Teacher Xu: Entering a Classroom in Late Qing China

This is the story of Teacher Xu.We know this story because of a set of teaching materialsTeacherXu left behind thatwere preservedbyhis student. TeacherXu was not a member of China’s elite but, rather, a typical schoolteacher living at the end of the Qing dynasty, when the time-honored and traditional approach to pedagogy was still very much in force. He must have been a lively teacher, with a charismatic personality and a touch of humor, which he brought into the classroom. He seems to have been deeply committed to his students and was concerned about their well-being. All these qualities are reflected in the teaching materials, the “text” he used. Teacher Xu was one of the common people in China. He made his living using his knowledge of writing and his own education to work as a teacher of boys (who were most likely to be students) most likely ages seven to sixteen. He imparted basic reading and writing skills and the intellectual culture they had inherited as Chinese. Some of the boys may have hoped to continue their studies and to take the provincial-level examination that would lead to a government-awarded degree. But when the traditional educational systemwas abolished in 1905, and when new elementary schools using new-style printed textbooks were adopted, Teacher Xu’s traditional texts and classroom style began to fall out of favor. The old-style education did not disappear in China after 1906, especially in the countryside, though ambitious students and their parents knew that the modern age called for a different set of skills and a less traditional worldview. The teaching materials we have that allow us to compose a portrait of Teacher Xu consist of 102 pages of handwritten information that Teacher Xu decided one day to have copied and bound together with string. He no doubt had other texts and materials in either handwritten or printed form that he used in the classroom,but these are thematerials that came intomypossession. I bought the bound text used by Teacher Xu at the Panjiayuan market in Beijing in September 2005, when I had just begun to collect handwritten texts offered by the used booksellers. The price was not high, because most