Chapter 2
School (I)
Schools are cradles for talents and the foundation of nation governance. In ancient times, there were old-style private schools and also public schools at all administrative levels, which conduct yearly enrollment and biennial exams. Schools at that time assessed the students on their reading of classic Chinese literature and the appropriateness of their ambitions after 1 year of education, on their diligence and goodness after 3 year of education, on their erudition and their relationship with teachers after 5 years, and their academic ideas as well as their interpersonal principles after 7 years – which is the preliminary milestone of their accomplishment. After 9 years, they shall be able to apply the universal rule in all aspects of life, and keep themselves conscious without the company of their teachers – this is the final destination of education. Therefore, at that time, the schools cultivated many resourceful and brilliant people. In later ages, however, the system of schools was cancelled, and people began to hire private teachers for their own kids. The poor could not afford such expenditure and left their kids idling about all day without the most common knowledge of the world, and even in large cities there were immoral scenes at times- most of them are due to the lack of schools. Academies, as the substitute of schools, were first designed to train the students in knowledge and affairs needed for serving the country. However, today, most students still live in the districts and few of them go to the academies; even those who go there are free to come and go without any limitations. The lecturers are only responsible for ranking the students in exams rather than giving them instructions. Students will only gather for cramming right before the exams. In such cases, they could learn nothing but truism, which never involves any discussion regarding the advantages and disadvantages of our country and the politics. Contents such as astronomy, natural science, and calendar, of course are excluded as well. The topics covered could barely meet the need of actual situation and thus the intention for building so many academies totally fails.
At the same time, the western countries well practice our ancient idea of seeking the lost intelligence from the folks. Their education systems are similar, of which the German system is the best. They have a scientific education system. In villages, there are private schools built for the poor that are sponsored as well as managed by local officials. Kids over six years old have to go to schools regardless of their genders, otherwise, their parents will get punished. Primary schools teach introduction courses including liberal arts and science, maps, arithmetic, history, and natural science, etc. Graduates from primary schools will go to middle schools. They will learn general courses there, including state religion, natural science, mathematics, geography, history, drawing, physical exercises, military training, grammar of mother language, as well as words and grammar of foreign language (only 1 kind of foreign language). Both primary and middle schools have lessons of state religion and playgrounds for military training.
Japan sets up a discipline named morality, which covers subjects regarding human relations and ethics based mainly on the Imperial Rescript on Education with the Four Books and Five Classics of China and those ethic principles from the West as the supplement. Middle school graduates shall be issued with a certificate for their further development in either non-military or military areas on their own choices. Those choose the former shall go to professional schools which include high normal school, high business school, high industry school, high medical school, Tokyo Art school (teaching painting, carving, decoration and casting), Tokyo Foreign Language School and Tokyo Music School. There are also Female Normal Schools. Those professional university candidates have to go to high schools for preparatory courses first. The disciplines are divided into three categories: the first includes laws and liberal arts, the second is science, namely natural science, agriculture and engineering, and the third is medicine. After learning the basic knowledge, the students are qualified for learning in universities where the professional education is divided into six categories- laws, liberal arts, science, agriculture, engineering and medicine- at a more advanced and sophisticated level compared to preparatory courses. Like the successful candidates in the imperial examinations at our provincial level, graduates from such universities could also get diplomas for their own major discipline. Those who wish to continue their education could go to advanced academies for further research. Graduates from such academies shall then get promoted. For the military community, soldiers could be promoted as non-commissioned officer only during wartime with the ranking no higher than 1st class sergeant for special departments,
Which is similar to Ba Zong (a junior officer in ancient Chinese army). Officers with rankings equivalent to or higher than second lieutenant and the lieutenant shall go to army academies to receive education for staff officers. Above senior captain, there are also major-level, lieutenant colonel-level and colonel-level ranks (all have their counterparts in China). There are other higher ranks such as major generals, lieutenant generals and senior generals. Anyone who wants to learn about navy knowledge shall first go to Naval Academies for 3 years, the graduates could then work on the warships for a year for internship as a candidate of second lieutenant, during which time at least one long-distance voyage is required. Those with excellent performance will be recruited by advanced Naval Academies. Advanced Naval and Army Academies differ from Liberal Arts University in their systems.
Western countries each have their own educational systems and entrance age requirements, yet they share the common goal. These preliminary schools, middle schools and universities, regardless of their focusing on liberal arts or military knowledge, require mainly a study period of three, four or five years. There will be more subdivisions as the courses go more advanced. More classes willed be opened for a large student base, yet a class contains no more than dozens of them. Students graduate from one class will then move upgrade gradually without any interruption. Primary schools will charge no tuition for the poor, and for those who are less poor but still find difficulties in affording such expenditures, they will cut off 50% tuition for them. Middle schools also only charge affordable tuitions from normal students.
Above is the general situation of foreign schools, teachers and officials.
China shall speed up to follow existing domestic and foreign practices in education, pay attention to both the non-military and military disciplines, set up minister for education and subdivisions for specific responsibilities. Such responsible people shall include an enlightenment director, a general education director, a professional education director, a compiler, an accountant, an exam director, and a supervisor. General and professional textbooks shall be compiled and selected based on useful books from various countries by Chinese and foreign experts and then issued to the provinces. The government shall further require local government officials and the rich to raise funds on site and encourage them to donate. Those donators and contributors shall be reported to the ministries and get praised. It is essential that we open primary and middle schools throughout prefectures and towns and universities in all the provinces with gradually progressed education system to avoid any disorder. Returnees who learn abroad for professional courses at their own expenses, if their majors are included in domestic schools in prefectures, towns and provincial capitals, shall be granted certificate, generous awards and official positions. With the large base of talents, there is no way that we always lag behind other countries in the East and West. Besides, China has no tradition of technical schools, thus children from the poor family always find it hard to make their livings. Such schools, once set up nationwide to teach them some skills, will enable them to live on their own skills and prevent them from committing crimes. Western countries prioritize technical schools over Liberal Arts schools, cause the former contributes not only commerce but also the public feeling.
These schools teach disciplines including manufacture, machinery, weaving, spinning, sewing, jade processing, medicine analysis and chemistry and so on, to cover all kinds of students. The establishment of technical schools is an urgent need due to the continuously growing population and the declining livelihoods in China.
Chapter 3
School (II)
Confucius describes the pursuit of Tao as a gradual progress such as stepping into the bedroom from outside. I would say the pursuit of knowledge is the same. In China, the education deteriorates on and on with neither enough resourceful teachers nor normal schools to cultivate such teachers. Therefore, students have to suffer those pedantic lecturers who waste all their lives in flowery languages. These people would barely answer any questions regarding the world situation, foreign politics, history of each dynasty, the philosophies of ancient sages, astronomy, zoology and phytology, philology and natural science. These people, in their lectures, always put the focus on the Five Classics and ancient articles. Indeed, the Five Classics tell the philosophy of the sages, and ancient articles could enlighten the kids. Yet not all of these articles are understandable for them. Those narrations are suitable for kids to learn; those involving profound learnings such as human nature and heavenly principles, however, are too hard to be introduced at an early stage. Today’s schools always choose the arcane ones and ignore the easy ones in the lessons based on the idea that the former tells the philosophy of the sages and therefore are requisite contents even for those who cannot understand them. These people always boast that: The goal for education is to learn the philosophy of the sages, which could only be achieved by reading their books; and such learning has to start at an early age. Therefore, kids begin to rote profound philosophies such as “the key of advanced education is to promote morality” after a couple of months since their recruitment. After this, books such as the Doctrine of the Mean,The Analects of Confuciusand The Analects of Menciuswould be added to their curriculum. Upon the completion of the four books, they have to further read through the Five Classics. These students keep working day and night with their focus on the formulaic exams rather than on the universal rule and grammar. Therefore, it is common for students, after 6 or 7 years of learning, fail to gain the most common sense; fool the students in the name of advanced education and make them ignorant as idiots, what a ridiculous pity!
Mankind have two types of learning capabilities- to comprehend and to rote, it is easier to train kids to do the former than to force them to perform the latter. Everybody knows that, kids could easily memorize stories and retell them. While forcing them to read The Great Learningand the Doctrine of the Meanwill only confuse them, and their failure in memorizing such articles-despite of their diligence- will bring them punishments by the lecturers. This system makes kids so tired of learning that, for them, schools are almost prisons and lecturers are the same as prisoners, and no wonder they always look forward to getting rid of schools and instead finding their livelihoods in military.
In my opinion, the capacities of pedantic lecturers in understanding the peace-realizing philosophy in The Great Learning, the profound and intangible goodness promoted by the Doctrine of the Mean, the morality advocated in The Analects of Confucius, and the method to refine oneself in The Analects of Mencius are doubtful. It is the most unreasonable to force those kids to read the classics hard for even the lecturer themselves to understand. Furthermore, today’s lecturers finish their work perfunctorily with nothing more than repeating previous scholars’ comments to their students. It could be easily imagine that, even there are some talented kids, the lecturers could do nothing but scolding the students to disguise their own ignorance once the kids ask them about the details in the classics. In these cases, aren’t they fooling the kids? Aren’t they preventing the kids from growing wise and brilliant?
What shall we do then? I would suggest to teach the kids up to 20 characters in dialect accent during their enlightenment each day. For kids have a vocabulary set of over 2,000 characters, it is recommended to compile 300 pieces of easily understood and illustrated texts regarding tangible and common things, folk stories or songs based on 24 Stories of Filial Piety, 24 Stories of Brotherhood, School Diary, Treatise of the Tao on Cause and Effect(Taishangganyingpian) (Illustrated Edition), Treatise of unknown goodness(Yinzhiwen) (Illustrated Edition) and other books. Teach one lesson every night, ask students to retell the content, the order, and then add the punctuations to make it the content for the next day. New lessons shall only be started the next day when the students’ command of such texts are confirmed through recitation. And they still shall learn new characters each morning until knowing 6,000 words. It is recommended to select 6,000 characters form the dictionary Shuowenjieziin traditional Chinese characters, Yao Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters, print them on papers and cut the papers into cards. Each student shall hold a box of such cards and allowed to start reading after they manage to read 2,000 words. Above is the content for this first year of education. In the following year, the students shall review the words, while learning easy understood articles selected from Classics and History Books such as Book of Sayings of Confucius and His Disciples and Intrigues of the Warring States, geography and mathematics. Confucianism divides the necessary learnings into rites, music, martial arts, riding, calligraphy, and techniques, today’s schools shall at least teach the daily needed part of them, namely, rites, physical exercises, and mathematics. As those ignorant on rites will fail to interact with other people, those lack physical exercises will make themselves weak, and those know nothing about mathematics could barely make their livings. The second year shall also include 300 lessons of customs and anecdotes worldwide with an educational mode that combines interpretation and reading while including reviewing. For the third year, the 300 lessons shall cover relatively meaningful articles selected from Intrigues of the Warring States, Records of the Historian, The History of the Former Han Dynasty, etc., and include the process of word review in the lessons.
After three years, with the proficient command of a vocabulary set of 6,000 words and after learning 900 articles step by step, surely the students would be able to grasp the essence and core spirit of such articles. On this solid foundation, it would be easy for them to further dig into the Four Books and Five Classics. As for writing skills: no matter it is letter, story, or news reports, the writer shall always extend the structure from a core sentence to a paragraph and then form the full text. Proper structure and grammar will naturally form the articles, and this process is what people call “writing”. Why shall the writers confine themselves in the stereotyped writing, which, if traced back, is actually evolved from this method? Education in this way could both relieve the teachers of their burden and encourage the students, spark their enthusiasm and interest in reading and therefore worth a try.
As an alternative, we can also follow Germany in the setting of primary schools: set 7 grades with 1 class for each grade and 10 disciplines: 1. Classics- teach the understandable and applicable part of 13 major Confucianism classics to cultivate the students’ goodness; 2. Chinese literatures- Chinese people shall have a good command of their mother language at both easy and hard levels including syntactic and semantic analysis of ancient writings, debates and letters; 3. Mathematics, refers mainly to Western Mathematics; 4. Geography, refers mainly to Chinese geography with that of other countries as supplement; 5. History, refers mainly to history of China and modern history of foreign countries for the recent 100 years, and a rough understanding of their ancient history would be enough; 6. Biology and botany; 7. Natural science; 8. Drawing; 9. Physical exercises; 10. Chinese characters. Primary schools are designed for general education and therefore include no foreign languages. Those who wish their kids to receive further education shall resort to middle schools or general courses[1].
[1]Content starting with “As an alternative, we can also follow Germany in the setting of primary schools” is the postscript of the Chapter School(II).
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