Chapter 105: New Education

"Can't we lump adults and children together?"

"We could run two shifts—day and night," Du Wen proposed. "Children during the day, then switch to adults at night."

"That won't work," Wang Luobin said, shaking his head. "You've never lived in the countryside. Children are half a labor force out there—parents will never agree to full-day schooling." Du Wen realized he was right, though she remained more interested in adult night school. "Then what about half-day classes with a focus on night school?"

"Even worse." Before Wang Luobin could speak, Chen Haiyang was already shaking his head vigorously. "My relatives went down to the countryside back then—night schools were popular too, but they closed during the busy season. Farmers work hard labor all day. They need rest. Who's going to come to your night school?"

"He's right," Wang Luobin agreed. "And until they recognize education's benefits, attracting them to study will be very difficult."

Du Wen, seeing opposition on all sides, grew anxious. "So we just don't do it?"

"Oh, we'll do it—we'll start with a training class." Xi Yazhou grinned. "Let's try some elite education."

His "elite education" was actually cadre training. Such short-term intensive courses had been commonly used in past local work: cultivating organization-friendly activists—whatever their initial motivations—raising their consciousness through training, strengthening their sense of organization and discipline, and teaching them work methods. Ultimately, they would become the transmission gears driving the masses in countless grassroots organizations. Saying this was easy, of course, but doing it was another matter. Breaking into a locality was the hardest part—especially in a closed, conservative traditional rural society. The salt field's crisis had given the transmigrators an excellent opportunity to penetrate local society. In that sense, Landlord Gou was their benefactor.

Who were the activists? The Tan father and son topped the list; the village head's daughter counted too; and then there were some young men friendly with Tan Chengqing. Single girls naturally could not attend evening classes with a group of men, so initially this night school was men-only.

Wang Luobin was not anxious to formally convene everyone. He first approached Tan Guihuang, saying he wanted to run a school for the children—teaching literacy and the basics of the abacus. Tan Guihuang looked troubled. Village children had daily farm chores; getting parents to agree to schooling would be difficult. Wang Luobin promised only half-day classes—guaranteed not to interfere with farmwork. Tan Guihuang reluctantly agreed to try convincing people, and for insurance, Wang Luobin also sent Zhang Xingjiao to persuade them. Xi Yazhou originally wanted to promise free lunch for any child who attended, but that would have placed too much strain on their dwindling grain reserves.

The turnout was better than expected. Most people, though believing their children's education useless, figured that literacy and arithmetic would not hurt their farming. And since schooling was only half a day, it would not affect field labor.

The school schedule ran four hours each afternoon, from noon to four. But salt workers, like most people of the era, had little precise sense of time. To build this concept, the Ge Hong Temple camp installed an electric loudspeaker that automatically announced each hour: "This is Lingao time, X o'clock." Xi Yazhou knew that rather than lecturing about hours and minutes, such subtle influence would prove more effective.

Work team members invested great enthusiasm in this education plan. The curriculum emphasized simplicity and practicality—current content focused on literacy and arithmetic. Basic Chinese reading required mastering at least five hundred characters, so Wang Luobin based his literacy plan on that number. For this school, he specially returned to Bairren Fortress and queried the Intelligence Group's computer database for two suitable textbooks: the 1959 edition Rural Literacy Textbook and the 1971 edition Rural Practical Mathematics. Both had been specially compiled for rural education—accessible and well-targeted. The mathematics book was particularly useful, including not just basic arithmetic but practical content like yield calculation, volume measurement, and simple geometric surveying.

However, both textbooks contained heavy period-specific language—frequent mentions of "Great Leader Chairman Mao" and "In the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution..." Wang Luobin copied and revised them overnight, then asked Zhou Dongtian at the printing room for thirty sets.

"Thirty sets?" Zhou Dongtian had grown stingy—his paper reserves had not been replenished. And these were two books, not a few pages or a small newspaper.

"Yes, thirty sets—elementary textbooks. As fast as possible!"

Zhou Dongtian flipped through the draft, seeing many illustrations that would be quite laborious to produce. But he promised to deliver the finished products as soon as possible.

Wang Luobin also added Pinyin teaching content from elementary Chinese. He had always believed that simplified characters and Pinyin were New China's two treasures for universal basic education. He showed this textbook to Zhang Xingjiao, unsurprisingly drawing opposition from the middle-aged failed-examination scholar. In Zhang's view, these "vulgar characters" were not too shocking, but as an educator, he opposed including them in textbooks. "This will mislead students," he commented.

Wang Luobin explained that this was mainly to simplify teaching and facilitate children's reading and writing. Besides, their educational purpose was not imperial examinations or poetry composition—just writing names, writing letters, and reading simple books.

Yet Zhang Xingjiao still felt uncomfortable. He actually recognized almost all these simplified characters—in his view, simplified characters could only be used casually, not formally. "Students taught this way would be laughingstocks—compositions entirely in vulgar script. Even if others don't laugh, we'd be ashamed as teachers." Growing agitated, he seemed ready to defend traditional characters with his life.

As for the literacy textbook, Zhang Xingjiao was equally dismissive. In his view, the Thousand Character Classic and Hundred Family Surnames were sufficient for children's education; new compilations were unnecessary. Seeing the beautifully printed textbook, he lamented—and criticized many phrases and sentence structures as "grammatically incorrect."

After enduring Zhang Xingjiao's critiques for over an hour, Wang Luobin proposed a fair competition: each would teach one class to see who could teach students to read and write faster. This startled Zhang Xingjiao. He re-examined the literacy textbook carefully. Finally, he admitted, "Your simplified characters are easier to recognize and write—naturally you would win..."

"Exactly. Our simplified characters are easy to learn and remember. Common people don't need advanced scholarship—literacy is just for convenient living." Wang Luobin explained this patiently. Zhang Xingjiao was their first deeply contacted intellectual, and his attitude roughly indicated how Ming intellectuals would view transmigrator culture.

After much persuasion, Wang Luobin compromised, agreeing to teach both simplified and traditional characters simultaneously. Zhang Xingjiao still was not entirely willing, but these overseas people establishing schools for poor children was already commendable. Besides, he was eating their rice—he could not be too difficult. Ancient scholars possessed at least some sense of responsibility for educating the masses—unlike modern people who became teachers purely for stable pay and summer vacations.

But for Wang Luobin, this outcome was unsatisfying. He had not truly convinced a Ming junior intellectual to accept his viewpoint.

To avoid interference, he initially started with Pinyin letters—teaching children pronunciation. Learning Pinyin meant mastering correct Mandarin pronunciation, and since the transmigrators would use Mandarin for education, this was essential. Children's language-learning ability far exceeded that of adults, making teaching doubly effective.

To Zhang Xingjiao, Wang Luobin's teaching methods were utterly bizarre. Zhang and his kind—Confucian scholars—had always received infusion-style education. Students began with the Three Character Classic, Thousand Character Classic, Hundred Family Surnames, and Children's Poetry; writing meant tracing red models. Teachers rarely explained—they just led daily readings for rote memorization. This continued until the students finished the Four Books. Most could recite them backward and recognize most characters.

But Wang Luobin's classes started with completely incomprehensible squiggly "ghost writing"—a, o, e... He had made beautiful flashcards: e was a goose—intuitive pronunciation teaching. Students learned these like songs. Only then were these symbols used to annotate characters. Realizing this purpose, Zhang Xingjiao suddenly understood—so this "Pinyin alphabet" Chief Wang constantly mentioned was for phonetic annotation, similar to the scholars' fanqie method. (Note: Ancient Chinese phonetic annotation used various methods, most commonly fanqie—a required subject for Classical Chinese majors.)

Still, Zhang Xingjiao had to admit: after learning this "Pinyin system," new characters came much faster. Some clever children could even sound out characters directly from textbook annotations. This quick method fascinated him. He repeatedly asked Wang Luobin which great scholar had invented it. Wang Luobin said that both Pinyin and simplified characters had been developed by the overseas great scholar "Wen Gaiwei" (Wen Gaiwei = "Literary Reform Committee")—his life's work—aiming for all Chinese everywhere to become literate. Such a grand ideal earned Zhang Xingjiao's deep respect.

(End of Chapter)