马来西亚华文教育与五福书院历史探源

Malaysian Chinese Education and the History of Wu Fu Academy

某些说法认为“五福书院”成立于1819年,而且又是马来西亚华文教育的缘起,最早源于民初《南洋年鉴》记载“五福书院”未曾说明来历的“成立”年代,又是缺乏探讨“五福堂”何以一度演变为“五福书院”,便进一步推论。殊不知,此种论述建立在以为华文理所当然由“外来移民”带进英殖土地,是会模糊华人更早参与开拓区域的贡献,也忽略南洋诸邦数百年使用汉字的历史。而五福堂联合着不同籍贯华人,形成传承祖辈历史文化、开拓地境与建构地方社会的共同体,虽然并非华文教育起源,却是因中华文教长期存在本区域才出现,其作为先民跨海跨境传承与推进传统文化教育的载体,确保清代广州府后人在马来亚北部的落地生根,开枝散叶。

Some sayings that"Wu Fu(Five Blessed Fortune)Academy"was founded in 1819 and it is the origin of Chinese education in Malaysia.Anyway,this kind of discourse was based on the imagination that Chinese Education was only brought into Malaya by"foreign immigrants"after British colony without thinking"Wu Fu Academy"was actually a temporary shield of a Commonwealth Organization named“Wu Fu Tang”which was found by United-Cantonese districts Pioneers during Malayan Larut war in Mid of 19 century.Further more,the discourse will confuse the contribution of the Chinese pioneers and their founded settlements,and ignore the history of the use of Chinese characters by the South China Seas people for hundreds of years.Although Wu Fu Tang is not the origin of Chinese education,it is a product as well as a carrier of Chinese traditional education which served the Cantonese community in Northern Malaya to inherit the history and culture of their ancestors as the base of collective thought that support the development of their local society.