Ancient Universities of Knowledge in China!

Hey everyone!! こんにちは! I would like to thank everyone who came to the Japanese calligraphy learning session on tuesday night. I hope it was an informative basic lesson on understanding the writing system and hopefully fun was had by all. I realized that it takes some patience and specific skills to not only learn a complex writing system like japanese, but to teach it as well! Please try to keep up those calligraphy skills!

I uploaded our little midway through the session video which shows all of your great progress and all the characters you already learned within the first 30 minutes of writing! You can watch it below:

Now that you have a basic understanding of the history of the characters from my previous post and how to write some of those characters from our calligraphy session, I'd like to inform you a little bit on how the writing system was taught to students through ancient universities of knowledge. I first researched the way in which students were taught writing in ancient japan, but realized that until the 1800s, most japanese was taught in the household. The father usually taught the son how to write and read kanji and kana, and the writing system was thus passed down the family. There were not nearly as many organized schools or universities to teach writing in ancient japan as I thought, this skill was taught either domestically or at religious institutions such as the temple. This example contrasts with the Reinventing Knowledge book's focus on the notion that knowledge can only be passed down through some form of institutions. But since the focus for our posts is on the learning of writing systems through knowledge institutions such as universities, schools, monasteries, etc., I decided to write this post on the schooling system in China. This seems only fitting, seeing as China was the one to first teach kanji characters, and then it waS brought to Japan. So in essence I will be talking about the origin of which the japanese writing system was taught through schooling.

Boys in China would usually begin schooling when they were around six years old. The elementary schools were very small, with usually only one teacher for the whole school. Most schools were held in religious temples, similar to in Japan.School began every morning at 6:00 in the morning until about 4:00 in the afternoon. And get this, there were no weekend breaks! I thought we had it bad.The teacher would sit in a chair, but all the boys had to sit on stools. The focus of study was on learning how to read and write chinese characters and understand the writing system. Math and Science were rarely taught in ancient china at elementary school age. Students would instead learn to write essays and poetry, and how to use the method of calligraphy in writing and in art. Students would stay at this elementary level school until they were sixteen or seventeen, or until they could pass the first examinations. Some especially gifted boys could pass the test early and go to more advanced programs.

By the time of the Ming Dynasty, beginning about 1400 AD, many rich women were allowed to learn to read and write at home. This marked the point were not only men would be considered for a formal education. Some rich women wrote poetry and eventually were studied in later years by students in modern China.Starting at around 500 AD, some boys and girls started to learn in Buddhist monasteries. Here children also learned how to read and write, but they did not learn painting or poetry. But rather Buddhist readings and doctrine.

As you can see there are multiple methods in which chinese writing systems were taught at an early age in ancient China. What do you think were the causes behind being taught in a different context? Social/economic status? Religious standings? Demographics?