教 (jiào): to teach; to instruct

Meanings

1 to teach; to instruct
2 a religion; a faith
3 to cause; to tell (someone to do something)

Characters

教

jiào

to teach; to instruct

Examples

HSK 2

他是一位中学教师。

Tā shì yī wèi zhōngxué jiàoshī.

He is a middle school teacher.

HSK 4

这件事给了我一个深刻的教训。

Zhè jiàn shì gěi le wǒ yī gè shēnkè de jiàoxun.

This incident gave me a profound lesson.

HSK 6

佛教和道教都是中国的宗教。

Fójiào hé Dàojiào dōu shì Zhōngguó de zōngjiào.

Buddhism and Taoism are both religions of China.

Tips

usage

The jiào reading is the bound morpheme inside most fixed compounds: 教育 (education), 教师 (teacher), 教室 (classroom), 教训 (lesson). It also carries the "religion" sense - 宗教, 佛教, 基督教 - and the causative "to cause / to tell sb to do sth" sense found in classical and song-lyric usage (敢教日月换新天).

memory

Heuristic: if 教 is the live verb taking an object ("teach Chinese", "teach class"), use jiāo. If it sits inside a noun compound or names a religion, use jiào. Exceptions are few - 教书 and 教学 (when meaning "to teach as a profession") keep jiāo because the verb sense dominates.

Components

radical

攵 pū

tap; strike (radical form)

Right strike radical - hand holding a stick. The disciplinary image fits the jiào reading especially well: 教训 (a lesson, often a harsh one), 管教 (to discipline), 教导 (to instruct and guide). Same radical anchors other authority verbs: 改, 政, 敬.

semantic

孝 xiào

filial piety

Left component - elder above child, the filial-piety image. For the jiào reading, this side anchors the abstract / institutional sense: values transmitted from one generation to the next become the basis of 教育 (education), 教化 (moral cultivation), and 宗教 (religion - literally "ancestral teaching").