On The Folk Scholars’ Teaching Works In The Song Dynasty

As the basic form of educational existence, training and instruction are the specific activities with the purpose to directly promote the valuable development of humanities. During the Song Dynasty, the phenomenon of cultural prosperity, prevalent imperial examinations, accelerating social mobility and demise of Gentry Clans brought about a unique group called the Song Dynasty folk scholars, some of which joined in the teaching business passively or actively under the push of livelihoods, or for the pursuit of the ideal education, some virtues of which also had an impact on local civilization. The study on their status of working not only helps us to re-examine the important contribution of this group for the education and social civilization in Song Dynasty, but also can broaden the researching area of history of education and teaching work in this period, as well as be beneficial to enhance the quality of teachers and provide some historical reference to educational and social equity.Downward vision is an important academic trend of present research of history of education, while the grouping of research being the important symbol of it. This dissertation actively response to the academic trend, which make use of the theory of social mobility in a tempt to organically combine the "thick description" of the Western and Chinese traditional historical narration. At the basis of human activities and historical scenes, this paper try to introduce the teaching works of a grass-roots intelligence group, called folk scholars in the Song Dynasty, in the context of broad social and cultural context, and to describe their real teaching conditions and activities in various places, such as Official schools, private schools, Academy, grass-roots society and some poor houses. In the process of introducing the educational history of Song Dynasty, a vivid picture of this group assisting the ruling class to maintain a state system and civilize people will be rendered.The part of Introduction firstly gives the reason of this research, and then defines the core concepts, furthermore makes some specific analysis and interpretation in research status, issues and ideas and theoretical methods.The first chapter analyzes the life and dream of folk scholars in the Song Dynasty, whose jobs are teachers, businessmen, farmers and doctors. In as much as some reasons, including the renaissance of teachers’ status, the increase of the social demand for education, the availability of books, the awakening of subjective consciousness and the need of local civilization, and the receiving of Shuxiu(a piece of pork as tuition). Being a teacher has become the most popular and ideal choice for folk scholars.The second chapter analyzes the teaching of folk scholars in the imperial college and local official schools. Since the third year of Qingli(1043), the Song government launched three reforms of schools, local official education being rejuvenated in these opportunities. Official schools generally available, the teachers being rare, some folk scholars, answering the call from government, took advantage of their prestige and knowledge to teach in official schools forum, which had become an important force to promote the development of official education.The third chapter discusses the activities of folk scholars in private schools. After the failure of three reforms of schools, the official education had been at the edge of extinction, and slowly turned into a vassal of scholars chasing fame and fortune. In the situation, they went to private schools, leading it to be the center of academics and the cradle of Neo-Confucianism.The fourth chapter is the main part. Being a teacher in official and private schools is the dream of all folk scholars, however, the requirement of prestigious and knowledgeable teachers only limited majority of people in the group. Therefore, a large number of them, named respectably as "village teacher", engaged in educational activities in private schools. This chapter attempts to give a true scene of revealing the daily life and teaching condition of this group in private schools, and give an objective evaluation to their contribution.The prosperity of publishing and rise of book collection in Song dynasty, drove by cultural booming and printing advances, had a profound impact on education. Against the backdrop of prosperous culture and book-worshiping society, this chapter explores the educational meaning in the movement of book collection, mainly from the description of folk scholars’.Benefited by the system of imperial examination, folk scholars had been the pivotal group in the grass roots, in which they engaged in different jobs and actively joined in the administration of their homeland. From the perspective of social cultivation, taking the typical examples of two groups of folk scholars-folk Confucian scholars and Kabuki artist-this chapter tries to sketch out the scene of they participating in the management of the country and sparing no effort to unify the ideology in grassroots to help ruling class.The part of conclusion provides a viewpoint that the brilliant achievements of education were acquired not only by the formulation and implementation of educational policy and the thought of elites, but also some humans who worked together, including the ruling clique, the upper elite and the folk scholars. The historical resultant they unified is an inexhaustible motive of the development of education in the Song Dynasty and the real reason of long-term prosperity of culture and education.