25. Shu, Wo he jiaoyu, p. 17. For other mentions of the 'discussions of schooling' see Li, Li Zonghuang huiyilu, p. 42, for Yunnan in the late 1890's-early 1900's, and Liao, 'Rural Education in Transition', p. 56, for Sichuan in the mid-1940's.
26. Smith, Village Life in China, p. 74.
27. Wang, 'Gudai ertong duwu gaiguan', p. 139.
The system was not as egalitarian as it appears on the surface. I have already pointed out that farm labourers and many tenant farmers and small landholders living at or below the subsistence level could not have afforded even the most modest fees. Within the ninhu itself, differential treatment was often given according to the amount of fees paid. Low fees simply entitled one to a place in the classroom; generosity meant a large share of the teacher's attention. Thus Shu Xincheng was permitted to start school for only 1200 wen ( per year in cash, two fat hens and a few dozen eggs simply because, being less than four years old, it was assumed
29
that he would not require much attention. Conversely, Hu Shi's mother paid record-breaking fees of twelve yuan a year, six times the normal, to
30
ensure her son special treatment. A hostile short story makes the point through caricature: of a poverty-stricken schoolmaster who took his meals at each student's house in turn, surreptitiously stuffing his sleeves with food for his wife, 'everybody said that he taught his students not according
31
to their level but to the quantity of food and drink provided.' From the schoolmaster's point of view, deficiencies in fees could be made up in number of pupils, since owing to the teaching methods used, an increase in numbers did not necessarily mean a commensurate increase in effort.
The third form of schooling, the school set up by the teacher, I shall discuss only briefly. It is of interest not so much because it differs greatly from the arrangements already discussed, but because such differ ences as there are take it in the direction of a modern school in the sense that no personal relationship, direct or mediated, necessarily exists between schoolmaster and parent. In such a school, no formalities of appointment were required, and the schoolmaster could simply hand up a signboard and wait for pupils. This act assumes a certain number of pupils in the vicinity (for few would attend a school not in walking distance of their homes), and thus an urban location, or at least a large village and popular teacher. Its ad hoc organization could lead to even greater
29. Shu, Wo he jiaoyu, p. 17. Shu states that it took his mother only three half-days of work picking wild cotton to earn the cash part of his fees. 30. Hu, Sishi zishu, p. 25.
31. Tian Lusheng, 'Xuejiu jiaoyu tan', in Yueyue xiaoshuo, 12 (1907), 33-38.
flexibility in attendance and payment of fees; it was possible to pay by
the month, or even, for very poor families who could not afford a large 32
single outlay, by the day. Like the hiring of teachers on the open
m a r k e t , th i s t r a n s a c t i o n h e l d the p o t e n t i a l of s h e d d i n g its s o c i a l e l e m e n t s and becoming purely the sale and purchase of services. The process does
not seem to have been carried to its conclusion; even in Peking in the
thirties, sishu pupils still tended to come ’from relatives in the 33
neighbourhood'.
A variation on this type was the da guan ( /if{ ), or school for
advanced students, at which a well-known scholar would prepare pupils for
the examinations. Such schools might be residential (since scholars of
such standing were not to be met with in every village, their instruction
formed an exception to the rule that schooling was usually obtained in the
pupil's home locality). They took pupils from their teens into their
thirties. In Wenshang, they were known as cuan ju ) from the fact
that those who attended did their own cooking. Shu Xincheng’s autobiography
shows a contrast between the self-reliance nurtured in this type of school
and the hand-and-foot service offered in the modern school which he later
attended.^
The division of schooling was not formalized as it is in the Western
or modern system. One master, if sufficiently capable, could teach all
levels from beginners to advanced in the same class. A school’s level
depended on the teacher’s reputation; only the best could afford to turn
away lower-level students.
Few pupils received all their education from one teacher. A typical
case is that of Chen Heqin, who in six years of sishu education studied 35
under four masters at three schools. If a family head did not change his
32. Leong and T a o , Village and Town Life in China, p. 96.
33. Dan, ’helping sishu dc yanjiu’, p. 1067.
34. Shu, Wo he giaoyu, pp. 38-39 & 52.
child's teacher because of dissatisfaction with his performance, he did
so because of a change of abode or fortunes. (Many students changed from
family to outside schools or switched to self-study for economic reasons; others had the1r education broken off altogether).
Chinese scholastic lore has always exalted the role of individual
application in studious achievement. A modern study takes a more cynical
view, concluding that in the examination system, 'the advantages were 3 6
heavily in favour of those who had wealth and influence'. Schooling,
standing at Llie juncture between family means and individual effort, showed
the influence of both. At the elementary level, texts and teaching methods
were similar in all schools, but even there individual attention - of the type automatically obtained in a small family school, and purchased at
extra cost in others - helped ensure that the child memorized and reproduced his lessons accurately, a desideratum in an examination system which penali
zed inaccuracy. The acquisition of more abstruse skills depended on the
possession of a family environment which permitted a prolongation of student-
hood, sometimes into old age. Examination success depended to some extent
on the utilization of one's forerunners' experience. Though books of model
eight-legged essays could be bought, the training given by one who had
himself passed the examinations was preferred. Those with the right
connections and income might even obtain the aid of a juren.
Even deeper than the divisions between those who enjoyed different levels of schooling was that between those who obtained schooling of some
kind and those who had never crossed the schoolroom threshold. There has
37 been some debate in recent years about the literacy rate in Qing China. Given the dubious quality and limited quantity of statistics for the period,
36. Chang Chung-li,
The Chinese Gentry
, p. 183.37. See F. Mote, 'China's Past in the Study of China Today', Journal
of Asian Studies, XXXII : 1 (1972), 107-120. Evelyn Rawski's forthcoming book on literacy in the Qing should be a useful con tribution to this field.
a single exact figure is unlikely to be obtained. My own estimate would be that some forty per cent of males attended a sishu at some time in their
childhood; many of these did not learn to read while they were there, and
others would subsequently have lost their rarely used skills.
Material garnered from memoirs and literary fragments can add to
uneven statistics to give a picture of the sishu in the mental landscape
of the Chinese. The common derogatory term for a village schoolmaster,
’Mr Winterhearth of Three Family Village’ (sanjiacun donghong xiansheng
-fi £ y44 fa Jb ) indicates his ubiquity. ln Wenshang in the 1930’s,
38. Liang Qichaosuggests a literacy rate of ’less than thirty per cent',
('Lun xuexiao: youxue’, Shiwu bao, XVI (1897) [10333. His fellow-
reformer Xu Qin gives a hyperbolically low estimate of five per cent.
(’Zh ngguo chu hai yi’, in Shu Xincheng (ed.), Jindai Zhongguo jiaoyushi
ziliao (Peking, 1962), Vol. Ill, p. 963. No attempt to survey the rate of literacy was made during the Qing, nor were national statistics
collected on the number of sishu. (Their very existence goes unmentioned
in the statistical compilations of the Ministry of Education). The
researcher is thrown back on local figures of uncertain validity
compiled after the introduction of the new system and on extrapolation from surveys of the twenties and thirties, made when the new system was
on the way to ousting the old. Peking was said to have over seven
thousand sishu pupils in 1909 0(uebu guanbao LXXXXII (1909) Jingwai
xuewu baogao, 17), and Shangyuan County to have three and a half
thousand for the same year (Jiaoyu zazhi, II : 3 (1909) Jishi, 21
1015293). It is unlikely that these or subsequent statistics include
private family schools, which by their nature did not advertise their
presence. The Peking figures certainly and the Shangyuan ones possibly
were collected in the course of a drive to reduce sishu, which would
certainly have meant that any schoolmasters aware of this intention
would have tried to avoid notice; this makes under-reporting highly
likely. Apart from defects in the figures as collected, it is possible
that the proportion of children in school in comparison with the number in sishu was deliberately exaggerated by educational officials interes ted in establishing a reputation for promoting schools and discouraging sishu. The caveats above apply equally to official statistics of the
Republican period. The first national survey, made in 1935, showed
101, 027 sishu still existing, with 1,757,014 pupils. Another source of
figures is independent surveys: Buck's shows 30% of the male population
to have been educated in sishu in the mid-1930's, (J.L. Buck, Land
Utilization in China (New York, 1964), pp. 373-4.)
39. Winterhearth' refers to the practice of teaching children from farming
families in winter, the slack season in agriculture. See Leong and Tao,
Liao T'ai-ch'u found 'at least 1 szu shu in every village - big and small. 40
In big villages and townships one expected more than one'. Writing of Shandong forty years earlier, a foreign observer found the desire for education everywhere present, prevented from realization only where a
41
village was too poor to hire a teacher. Shu Xincheng's home, a Hunan village of twenty or thirty households, supported two elementary sishu at
the turn of the century. At that time, he reflects, the sound of chanted lessons was to be heard in every hamlet of ten houses. (The amount of noise from such chanting served as an index of an area's cultural standing:
42