Classic Chinese Primers Make a Comeback

It was in 1923 that elementary school children in Peking began attending "newstyle" schools. Ethnologist Kuo Li-ch'eng, who was just six years old at the time, still recalls the first sentence in their elementary reader, which was written in colloquial Chinese rather than the traditional literary language: "The big dog barks, and the little dog jumps." When he told his grandmother about it she exclaimed indignantly, "Animals! How can people study something like that?"

What should people study?

In Kuo's extended family, the more than forty children belonging to her generation, starting at age three, were instructed by an elderly teacher in the family's private schoolroom, where they studied the Three Character Classic, the Thousand Character Classic, the Four Books, and the Five Classics, practiced calligraphy, and learned how to compose in literary Chinese, before going on to junior high school at age fourteen.

The new education has held sway for more than half a century. Today a six-year-old sits in a schoolroom with forty or fifty classmates as they recite in unison the Chinese phonetic alphabet and sentences like: "I get up early every day, and the sun gets up early every day too."

Nowadays it's Chinese majors in college who use old primers like the Yuhsueh ch'iung-lin, or The Epitome of Learning for the Young, as extracurricular reading to "strengthen their Chinese." Looking back on the readers used by their forebears, college students at the end of the twentieth century share a common opinion, "They're not easy!"

Times change. These days the sidewalks are full of vendors hawking picture books and cassette tapes of the Three Character Classic and its ilk, illustrated, recited, or sung for the edification of the little ones.

Why has there been a "revival of the antique" in children's primers, when the new and the up-to-date are all the fashion elsewhere? What are we looking for in the "good old days"?

"Modern education stresses learning through enjoyment and the development of the intellect, whereas primary education in the past emphasized morality and the building of character," says Chu Feng-yu, a lecturer in Chinese at the Chinese Cultural University who has studied children's textbooks for many years.

She points out that education in ancient times was highly elitist: the children of officials were educated thoroughly so that they could pursue careers in the government, but most families did no more than to have their children learn some arithmetic and a few rudimentary characters to help them earn a living. Most importantly, readers like the Three Character Classic or the Hundred Family Surnames and popular collections of maxims and adages were expected to imbue in young minds the virtues of filial piety, respect for one's elders, and contentment with one's station in life.

Kuo Li-ch'eng, who has annotated several popular editions of the classics for children, says that the utilitarianism of modern society has left contemporary Chinese, whose ancestors were always so sure of their place in the world, somewhat at a loss for direction. The reason so many children these days are made to memorize the Three Character Classic is that adults, having lost some of the old traditional virtues such as contentment, peace, and tranquility, are anxious to grasp the best and most beautiful of the ancient and force-feed it into their children, placing their hopes in the next generation.

"The books you memorize as a child you remember for life"--that is one of the main strengths of the old system of education, in many people's minds. Chang Hsin-ch'eng, a professor of psychology at National Taiwan University who has studied the development of infant intelligence, indicates out that the most salient characteristic of children from birth to six years of age is their phenomenal capacity to learn. Those are the years when they are able to absorb just about any kind of information without rejecting it.

Parents today are in a bind.

When they hear for the first time their three-year-old recite in sweet and tender tones the beginning lines of the Three Character Classic--"People by nature are basically good; in nature close, by habit apart"--they are often delighted beyond words. My child will certainly grow up to better than I, they think, because at that age I just rolled around on the floor all day with diapers and a runny nose!

All too soon, however, they may find that their child's ardor for the classics of the past has cooled considerably--there are, after all, so many fun and interesting things to attract a child's attention. Parents the world over wish the best for their children, and to give them that many are willing to go to the same lengths as Mencius' mother, that proverbial paragon of maternal virtue who broke her loom when the future sage refused to study and who moved house three times to provide with him a suitable neighborhood in which to grow up.

Only later do they find that the little girl of the Chang family has entered a bilingual nursery school and already learned her ABC's, while their own little precious is at home still trying to memorize her "people by nature are basically good." Or the Lee boy is off learning about computers, while little junior is still doing violence to the old poets' hoariest chestnuts. . . . Isn't the child falling behind on the racetrack of life with its everaccelerating pace?

It's clear that the old saying, "A child not taught is the fault of the father; lax instruction, the teacher's indolence," is deeply impressed in the minds of Chinese parents and teachers. Kuo Li-ch'eng's grandmother insisted that the family's children remain at home and study the classics, while parents today trundle their toddlers off to cram school. Be it then or now, primary education has always been a headache for parents. But staying faithful to one's values rather than being motivated solely by material gain and rearing children to respect culture and ethics as they start off down the racetrack of life should remain a valid guideline at any place or time.

[Picture Caption]

Modern reading books teach children to read with simple illustrated texts, but they can't match the Three Character Classic in depth of content. (photo on the left by Chung Yung-ho)

Primary education today emphasizes learning through fun: looking at illustrated books and drawing pictures in a relaxed class atmosphere and going on outings with parents to learn about nature. (photo at lower right by Chung Yung-ho)

Letting a child offer incense before an ancestral tablet enables him to experience the meaning of respect for one's ancestors (photo by Chung Yung-ho)

Parents share a common desire for their children to be better than they are, but can they control their children's future?

Primary education today emphasizes learning through fun: looking at illustrated books and drawing pictures in a relaxed class atmosphere and going on outings with parents to learn about nature. （photo at lower right by Chung Yung-ho）

Primary education today emphasizes learning through fun: looking at illustrated books and drawing pictures in a relaxed class atmosphere and going on outings with parents to learn about nature. （photo at lower right by Chung Yung-ho）

Primary education today emphasizes learning through fun: looking at illustrated books and drawing pictures in a relaxed class atmosphere and going on outings with parents to learn about nature. （photo at lower right by Chung Yung-ho）

Letting a child offer incense before an ancestral tablet enables him to experience the meaning of respect for one's ancestors （photo by Chung Yung-ho）

Parents share a common desire for their children to be better than they are, but can they control their children's future?