Notes on Robert Culp, Articulating Citizenship

Culp, Robert. Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education and Student Politics in Southeastern China, 1912-1940. Harvard University Asia Center, 2007.

I'm not sure where I first heard of this book, but it turned out to be very useful for thinking about my own project on Taiwan in at least two ways. One way was expected--Culp takes a close look at some of the secondary school language textbooks used in China during the period under investigation, which was something I wanted to see in order to think about how I am discussing elementary-level language textbooks in Taiwan. Culp notes a change from the earlier Republican era production of textbooks, which allowed for a range of political and social perspectives to be presented, to the post-1927 period, during which 

the Nationalist government quickly promulgated regulations requiring submission of textbooks for approval. ... Detailed curriculum standards coupled with regular review of textbooks and increasing institutional oversight led to a progressive standardization of textbooks over the course of the Nanjing decade. (p. 50)

The earlier textbooks, as Culp points out, included readings on social issues from a variety of perspectives, such as "Zhou Zuoren's descriptions of utopian socialism, Cai Yuanpei's anarchist writings on integrating work and study, Hu Shi's calls for individual autonomy, and empirical analyses of social inequalities" (p. 140). This range of perspectives was replaced after 1927 by "readings that celebrated the Nationalist Party, called for party and state guidance in gradual processes of social leveling and reform, and promoted an ideal of young people's dedicating themselves to national development and social service" (p. 148).

Culp also includes examples of student writings published in student publications to show how they were taking up the ideas expressed in their textbooks during those different periods. I'm having less success finding student writings for my project, though I have come across some. Hopefully, I'll be able to find some more examples as I continue to work on this.

The other way in which the book is useful is that it reminds me of the necessity to connect what the KMT  was doing with education in martial law era Taiwan with what it had developed in Republican China. What did the Nationalists bring over to Taiwan in terms of their literacy and civic education beliefs and practices, and how did they adapt that to the context of postwar Taiwan? How much and in what ways did they see the Taiwanese students as similar to and different from the students on the mainland? 

These are some of my thoughts about the book right now--here are a few reviews of the book that I came across, if you want more detail about Culp's arguments:

• Borthwick, Sally. Review of Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education and Student Politics in Southeastern China, 1912–1945. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 69 no. 2, 2009, p. 443-450. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/jas.0.0028. 
• Liu, Jennifer. Review of Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education and Student Politics in Southeastern China, 1912–1942. China Review International, vol. 18 no. 2, 2011, p. 179-182. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/cri.2011.0047.
• Tsin, Michael. ROBERT CULP. Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education and Student Politics in Southeastern China, 1912–1940. (Harvard East Asian Monographs, number 291.) Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center. 2007. Pp. xvi, 382. $49.50., The American Historical Review, Volume 113, Issue 5, December 2008, Pages 1500–1501, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.113.5.1500 
• Weston, Timothy. Review of Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education and Student Politics in Southeastern China, 1912–1942. The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 68, no. 1, 2009, pp. 260–61. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20619685. Accessed 28 July 2023.