Di Luo, "Beyond Citizenship: Literacy and Personhood in Everyday China, 1900-1945" (Brill, 2022)
New Books in Education
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The Different Narratives of the Nationalist Party and the Importance of Literacy
The Nationalist Party claimed control of the central government between 1928 and 1936. It construes mass education as a part of this effort for eventually obtain constitutionalism. The term "impaired citizens" implied that illiterate people were incapable of becoming economically productive, politically engaged, and patriotically concerned. So in order to address those personal failures is to obtain literacy through state-sponsored short-term training programs. However, it's quite doubtful if we look at it from the perspective of the people who participate in those training.
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