Key Concepts in Chinese Thought and Culture

KEY CONCEPTS

TERMBASES

Teaching and Learning Promote Each Other.

Teachers and students improve each other. The ancient Chinese realized that teaching is not just a matter of teachers influencing students, but a two-way process of mutual interaction. In this process, teachers and students continuously make their own progress and improvements. It embodies the view that both teachers and students can benefit from their interactions, which is quite similar to the views of modern education.

CITATION

Learning makes you find out your shortcomings, and teaching makes you find out that you still have room for improvement. When knowing your shortcomings, you can think about them and make improvements; knowing you still have room for improvement, you can work hard to close the gap. That is why we believe that teaching and learning promote each other. (The Book of Rites)

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CORRELATION

Learn
To Confucianism, learning is the way to cultivate oneself to achieve moral integrity. The usual meaning of the term is to acquire knowledge and understanding, but for Confucianism it focuses more on the cultivation of moral and ethical qualities to achieve personal growth. Through learning classics and rites, and following the practices of sages, a person is able to cultivate and improve his moral standards and thus become a person of ideal qualities. Daoists, on the other hand, are against learning, and Laozi said that “fine-sounding arguments” only cause unnecessary worries, and can disrupt a person’s natural state of mind.
Practice
Xi (习) means to develop a good command of something through frequent practices. Repeated practice is an important part of learning, which is necessary for acquiring knowledge and skills. In Confucian thinking, xi refers mostly to regular observance of ethics, rites and moral requirements. This will develop habits of speech and action required of a person of moral integrity.
Education for All Without Discrimination
Education can and must be provided for all. It eliminates the differences in social status and wealth. (Another explanation is that education should be provided to students without discrimination on the basis of social status or wealth.) Education consists of teaching of social norms, music, and moral principles. A non-discriminatory approach to education means making no distinction between students based on their social status, wealth, mental capability, moral character, geographic location, or ethnicity. Transcending differences in social status, geography, and ethnicity, education for all without discrimination is a humanistic ideal that champions equal treatment of all people and rejects all forms of discrimination.
Teaching How to Fish
This term expresses the idea that giving away a fish is not as good as teaching one how to fish. The meaning is that rather than giving something away it is better to teach the method of obtaining it so that people can get what they need through their own efforts. It implies that once an objective is established, the method of achieving it becomes most important, and that the effective way of helping and managing people in the long term is to encourage them to be self-supporting.
Instruct Only Who Is Anxious to Learn; Teach Only Who Wants to Express Himself but Does Not Know How.
One should not instruct a student until he is anxious to learn; one should not give guidance to a student until he wants to express himself but does not know how. This term is an underlying principle of Confucius’ （551-479 BC） philosophy on education. It stresses the importance of keeping students motivated. The principle of guidance of teaching in contemporary educational theory originates from this concept.

KEY CONCEPTS

Teaching and Learning Promote Each Other.

CORRELATION

Learn

Practice

Education for All Without Discrimination

Teaching How to Fish

Instruct Only Who Is Anxious to Learn; Teach Only Who Wants to Express Himself but Does Not Know How.