13
even keel over the centuries.
3. Grounded in Education by Rote
Education in these concerns began in the schoolroom and at home. This indoctrination was rendered the more effective because of the memorization process that was such a central feature of the Chinese teaching method. Looking back on his schooldays in San Ning Country, Kwantung, Dr. Ng Poon-chew wrote:
"In the old method when I was a boy, we were compelled to study, but we were not required to know what we were studying about. We were simply set to memorize the Confucian classics, endeavouring hard to transform our heads into first-class phonographic records.
--21
The feats of memorization, in a country which relied heavily on this method of teaching, often bordered on the phenomenal." In 1914, after fifty years' experience of China, Archdeacon Moule not only testified to the positive qualities of memorization but deplored its likely fate at the hands of the new Republican educators in their haste for change.22
4. Extended by Copying Teachers' Handbooks
Apart from memorization of the classical books and the moral lessons imparted thereby, there was other work to be done in the classroom. For the smarter village boys who became the educated village elders of their generation, the process of absorption and indoctrination had been intensified by their teachers' practice of making them copy their own manuscript guides to social etiquette, useful exemplars and local traditions.
Tsuen Wan fully exemplifies the old system of education (in the broad sense of ethical teaching), and its lingering force into practically our own time. Several of my friends among the indigenous population had told me about this copying before I came to realize its full importance and significance; and over a period, as the more educated elderly villagers produced their own handbooks and spoke of their education and the copying work their teachers had given them to do, the pattern became very clear to me. These men were the type of
13
even keel over the centuries.
3. Grounded in Education by Rote
Education in these concerns began in the schoolroom and at home. This indoctrination was rendered the more effective because of the memorization process that was such a central feature of the Chinese teaching method. Looking back on his schooldays in San Ning Country, Kwantung, Dr. Ng Poon-chew wrote:
+
·
we were
"In the old method when I was a boy. compelled to study, but we were not required to know what we were studying about. We were simply set to memorize the Confucian classics, endeavouring hard to transform our heads into first-class phonographic records.
--21
The feats of memorization, in a country which relied heavily on this method of teaching, often bordered on the phenomenal." In 1914, after fifty years' experience of China, Archdeacon Moule not only testified to the positive qualities of memorization but deplored its likely fate at the hands of the new Republican educators in their haste for change.22
4. Extended by Copying Teachers' Handbooks
Apart from memorization of the classical books and the moral lessons imparted thereby, there was other work to be done in the classroom. For the smarter village boys who became the educated village elders of their generation, the process of absorption and indoctrination had been intensified by their teachers' practice of making them copy their own manuscript guides to social etiquette, useful exemplars and local traditions."
Tsuen Wan fully exemplifies the old system of education (in the broad sense of ethical teaching), and its lingering force into practically our own time. Several of my friends among the indigenous population had told me about this copying before I came to realize its full importance and significance; and over a period, as the more educated elderly villagers produced their own handbooks and spoke of their education and the copying work their teachers had given them to do, the pattern became very clear to me. These men were the type of
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