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Character
教
Strokes11
Radical攵 (攴)
HSK2
FrequencyVery common — generally within the top 300 most frequent characters.
教 means 'to teach' and, in its second tone-reading, 'teaching / doctrine / religion'. Learners meet it everywhere: 教室 (classroom), 教育 (education), 老師教我們中文 (the teacher teaches us Chinese), and in religion words like 宗教 and 基督教. The two Mandarin readings (jiāo for the verb, jiào for the noun) matter, and Cantonese makes the same split with gaau1 and gaau3.
Mandarinjiào · ㄐㄧㄠˋ
Cantonesegaau3 · gaau
Two readings in both languages: jiào / gaau3 for the noun sense (教育, 宗教) and for compounds generally; jiāo / gaau1 for the plain verb 'to teach' (教書, 教我). In Cantonese the verb reading gaau1 is high level, the noun reading gaau3 mid level.
爻both the crossed strokes at top left; in old forms often read as counting sticks or divination marks, and sometimes taken as a sound element (yáo)
Origin
Oracle-bone forms show a hand holding a stick (攴) beside a child (子), with a pair of crossed marks (爻) above the child. The straightforward reading is 'an adult with a rod instructing a child'; the 爻 element is usually explained as counting rods or tally marks, i.e. the lesson content, though whether it is purely semantic or also phonetic is debated. Note that the top-left of the modern form is written 耂 + 子 (as in 孝) in many fonts, which has led to the popular claim that 教 is 孝 'filial piety' plus 攵 — that is a later rationalisation of the shape, not the original structure.
Remembering it
A child (子) under crossed lesson-marks (爻), with a hand holding a stick (攵) at the right: someone is making sure the child learns. The right-hand 攵 is the giveaway that this is an 'acting on someone' character.
In Mandarin, use jiāo when it is a plain verb with an object or in 教书; use jiào in almost all compounds (教育, 教师, 教室, 宗教). Cantonese parallels this: gaau1 for 'to teach' (佢教我), gaau3 in compounds. Note 教 jiào 'religion' — 基督教 Christianity, 佛教 Buddhism, 回教 Islam (the older Chinese term; 伊斯蘭教 is now more standard). 教师 is the occupational title on forms; you address a teacher as 老师, never as 教师.
Context
The phrase 因材施教 ('teach according to the student's ability') is attributed to Confucian teaching practice and is still quoted constantly in Chinese education debate. 教 also forms 家教, which means both 'home tutoring' and 'the upbringing a family gives' — saying someone 没家教 is a sharp insult about their manners.
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