With unprecedented breadth, this volume integrates the history of late imperial China with the history of education over three centuries of Chinese social, political, and intellectual life. The essays probe beneath the educational ideals enunciated by Neo-Confucian philosophers to elucidate actual educational practice in China from the late Ming dynasty to the late Ch'ing. Among the questions addressed: How was education affected by gender and kinship relations?

What were the content and perceived function of elementary education? How did civil service examinations represent elite educational ideals? How did the doubling in size of the late empire under Manchu rule influence the extension of education and schooling in a multiethnic political culture? The authors also examine the intellectual battles over the very meaning of "school" in China before the twentieth century.

1. A collaboration between social and intellectual historians, this volume is the most comprehensive work in English on education in China from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century.