The
sishu
not only gave the child adult texts but demanded of himadult standards of behaviour, fitting the stereotype of the 'educated man'.
In this union of the adult and the child's world it differed markedly from the 'child-centred' teaching methods evolved in the West in the nineteenth century by disciples of Froebbels and Pestalozzi, which placed a high value on engaging the child's interest and allowing him freedom to play and run
around. In China, most people sent their sons to school to get the childish
ness whipped out of them, not encouraged. A Hunanese proverb ran 'a hoy
6 7
is tamed by school, a girl by marriage'. Others in the same vein are 'he
won't grow into a man without beating; beat him into an official', and
'to rear without teaching is a fault in the father; to teach without
68 J
severity is a fault in the teacher'.
Teachers who took such injunctions literally could make their pupil's
lives a misery. Common punishments were blows with a ruler or bamboo rod,
or kneeling in front of Confucius' picture for as long as it took an incense
stick to burn. The supposed educative functions of these punishments was
easily lost in casual brutality. Guo Moruo recalls that when he first
attended school he was beaten around the head so often that his scalp was
a mass of unhealed sores. His mother, in lieu of protest, made him a hard
69 padded cap, but was powerless after the teacher discovered it.
With their classical texts, emphasis on rote learning, and severe discipline, the traditional Chinese curriculum and teaching methods could
66. Liao, 'Rural Education in Transition', p. 45.
67. Shu,
Wo he jiaoyu,
p. 12.68. Herbert A. Giles (trans. and ann.),
San Tzu Ching
(Taibei, 1975 f19103),pp. 11-12. (The translation above is mine).
69. Guo,
Wo de younian
, pp. 54-55. A similar ruse is recalled by William Liu,who put a stone wrapped in rags under his cap to forfend against his
of the Western school as I have described it above.
In areas where the new schools imposed uniformity, compulsion, and
rigidity, however, the sishu was arbitrary, fluid, informal, responsive.
Those boundaries which define the modern school as being other, different
from the outside world, were absent in the sishu. A sishu never had its own
premises in the sense of having a building designed for its occupancy;
this would have needed an administrative structure and income beyond the
resources of the small community it served. Classes might be conducted in
the study or spare room of a well-to-do household, in a room in the teacher'
own house, or in public premises such as a temple or ancestral h a l l . ^
School furnishings were often brought from h o m e , ^ or, in the north where
a heated brick bed was available, dispensed with. This simplicity meant
that schooling could occur whenever teacher and pupil, books and writing
implements, were brought together.
The role of the teacher was no more fixed than that of the room he
occupied. I have mentioned that teacher and pupil were often related by
blood, or at least mutual acquaintance. The teacher had a dual role
in another sense: whether from economic need or good wrll, he would lend
a hand in a variety of tasks to his illiterate and semi-literate neighbours.
In a literary vein, he would write their letters, choose their children's
names, compose couplets for New Year or a wedding or funeral notice. He
wrote their pleas and plaints for lawsuits, and acted as their intermediary
in other dealings with the outside world - the hiring of an opera troupe,
for example, for a village festival. Many teachers doubled as doctors,
another trade for which literacy was the main qualification; others
70. See Smith, Village Life in China, p. 75, and for examples, Shu, Wo he jiaoi/Uy p. 10, Zhou Zuoren, Zhitang huixiangluy p. 21.
dabbled in less reputable sidelines, such as fortune-telling or peddling.
The sishu's adaptability was equally evident in its calendar, which was a movable one. Apart from those which offered winter classes, it was usual for sishu to open after the lunar New Year and close before it. In this they conformed to Chinese custom and the agricultural year, unlike the new schools which copied the Japanese system and opened in autumn.
Traditional festivals such as Qingming and Mid-Autumn were celebrated with a holiday. Within this broad framework, every 'szu shu ran a different
73
calendar... Hand! every student had his own calendar'. In a rural sishu, the school year was broken whenever pupils' help was needed in harvesting or other agricultural tasks, or when local festivals were held and opera troupes invited. A teacher with private business or public duties might close down the school or entrust it to an older pupil during his absence. To such permitted holidays, students added time taken off for visits to
74