The legendary earliest school in my country appeared during the Yu and Shun era. Its name is

The legendary earliest school in my country appeared during the Yu and Shun era, and its name was Xiang.

What is Xiang? Judging from the glyph, it means that there are sheep in the house. According to legend, this refers to the school during the Yushun period. It is also a place specially prepared by the tribe for the elderly and children so that they can raise children together. , support the elderly.

Of course, there are also some documents that believe that this is "Mi Lin", a place for storing food. Scholars in the Han Dynasty also gave some explanations about "Xiang" and "Mi Lin", thinking that "Mi Lin" is A place for "hiding and nourishing people's things", and "庠" means "nurturing people with kindness and hoping to enrich them".

From this point of view, this "庠" has a double meaning, one "庠" is a place where food is collectively stored or animals are raised; the other is a living space for the elderly and children of vulnerable groups.

Then why is it considered a "school"? We can imagine that the elderly and children live together day and night. Will they intentionally or unintentionally form a relationship between educating and being educated in their daily interactions?

The elderly have rich life experience. When they have lost the ability to work, will they tell their stories or legends to children who are not yet able to work? Therefore, "庠" actually has the nature of a "school" as an educational place.

In "July", such a scene is described, that is, the Zhou people gathered in the "gongtang" during the winter leisure, drank wine, slaughtered sheep, and drank and talked. In this regard, Chen Huan, a textual scholar of the Qing Dynasty, wrote "Shi Mao's Biography" says: "Gongtang" was the primary school in the early Zhou Dynasty, and it followed the "Yu family's system".

Taking the Jiangzhai Yangshao Cultural Site in Lintong, Shaanxi Province as an example, the layout of a matriarchal village has a square in the center, surrounded by large and small houses, with several small houses surrounding the big house. The big house is where the elderly and children live, and the other small houses are where adults and men live.

At the same time, archaeologists have also discovered the remains of such large houses in the archaeology of Neolithic cultures in various places. Many of the unearthed cultural relics are special-purpose ritual vessels. It can be seen that "庠" was a place for group gatherings. , is also a place where rituals or sacrifices are held. In fact, this is in line with the nature of schools in ancient times.

Unlike our modern schools that teach cultural knowledge, schools in ancient times were closely related to sacrificial rituals. Education historians generally believe that schools were founded during the slave society. The school was called "Piyong" in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and it was a place where a small number of slave-owning nobles studied. Ancient schools were called Xiang, Xu, Xue, Xiao, and Shu. When it first came into being, it was not always a specialized educational institution, but also a place for practicing archery and providing care for the elderly.

In the Western Han Dynasty, schools were divided into central and local schools. The central government established Imperial College, which was the highest institution of learning in the country and is equivalent to today's universities. A school palace was built in the place. During the Tang Dynasty, schooling reached its peak in ancient times, and the classification of schools became more detailed.

The historical origin of the definition of school

Since the Xia and Shang Dynasties, there have been "Xiu and Xu" (that is, schools). Mencius said: "The nurturing is nurtured, the school is taught, and the prefaced is shot." As a special social organization, as soon as the school appeared, it took it as its own responsibility to cultivate the people needed by the society, and thus the method of teaching students in accordance with their aptitude for cultivating talents emerged. In terms of educational methods, history has given schools a higher status.

For more than 2,000 years, Jixia Academy in Qi State triggered the contention of a hundred schools of thought. Confucius opened an apricot altar in the corridor of Dacheng Hall to teach sages in the six arts. The six academies in the Song Dynasty were responsible for selecting talents.

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, sages such as He Ziyuan and Qiu Fengjia, the founders of the Revolution of 1911, successfully founded new schools. Huang Zongxi proposed that "it is the school that exposes what is wrong". He believed that schools not only have the function of cultivating talents and improving social customs, but also Moreover, the ability to discuss national political affairs should also be discussed.

When the people’s educator Tao Xingzhi’s theory of life education was put into practice at Nanjing Xiaozhuang School, he also proposed that “everything in the school should be extended to nature”... Until today’s modern schools, cultivating people with this The nature has not changed, because this is what a school should be; but the connotation of "cultivating talents" is richer and more in line with people's personality development, national needs and social progress, and it also makes the school more life and vitality .