H.C. CHEN HIS LIFE AND WORKS January 05, 1980
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Professor Ho-chin Chen (1892 1982) was a well-known Chinese educator and China's first modern theoretician in early childhood education. In addition to his contribution to the development of child education in China, he also contributed to the development of China's teachers training program, child psychology, children's literature, and reform of the written Han language. As an out- standing educator and patriot, he was appointed member of the Na- tional Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference right after the founding of the People's Republic of China. He later became one of the Vice-chairmen of the Standing Committee of the Jiangsu Provincial People's Congress. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the late Ho-chin Chen was President of the Nanjing Teachers's University, Honorary Pres- ident of the Education Society of China, Honorary President of the National Children's Education Research Institute and member of the Chinese People's National Committee in Defence of Children.
Professor Chen was born of a poor family in a small town in Zhejiang Province. It was only with the help of his relatives that he managed to get some schooling. After graduating from Qinhua University in Beijing in 1914, he received a government scholar- ship to pursue advanced studies in the United States. He was en- rolled first in John's Hopkins University and then in Teachers College, Columbia University under such well known educationists as doctors Kirpatrick, Thorndike and Monroe. After receiving his MA degree from Columbia, he returned to China in 1919 and taught in Nanjing Teachers College. In 1928, he assumed the post of Head of the Chinese Education Department of the Shanghai Municipal Council up to 1939.
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Between 1934-35, he made a study tour of 11 European countries including the United Kingdom, France, the USSR, Poland, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. He also attended international conferences and gave lectures abroad, including a UNESCO Seminar on Childhood Education from 3 13 Year-olds in Prodebrady, Czechoslovakia 1948. He was committed to the formulation of an educational system that suited Chinese conditions and met the needs of the Chinese people. Although he had studied abroad, he was not in favour of copying directly from other countries. While absorbing useful things from foreign coun- tries, he stressed the need to develop a system of education suited to China through a series of experiments.
In 1923, he established the Nanjing Drum Tower Experimental Kindergarten at a time when kindergartens were extremely rare and
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