Legacies of Childhood: Growing up Chinese in a Time of Crisis, 1890-1920

Abstract

History of Education Quarterly section on mathematics and science, both of which, with even more practical subjects, had been promoted in the 1889 Intermediate and Tech nical Education Act. Wynford Davies attributes the failure of many pupils to achieve good results in, and fashion subsequently successful careers from, their studies in mathematics and science to "poor teaching at the hands of non-spe cialist teachers in the lower school" (p. 103). The book's weaknesses are mainly in the area of not making what may have seemed to the author rather obvious connections to the contemporary failure to resolve similar problems. Gareth Elwyn Jones's authoritative book, published by the University of Wales Press-Controls and Conflicts (1982)-which deals comprehensively with such resonances, is mentioned in the bibliography, but hardly referred to at all in the text and its references. Preferably, later books issued by the Press should publish references as footnotes, and also more usable indexes. It must be acknowledged that the book went through the Press in tragic circumstances. The author, a distinguished director of education for Pembrokeshire, died just before his manuscript was to be processed for publication. His wife, who had been a devoted supporter of his enterprise, passed away before the book was in print. Nevertheless, the volume, which commemorates their joint devotion to the development of education in Wales, also celebrates the varieties and inconsistencies of Welsh devotion to education. In the near future other books from the University of Wales Press by Gareth Evans and Gareth Elwyn Jones will reinforce our confidence in the vitality of the historiography of Welsh education. In the meantime everyone should dip into Wynford Davies's well-conceived study. Perhaps, also, "outsiders," across the Dyke, might like to read J. Ifor Davies's superb study of a single Welsh institution, The Caernarvon County School (1989). I think, simply from looking at that brilliantly conceived text, that the phenomenological approach has a future as a means of studying the British educational past.

Upbringing Chinese Children in Migration

“…schoolboys, yet the first as a group to confront the intrusive Western world' (Saari, 1990). They had an experience of childhood at this moment of historical transition between the established traditions of family and education and the shifts accompanying the rise of modern China.…”