The impact of western civilization on China, in the form of missionary-run girls' schools, had brought about extensive debates among Chinese intellectuals in the Late-Qing period. In theses intellectual discourses, girls' education was gradually recognized as an important benchmark of a nation's "civilness" as well as an excellent means to "strengthen a country " and its people....[ Read more ]

The impact of western civilization on China, in the form of missionary-run girls' schools, had brought about extensive debates among Chinese intellectuals in the Late-Qing period. In theses intellectual discourses, girls' education was gradually recognized as an important benchmark of a nation's "civilness" as well as an excellent means to "strengthen a country " and its people.

As the only government-operated higher educational institution for girls in Canton, the First Kwangtung Provincial Girls' Normal School is a case study to examine how schoolgirls were "reformed" into a "new model" and how they were portrayed as "mother of the nation" in accordance with the Education Ordinance for Girls of 1907. Later in the Republican era, schoolgirls were further taught to become "female citizens", so as to live up to the image of "modern citizenry". Be it "mother of the nation" or "female citizenry", both of these new ideals, or standards of behaviour, were constructed through the imagination of contemporary intellectuals who were eager to use schooling as a means to mold women into "shapes" that would symbolize a nation's advanced state of civilization and "modernization".

An important significance of the development of modem education for women in China was that girls began to go out from their inner chambers into the public domain. By taking part in all sorts of nationalistic movement, political activities, feminist movement and so on, women gradually conquered social space and had their social status transformed.