How did the ancient private schools in China teach?

The class setting in ancient schools was vertical mixed classes. Now we are all horizontal mixed classes, which we learned from the west. Vertical mixed class means that students of different ages study together. Mongolian academy is in the same class from 3 years old to 18, and county academy is in the same class from 15 to 50. In class, everyone has a desk. I didn't know that two people had a table and crossed it. Sometimes the table is different, because it was moved from different families. Every student is reading aloud, but it doesn't affect others. In ancient times, there was a word to describe this kind of reading in a low voice, which was called "loud reading". Nowadays, many people write typos and recite "Lang". What do you mean by "loud and clear"? That is, students are reading aloud. However, the word "lang" next to jade means beautiful jade. When two beautiful jade pieces collided, the sound was still loud, so they were not broken. "Loud reading" means that the sound of reading is like two beautiful jade pieces gently touching each other, making a wonderful sound. Small voice, different, but it's good to get together. The students are reading aloud separately, and the melody is beautiful. It's really nice to get together. It's called "the book is loud". Every student is reading in a low voice. The teacher can hear it, and of course the students can hear it. But the volume of the voice is not big. When you don't want to listen, you can block other people's voices and concentrate on reading your own books. Just because the reading sound is not loud, it can be shielded or not, so the reading sound of others is also a kind of learning for yourself. Imagine that a 3-year-old child is reading the three-character classic, and an 8-year-old child next to him is reading The Analects of Confucius. A 3-year-old child won't teach him The Analects until he is 6 years old, but by that time, he has been listening to people read The Analects for three or four years! Can you learn quickly? Make full use of rest time, distraction time and play time (students often sit down to play, but now they are not so self-disciplined, because they are all self-taught, so long as they can recite it in the end, let themselves recite it anyway). Use subconscious learning, preview and use the acceleration generated by the accumulation of quantity. This is the ancient religion of China. Now it's said that using screen flash to learn a foreign language, using sleeping radio to learn a foreign language, the same thing, the ancients have. The rest of the benefits, older children take care of children, senior students take care of lower ones, and many questions can be solved by asking seniors, such as the Analects of Confucius. Teacher, don't worry so much. It is not only beneficial to small countries, but also beneficial to big countries. If you don't want to be confused by your brother, you have to study hard. Children value their own image most. In the absence of the teacher, older children can manage the class instead of the teacher, which is also an exercise. In the class, there is the order of the elders, the friendship between teachers and friends, the courtesy of others, and the way to advance and retreat. The teaching method of ancient education is divided into several steps. The first step is to give away books. This is from the teacher's point of view and from the student's point of view. This is called "writing". Because students have to walk to Mr. Wang's desk with books, they are called "writing books". There are three stages in storytelling. The first stage is called "book ordering", that is, students take books, turn to the page they want to learn and teach them to teachers. Mr. Wang pointed out the sentence for him to read. In ancient times, there were special sentence reading tools, which were slightly longer than toothpicks and were generally made of wood, chicken bones, iron and high-grade ivory. One end is thick and one end is thin, and there is a circle at both ends. Use it to cover the inkpad, and cover the place where the sentence is broken, which is a circle, indicating reading the sentence. Usually, small circles indicate commas and large circles indicate periods. Commas and periods also have small circles, and this word is well used with large circles. But generally speaking, when commenting on wonderful words, you will use a brush to point a dot next to the words. In the section of ordering books, if students are old and can read sentences, they will order them themselves and modify them for the teacher. The second stage, called "reading", is that the teacher demonstrates reading and the students follow suit. Imitate sentence by sentence. Under normal circumstances, Mr. Zhang will read the information we recorded three times. Some have seen it six times, and some have seen it twice. The third stage is to teach "storytelling", that is, the teacher has to explain. Explain the simple meaning that students of that age can understand, just saying. Most importantly, tell stories. How many times do you give books a day? How many books at a time? These are all different from person to person. The study time of ancient Mongolian museums is generally 2 to 4 hours a day. The study time in the library is usually 4 to 8 hours a day. In ancient times, there were many paintings such as "Twelve o'clock Picture of Children". When you look at them, you can find that children play most of the time except eating and sleeping. There is little time to study in class and little or no homework. During these hours, it is up to the children to decide how many books to give. Because he finished his book, he had to go back and recite it. I have memorized it all, so I need to check it for the teacher. When do you recite it? Only he knows. He felt that he knew it by heart, so he raised his hand to inform his husband and went up again. So it is the students who control the learning progress. The content of a book is not much, like when you are enlightened, it is generally about ten words, like "at the beginning of life, human nature is good." Sex is similar and learning is far away. " This is the content of a book. A little bigger, it will be twenty or thirty words. When you go to the school library, it usually doesn't exceed 100 words at a time. How many times do you go to school a day? The gentleman who records the most is ten times a day. He said, I am a child prodigy, and I can read ten books a day. Where are the others? He said it was usually only three or four times, and some even once a day. It can be seen that once in the morning and once in the afternoon, or twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon, are relatively normal. The content of a day's study is between a few dozen and a hundred words. This progress seems to be slow now, but you can figure it out, which is the content of new learning every day. Press 100 words a day, which is 30,000 words a year. After studying in private schools for 12 to 15 years, you will accumulate at least 350,000 words. The point is that these are all memorized! Besides learning new lessons, we should also review old ones. Review every day. How many words can ancient literati recite? Generally, it is between several hundred thousand words and several million words. Everyone has heard that Mao Dun can recite A Dream of Red Mansions, right? Just open a page and he can recite it. He is not the only one who can recite A Dream of Red Mansions. A dream of red mansions has a million words. This is still for fun. What you really want to recite is the Thirteen Classics. The imperial examination is compulsory. Eight-part essay is a composition based on a word, a sentence and a paragraph randomly selected from the Thirteen Classics. So you have to recite all the thirteen classics. How many words are there in the Thirteen Classics? According to the statistics of Zheng Gang in the Southern Song Dynasty, Zhouyi has 24,207 words, Shangshu has 25,800 words (when Huang Kan removed the fake ancient prose 17925 words), Mao Shi has 39,224 words, 45,806 words, and The Book of Rites has 56 words115 words. Biography of the Ram (Yan Qing Ruoju statistics) is 44075 words, Biography of Gu Liang (Yan Qing Ruoju statistics) is 4 15 12 words, The Analects of Confucius 13700 words, and The Book of Filial Piety 1903 words. Can you recite these 640 thousand words into the examination room? Of course not. Because you can't write eight-part essay yet. Eight-part essay is based on the Thirteen Classics, so the ancient college entrance examination review materials are called "high-headed lectures", that is, every sentence of the Thirteen Classics has a topic. Here is a model essay with eight-part essay. Recite the Thirteen Classics and master high-level lectures. Is that enough? Still not working. Although the imperial examinations in Ming and Qing Dynasties were mainly based on eight-part essay, it was not without poetry, which was also the basis of eight-part essay. To master poetry, you must recite or read a series of poems, such as Chu Ci, Yuefu, Fu of the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties, ancient poetry, Tang poetry, Song poetry, Yuanqu, a hundred schools of thought contend, anthology, ancient prose, etc., with at least several hundred thousand words. Is that enough? Of course not. What kind of scholar is he who has not read Historical Records? What kind of scholars are those who haven't read Purple Tongzhi Sword? So I want to learn history and memorize the good ones. In addition, astronomical geography, agricultural water conservancy, medical divination mathematics and martial arts should all be involved. Piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, both civil and military, is also a scholar. Therefore, it is by no means empty talk that ancient literati can recite hundreds of thousands to millions of words. Ancient education, without textbooks, was all about reading the original and the whole book. The second step is to recite, and the students go down to review themselves. The content of the review is not only the classic itself, but also the classic notes and the teacher's explanations. The third step taught by the ancients is called retelling. Re-emphasizing means that after the students recite the book, they raise their hands to inform the students, and then go up to check with the teacher. You can write after you pass the exam, so it is the students who decide the learning progress. So what is repetition? Teacher, can you say it again? No, students! Please repeat what the teacher just told you. What do you mean you really learned something? Is to be able to tell others. Ancient children began to do this training at the age of three. When I was three or four years old, I just began to understand. What the teacher teaches is so simple that he can repeat it. Later, with the growth of age, the difficulty will gradually increase, but it has always been affordable at his age. From giving books, to endorsing, to repeating, a classroom teaching is completed. So I gave the book again. In fact, the teacher's teaching time is not long, and everyone gives books for a few minutes to ten minutes at a time. In the final analysis, teachers still have a lot of free time, because students mainly study by themselves, and teachers only guide and guide. It's nothing, as long as you get used to it from an early age. Now in our teaching, the teacher is the learning nanny of the students. Take pains to talk and talk, students understand and then talk, wasting time and teachers' energy. What is the effect of learning? In addition to teaching, there are reviews, lectures and exams. These are the contents of reading. Besides reading, there are other learning contents, such as writing, singing, playing the piano, dancing, games, martial arts, farming, playing chess, studying medicine and so on. Review is something you have to do every day. Keep rolling and repeating. Yes, it's a discussion class. Ask a question, discuss it, test your study results and express your personal opinion. Learning and discussion are also important ways to gain true knowledge, especially innovation. "The Analects of Confucius", "Luz once had a public servant in Xihua", is what he said. Finally, the teacher will comment. Zhu and Zhang Wei's lectures at Yuelu Academy and Zhu and Lu Jiuyuan's lectures at Ehu Temple are all famous events in history. Historically, students from all over the world got the news and rode fast horses from all directions to attend lectures. There was an endless stream of people on the road, and the lecture hall was packed inside and outside. The water in the manger was drunk by the students' horses at once. The debate on stage and off stage lasted for three consecutive days and nights. Author: Xu Jianshun, Associate Professor of Chinese Department of Minzu University of China.