They are called “laoshi” – literally “master” – but the word actually means “teacher”.
To be a teacher in China is a contradiction in terms of status. Teachers are badly paid. Many tutor students privately to offset their meagre earnings in the day job. Yet their status in society is lofty; their word is lore.
This applies to parents equally as much as to students; it is a status handed from one generation to another, a never-questioned baton.
In a way, that is part of their problem in China and it is why I was invited to go there in the first place.
China’s leaders in education are eager to learn from Britain. You might have heard on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show (October 14) that education is the single largest growth area in commercial business with Britain. Yet George Osborne and Boris Johnson did not mention it once while they were out there on their recent trade mission!
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