CHAPTER XII
SCHOOLS, SCHOOL-MASTERS, AND SCHOOL-BOOKS
Chinese passionately fond of education—Reverence for printed or written words—State makes no laws for the education of the people—The school-house and the school-master—System of teaching—Boys first learn sound of words—After years of study learn the meaning of each character—Small percentage of readers in China—One set of school-books in every school in the Empire—The Three Word Classic—The “Four Books” and the “Five Classics,” with analyses.
There is no nation in the world that has a more passionate and earnest desire for education than the Chinese. In the four great divisions into which all society has been roughly divided, the scholar is placed at the head of the list, as the one that is considered most worthy of honour. Outside of official rank, the highest title that the Chinese have in the whole of their language is bestowed upon the school-master. He may be a man so poor that he has hardly enough money to buy food for himself and his family, and his clothes may be of the plainest and the meanest description, and yet he has a title given him that is never bestowed upon any of the three other classes. A man might be a millionaire and rolling in wealth, but if he were simply a merchant or a tradesman, the coveted title that the poorest scholar gets would never be given to him, even by the most loyal of his friends or by the meanest servant in his employ.
The reverence that the nation has for learning has induced a sentimental and what might seem to be a superstitious regard for the mere written or printed word. Even that dead form is held to be so sacred that it may not be misused or treated with contempt or indifference. A very common sight in a Chinese street is to see a man with a basket slung over his shoulder on which is inscribed two large characters which mean “Have pity on the writing.” His eyes are kept steadily on the roadway, and on any nook or cranny by the side, and he eagerly pounces on any scraps of paper, no matter how frayed or dirty, and places them in his basket. Occasionally he catches sight of a broken piece of pottery or a fragment of a rice bowl on which are some of the precious characters that were burnt into them when they were being manufactured. These also are picked up and reverently laid aside with the pieces of paper that have been rescued from the feet of the passers-by.
You stop the man and you ask him what he means by picking up this rubbish on the street, and he tells you that he is employed by benevolent persons who cannot bear the thought of seeing the sacred characters that were invented by the sages and that had been the cause of China’s greatness trodden under foot of men. And so he is gathering all that he can find on the streets, and at a certain time with due ceremony the whole will be burnt, and be thus saved from the dishonour that had been put upon them.
The devotion to education is not a mere sentimental one, but one that has covered this great Empire with schoolhouses, for in all the towns and cities and in all the larger villages even the people have established the common schools in which the children of the locality may receive an education. There are no such things as Government schools, neither are there private ones. It is true that rich men sometimes engage teachers for their sons and have the tuition carried on in their own homes, but what may be called the common schools of the country are managed and supported entirely by the elders or leading men in the various localities in which they exist.
The State takes no cognizance whatever of the educational efforts of the people, neither is it called upon to spend a cash in upholding the institutions that are in existence for the teaching of the youth of the country. The people have from time immemorial taken these duties upon themselves, and they have willingly borne the responsibility of raising the funds that have been necessary for the successful carrying on of the schools.
The usual practice is at the close of the year for the leaders, say, of a village to meet together and discuss the question of the next year’s school. They have already canvassed the parents who have sons, and ascertained how many of them will attend and how much they are willing to contribute towards the teacher’s salary. They are thus in a position to know whether they have sufficient funds to invite a first-class man to take charge of the school, or whether they will have to be content with an inferior scholar instead.