Schools Of The World: Mid-Cave Primary School

Schools come and go. Here’s one school that was closed down but had a unique identity because it was housed inside a cave.

Situated in a small place called Mao village in Ziyun County, China, the Dongzhong Cave had been a place of learning since 1984.

The Miao people in the Southern part of Guizhou opened Mid-Cave elementary school to cater for its children and at its peak employed 8 teachers who taught 186 students who would otherwise have no education.

This is an aircraft-hanger size natural cave carved out of the mountainside by water, wind and seismic shifts. The buildings inside don’t need a rood because they are protected by the cave.

With several rock strata on the walls, the cave school was perfect for studying geology and it had the best choir in the area because the acoustics were perfect for choir training. Teachers said that biology became much more hands on thanks to the lizards and bats that made the cave their home.

The school was actually closed in 2011 because the Chinese authorities said it didn’t represent what China was about saying “China is not a society of cavemen.”

Watch a BBC video of the school here.