Chapter 153 Why would anyone want to restore "classical literacy"?

Next, I would like to talk about classical literacy. When I discuss the Japanese "decline of IQ" in the media, I will definitely talk about "modern people who have lost their quality". As I discussed earlier, if the quality here refers to classical literacy, then there are not so many problems.What I want to say is that even if the younger generation does not read the classics of the past, there are still many problems.So, what's the problem? My position is that "times have changed, so quality should be redefined". But now Japan has a lot of theories of quality retroism, which I am surprised.Newspapers, Bungeishunju, Chuo Koron, and other comprehensive magazines also compiled columns such as "The So-called Japanese Quality" and "Modern People Who Lost Quality".

Of course, it's not that I don't understand this mood, but it's those past qualities that are being discussed in this column.I am very puzzled by this, because their point of view from beginning to end is "it is impossible for people not to read classics nowadays". They said, "During the Edo period, Japan was one of the few countries with a high level of quality in the world. However, after the Meiji Restoration and with the development of modernization, the citizens paid more and more attention to practical learning and ignored the classics. After the war, This trend has been exacerbated, and Japan has become so decadent.”

Their so-called "qualityism" is the idea of ​​cultivating one's own excellent personality through reading and making contributions to society.This was the trend of thought pursued by the old high schools during the Taisho period, and it remained a normative culture for college students until the postwar 1970s. In the book "The Decline of Qualityism" written by Emeritus Professor Takeuchi of Kyoto University, he used various documents and statistics to demonstrate the rise and fall of qualityism.As he demonstrates, essentialism died around 1970, so why bring it back now?

In the past, people who could tell history were considered to be qualified people, which is true in a sense, but now only knowing history can't do anything. In this age of Google, almost all historical knowledge can be looked up in an instant.If you want to find examples related to history, you can search the Internet and you will find a lot of information.Therefore, people who pay more attention to mental training only need to know how to look up historical events on the Internet.Now, even the collections of the Harvard University library can be read by searching, so there is no need to keep history in mind as knowledge.

I also said in the previous chapter that the most important thing is to be a "thinking person".People who can ask "has there ever been an event similar to what is happening now" in history and think about it are better than "people who only understand history".Such a person is a quality person in the 21st century. As long as you give Google three hours, it can give you a very deep understanding of the topic you are looking for.In other words, future success depends on the depth of thinking rather than the amount of knowledge. Some people are as knowledgeable as an encyclopedia.We can call them Ryotaro Shiba or Takashi Tachibana's type of qualified people. Although such people will be respected in the 21st century, they cannot create any value.

Of course, this does not mean that they are "human beings who cannot think". The great thing about Shiba Ryotaro is that he can use his knowledge to make up new stories.We can't experience the world in the past, but he can write such unexperienced stories as if he had experienced it himself, making people feel as if he saw something invisible. This ability is very remarkable. However, now this kind of knowledge cannot be called quality. The reason world leaders have moved away from classical qualities is because qualities as knowledge have lost their meaning.In this sense, Japan's emphasis on knowledge education, that is, the competition of "knowing or not knowing" is useless.What I have repeatedly emphasized is that the "〇X-style education" should be stopped immediately.

In addition, knowledge for the modern world is more important than classical knowledge that can be searched on Google in a short time.Compared with qualified people, whether they have the ability to solve problems and whether they can apply this ability to practical actions is the measure of whether a person can be used in the world.