Manual labor an important form of education

Xinhua

"Look, the green onions have grown a bit taller," I called to my wife on a sunny morning about two weeks ago.

"Are you kidding?" she replied demurely from a distance. "You only planted the seeds yesterday. How could it be so fast?"

"Come and look," I waved at her in earnest, my eyes riveted on a small plastic pot filled with soil in which I had planted the roots of a few green onions the day before.

After a closer look at the greenish sprouts bursting out of the soil, she murmured, as if to herself: "They have indeed inched up!"

The next morning, I got up early and tiptoed toward the pot on our balcony so as not to awaken my wife. The green onions had grown even taller. About a week later, I "harvested" the first batch of green onions – the first time I had ever grown green onions by myself.

Inspired by the unexpected success, I grew a second pot of green onions as well as some garlic sprouts. They've been growing well, and I have reaped several harvests already.

I learned to grow these edible plants – usually cheap and abundant in normal times – during Shanghai's lockdown, designed to contain the spread of COVID-19. Purchasing vegetables has become rather inconvenient due to stay-at-home restrictions. Many of my friends have had to make do without certain vegetables, including garlic sprouts and green onions, which are popular ingredients to spice up a variety of dishes.

During our lockdown that began on April 1, my wife has only been able to buy a small batch of green onions, as supply capacity to make deliveries is limited. I proposed we preserve the roots of these "rare" gems so we could later grow more green onions on our own. Because we stored plenty of garlic, we decided to test our luck and see if we could grow garlic sprouts as well.

The pleasant surprise from my "pot experiments" was equal to my wife's earlier attempts to grow bean sprouts. She once placed mung beans in a used milk box, and in less than a week sprouts flourished thanks to her meticulous care. She picked up the skill from a video shared by one of our neighbors.

"Maggie, could you give me a used milk box?" another neighbor asked my wife on Friday. "I also want to grow bean sprouts." Luckily we had just finished a box of milk, so we gave him the used box the next day.

Many people who are confined to their homes during lockdown have learned to grow vegetables or cook better than before.

All this boils down to a simple pleasure from constant physical work, and not just for adults. Over the past six weeks, many primary and middle school students in Shanghai have helped their parents prepare vegetables and cook for their families.

Xinhua

When I was their age, I primarily studied textbooks both in class and at home; rarely did I help out with chores around the house. My mother, then a practicing physician, washed all our clothes and cooked dinner when she came home from work.

I did "some" manual labor, such as sweeping the playground at school with a big bamboo broom and cleaning windows at home with worn-out pieces of cloth. I remember how happy I was when my middle school teacher praised me for using my hands to dig out leaves and twigs that had fallen from trees. That was 40 years ago, when I was tasked with cleaning a tree-covered playground outside our classroom.

In retrospect, it's unfortunate that physical work, despite the profound sense of pleasure it can produce, generally played a lesser role in my early education than my studies.

If manual labor, especially agriculture-related, had been an independent course like math during my adolescence, I would have learned early on how being connected to nature refreshes one's body and soul in a different way than purely intellectual exercises.

Labor is lofty

Young people today are luckier. Washing vegetables and cooking are now required tasks during lockdown – tasks that make the word "homework" more meaningful.

The city's education authority even launched a weeklong campaign this month to guide students through their home tasks. The campaign's goal, according to a Wenhui Daily story on May 10, is to promote the idea that "labor is lofty."

The campaign preludes a new national policy that takes effect this autumn. The Ministry of Education recently announced that starting this fall semester, manual labor will be an independent subject in the country's primary and middle school curriculum – a milestone in China's history of compulsory education.

The new policy stipulates that a course on manual labor will consist of three categories: daily work like cooking and repairing home appliances; agricultural and manufacturing labor like growing vegetables and making handicrafts; and services like volunteering for the public good and engaging in business services.

Of all the physical skills that will be taught, those related to agriculture, cooking and handicrafts are among the few students will learn throughout their nine years of compulsory education. In particular, learning agriculture-related skills will help students understand the merits of traditional Chinese gengdu culture, which combines farming and reading (geng means farming and du means reading).

"Gengdu is wholesome education that refreshes both the body and the soul," said Zhang Xiaode, director of the Research Center for Chinese Rural Civilization and a senior professor at the National School of Administration.

"It's a pity that some of us believe we no longer need gengdu education, because technology and urbanization are sufficient sources of modern progress and prosperity. But farming, which enables one to work between heaven and Earth, can reward one with immense pleasure. As people cultivate the land, they are having direct dialogue with nature that can hardly be possible if they stay behind closed doors in offices and factories."

Xinhua

Root of wisdom

Cheng Minsheng, a professor of history and culture at Henan University, said there were many farmer-scholars during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) who compiled classical treaties on agriculture based on their lifelong experiences on farms. In other words, agricultural work provided these scholars with new ideas about farming.

For example, Chen Fu (1076-1156), a renowned farmer-scientist, read extensively and worked hard in the fields, growing medicinal plants and many other things. His "Book on Agriculture," which crystalizes his farming experiences, is one of China's most influential classics on agriculture.

A rural life is not only crucial to farmer-scientists, but also inspires and nurtures philosophers.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, once called the countryside "the root of philosophy." In 1934, he wrote an article in which he defined his philosophical work as "intimately rooted in and related to the life of peasants."

He described the beauty of his "work world" in a mountain valley: "The gravity of the mountains and hardness of their primeval rock; the slow and deliberate growth of fir trees; the brilliant, simple splendor of meadows in bloom; the rush of a mountain brook on a long autumn night; the stern simplicity of the flatlands ... On a cold winter's night when a wild, pounding snowstorm rages around a cabin and covers everything, that is the perfect time for philosophy. Then its questions must become simple and essential."

Michael Inwood, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Oxford University, said: "For Heidegger, it was important to appreciate the up-down, right-left, here-there everyday space in which German peasants measured time and distance through pipefuls smoked on a journey."

Duan Elgin, an award-winning writer, said in his bestselling book "The Living Universe" that when he was young, farm life brought him "the gift of deep silence in a setting where subtle ecstasies would regularly blossom."

"I recall lying down in a field of lettuce, nearly covered by its abundant leaves and absorbing the humming aliveness of the Earth, the fields and the sky above me," Elgin said. "In my early twenties, I moved to the city, where I felt a deep separation from the familiar aliveness of my farming days."

When I look at the soil in two small plastic pots on my balcony, I no longer treat it as dirt like I would in the past. As I water the soil with my hands, I feel it's alive.

What Heidegger and Elgin have in common is their realization that an inspiring farming experience helps one to learn and live better. Both are also aware of the dangers of modern people's alienation from the humming aliveness of the Earth due to a tilted pursuit of technology and urbanization. Such an undesirable pursuit is typical under some prevailing Western models of progress.