Learning in the Confucian sense differs markedly from “education” as our own schools practice it. It was values-laden and driven by practice, valuing life experience and role models over book learning. The very first line of the Analects places this ethos front and center:
“To learn and then apply what you have learned, is this not a pleasure?” (Analects 1:1)
Advanced students were exhorted: “The official, having discharged his duties, should devote his leisure to learning. The student, having completed his learning, should apply himself to becoming an official.” (Analects 13:19).
Learning is not the mere acquisition of book knowledge but a continuous cycle of study, practice, reflection, and discussion. Confucian learning is something that is done in the community, with both mentors to learn from and peers to spar with. The Analects themselves are a record of this process, with Confucius instructing and sparring with his disciples and watching as his proteges go on to achieve government positions and take on disciples of their own.
Confucius taught at a time when China was riven by civil war and when corruption and treachery were mainstays of politics. His aspiration was to create a class of upright officials—what he called 君子 junzi, “noble men,” an equivocation emphasizing nobility of character rather than social rank—who could reform government to better serve society. This ideal set the tone for his teaching, which was centered around self-cultivation, ethics, and how to create functional human relationships and sound cultures in governing institutions. Like the classical Western conception of the liberal arts that focuses on a free citizen’s civic participation, Confucian education was relationally and politically oriented. It was aimed not at self-advancement but at producing upright and confident future elites who, in improving themselves, were fit to improve society.
In Confucius’s time, these aspirations meant government service, while in modern society this may encompass a wide range of careers and professions. Whatever their line of work, Confucius did not want his students to view themselves as mere technicians or social climbers, but instead cultivate a holistic view about the social contribution of their work. He once said that “the gentleman is not a tool.” (Analects 2:12). Originally intended to warn against overspecialization, against thinking of oneself as a machine churning out deals or billable hours, this remark also rhymes with the modern slang of “tool” as a soulless social climber.
This holistic view included critically thinking about the educational and professional hierarchy itself. Confucius once cuttingly remarked:
“In a well-governed state, it’s shameful to be poor and unknown; in a poorly governed state, it’s shameful to be rich and in office.” (Analects 8:13)
Success in the hierarchy may be a means to the end of building a better society, but it is never an end in itself. There are prestigious institutions and lucrative careers that are damaging to society, such that a noble man would decline them, and moral stands for which statesmen should be ready to risk their careers. In the Confucian school, students were to carefully judge the values an institutional hierarchy promotes before entering it. In modern meritocracy, by contrast, the hierarchy only judges you.
The Confucian orientation forms a telling contrast with modern striving parents, who have a sophisticated understanding of how to get into a good school but cannot articulate why. How many parents who drive their kids to achieve for the sake of getting into a good school can articulate, concretely, what a good school is supposed to do? How many can explain how a management consultant or investment banker—careers that account for over 40 percent of Harvard graduates—ought to serve civilization?
This was an excerpt from an article by Peter Wei – The Confucian Cure For Tiger Parenting.
