Abstract
Abstract Children’s literature values literariness and imagination, but language education in Taiwan mainly emphasizes language skill acquisition. This makes it diffi cult to integrate children’s literature into language education. This article takes a historical perspective to analyze the characteristics of elementary school literature education in Taiwan in the early post-WWII period. It fi rst discusses the relationship between children’s literature and literature education in elementary school. It then analyzes related literature, documents, and curriculum standard to have a better understanding of the social and educational environment at that time. Furthermore it focuses on literature education in language education and analyses related teaching materials, literature texts, and lesson plans of that period. In aspect of literature texts, the story of Zheng Cheng Gong was chosen as it was the common material in both the colonial and the early postwar periods. As for lesson plans, eight of them were chosen and analyzed from an archive of lesson plans at that time. At last, based on literature analysis and content analysis, this article presents a profi le of literature education at the early postwar period. The conclusion is as following: First, text analysis of the story of“Zheng Cheng Gong＂indicates that literature texts at both the colonial and the early postwar period transmitted national ideologies. Second, the objectives of lesson plans reveal that national ideology was rooted in literature education at the early postwar period. Third, theskills. Fourth, despite the remarks in language curriculum standard of the importance of children’s literature, it was not presented in literature texts and lesson plans at that time.