Contenu du sommaire : Religion, éducation et politique en Chine moderne

“Build Schools with temple property,” miaochan banxue is a curious historical object. The term refers to a vast array of ideas and practices linked to the introduction of a modern educational system in China at the turn of the 20th century, and to campaigns for religious reform of various inspirations. This article sketches a state of the field of current historiography, and analyzes miaochan banxue as a whole from four distinct perspectives: as political process, being part and parcel of a series of reforms aiming at building a modern state and a modern Chinese society; as a motor of social and religious change, by gauging its impact on social life in villages and neighborhoods; as experience lived by participants, whose individual motivations and affects need exploring; and, finally, as an intellectual object for historians.

Using the Daoist Xuanmiao Monastery as a case, this study reconstructs and investigates the Quanzhen Daoist monastic activism in promoting modern popular education in Nanyang from late Qing to early Republican period. Contrary to the conventional wisdom which tends to see Daoism as either an obstacle, or a victim in the process of modernity, this study shows that the Quanzhen monastery and its clerics played an active in establishing and running several new primary schools, an orphanage, and a vocational workshop in the city from the early 1900s to the late 1940s. I contend that this Daoist activism should not be narrowly or exclusively interpreted as a state-coerced cynical monastic anticipation of the threat of expropriation. Rather, the Daoist activism of the late Qing and early Republican era follows a much longer pattern of the Quanzhen monastery's sustained collaboration with the state and its commitments to local community which began with the Quanzhen Daoist reconstruction of Nanyang shortly after the Manchu conquest, and lasted all the way through the Daoist defense of the city during the anti-Taiping uprising in the 1860s.

During the 100 years under study, Catholic educators were in a continuous balancing act. On the one hand, they aimed at contributing to the national educational effort with schools of all levels and for all kinds of people. On the other hand, they viewed their schools as a means for preserving the faith of Catholics and a tool for the evangelization of non-Christians. Catholic elementary and secondary schools displayed three other striking features. First, these schools focused on people's needs, giving priority to the poor uneducated rural population. Second, they contributed to the modernization of rural China by introducing ideas that had already been accepted in big cities, including basic practices such as hygiene. Third, they countered China's traditional attitudes toward females by giving a new status and role to Chinese women. This essay also shed light on the means the Catholic Church in China developed to ensure that its educators be updated on three matters crucial to the viability and success of Catholic schools: statements from the Holy See, changes in the Chinese government educational policies, and conditions of Catholic schools in different locations.

As a “radical” reformer in late 19th-century China, Kang Youwei sought to make innovations within Confucianism so as to adapt this tradition to the sweeping changes of the end of the imperial period. On the one hand, he tried to create a Confucian “Church” by following the Christian model and suggested establishing Confucianism as a State religion; on the other hand, he criticized the imperial civil examinations and promoted educational reform, while hoping to be able to combine traditional teaching with modern education. Those attempts failed : Confucianism was not transformed into a religion of Christian style, and the building of Chinese modern education made it lose its central status among Chinese values. Kang Youwei's unsuccessful attempts shed light on Confucianism's predicament in modern China.

Through the case study of Chengda Teachers Academy, this article discusses the content, development and influence of Muslim educational reform in China in late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The ethnic identity of Hui Muslim communities led to a strong emphasis on integrating Muslims in China socially, economically and politically. Thus, the content of the educational reform in turn emphasized the learning of Chinese language and patriotism education. Chengda's overall success resulted largely from the support it received from Muslim officials in the Nationalist government. Through the Yuehua magazine and other publications, Chengda's visions of Muslim communities' integration played an key role in turning Muslims in China into “Chinese Muslims.”

During the last few years in the PRC and in Taiwan, a small minority of parents have illegally removed their children from compulsory school attendance in order to oversee their children's education themselves or to entrust them to private individuals. Focusing on the Confucian Classics as the sole textbooks, those involved believe themselves to be the inheritors of the “traditional education,” which they re-appropriate as an alternative to the official school system, due to their perception of deficiencies in state education. Just as the wider “children's Classics reading movement,” of which they are a radical group, the sino-taiwanese “family schools” owe their origin and their principal characteristics to a Taiwanese professor, Wang Caigui, who, after having been a disciple of Mou Zongsan, has evolved from his neoconfucianist academic background and become a strong promoter of “Classics reading,” and also, though in a more discreet way, “family schools” as a kind of paradoxical elitism. Based on fieldwork study in about ten “sishu” in mainland China and in six Taiwanese “dujingban,” this article takes into account both the similarities and differences of Chinese and Taiwanese socio-political contexts, not neglecting the evident homologies with western “homeschooling” practices. It tries to articulate both the generic and the specific approaches by combining three perspectives on the dynamics and issues at stake in this double education network. 

Taiwan's third religion but still a forbidden organization in the People's Republic of China, often considered a « New Religious Movement », the Yiguandao (Way of Pervading Unity) is currently expanding quickly all over Asia. Based on fieldwork mainly carried out in Hong Kong in 2010, the article explores the role of education in this expansion process by focusing both on the promotion in society of Confucianism-inspired texts and on the organization of training sessions for the adepts. It also suggests that the emphasis the Yiguandao puts on jiaohua (education/transformation) constitutes a useful legitimization strategy vis-à-vis political authorities, be it in Taiwan or, more recently, in Mainland China.

Education is central to religion. To be able to send, receive, and interpret the religious message one needs to be educated. Education is also central to the secular nation-state. The modern nation-state demands its subjects to be disciplined and educated in a national curriculum. That curriculum contains the basic elements of modern science, required for educating an adequate workforce, but also basic elements of national culture, such as language and history. This paper regards the secular and the religious as mutually constitutive, so that what is secular is shaped by the religious and what is religious is shaped by secularism. It explores this relationship comparatively with a focus on China and India. Special attention is given to the teaching of science and of national morality as well as to the importance of language in both religion and nationalism.