<p>The classical communities had the confidence that their difficult written languages placed an exclusive position as the literary language. Along with Latin, traditional written Chinese was also far from the colloquial language. In modern China, many intellectuals felt that it was necessary to overcome this situation and establish a new language education system. Hu Shih (1891-1962), picked up in this paper, is still one of the most famous philosophers, who reevaluated vernacular Chinese as the new “active” literary language.</p><p>This paper aims to examine the formation of curriculum theory for language education through the case of Hu Shih’s contemplation and practice. For this purpose, the author analyzes his statements concerning curriculum and instruction for language education.</p><p>Hu Shih went to the United States in September 1910 with the help of a government scholarship. During summer vacation in 1915, certain staff members at Chinese student office in Washington D. C. distributed documents on Chinese situation. Because of this incident, Hu Shih was regularly discussing about Chinese literature with his friends. At the same time, he formulated rules for the literary reform and published the improved version of them as the eight points. After studying in the U.S., he proposed the thesis “Guoyu de Wenxue, Wenxue de Guoyu (國語的文學・文學的國語 )” in his paper. This new thesis means “Literature written in national language, National language of literary value” in English. When returning to China, he read Edith Sichel’s book and wrote the impression in his diary. Referring to the history of European Renaissance, he pointed out that the accumulation of creating practical works based on vernacular Chinese would become the basis of national language with literary value as Chinese Renaissance. To promote these steps, he started to argue for the necessity of new curriculum and instruction theory for language education. In this context, he concretely suggested that all school textbooks composed in colloquial language should be distributed from the lower grades, and classical literature should be arranged after junior high school and high school stages.</p><p>This paper picks up Hu Shih’s statements on curriculum and instruction for language education. The analysis of this paper reveals that he proposed the thesis “Guoyu de Wenxue, Wenxue de Guoyu” with reference to European Renaissance. As Li Jinxi, a famous linguist in modern China, mentioned, Hu Shih’s argument played a key role in unifying the language unification and the literary reform. This background also set the stage for the development of his theory on language education and his contribution as the core policymaker for educational reform in the May Fourth Period.</p>