中国教育史中被忽略之儿童与妇女探究的检讨

A Review of the Studies of the Neglected Children and Women in the History of Chinese Education

受到"基层史"观念的启迪,近十年儿童史与妇女史成为中国教育史研究的两个新兴课题,本文旨在检讨这些研究所遇到的问题与限制。其主要是发生在研究史料、历史解释及研究对象代表性上。原本许多研究者探讨儿童史与妇女史,是要让被忽略的基层庶民现形与自己发声,以彰显其"主体性",但是经检讨后发现虽然这些过去被忽略者们已被看到,但当事人自己的声音似乎仍未被听到。他们不是由"成人替儿童发声",就是"男性替女性发声",或"优势女子替弱势女子发声"。"让当事人自己发声"的主张,似乎成为梦想。不过,当研究范围转向近现代史时,由于史料、研究方法、技术与设备的改进,而使此事成为可能,而口述历史成为重要方法之一。

Enlightened by the viewpoint of history from below, the neglected children and women in the history of Chinese education were inquired in the recent decade. The main purpose of this paper is to review and analyze the problems and restrictions of those studies. Qualification and volumes of sources, the historical interpretation and the representation of objectives were the main obstacles. Many researchers intended to make the neglected people at grass-root level visible and capable of voicing their opinions and thus show their subjectivity by reviewing and analyzing the history of children and women. However, the result was that although the images of those neglected children or women in history had been shown and seen, the voices of those neglected were still not heard. It was either that children were expressed indirectly by adults or that women were expressed indirectly by male or that the disadvantaged women were expressed by the advantaged women. The ideal that ＂let people speak out directly＂ is still a dream impossible to come true. However, given the improvement of historical sources, research methods, technique and equipment, the ideal becomes possible and oral history becomes one of the imnortant methods.