The history of school music songs began with the Reform Movement of 1898 of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao in the late Qing Dynasty. Due to the invasion of western imperialism, some feudal intellectuals realized that in order to save the nation and survive, they must learn from Japanese scientific civilization and vigorously develop capitalist economy. Therefore, Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao put forward "reform and reform" and advocated "abolishing imperial examinations" and "promoting schools". 1898, Kang Youwei introduced the German school system in The Memorial of Emperor Guangxu's Invitation to Run a School? "Rural primary schools are limited to the people of the whole country and must be over seven years old. He taught literature and history, arithmetic, geography, physics and music, and graduated in eight years. Its non-registrant? Punish their parents. " And asked the Qing government to "stay away from Germany?" Japan recently? To determine the academic system. After the failure of the Reform Movement of 1898, Liang Qichao and other progressive reformist intellectuals published articles and songs through Japanese domestic publications such as Xinmin Cong Bao and Zhejiang Chao to further publicize the role of music and songs in ideological enlightenment and continue to emphasize the importance of music and song lessons. After the "Gengzi Incident", the Qing government was forced to give approval to the establishment of music and song classes in the school rules promulgated in 1904. Since then, music and song lessons in new schools around the country have formed an atmosphere. At that time, the music classes offered by this new school or songs written for school singing were called "school music songs". It was not until 1923 that the course was renamed Music? The word "song of music" is gradually out of use.

Most of the contents of the school songs reflect the demands of the bourgeoisie and its intellectuals in China at that time to learn from western scientific civilization? Realize "enriching Qiang Bing" to resist foreign aggression and other bourgeois democratic and patriotic ideas. If there are songs that reflect women's emancipation of the mind, propagate bourgeois republican ideas, oppose feudal superstitions, propagate and study scientific ideas, there are also many songs that specifically educate children in general thoughts and knowledge. It is precisely because of the advanced significance of the ideological content of school music songs at that time that they were welcomed by the majority of teenagers. School music songs are basically lyrics songs, and most of the tunes come from Japanese and European and American pop songs. There are few songs written by China folk tunes, and even fewer songs written by composers.

The appearance of school music songs not only had a far-reaching impact on the ideological enlightenment of young students at that time? More importantly, it has brought a new musical form to China music? That is, the collective singing form of the school song. It laid the foundation for the vigorous development of mass singing movement in China. Although western missionaries brought western music and theories to China a long time ago, they were never accepted by most people in China. But with the development of school songs, western music and various art forms (mainly singing, playing organ, piano, violin, etc. ) was first introduced and taught. In particular, the introduction of notation (staff) and the basic music theory of western music made western music spread more widely in China society, and at the same time, it also prompted the China music industry at that time to think about how to go global and establish a new China music culture. In addition, school music songs have created a group of musicians who spread modern music culture and initiated and developed school music education for China. Therefore, school music songs have far-reaching historical significance for the development of modern music culture in China.