Chapter 2 1. Why education is important for children

Everything is perfect when it is first created by the Creator, but once it is processed by humans, it will become dilapidated. People force one kind of soil to grow what another soil can grow, and one kind of fruit tree to bear the fruit of another kind of fruit tree; they disrupt the changing laws of climate and season; they abuse others dogs, horses, and servants; they subvert all beings, and kill the nature of all things. Moreover, they have a fondness for things that are ugly and grotesque; they dislike things as they are, even to their own kind, and they train men as horses, or as trees, as they please. to trim.

But judging from the current situation, thanks to this kind of training and pruning, otherwise the situation of human beings may be even worse.If a person is not brought up from the day he is born, there is no hope for his future. All social institutions and customs, such as prejudices, needs, authorities, and precedents, have been imposed on him, and these things have no positive effect except to stifle his nature.Like a sapling growing in the middle of the road, his nature was trampled on at will by passers-by. Please, kind and insightful mother, only you can make those people find another way, and protect this little tree from those public opinions.Under your careful irrigation, it will surely bear huge fruits, and you will be overjoyed by then.

You have to build a wall as early as possible to protect the child's heart.Perhaps someone else can draw the boundaries of the fence, but you must install the fence. Only by nurturing can a sapling sprout; only by educating can a child grow. Think about it, even if a person is born with a strong body and great strength, but does not know how to use it, then this body and strength are useless, and even they will bring bad things to people. Influence, that is, to make others think that he does not need any help. It can be said that this will make people stay in loneliness all the time, and they have already bid farewell to this world with great regret before they know what they need.

We sympathize with all that babies suffer, but what we don't think about is that if human beings were not born as babies, that is, if they didn't go through infancy, human beings might have perished long ago. We are born weak, so we need others to give us strength; we are born helpless, so we need others to help us; we are born stupid, so we need others to teach us how to distinguish right from wrong.Only a good education can allow us to make up for our birth defects. There are three ways of education: education from nature, education from people and education from things.The education of nature refers to the self-development of our faculties and organs, the education of man refers to the intervention of others in this development, the education of things refers to the experience we gain from things that affect us.

It can be said that everyone's growth depends on these three teachers.If one of these three kinds of education is missing or there is a conflict between the three, then the education of this student will fail, and his growth will not even be satisfactory to himself. If these three kinds of education can coexist harmoniously, then the education of this student is successful, and he will realize his wish, so that his life will be more meaningful. Of these three kinds of education, the education of nature is entirely independent of us, and the education of things is only in certain respects under our influence.The only thing we can interfere with is the education of people, and such interference is only a luxury, because it is almost impossible to control the behavior and speech of everyone around a child.

So, to achieve this goal, luck is essential.The goal mentioned here refers to the natural goal, because the three kinds of education are complementary and indispensable, and the natural education is the most uncontrollable factor, so it plays a decisive role in the other two kinds of education. However, the meaning of the word "natural" is somewhat vague, and we must first define it.Some people say that "nature" is synonymous with habit.Is it true?You know, certain forced habits cannot kill nature! For example, some vertically growing plants have to bend to grow under the action of external force, but once this restraint is released, they may still maintain the original twisted growth direction, but their inner juice will not With any intervention, they become a little more vertical with each new development.

The same is true for people.When a person stays in the same environment for a long time, he will form a habit. Although it is not natural, this habit will still become stronger and stronger.However, as long as the situation changes, this habit will gradually disappear, and people will gradually return to their original state.To put it bluntly, education is a kind of habit, and only habits that are in line with nature can be called "natural". We are born with the ability to feel things and are influenced by all kinds of things around us from birth.When we become aware of this feeling, we start to make judgments, that is, whether to move towards or avoid the thing that makes us feel.

This choice mainly depends on three aspects: one is to see if this kind of thing can make us feel happy; Definition. These tendencies grow stronger as our senses become more sensitive and our intellect more developed.These tendencies, however, are more or less subject to change under the influence of habit.This unaltered tendency is what I call "inner nature," and it is the motive force for the development of all things. If these three kinds of education are only different from each other, there will be no big problem, but if these three kinds of education conflict with each other, how should we deal with it?When the purpose of educating a person is not for his own development, but for the wishes of others, then the three cannot be coordinated.

In fact, for a small society, its scope is very narrow. When the internal unity is united, it will gradually drift away from the large social environment.For example, patriots are not friendly to people from other countries. In their view, foreigners are people who have nothing to do with them. The emergence of this situation is very natural. Although there are certain disadvantages, the impact is not great.Moreover, these people are very friendly to their fellow countrymen, to those they live with. For example, abroad, the Spartans are careerists, greedy and unrighteous people.However, at home, they are civilized, courteous, fair, and get along with each other in harmony.

There are those who consider themselves cosmopolitans, and in their writings speak of their duties in far-flung places.In fact, those duties they had so much disdained to perform, they substituted love for the Tatars for love for their neighbours. A natural person lives for himself, is a unit of numbers, and is a unity that can only be related to his compatriots.A citizen is a score, which is closely related to the denominator. How valuable it can be depends on the overall value, that is, the quality of its relationship with society. A good social system can make a person change his nature, transform his existence from absolute to relative, and transform him from an independent individual into a part of a community.To the citizens of Rome he was not Caius or Lucius, but a Roman.

Pedalet, a Spartan, wanted to attend the meeting of three hundred, but was refused.Thinking that there were 300 Spartans better than himself, he left happily.It was a sign of sincerity, that men like Pedalet were true citizens. Likewise, in Sparta, there was a woman whose five sons were at war, and who anxiously awaited news of the war.When the inquiring slave came back, the woman immediately asked him how the battle was going. The slave said, "Your sons died on the battlefield." The woman angrily said, "Damn slave, did I ask you this question?" The slave replied, "We have won!" Upon hearing the news, the woman immediately ran to the temple to worship the gods, thanking the gods for Sparta's victory.It can be said that this woman is a real citizen. If a person is in society but puts his personal emotions first, in this kind of contradiction, he cannot know his real needs. A man who hesitates between his own desires and his responsibilities to society makes him neither a man nor a good citizen; . If you want to make a difference, you must regulate your words and deeds to make them consistent.Choose to do what you should do, and actively implement it.I am looking forward to such a miracle, to verify whether he is a man or a citizen, or how to become a community of two kinds of people. Because we have to fight against the institutions of nature or society, we have to choose whether to make a man or a citizen?Since these two purposes are relative, the two corresponding forms of education are also relative: one is public education, and the other is family education. For public education, Plato has a detailed discussion in a book.Judging from the title of the book alone, many people would think that this book is about politics, but it is not. This book is actually a rather wonderful monograph on pedagogy, and it is an unprecedented monograph on pedagogy. Only when there is a country can there be citizens, and the words "country" and "citizen" should be eliminated in modern languages. I don't think the so-called education provided by those ridiculous colleges is a public or social education, trying to pursue two diametrically opposed goals at the same time, and it backfires, neither of which is achieved.Those who come out from there are some hypocritical and insidious villains. They seem to be willing to do good things, but they are actually for themselves in essence. The contradictory personality shaped by this kind of education also exists in ourselves. Since nature and man lead us in two different directions, we can only mix them or choose a middle way by our own strength.As a result, none of our goals were achieved. This contradictory state is always with us, making us indecisive throughout our lives, and in the end we not only fail to realize our own wishes, but also fail to contribute to others or society. Next, what I want to talk about is family education.Family education is also called natural education.If the purpose of a person's education is only for himself, what is the significance of him to society?If these two purposes can be merged into one purpose, then the contradiction does not exist, and thus removes a major obstacle to his happy life. Of course, we can judge a person only after we have a comprehensive understanding of him, his growth process and his adult situation, which requires us to first understand the natural person.This is the core content of this book. It is quite difficult to cultivate a natural person. Specifically, how should we do it?In fact, all we have to do is do less.If we are sailing against the current, we only need to grasp the direction and go roundabout; if the wind blows suddenly, but we want to stay where we are, the only way is to drop anchor. In the existing social order, everyone's social status is fixed, and in order to achieve this status, everyone should be educated.But if a person is educated for a certain status, it is impossible for him to win another status. Only when the destiny is the same as the position of the parents can education become meaningful, otherwise education can only bring prejudice, which will do all the harm to the students without any benefit. In Egypt, the son had to obey the father, so education had an achievable goal.But although there are social classes in our society, the people in the classes are not fixed, so no father can guarantee that it is beneficial for him to educate his son for a certain status. According to the laws of nature, all men are created equal.It is the common duty of all human beings to strive tirelessly for humanity.A man who has been educated in this field will take up the tasks connected with this duty on his own initiative. I do not care whether my pupil becomes a soldier, a clergyman, or a lawyer, for nature has taught him to know his own life before he enters his parent's profession.The only skill I want to teach them is: how to learn to live. The students I teach will not be civil servants, warriors or monks, but first of all a person.He will become the kind of person he should be. No matter what the situation is, and no matter who the other party is, he can always stick to his duty as a human being.His position is unshakable, and he will always remain where he is. If a person's status is fixed at birth and cannot be changed, then the current education is still beneficial: in order for the child to strive for a certain status, we give him a specific education, which at least guarantees that he will be free from Troubled and hurt by other positions. However, there are too many unpredictable things in life, and we are also in such a turbulent era. Just imagine, under such a social background, what else is better than keeping a child at home and waiting for him all day long? What about something more stupid? Such a child is pitiful, as long as he makes a slight move, or only takes a step downhill, his life is likely to be wiped out.We don't want him to bear this pain, but at least let him know that this pain exists.