20世纪上半叶社会教育中的残障与性别——以盲人教育为例

Educating the Blind:Disability and Gender in Chinese Social Education During the First Half of the 20th Century

“扫盲”一词是贯穿20世纪中国社会教育与公民建设的强大隐喻。然而,作为实存的盲人与视障群体,其识字问题却被排除在面向大众的主流启蒙叙事之外。盲文在华的传播也被简单地划入特殊教育史研究的范畴,从而忽视了其拓展下层社会教育对象与塑造现代公民身份的重要历史意义。本文聚焦中国盲文在社会教育活动中的身体与性别面向,分析中国盲文体系如何在本土化的过程中逐渐脱离基督教针对病残身体的救赎观,并参与到国家针对下层社会中盲人职业群体(以女性盲艺人群体为主)的救助与整合中。本文首先探讨清末民初的改革派精英与社会教育家如何吸取教会学校对视障群体的教育经验,对以性别划分的下层盲人职业群体的技能进行重塑,进而推动了国民政府在福利国家的框架下实践将盲文与生产劳动相结合;然后探讨新中国成立后,共产党在改革盲文的同时,强调盲人女性通过参与文艺活动与生产劳动实现身体的解放,成为“残而不废”的社会主义建设者。新中国成立初期以来的盲人教育开始走出社会教育的福利模式,寻求突破性别与阶级的双重边缘性。

"Wiping out illiteracy"had been a powerful expression in the promotion of social education and citizenship in China throughout the 2o"century.Blind people,however,were largely excluded from mainstream narratives about the educational effort to enlighten the masses.The spread of Braille literacy in China has also been sorted into the history of special education,which does little to uncover the social functions of educating the blind at the grassroots and demonstrate the importance of social education in shaping disabled citizenship.This article focuses on the localization of Chinese Braille and how this process reveals the aspects of disability and gender in social education.In particular,the paper shows how Chinese Braille became separated from the understanding of Christian salvation for the sick and disabled and was reincorporated into the state's strategy to support and organize traditional communities of blind professionals(such as blind women artists and performers).The author begins with a discussion of late-Qing and early-Republican reformers and social edu-cators and their effort to borrow from missionary schools the means of educating the blind and reorganizing skills and knowledge in gender-based professional groups.These reformist elites helped promote the Nationalist government's framework of welfare state through the combination of Braille literacy and productive labor.The study then extends into the reform of Braille under the Chinese Communist Party after the founding of the People's Republic,showing that blind women participated in propaganda and production to liberate their bodies from feudalist oppression and became"disabled but not useless"builders of socialism.In the early PRC,the education of the blind started to go beyond the welfare model of social education through looking for breakthroughs of gender and class-bound marginalities.