Session Information
31 SES 13 B, Negotiating Language Legitimacies in Transnational Educational Spaces. Institutional and Individual Perspectives
Symposium
Contribution
Since the conclusion of unequal treaties between Euro-American powers and China, Japan and Korea, foreign settlements with small but influential Euro-American populations formed out in East Asia. The extreme power hierarchies between Euro-American and East Asian societies during the so-called the “great divergence” were increasingly challenged by the rise of East Asian nationalisms and Japanese imperialism. Schools that especially catered for the children of Euro-American families emerged from about the turn of the century. Analysing the place of foreign language instruction at these institutions on the basis of school reports and other contemporary documents, this paper asks which role language played in negotiating civilizational hierarchies up to the Second World War. Adopting a comparative perspective the focus will be on three international schools of different national backgrounds and operating in diverse geographical, cultural and legal contexts. The Seoul Foreign School was established in 1912 by an elite of American Presbyterian missionaries. At this institution the only foreign language that students could optionally learn was French. The German Kaiser-Wilhelm-Schule in Shanghai was established in 1895 and later served as the only German school leading to the Abitur in East Asia. In the case of this institution, English was one of the most important curricular subjects and all students also learned French as a second foreign language. Latin was offered as an optional subject, and Japanese was introduced as a voluntary study group during WWII. The Sienkiewicz High School (Gimnazjum im. Henryka Sienkiewicza) in Harbin, founded in 1915, was the only Polish post-primary school in East Asia. After English had for long been an established part of the curriculum, a reform process introduced Chinese as a compulsory subject in the early and Japanese in the late 1930s with the idea of training agents for Polish economic and cultural expansion in East Asia. In summary, it appears that most schools aimed at passing on social capital by pursuing a language policy as if they were located in Europe or North America and only hesitantly opened up to the local environment. For an underprivileged European community as the Poles, the embrace of East Asian language skills could be an avenue for status enhancement. The role of English as a lingua franca in treaty port East Asia is confirmed, while the rise of Japanese imperialism apparently increased (if not administratively imposed) the legitimacy of the Japanese language.
References
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