commission toured schools in New York, Pennsylvania, and other northeastern states as well as Washington, D.C. Greenville was the first stop in North Carolina. Following ECTTS, the Chinese group visited the Agricultural and Mechanical College (now, NC State), the State School for the Blind (now, Governor Morehead School for the Blind), the State Normal School in Greensboro (now UNC-G), as well as the Agricultural and Mechanical School in Greensboro (now, NC A&T State University), and Guilford County Farm-Life Schools.
Dr. Ping-wen Kuo (Guo Bingwen, 1880-1969) led the three-man commission. A graduate of Worcester College with a doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University, Kuo was one of “the foremost leaders of the new educational movement in China” that emerged with the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. While visiting ECTTS, Dr. Kuo spoke twice to the school, once about the purpose of the commission and then about his native country. According to the Wilmington Morning Star, Kuo “was thoroughly enjoyed by all who heard him.” He was accompanied by Mr. Yong Chen, a member of the Kiangsu Educational Association and a graduate from Teachers College, Columbia University, and Mr. Tsuyi Yu of the First Provincial Normal School of Soochow. Earlier, Mr. Yu had studied at a normal school in Japan.
During the study tour, Dr. Kuo explained that the Southern states were especially relevant to rural China which faced the same problems found in the South. In China as in the South, a drive was underway to provide educational opportunities for every child, including the poorest. Kuo thus affirmed that “the light of modern civilization” was “piercing the dark clouds of ignorance in the interior of the vast Mongolian nation.” Kuo explained that the commission was primarily concerned with investigating elementary schools, secondary schools, industrial work, and normal and teacher training work. His hope was that China would realize a system of public education patterned largely after that of the United States, that adapted itself to the environment, prepared people for democracy, and taught them a skill enabling them to contribute to national advancement and development.
Dr. Kuo was a vocal supporter of the president of the Chinese Republic, Yuan Shikai (1859-1916). However, the Republic, founded just two years prior, rapidly fell into a dictatorship, led by Yuan, and then an attempt, by Yuan, to revive imperial rule in his own person. Following Yuan’s death in 1916, China drifted into a decade of warlord rule. Throughout this period of political unravelling, Kuo, determined to establish a new educational system, worked with Yuan and later the warlords to first reorganize Nanjing Normal School into China’s first coeducational university, later Nanjing University. In 1921, Kuo served as the first chancellor of the Shanghai College of Commerce, the forerunner of the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. In 1923, he was elected vice-chair of the World Education Congress, and chair of the Asian division. Kuo’s work during the decade following his visit to ECTTS led to his later recognition as one of the founding fathers of higher education in modern China.
When the Nationalist Party (Guomindang) launched its drive to revive Republican China in the mid-1920s, Kuo fell from favor due to his earlier support for Yuan Shikai and his cooperation with the warlords. In 1925, Kuo returned to the U.S. to lecture at the University of Chicago, and later helped found the China Institute in New York City. During WWII, he relocated to London to work with the Chinese Embassy, and following the war, returned to New York as part of the Chinese delegation working to found the United Nations.
Kuo’s brief time at ECTTS perhaps helped to shape his emergence as one of China’s most progressive and pragmatic educational and administrative leaders of the early twentieth century. Had the early history of Republican China turned out differently, one can only wonder how the relationship forged, briefly, in the spring of 1914, might have blossomed in the years ahead, elevating East Carolina on the international stage as a global leader in teacher education.
Sources
- Alderman, S. S. “Republic of China Making a Study of American Education.” North Carolina Education. April 1914. P. 5. https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/collection/p249901coll37/id/14013/rec/32
- Allen, Ryan M. Kuo Ping Wen: Scholar, Reformer, Statesman. San Francisco: Long River Press, 2016.
- “Chinese Commission Visits Greenville, to Study Methods in East Carolina Teachers Training School.” Wilmington Morning Star. March 19, 1914. P. 3.
- “Chinese Commission Visiting Greensboro.” Greensboro Daily News. March 20, 1914. P. 3.
- “Chinese Educators in the State.” The State Journal. March 20, 1914. P. 7.
- “Chinese Educators Visit A&M College.” Wilmington Morning Star. March 28, 1914. P. 4.
- “Chinese Teachers Coming.” Des Moines Register. March 14, 1914. P. 3.
- “East Carolina Training School.” Scotland Neck Commonwealth. April 2, 1914. P. 1.
- “Educators from Republic China, Three Members of Government Commission on Visit to This State.” News and Observer. March 19, 1914. P. 5.
- “Greenville, With East Carolina Teachers Training School, Educators from Chinese Republic Visit Institution.” News and Observer. March 22, 1914. P. 20.
- Kuo, Ping Wen. The Chinese system of public education. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University. 1915. https://archive.org/details/chinesesystemop00kuop/mode/2up
- “Japan Modeling Schools on Ours.” Washington Daily News. March 18, 1914. P. 3.
- “Special Happenings of the Year.” Training School Quarterly, vol. 1 (April, May, June 1914), pp. 53-54. https://archive.org/details/trainingschoolqu01east/page/54/mode/2up/search/Chinese
Citation Information
Title: Chinese Educational Commission Visit
Author: John A. Tuckr, PhD
Date of Publication: 4/22/2020