Revisiting the Kuen Cheng High School Dispute: Contestation Between Gender Equality and Ethnic Nationalism Discourses
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RIAC_A_360703.fm Page 165 Saturday, January 24, 2009 1:08 PM Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 10, Number 1, 2009 Revisiting the Kuen Cheng High School dispute: contestation between gender equality and ethnic nationalism discourses 5 POR Heong Hong Taylor and Francis ABSTRACT By contextualizing the birth of modern Chinese women’s education as well as Kuen Cheng Girls’ High School (KCGHS) in the ethno nationalistic movement in pre-independence years, 10 and revisiting the dispute over changing KCGHS into a co-education establishment in the Chinese education movement background in the post-independence era, this paper illustrates the paradox of Chinese ethno nationalism, that took expression in modernization since its inception. The dispute over converting Kuen Cheng also shows how women’s education, a product of Chinese ethno nation- alism as expressed in modernization and an appeal for equal treatment, has unexpectedly become a 15 drive for democratization, equal treatment and pluralization from within the Chinese education movement in the post-independence era, and thus makes the idea of gender equality not incompatible with ethno nationalism and Chinese education. 20 Introduction movement itself has also been raised in face of social changes over these years. The A distinctive feature of the Chinese educa- appeal for reform and transformation, such tion movement in Malaysia is its origin as a as how to modernize and democratize the community-funded education system with Chinese education movement’s organiza- 25 broad grassroots support and participation. tion, is not something that comes from the A concept such as an ethnic nation’s outside but is a reflection and reaction from modernization and self-strengthening was within, in the face of the growing rigidity of promoted in the pre-independence era the movement, which has been getting among the Chinese immigrant society, with passive and reflexive in responding to social 30 the extensive network of the modern changes and internal stratification. Is the Chinese school system as the fortress for institutional arrangement of the indepen- political mobilization, to support the dent Chinese secondary school modernized Chinese nationalistic movement in their and democratized enough to professionally homeland, China. While, in the post- handle conflicting interests among different 35 independence era, community support segments of the Chinese community? How continues to be the basis of Chinese schools, should the Chinese education community modernity – such as cultural plurality, respond to new values and pluralization of democracy and civil society – has been culture, such as homosexuality, gender further advocated by the mother tongue equality etc? These are questions frequently 40 education movement as a negotiating asked by reformers from within. framework or basis while taking up the The decision of changing Kuen Cheng issue with the state1 on the government’s Girls’ High School (KCGHS), a Chinese girl national education system, which is seen by school founded in Kuala Lumpur in 1908, by the latter as a site or an instrument of its Board of Director (BOD), into a mixed- 45 nation-state-building. sex or co-education (co-ed) school in late However, a recurrent question about 2006, provides a chance for reformers to the democratization and pluralization of the engage in discussion of – and for researchers ISSN 1464–9373 Print/ISSN 1469–8447 Online/09/010165–13 © 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14649370802605357 RIAC_A_360703.fm Page 166 Saturday, January 24, 2009 1:08 PM 166 Por Heong Hong to observe – the modernization, democrati- established by the European Christian zation and pluralization of the Chinese missionary in the 19th century (Zheng 1997; education movement. The event raises Fan 2005). The other effort of progressive questions in the mind of some of the move- advocacy of women’s education in Malaya 5 ment’s supporters and researchers about came along with the social transformation what constitutes gender equality and the brought by the Chinese reformists and possibilities of Chinese education to inte- revolutionaries as Malaya became a place of grate gender equality into its educational frequent visits and a platform of political programs. mobilization by these Chinese nationalistic 10 By outlining the development of movement leaders (Yen 2002: 177–216). women’s education in the ethno-nationalistic The rapid growth of Chinese female movement context and revisiting the dispute education in British Malaya in the early 20th of KCGHS, this paper aims to study the century was the product of the Chinese compatibility of gender equality with nationalism that spread worldwide during 15 modern Chinese education and the condition the years of Chinese self-strengthening and of modernization, democratization and the anti-imperialism movement, in response pluralization of Chinese education. to the oppression by the Allied forces and humiliation in the Sino-Japanese war (1894–95). The modernization projects or 20 Women’s education within modernization self-strengthening movement in China, from the late 19th century until the first quarter of Emergence of women’s education 20th century, were mainly driven by three The idea of women’s education was trans- groups of people, namely the reformists, mitted to many Asian countries through both inside and outside the Ching Court, 25 Christian missions in the middle of the 19th and the revolutionaries.2 These three groups century. A few decades later, women’s of people were differentiated by their value education, as promoted in the single-sex judgment of how to modernize China. The format, was adopted and advocated by reformists favored a less radical pathway by some Asian ethnic nations as an effective advocating constitutional monarchy while 30 means of self-strengthening in response to the revolutionaries preferred to build a the oppression of Western colonialism and republic by throwing out the Ching imperialism. Dynasty. The reformists and revolutionaries Lifting women’s intellectual level was later realigned themselves either as important as women were expected to be a Communists or Nationalists after the 1911 35 modern educator and mother for the Revolution, which marked the collapse of purpose of ethnic nation-building during the Ching Dynasty.3 The objective of the dawn of the 20th century. Women’s modernization and self-strengthening by emancipation and nationalism were thus both reformists and revolutionaries is to intertwined with Asia’s modernization pursue the ethnic nation’s autonomy and 40 drive. It is, however, significant to note that self-determination and the power to ask for the main purpose of women’s education equal treatment when the nation has cross- during that time was to strengthen the national negotiation. ethnic nation, the extent of the emancipation Although all of the three groups took effect of women’s literacy on women was female education as a means of the ethnic 45 sometimes unexpected and unwelcome by nation’s self-strengthening, Du Xue Yuan’s some of its advocators. This will be further study has pointed out that women’s libera- discussed later in this paper. tion was never the intention of female The earliest women’s education in education as advocated by the reform- Malaya is impossible to date accurately but minded Ching bureaucrats as they were 50 among the most well-known girls’ schools socially conservative and too reserved to that can be documented were those allow women to have as equal access to RIAC_A_360703.fm Page 167 Saturday, January 24, 2009 1:08 PM Revisiting the Kuen Cheng High School dispute 167 education as men, or to freely associate with later forced to shut down during the people outside the family, or to walk on the Japanese occupation of Malaya and only had street as freely as their male counterparts, or a chance to reopen section by section after to freely choose their future spouse (Du the Japanese surrendered in the mid 1940s 1995). Unlike the reform-minded Ching (Kuen Cheng 1978: 13–17). 5 bureaucrats, the younger extra-Ching-court Although the original account regard- reformist and revolutionaries were more ing the idea and discourses of establishing exposed to foreign intellectual influences and running Kuen Cheng by the founders and more progressive than their predeces- could not be found, the close relation that sors, that liberating women from the tradi- Kuen Cheng as well as other Chinese 10 tional Chinese culture – such as forbidding women’s education institutions in Malaya women from being seen in the public, had with the educational reform and with widow chastity, foot-binding, a woman of women’s liberation movement led by both no talent was a woman of virtue etc – was reformists, within and outside the Ching taken as an important objective of female Court, and revolutionaries in China, was 15 education, which marked the first wave of well documented (Kuen Cheng 1968; Zheng the women’s liberation movement at the 1997; Yen 2002). dawn of modern China (Du 1995: 249–318). The ex-principal of KCGHS Zhai Zhao- Both reformists and revolutionaries wanted Xun7 revealed in her prelude in the Souvenir women to improve so that people of their Magazine of the 60th Year Anniversary of 20 ethnicity will improve. the Kuen Cheng School in 1968 that: Even though women were expected to [For] thousands of years women were gain literacy and improve intellectually, devalued by the Chinese society and their roles as mother and wife and their received education only in the family sexuality were never questioned but only until 1904 when the home-based 25 redefined to suit the ethnic nation’s modern- education related clauses of the Regu- ization. The wide establishment of modern lation of School, which was announced Chinese girl’s schools by the reformists and by the Ching Court bureaucrat Mr. revolutionaries in British Malaya during the Zhang Bai-Xi and etc., specified that first quarter of the 20th century was to serve ‘home-based education should include 30 as beachhead for the modernization of female students’.