This book presents a comprehensive study of “the introduction and development of modern childhood in China through the child advocacy efforts of a philanthropic organization called the National Child Welfare Association” (p. 20). The Introduction elaborates on the study in relation to current literature on childhood, research on the history of modern education, late-Qing reforms and the missionary movement in China. Such information is essential for the construction of a historical context against which Margaret Mih Tillman traces transnational advocacy for child welfare and education, and analyses similarities and differences between the Nationalist and Communist views of childhood.
Seven chapters are structured along chronological timelines. Chapter one focuses on Chen Heqin (1892–1982), who is renowned as “the father of Chinese kindergarten.” Western influence, missionary education, foreign aid and the challenges that both missionary and Chinese Christians faced in early 20th-century China are narrated to provide a specific setting against which Tillman examines Chen's study of the child in Chinese kindergartens and the development of his Chinese child psychology theories. Tillman presents an excellent analysis of Chen's approach to “indigenization” in which he creatively dovetailed modern ideas and Christian values into “scientization,” advocating for “modern Chinese kindergartens specifically for the Chinese child” (p. 30). While this book is not an intellectual biography of Chen Heqin, his life and work are a key thread binding transnational advocacy for child welfare and education practices during each period.
Chapter two contains a detailed account of the development of the Child Welfare Association under the Nationalist government in 1928–1937. Chen, as a board member and child psychologist, worked with the organization aiming to “raise the status of children and thereby modernize the Chinese family” (p. 56). Chapter three describes how, during the Sino-Japanese war of 1937–1942, a fragmented China created freedom for philanthropists, enabling them to manage the refugee crisis; meanwhile, it also “diversified the political significance of childhood” and “shaped the material foundations for childhood in China and its image around the world” (p. 80). Chen, as the head of the Shanghai NCWA in the early war years, together with other professionals and Chinese Christians, stayed in Japanese occupied Shanghai and performed much of the wartime relief work, especially for child welfare.
Chapter four continues to explore child advocacy during the wartime when both Nationalists and Communists retreated to the countryside. Along with an extensive account of how professionals like Chen Heqin and various charity organizations continuously cared for children and educated the rural population on child rearing, Tillman makes an interesting comparison of the policies and practice relating to childcare and child welfare in the Nationalist areas and Communist Yan'an. Chapter five discusses child welfare and national reconstruction during the 1945–1949 civil war period. The author continues her comparison of the policies and cultural values of childhood in the regions under nationalist control and Yan'an, revealing competing visions of modern childhood although there were also striking similarities. The final two chapters of this book analyse the communist approach to child welfare in the first decade of the PRC. Chapter six reveals how child experts, and even kindergarten teachers, underwent reeducation under Communist rule. It focusses on Chen Heqin, who was forced to denounce Dewey's influence on his teaching philosophy and child psychology. Chapter seven describes how women in the 1950s were mobilized to enter the work force when collective childcare was available. These final two chapters highlight the comparisons made in the previous chapters, unveiling the characteristics of early child education under Communist rule: curtailing the sentimental value of childhood while aggressively directing children's political growth.
Tillman explores a broad range of primary sources, such as archival documents, manuals and journals of NCWA, Christian print media, and even accounting charts, campaign materials, budgets and school reports. In her analysis of this original data Tillman consults an extensive existing scholarship. Indeed, this well researched, informative and rigorous work provides much food for thought.
Arising from the scope and extensive sources used in this study are detailed descriptions of the activities of various charity organizations, government agencies and individuals, including elite professionals like Chen Heqin and Chinese Christians. The excellent conclusion dovetails the detailed narratives from the chapters into a coherent and complex picture of modern childhood in China. By revealing the different political significances of modern childhood following the political revolutions of 1911, 1927 and 1949, Tillman suggests that child education could facilitate state control. This argument highlights the meaning of this book's title, and more importantly leads us to ponder the deep roots of the Red Guard Movement during the Cultural Revolution.
Scholars researching early child education and childhood socialization in modern China will benefit from this informative, instructive and inspiring work. It may also be useful to scholars in comparative education, and anyone with a general interest in Chinese education, society and history.
