People · educator, Municipal Council Chinese education officer
Chen Heqin
陈鹤琴Chén Hèqín · 1892–1982
Early-childhood educator who from 1928 ran Chinese education in the Shanghai Municipal Council's schools and later led refugee schooling in the city.
Chen Heqin (陈鹤琴, Chén Hèqín) was a Chinese educator who held one of the few senior Chinese posts in the Shanghai Municipal Council’s school system. The Council ran schools for both foreign and Chinese children, and from 1928 Chen was responsible for the Chinese side.
Born in Shangyu, Zhejiang, he studied at St John’s University and Tsinghua, then at Johns Hopkins and Columbia, returning in 1919. He taught in Nanjing and led kindergartens and teacher training there before moving to Shanghai. With others he started a society for early-childhood education in 1927 and its journal. The gazetteer says that in the Council he rose to head the Chinese education section of the Education Department, managing its Chinese schools.
From 1937 he led schooling for refugees in Shanghai. He later ran a teachers’ school in Jiangxi, served as an education inspector in postwar Shanghai, and took part in the 1949 Beijing conference. He died in 1982.