训蒙大意示教读刘伯颂等

The teachers of old taught human relations. When the later habits of recital and fine writing arose, the teaching of the former kings perished. In teaching children today, the one business must be filial piety, brotherly respect, loyalty, good faith, propriety, rightness, integrity and shame; and for the way of cultivating them, it is fit to draw them into singing the poems to stir their aspiration, lead them to practice ritual to give their bearing gravity, and prompt them to read to open their awareness. People today often call poetry and ritual practice irrelevant to the times — the shallow views of a degenerate age; how could they know the intent of the ancients in founding education?

Broadly, a child's nature delights in play and dreads restraint, like plants just sprouted: let them open freely and the branches run; bruise and twist them and they wilt. In teaching children one must set them forward with zest, hearts glad — then their progress cannot stop: like seasonable rain and spring wind upon the plants, all bud and surge, growing day by day, transforming month by month; strip them with frost and ice, and the life pines, daily withering.

Thus drawing them to sing the poems is not only to stir aspiration: it lets their whooping and shouting drain away into song, their pent gloom flow out in cadence. Leading them to practice ritual is not only to grave the bearing: the wheeling and bowing stirs their blood, the kneeling and rising binds their sinews. Prompting them to read is not only to open awareness: brooding and turning it over preserves the mind; chanting with rise and fall vents the will. All this guides the will along its grain, tunes the temperament, silently melts the meanness, quietly transforms the roughness, till they near propriety and rightness without feeling the hardship and enter measure and harmony without knowing why — the former kings' deep intent in founding teaching.

But the schoolmasters of recent times drill only parsing and copybooks, demanding discipline without leading by ritual, seeking cleverness without nourishing with goodness — flogging and binding as if guarding convicts. The child sees the school as a prison and will not enter, the master as an enemy and will not face him; dodging and covering to snatch his play, scheming and lying to indulge his wildness — thin, mean, base, daily sinking lower. This is driving them into evil yet hoping for good — how could it come?

All that I teach is meant just for this. Fearing the age will not see it and call it impractical — and I too am soon to leave — I charge you earnestly. You teachers must take my meaning to heart, holding it as the rule forever, never letting the talk of the day alter or scrap these guidelines; so may the work of 'nourishing uprightness in the young' be achieved. Remember it well!