Chapter 8 Section 3 Mohist Private School

When the trees on the tomb of Confucius gradually grew, Mozi (named Zhai, about 468-376 BC) was born in Lu State with the same spirit of salvation.He can make cars, is an expert in handicraft machinery manufacturing, and is a well-educated person. He advocates diligence and thrift, and he practices it by himself.In order to prevent the Chu people from attacking the Song Dynasty, he prepared his own dry food and walked continuously for ten days and ten nights. His feet were worn out and blood flowed on the ground. He tore off his clothes to wrap them up. Old cocoons give birth to new cocoons.In this way, he rushed to Yingdu to meet the king of Chu, argued with the counselors who advocated attacking the Song Dynasty face to face, and refuted them.

Mozi also received Confucian private school education when he was young, but later he disagreed with Confucian ideas, so he founded a Mohist private school with a unique style of small-scale production; more than 300 of his disciples are excellent handicraft workers and can go through fire and water. Fighting warriors.The attitude of Confucian private schools to traditional culture is "telling without writing, trusting and loving the ancients", which attaches great importance to summarizing and inheriting traditional culture, but rarely talks about encouraging innovation; while Mohist private school advocates "telling and writing" Excellent ones should be "stated"—summarized and inherited, and excellent ones in contemporary culture should be "made"—created; in this way, there will be more and more excellent cultures.This obviously encourages the spirit of innovation.Confucian private school attaches great importance to ritual and music, and advocates "thick burial"; Mohist private school hates consumption that destroys production, and advocates "frugal burial"; it believes that "thick burial" causes the wealth that has been produced to be buried, which is a waste of money and hinders production. waste.Confucian private schools value moral education but not science and technology education; Mohist private schools affirm that science and technology are beneficial to the country and the people, and should be placed in an important position, reflecting the strong desire of the working people to develop production.Mohist private schools opposed ritual and music, showing the working people's strong dissatisfaction with the aristocrat's luxury and obscenity; but because of this, they completely negated the role of ritual and music, and denied the significance and value of ritual and music as a spiritual civilization in building a new social order. It is also one-sided.

Mohist private school attached great importance to the teaching of natural science knowledge. It was the first to explain natural phenomena and their laws in precise terms in the form of definitions and laws, and invented experimental methods to study and prove natural phenomena and their laws.At the same time, the invention and creation in this field have been introduced into the teaching field.The knowledge of natural science taught by Mohist private school involves geometry, mechanics, optics, acoustics and other aspects.Regarding geometry, the concepts of point, line and sphere are covered.With regard to mechanics, the nature of force, motion, force balance and simple machinery are discussed.In terms of optics, he first discovered the basic optical principle that light proceeds in a straight line. On this basis, he discussed the formation of shadows, the relationship between light and shadow, the relationship between light and light sources, and the formation of shadows. He also described the plane mirror. , Convex mirror, the relationship between object and image in concave mirror.Almost all the basic issues of modern optics on image theory are involved.Regarding acoustics, it describes how to use the resonance of sound to detect the enemy's situation.In addition, in terms of logical methods, Mohist private schools attach great importance to analogical reasoning, pay attention to the classification of things or concepts, and then extrapolate to the future based on existing experience to demonstrate the inevitability of the development of things.

In short, the teaching content of Mohist private schools covers a wider range of fields than Confucian private schools, and their innovations in science and technology education are far ahead not only in ancient China, but also in the history of science and technology education in the world at that time.For example, although some of the theories about mechanics were described in the works of Aristotle in ancient Greece (384-322 BC), they did not explain clearly the principle of lever torque.It was not until Archimedes (287 BC-213 BC) that he used the concept of torque to explain the principle of levers, but Archimedes was nearly 200 years later than Mozi.Regarding the principle that light proceeds in a straight line, the ancient Greek Euclid (330-275 BC) once proposed this idea, but there was no experiment to prove it, and Euclid was more than 100 years later than Mozi.Mohist private schools first applied scientific experimental methods to teaching, and wrote an extremely rare and glorious chapter in the history of the development of science and technology in ancient my country and the history of science and technology education. Their creations and contributions will shine forever.

After Mozi's death, Mohism was divided into three factions: Xiangli's, Xiangfu's and Dengling's.There are traces of private disciples of the Mohists in the south, north, and Qin State in the west.The Mohist private school is also a political group and school with strict discipline.Confucian private schools often recommend their disciples to become officials, and Mohist private schools are the same. The difference is that the leader of Mohist private schools has the command over the disciples, not only for recommendation, but also for recall.If a disciple violates the purpose of Mohism's private school, and violates Mozi's teachings such as "universal love" and "non-gong", he will be recalled at any time.Mohist private school requires students to have the spirit of hard work, hard work, obedience to discipline, restraining the strong and supporting the weak, being brave in doing what is right, and self-sacrifice.Mohist private school adheres to the "will of heaven", admits that heaven has a will, and advocates "wisdom of ghosts", and there must be ghosts and gods.This shows that Mohist private school did not get rid of the shackles of traditional religious concepts.They advocate religious education, and believe that through "heaven" or "ghosts" rewarding good and punishing evil, they can punish the ruler's promiscuity or tyranny, so as to realize their proposition of loving and benefiting the people.These are the characteristics of Mohist private schools.