The Great Learning and Education in China
The Great Learning as we know it today is the result of multiple revisions and commentaries by a number of Confucian and Neo-Confucian scholars. The Great Learning, along with the Doctrine of the Mean had their beginnings as chapters within the Book of Rites. The Da Xue, along with the Doctrine of the Mean were removed from the Book of Rites and designated as separate, and equally significant, works by the Neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi). In the winter of 1190 C.E. Zhu Xi published the Four Masters (Ssu-tzu), a collection of the Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean, the Mencius and the Analects (Gardner, Principle and Pedagogy, 64). These four texts soon became the initial basis of study in the Chinese imperial examination system. Zhu Xi was prompted to refine the Da Xue and incorporate it into the curriculum as he felt that the previously utilized Classics were lengthy and too difficult to comprehend by the common individual to be used as an educational foundation for Confucian thought. (Gardner, Principle and Pedagogy, 64). Utilizing the much shorter and more comprehensible Four Books would allow Zhu to reach a much greater audience (Gardner, Principle and Pedagogy, 63). To aid in comprehension of the Da Xue, he spent much of his life studying the Great Learning and published a series of commentaries explaining the principle teachings of the text. The Da Xue (Ta Hsueh) itself gets its name from "tu-jen chih hsueh," referring to the education of adults. Unlike many scholars before him, Zhu Xi presents the Great Leaning as the Way of self cultivation and governance that is to be studied by all people, not only those in, or seeking, political office ( Gardner, Confucian Commentary,192).
Read more about this topic: Great Learning
Famous quotes containing the words the great, learning, education and/or china:
“You remind me of a child-friend who once wrote to tell me about her sister being married. “Now I will tell you all about Bessie’s wedding.” Then came a long account of bridesmaids, and breakfast, and everything else, except the name of the bride-groom! That of course didn’t matter: the great thing was to get married somehow.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Justice turns the scale, bringing to some learning through suffering.”
—Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.)
“Toward education marriage nervous breakdown, operation, teaching
school, and learning to be mad, in a dream—what is this
life?”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)
“Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction.... It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)