CIIC:Today's featured article/January 17, 2018

From Wiki China org cn
Confucius

Confucius was the first to advocate moral education. Politically, he advocated the practice of the “rites of the Zhou Dynasty,” and in education he urged the re-adoption of the “six arts” formed in the heyday of the Western Zhou Dynasty. However, his “resumption of the Zhou rites” was by no means a simple retrogression to the Western Zhou period, but was intended as part of a reform needed by his own time. His fundamental idea of reform in education was to attain the goal of “recommending outstanding talents” by way of introducing “the best students to officialdom.” By “outstanding” and “best” he meant those who had perfected their morality, those who were truly benevolent or virtuous. Moral education was therefore given prime importance in his teaching. He devoted almost all his life to systematically editing and revising Shi (The Book of Songs), Shu (The Book of History), Li (The Book of Rites), Yue (The Book of Music), Yi (The Book of Changes), and Chun qiu (Spring and Autumn Annals), and compiling them into teaching materials known as the Six Classics. (More...)