Here’s something Confucius and Mencius would agree with:

Children who are not learning basic skills in the home during the most
important years of brain development (0-5 years) will enter
kindergarten already at an educational disadvantage. Since new academic
skills are continually based on previously learned knowledge, I do not
believe that elementary and high schools alone can rectify this early
educational disparity. Without parental support, involvement and
interest, these students will likely continue to lag behind throughout
their unhappy educational experience.

     Parents should be concerned about and involved in their children’s education.  But there would be one, rather large, caveat, from a Confucian perspective: the parental role should be complementary and subsidiary to that of the teacher.  Parents should not be their children’s sole teacher in the primary and secondary setting; they should support and help in the work of education, which is overseen and managed by a teacher.  Confucius, in other words, is against home-schooling.

     His reasons (and you will have to trust me on this one for now; I am home and my books are in my office), which are echoed by Mencius, center on the pressures that emerge in the teaching process.  To be a good teacher, you have to correct your students, and students might feel resentment or even anger at such correction.  That sort of feeling could be corrosive to the parent-child relationship.  So, as Mencius says, the ancients taught each other’s children to shield parent-child bond from the pressures of teaching and learning.

     But that leaves plenty of space for parents to support and encourage and help their kids with their learning.  An idea, it seems, that is timeless.

UPDATE: Here is the Mencius passage, 7.18:

Kung-sun Ch’ou said: "Why is it the noble-minded never teach their own children?"

"The way people are, it’s impossible," replied Mencius.  "A teacher’s task is to perfect teh student, and if the student doesn’t improve, the teacher gets angry.  When the teacher gets angry, the student in turn feels  hurt: ‘You demand perfection, but you’re nowhere near perfect yourself.’ So father and son would only hurt each other.  And it’s a tragedy when fathers and sons hurt each other.

"The ancients taught each other’s children.  That way father and son never demand perfect virtue of one another.  If they demand perfect virtue of one another, they grow distant.  And nothing is more ominous than fathers and sons grown distant from one another."

     Even though in the original question it is suggested that the noble-minded never teach their children, I still think there is room here for parental support and encouragement for a child’s education, especially his or her moral education.  Home-schooling, though, would appear to be beyond the Confucian comfort zone.

Sam Crane Avatar

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One response to “Parents and Education”

  1. Kim Avatar

    We are enjoying all kinds of education about Confucius today — Sept. 28 was declared this year to be an annual “Confucius Day” in the state of Hawaii. The Confucius Institute at the University of Hawaii is hosting some presentations that celebrate Kong Zi and The Analects. I was reading the text of the state House resolution today and found this section particularly interesting:
    “…WHEREAS, Confucius also preached not doing to others what you would not do to yourself, encouraged politicians to model themselves on the ways of honorable politicians of the past, and reminded us, “What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the mean man seeks is in others”…”
    Happy Confucius Day from Hawaii.

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