Empress Deng (81-121 CE), who had the personal name of Sui, was the granddaughter of the Grand Tutor Deng Yu. Her father, Shun, was governor of the protectorate over the Qiang people; her mother, Yin Shi, was the daughter of a younger cousin of Empress Guanglie. When the Empress Deng was five years old, her paternal grandmother, being fond of her, cut the child's hair. The grandmother was old, and because of poor eyesight she wounded the forehead of the empress, who suffered the pain without a word. Those near her seeing this wondered at it and questioned her. The empress answered, "It is not that it did not hurt. Grandmother loves to cut my hair. As it is hard to wound an old person's feelings, so I bore the pain." At six years of age the empress was able to read the Historical Reader; at twelve she recited the Book of Poetry and the Confucian Analects. Whenever her elder brothers studied the classics or history, she would interrupt by asking difficult questions. Her interest was in ancient books and records, and she never paid any attention to home duties. Her mother often scolded her, saying, "You do not learn needle-work with which you may make garments; instead you set your heart on studies, don't you? Are you hoping to win a post at the Imperial Academy?” The empress repeatedly disobeyed her mother, performing women's tasks during the day but studying the classics at night. Her family gave her the nickname, "The Student," while her father marveled at her and consulted her in all things.

In the fourth year of the Yungyuan period, (92 CE), she should have entered the group to be admitted to the women's apartments of the palace, but her father died. Day and night the empress wept bitterly; for three years she would not take any salt in her food. Her deep grief destroyed her looks; her relatives did not recognize her. During this time she dreamt of touching the heavens, vast and clear, as if in the form of a stalactite, and lifting her head, she drank from it. When she inquired of an interpreter of dreams, he said that the sage-king Yao dreamt of grasping and ascending the heavens. The dynastic-founder Tang dreamt that he reached up to heaven and licked it. These are all signs of Sage Kings, whose auspicious omens are beyond description. A physiognomist upon seeing the future empress was startled and said, "Here is the likeness of the founder Tang."1 Her family privately rejoiced, but did not dare to spread these prognostications abroad. The empress' uncle, her father's younger brother Gai, said, "It is often heard that he who saves the lives of a thousand persons shall have descendants honored with ranks of nobility, and my elder brother Shun (the empress' father) is such a recipient because in his commission to repair Shiqiu River he saved in a year the lives of several thousand persons. The way of Heaven may be trusted; it is certain that his family will be rewarded with blessings! In former days the Grand Tutor Yu once remarked, 'I, a leader of a million troops, never once killed a single man uselessly.' Among his descendants there must be one who will be ennobled."

In 95 CE the future empress again was chosen, together with others, to enter the palace. She was five feet and five inches tall, beautiful in manner and figure, so entirely different from ordinary young women that all those around her were startled. In 96 CE, in the winter, at the age of sixteen she was made an honorable lady of the court. She was reverent, solemn and cautious. Her manner was measured and correct. She served Empress Yin deferentially, at all times terrified and trembling. In dealing with those of her own rank, she invariably deferred to others. She was kind, generous, and polite even to the palace attendants, servants, and slaves. The emperor delighted in her greatly.

Unauthorizedly to kill a child is punishable by tattooing and being made a wall builder or a grain-pounder. When a child is newly born and its body is deformed or not whole, to kill it is not to be considered a crime. If when a child is born and the child's body is whole and not deformed--merely for the reason that one has too many children and does not wish that it should live, and consequently not to lift it up but to kill it, how is this to be sentenced? This is (a case of) killing a child.

Mencius' mother lived near a cemetery when Mencius was small and he enjoyed going out to play as if he were working among the graves. Mencius enthusiastically made tombs and performed burials. His mother said, "This is no place to raise my son!" So they moved and dwelt next to the city market. But when her son began amusing himself by pretending to be a merchant, Mencius' mother once again said, "This is no place to raise my son." 1 Once again they moved, settling this time, beside a school. Here, the boy played at arranging sacrificial vessels and the rituals of bowing, yielding, entering and withdrawing. Mencius's mother said, "Here indeed is a place to raise my son." And that is where they stayed. When Mencius grew up he studied the Six Arts. 2 In the end he became a famous scholar. The gentleman says, "Mencius' mother understood enculturation by immersion." 3. . . .

When Mencius was young, after finishing his studies he returned home. At that moment, Mencius' mother was weaving. She asked him, saying, "How far did you get in your studies today?" Mencius replied, "About the same as usual." Mencius' mother then took up her knife and cut the cloth she was weaving. Mencius became alarmed and asked her to explain her actions. She said, "Your neglecting your studies is like my cutting the cloth I wove. Now a gentleman studies in order to establish his reputation, he asks questions to broaden his knowledge. This is the means by which he obtains peace and happiness at home and avoids harm when he goes abroad. If now, you neglect your studies, you will be unable to avoid a life of menial service and will lack the means to distance yourself from trouble and strife. How is it different from weaving and spinning to make a living? If midway I give up and abandon my weaving, how would I be able to clothe my husband and child and go for long without grain to eat? If a woman who abandons her livelihood and a man who neglects cultivating his virtue do not become burglars or thieves, then they will end their days as slaves." Mencius was frightened by his mother's words. Day and night he studied tirelessly. He then studied with the great master Zisi until he became one of the leading scholars of his generation. 4

1. Hsiung, Ping-chen. A Tender Voyage: Children and Childhood in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005, 103-27.
   This reading helps contextualize Primary Source No. 6 (early education). Since my module focuses on early China, Hsiung's book is an excellent introduction to the history of childhood in mid- and late imperial China
2. Kinney, Anne. Representations of Childhood and Youth in Early China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, 53-96.
   This reading provides further discussion of the parents' right of life and death over their offspring and may be used to supplement primary Source No. 3. The entire book also provides copious materials to contextualize all of the primary sources in this module.
3. Waltner, Ann. “Infanticide and Dowry in Ming and Early Qing China.” In Chinese Views of Childhood, edited by Anne Kinney, 193-218. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995.
   While this book is useful for providing background for this module, Waltner's article that discusses the link between the practice of female infanticide and girls' prospects for marriage can help contextualize Primary Source no. 3 (infanticide) as well as Primary Source No. 4 (A Girl prodigy).
4. Waltner, Ann. “Representations of Children in Three Stories from Biographies of Exemplary Women.” In Children in Chinese Art, edited by Ann Barrott Wicks, 84-107. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 2002.
   This article, one of many useful resources in the book in which it appears, discusses several different depictions of the story relayed in Primary Source no. 1—the childhood of the philosopher Mencius (Mengzi)—and the cultural connotations of each individual representation. An additional illustration of this story appears in Hsiung's book (cited above), on p. 138.

by Jessica Hodgson
(Suggested writing time: 50 minutes)

Using the images and texts in the documents provided, write a well organized essay of at least five paragraphs in response to the following prompt:

• Evaluate the purpose and role of education for children in Ancient China.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following institutions for primary sources:

• E.J. Brill,
• Penguin Books,
• Shandong Cultural Relics and Archeology Institute,
• Stanford University Press,
• University Books,
• University of Hawaii Press,
• University of Virginia,
• Shandong Provincial Museum,
• Wenwu chubanshe, and
• Zhonghua shuju.

About the Author

Anne Kinney is a Professor of Chinese at the University of Virginia. Among her recent publications are Representations of Childhood and Youth in Early China and The Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China. She is currently at work on an annotated translation of Lienüzhuan (Traditions of Exemplary Women) and a digital research collection for the study of women in early China.

About the Lesson Plan Author

Jessica Hodgson teaches Advanced Placement World History and World History and Geography at South County Secondary School in Fairfax County, VA. She has traveled to China as part of a Fulbright-Hays seminar, is a National Writing Project alumnus and has studied the life, music and history of J. S. Bach through a National Endowment for the Humanities summer institute. When she is not teaching, she plays the cello with an amateur string quartet.

The unprecedented interest in the child who assumed unique importance in the Han period was set into motion by a convergence of historically-specific conditions: (1) the establishment in the Qin dynasty (221-207 BCE) and the further development in Han times (206 BCE-220 CE) of a merit-based civil service, which increased the educational and occupational opportunities of boys moving up the social ladder; (2) and the frequency with which children came to the throne unprepared to govern; (3) the attempt to further the Confucian project by advising women about various methods of child-rearing and instruction for young children; (4) the effort to educate girls about their proper roles in society because of an increasing anxiety over the influence of women in political events; (5) the growing influence of Han Confucianism, which stressed early education and argued for the establishment of a large-scale public school system; (6) the new centrality of correlative and occult thought which linked the child to cosmic processes and by extension to all of the major disciplines of intellectual inquiry; (7) the formation of a textual canon, which defined cultural mastery and established a clear standard by which to measure achievement; (8) the emergence of biographical writing which took into account significant events of childhood. What follows is an elaboration on the factors and forces that led to the emergence of the child as a topic of significant cultural attention.

What contributed to the rising recognition of children's important in Han society was the consolidation of a unified empire that depended in part on a meritocratic system of advancement for its civil and military officials. The large-scale and complex activities and agenda of the centralized state required the ruler to take stock of, utilize, and develop the potential of his human resources to the fullest. Thus, in Qin times, we see the new imperial government registering, taxing, and demanding labor and military service from each household in the empire according to the age and gender of its family members. We also see the enactment of laws punishing infanticide, infant abandonment, and filicide in this period in order to husband state resources. But when the energetic and visionary First Emperor of Qin died in 209 BCE his son proved unequal to the task of imperial rule, and the Qin fell four years later.

When the first Han emperor, Liu Bang, emerged victorious in the wars that followed Qin's collapse, the Han faced the same tasks of training and installing a bureaucracy, but with the additional responsibility of inquiring into the reasons behind Qin's downfall and rectifying its errors. To that end, an increasing number of intellectuals urged Han rulers to take care in the education of heirs to throne, to ensure that when these boys replaced them they would govern wisely and maintain the health and continuity of the dynasty. They advised women about various methods of child-rearing and instruction for young children, and the sooner the better, because they saw early childhood training as crucial to the development of an accomplished adult. They also called for the establishment of a public school system to prepare boys for the civil service. The recent and precipitous demise of Qin and the fragility of the Han empire in the opening years of the dynasty provided a vivid reminder of what was at stake and gradually worked to train both imperial and intellectual attention on childhood as a means of stabilizing and fortifying imperial rule.

In contrast to the diverse and plentiful materials on boys in Han sources, we see little intellectual engagement with issues specifically concerned with girls. In Han times, women played a fairly small role in both the civil service and the military. Consequently the education of girls did not attract nearly the same level of attention as that devoted to the intellectual development of boys. A poignant example is the story of how, when the Empress Deng was a small child, her mother scolded her for attending more closely to classical learning than to needlework and asked her if she thought she was preparing for a post at the Imperial Academy as Erudite. Nevertheless, from the about 74 BCE onward, increased anxiety over the influence of women in political events and the threat they posed to dynastic stability resulted in efforts to educate girls about their proper roles in society, using as models for emulation the lives of exemplary women from antiquity. While it is impossible to say how many girls and young women outside of court or literati circles received this sort of training, we do know that the goal of female education differed from that for boys. Girls were not instructed to further their own ambitions but for the sake of the moral, intellectual and professional development of their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons. Still, toward the end of the Former Han, as ambitious men of the gentry were increasingly appraised for their Confucian morals, their womenfolk also came under closer scrutiny. At the same time, drawing on both imperial Qin and Han Confucian models, the government made sporadic efforts to reach out to all of its subjects in an attempt to bind them more closely to the ruling house. This endeavor included not just women and girls of the court and the gentry, but a broader base of female subjects, who were recognized by way of special grants and awards for values such as chastity and obedience.

Confucian education, with its reverence for institutions that privileged elders, ancestors, and worthies of antiquity, promoted the study of classical texts and moral exemplars of ages past so as to gradually shape the child according to canonical molds. Thinkers associated with Daoist thought, on the other hand, traced the infant's life back to a cosmogonic process, linking it to the workings and laws of nature rather than to the power of ancestors and human artifice.

The theme of the precocious child, linked as it was to the struggles of worthy and often obscure figures in the establishment of a divinely sanctioned order, is another reflection of the sensibilities of the Qin and Han empires. They replaced, in varying degrees, aristocratic entitlement with a system of ranks based on merit. The merit system sought not only adult males but also young boys, who were groomed at increasingly earlier ages for bureaucratic positions and who were recommended in response to occasional imperial edicts that sought youths with extraordinary gifts and great promise. Biographical writings of the Han reveal a similar new fascination with the intellectual capacities of young children.

In conclusion, the dynamic convergence of a variety of historical conditions led children to became important topics of intellectual engagement and the significant subjects during Han times. And we can single out the creation of a unified empire as the most momentous and profound impetus for the unprecedented focus on children in early China.

The key themes in this module are (1) nature vs nurture (e.g., wisdom and virtue as inborn vs life-long cultivation of learning and virtue); (2) separating the sexes and gender differentiation: the "inner" (private/domestic) realm of women vs the "outer" (public/official) realm of men; (3) the low status of the child in a gerontocratic culture vs the child as an embodiment of cosmic process and heavenly order; and (4) the child's low status in the family vs the child as valued property of the state.

1. Compare the biographies of Mencius and Empress Deng (Primary Sources 1 & 4).

The fascination with precocity in the Later Han dynasty seems linked to developments in the civil service system and the testing of candidates for various posts, a system not that alien to our own civil service exams or SAT and GRE testing. As the Later Han bureaucracy became more entrenched along with abuses of the system, precocity came to stand for basic administrative promise and also for the possibility of stemming the tide of corruption. One of the general standards of moral behavior against which a candidate was measured was the requirement of incorruptibility. The virtue of incorruptibility in an official implied that he would remain pure in the company of less scrupulous individuals and in spite of temptations to abuse the power granted to him. Although the connection between incorruptibility and precocity is not immediately obvious, a statement of Confucius makes it clear in what sense early moral discretion may have vouched for an individual's integrity.

Confucius said that the highest form of wisdom is seen in those who are born wise. Furthermore, according to the Analects, only those possessed of extreme goodness cannot be changed. To claim that a child was born wise, and therefore good, was subtly to suggest that he was at the same time incorruptible, because a child born with a superior natural endowment could not be changed and thus tainted by even the most impure environment. Thus, the manifestation of moral traits in an infant or small child may have served as evidence of his inborn goodness, and by extension, as an indication of his imperviousness to corruption--a highly attractive prospect for those seeking honest officials for employment.

Finally, far from illustrating a belief in the importance of birth over merit, the motif of the child born wise is associated with the struggles of worthy and often obscure or socially challenged figures in the establishment of a divinely sanctioned or at least superior order. The biography of Empress Deng, in this way suggests that although she is a mere women and lacking in aristocratic credentials, the merit of her family has gained Heaven's favor, but only because she is seen as a fitting person to lead the world into a new and higher order. When such a hero or heroine rises from obscure or humble beginnings to a key historical role, he empirically 'proves' that the world is ultimately governed by virtue after all, despite all evidence to the contrary.

On the other hand, Han Confucian thinkers charted a child's intellectual and moral progress along a gentle upward curve that began its ascent at conception. By the time of early adulthood, the moral and intellectual abilities were considered complete, but only in the sense that the child was now a fully functioning adult. From this state of readiness, the mature cultivation of virtue could begin and was supposed to continue throughout the course of a lifetime. Like schematizations of the child's moral progress, Confucian attempts to chart the child's biological development also stress the incomplete nature of the infant and the body's gradual evolution into fully human form. This tendency stands in sharp contrast to the propensity to focus on well-developed capacities in young children.

In summary, then, early Han Confucian descriptions of a child's intellectual, moral and biological development are generally based on the notion that a virtuous adult is the culmination, and perhaps, the triumph, of a long, gradual process which begins at conception. While ignoring childhood as a valuable stage of human development per se, the emphasis placed upon the undeveloped nature of the infant and the child also represents a bold challenge to the notion that privilege is a matter of birth alone.

While the emphasis on merit accumulated over the course of a lifetime rather than privilege based on birth that may have originally served to warn young power-holders about the dangers of complacency, it also paved the way for poor but determined boys to rise to positions of national importance. It is historically documented, for example, that a boy named Ni Kuan (fl. 120 BCE), for example, who hired himself out as a manual laborer to pay for his education, and who "carried a copy of the classics with him as he hoed," eventually rose to the status of imperial counselor. Thus, according to Former Han Confucian thought, a boy's future social worth depended not upon pedigree alone but on the gradual accumulation of virtue and learning as well. And though family wealth must have frequently determined a boy's access to education, the path to privilege, at least in theory, was open to all boys who could match Ni Kuan's perseverance.

2. Compare gender roles as described in Source 4 (Empress Deng bio) and Source 6 (Early Education).

These two readings illustrate how we should question:

• the extent to which people in real life adhered to the dictates of prescriptive texts, and
• how writers in early China justified women whose behavior was not in keeping with traditional gender roles.

One of the key elements in the biography of Empress Deng seems to be the merit and virtue of her male kin and the empresses' seeming and seemly lack of ambition. She turns down her first opportunity to enter the court in order to mourn the death of her father, demonstrating her prioritizing filial piety over thirst for power.

Lesson Plan: Ancient China

by Jessica Hodgson

Time Estimated: three 50-minute classes

Prior Knowledge
Students will need to have an understanding of Confucian values in order to complete this lesson.

Objectives

1. Analyze the role that education and Confucian values play in childhood in Ancient China.
2. Compare the educational opportunities available to girls and boys in Ancient China.
3. Analyze how these differences demonstrate Confucian values.

Day One

Warm Up: The American Education System
Students will think about and answer some questions about their education. They will then share those answers out with the class.

Brainstorm
Students will brainstorm a list of Confucian ideals as a class.

Document Analysis
Divide the students into pairs and assign each pair one of the documents to read. They should complete the document analysis sheet. Using what they have learned from their document, they should identify specific quotes from the documents that demonstrate how education reflects Confucian values. They will then share what they have learned from the document with the rest of the class. Other students will record the responses on additional document analysis sheets.

Day Two

Poster Activity
Using the documents, students will work in groups of 3 to create posters. Divide the groups and randomly assign the students a topic for their poster (either a poster that is an advertisement for a girls' school in Ancient China or a poster that is an advertisement for a boys' school in Ancient China)

The posters should meet the following criteria:

• The title/name of the school
• A slogan that would make someone want to go to the school
• At least two neat and colorful illustrations that show what kinds of lessons someone would be taught in the school

Students will share their posters with the class

Homework
For homework, students will prepare for a Socratic Seminar.

Day Three: Socratic Seminar

Students will participate in a Socratic Seminar in which they will discuss the following questions:

• What seems to be the purpose of the American education system? How do you know? (Give examples)
• What seems to be the purpose of the Ancient Chinese education system? How do you know? (Give examples)
• Why are educational systems necessary?
• How do governments use educational systems to further their goals for the country?

Directions for a Socratic Seminar

• Understand the question(s) for the seminar.
• Read the source(s).
• Take notes from the sources to help you answer the question(s).
• Comment about one of the following (5 pts.)
  
  1. information in the sources
  2. validity of evidence used by the author(s)
  3. the strength of the argument (thesis)
  4. to respond to a question asked by someone else
  5. to respond to a comment made by someone else
• Ask a question about one of the following (5 pts.)
  
  1. information in the sources, e.g., vocabulary
  2. validity of evidence used by the author(s)
  3. the strength of the argument (thesis)
  4. to respond to a question asked by someone else
  5. to respond to a comment made by someone else

Maximum of 10 points per student.

If the aim of regular education is to make known the proper relations between man and man, to make the Japanese people understand their proper role, and to raise the quality and the welfare of Society and Nation, every person who lives in this in this country must receive a regular education. The country has the responsibility for achieving this end; but it is also the responsibility of each individual to dedicate himself completely, and every city, town, and village must–as they have been ordered–provide school facilities out of public funds, supervise all people involved, and see to it that children attend school.

The materials for regular education are provided by our national spirit, customs, prosperity, and strength, and all those who desire the strengthening of the eternal foundation of the nation must be careful to understand correctly our hundred-year national plan.

In the elementary schools, the first objective–namely the spirit of reverence for the Emperor and patriotism–will be achieved through cultivating morality and practicing the way of Humanity. Children must be encouraged in practical work, disciplined in simplicity, and developed into good and loyal subjects.

The body is the source of the hundred things that have to be done [the root of everything]; therefore physical education and development must be cultivated during youth with due regard for the pupils' maturity and strength, and the schools must be particularly careful in this.

The elementary school morals course must be based on the Imperial Rescript on Education. It is also expected that it will be based on Japan's distinctive way and on full knowledge of the rest of the world, and that it will endeavor to put these into practice and will never outrage public morality.

Reading, writing, composition, and arithmetic in the elementary schools will strive to use morals, Japanese geography, Japanese history, and the needs of daily life as the source materials and will be taught by well-prepared methods.

All these subjects require the selection of good suitable textbooks. It is especially important that many teachers pool their thoughts in selecting the morals text or else the objective will not be achieved.

Since educational and economic considerations are of extreme importance, the editing and selection of textbooks require very profound study.

Educational errors bring about harm–they may cause children to hate their family's occupation, despise their parents, acquire an appetite for luxury, seek to escape, and avoid work. Moreover, even poor people must attend school during their best years and if they fail to husband their resources and waste their time, they stir up unhappiness not only for themselves and their families but bring harm to the country as well. Therefore we must be careful that education not bring harmful effects, that girls, for example, do not lose their chastity and feminine ways (literally, beautiful manners), that children do not grow up incapable of doing proper work, or deficient in the ability to look after their households.

Since teachers are the heart of education, we must be very careful in selecting elementary school teachers, we must give them generous treatment, make them feel secure in their jobs, and encourage them to develop their sincerity (literally, devote themselves to the ways of sincerity).

Of the 60,000-odd elementary school teachers at the present time less than one-half are properly qualified. Therefore in order to secure better results, we must concern ourselves to improve their qualifications by achievement tests and we must reduce the number of older people, rich though they may be in experience, and increase the number of younger people. We must revise the qualifications law, amend the appointments law, make the best use of the experience of older teachers, and increase the number of good, regular teachers.

Rather than provide perfect facilities for a limited number of children, our policy must be to provide compulsory education for the largest number. . . . At the present time less than one-half of the school-age children are attending school. Most of the remainder are from poor families, and it is our urgent task to find ways to make them come to school. . . .

If our aim is, as it has been from the start, to have all children, rich or poor, in school, facilities must be improved as quickly as the national economic condition and the economic situation of the people permit. . . .

Ordinary administration of local school affairs should, as much as possible, be left to the local authorities. However, matters requiring special consideration, such as educational objectives, methods, teaching regulations, textbooks, teachers, and pupils, are fully under the guidance of the Ministry of Education. . . .

Know ye, Our Subjects:

Our Imperial Ancestors have founded Our Empire on a basis broad and everlasting, and have deeply and firmly implanted virtue; Our subjects ever united in loyalty and filial piety have from generation to generation illustrated the beauty thereof. This is the glory of the fundamental character of Our Empire, and herein also lies the source of Our education. Ye, Our subjects, be filial to your parents, affectionate to your brothers and sisters; as husbands and wives be harmonious, as friends true; bear yourselves in modesty and moderation; extend your benevolence to all; pursue learning and cultivate arts, and thereby develop intellectual faculties and perfect moral powers; furthermore, advance public good and promote common interests; always respect the Constitution and observe the laws; should emergency arise, offer yourselves courageously to the State; and thus guard and maintain the prosperity of Our Imperial state; and tus guard and maintain the prosperity of Our Imperial Throne coeval with heaven and earth. So shall ye not only be Our good and faithful subjects, but render illustrious the best traditions of your forefathers.

The way here set forth is indeed the teaching bequeathed by Our Imperial Ancestors, to be observed alike by Their Descendants and the subjects, infallible for all ages and true in all places. It is Our wish to lay it to heart in all reverence, in common with you, Our subjects, that we may all attain to the same virtue.

October 30, 1890

Our children will surely become ill and die if we fail to give attention to their care during childhood. Moreover, if we do not educate them thoughtfully, they will invariably grow up so bigoted and stupid that they will be unable to compete even among barbarians. These are truisms most easy to understand. When it comes to caring for children, there is a natural instinct among parents, regardless of wealth and sophistication, to feel that they must earnestly protect their young. Is it not really strange and regrettable, however, that they are not a few who without reflection ignore the factor of education?

From infancy until they are six or seven, children's minds are clean and without the slightest blemish while their characters are as pure and unadulterated as a perfect pearl. Since what then touches their eyes and ears, whether good or bad, makes a deep impression that will not be wiped out until death, this age provides the best opportunity for disciplining their natures and training them in deportment. They will become learned and virtuous if the training methods are appropriate, stupid and bigoted if the methods are bad. Just as a young tree once bent at planting cannot be straightened when it grows up, what deeply penetrates children's minds during this sensitive and keen period cannot be changed after they grow up, even though one may desire to do so. How can we avoid giving attention to this age that is the dividing point at which it is determined whether an individual throughout his life will be wise or stupid, good or bad?

The countries of Europe and American have naturally left nothing undone in establishing schools everywhere and developing every method for the education of their children. With the advance of modern culture, however, the theory is increasingly widespread that education in the home clearly surpasses that in the schools. The theory runs as follows: A family resembles a country, and for parents to educate their children is their clear responsibility from the point of view of natural ethics (tendō jinri). Parents at home are able to guide children at any time during infancy when the young people are most receptive. Teaching what they desire to teach and transmitting what they desire to transmit, the father by his strictness and the mother by her tenderness carry on together without the injury of outsiders disturbing and tempting the children. Once the children leave home, it will be impossible for them to avoid disturbing and tempting evils even though their education is in a place of upright customs. Since the affection of even good teachers and good friends is vastly different from the guidance of parents as the best teachers for educating small children.

This principle applies, however, only to the comparatively wealthy middle and upper class families since there are few parents even in the enlightened countries, not to mention unenlightened countries, who train their children sufficiently at home. There are times when even such [advantaged] parents can only entrust the training of their children to others for the reason that they are prevented by their occupations from performing their family duties. Under present conditions in society, however, parents take for granted that their children should be entrusted to others, and they seem not to recognize that their children's education is their principle parental responsibility. The homes being without parental training, the children of the rich consequently become accustomed to arrogant and extravagant ways by associating only with ignorant and blind servants, while the children of the poor learn mean and dirty habits by mingling with ignorant and stupid children. How can these children avoid becoming ignorant and stupid and thus waste their days in profitless and harmful activities?

When the children grow up ignorant and delinquent because their parents were prevented by their occupations from training them, not a few parents freely admonish the children or even go so far as to reproach the children's friends and teachers without recognizing that they, the parents, themselves are the guilty. While they may be extremely mistaken, however, they should not be harshly blamed. Should you ask why, it is because they do not know how to educate their children since they, after all, did not themselves receive training from their parents.

What then should we do about the situation? Needless to say, event though we want to halt the illness, the cure cannot be accomplished in a day when the disease has penetrated to the marrow of the bone. Therefore, I do not now suddenly hold the parents wholly responsible for the education of their children. If parents just recognize the training of their children to be their responsibility and if they attentively exhaust their powers to this end, then I hope that their children will also understand their responsibility to educate the succeeding generation and that this may ultimately become a family tradition and regional custom. What I desire still more deeply is only that, by actively establishing girls' schools and devoting our energies to educating girls, we may train these girls to understand how important it is for them to educate the children to whom they give birth.

Napoleon I once observed to the famous woman teacher Campan, "Since all the old methods of education really seem to be worthy of respect, what do we lack for the good upbringing of the people?" When Campan replied "Mothers," the emperor exclaimed in surprise, "Ah, this is true! This single word suffices as the guiding principle of education." These are indeed meaningful words.

In a later number, I shall explain the necessity for girls' schools.

The essence of education, our traditional national aim, and a watchword for all men, is to make clear the ways of benevolence, justice, loyalty, and filial piety, and to master knowledge and skill and through these to pursue the Way of Man. In recent days, people have been going to extremes. They take unto themselves a foreign civilization whose only values are fact-gathering and technique, thus violating the rules of good manners and bringing harm to our customary ways. Although we set out to take in the best features of the West and bring in new things in order to achieve the high aims of the Meiji Restoration—abandonment of the undesirable practices of the past and learning from the outside world—this procedure had a serious defect: It reduced benevolence, justice, loyalty, and filial piety to a secondary position. The danger of indiscriminate emulation of Western ways is that in the end our people will forget the great principles governing the relations between ruler and subject, and father and son. Our aim, based on our ancestral teachings, is solely the clarification of benevolence, justice, loyalty, and filial piety.

For morality, the study of Confucius the best guide. People should cultivate sincerity and moral conduct, and after that they should turn to the cultivation of the various subjects of learning in accordance with their ability. In this way, morality and technical knowledge will fall into their proper places. When our education comes to be grounded on Justice and the Doctrine of the Mean, we shall be able to show ourselves proudly throughout the world as a nation of independent spirit.

TWO NOTES ON ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

1. All men are by nature benevolent, just, loyal, and filial. But unless these virtues are cultivated early, other matters will take precedence, making later attempts to teach them futile. Since the practice has developed recently of displaying pictures in classrooms, we must see to it that portraits of loyal subjects, righteous warriors, filial children, and virtuous women are utilized, so that when the pupils enter the school, they will immediately feel in their hearts the significance of loyalty and filial piety. Only if this is done first and then other subjects taught later will they develop in the spirit of loyalty and filial piety and not mistake the means for the end of other studies.

2. While making a tour of schools and closely observing the pupils studying last autumn, it was noted that farmers' and merchants' sons were advocating high-sounding ideas and empty theories, and that many of the commonly used foreign words could not be translated into our own language. Such people would not be able to carry on their own occupations even if they some day returned home, and with their high-sounding ideas, they would make useless civil servants. Moreover, many of them brag about their knowledge, slight their elders, and disturb Prefectural officers. All these evil effects come from an education that is off its proper course. It is hoped, therefore, that the educational system will be less high-flown and more practical. Agricultural and commercial subjects should be studied by the children of farmers and merchants so that they return to their own occupations when they have finished school and prosper even more in their proper work.