Education and National Colonialism in Postwar Taiwan: The Paradoxical Use of Private Schools to Extend State Power, 1944–1966

Abstract

After World War II, the colonial rule imposed by the Kuomintang (KMT) in Taiwan was symbiotically connected with its project of nation building. This project of “national colonialism” initially spurred the KMT to build an extensive public education system and to marginalize private schools. Financial concerns after 1954, however, forced the KMT to allow more private schools to open. As the role of private schools expanded, the state limited their resources and required that they follow state curricula, leading many private schools to come under the control of agents tied to the regime. Thus, schools that the colonizers initially sought to subdue ended up spreading ideologies that served the KMT. The case of Taiwan provides a perspective on colonialism and private schooling that suggests that private schooling under national colonialism differed from that under nonnational forms of colonial rule.