Chapter 9 Section 8 Family Education of the Four Peoples

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, with the collapse of the well field system and the patriarchal family system, in agriculture, the phenomenon of collective farming by a large number of slaves with "a thousand couples working together" disappeared, and a working method in which individual families owned private fields appeared; In terms of academics, the rise of private schools also broke the "academic bureaucracy", that is, the situation that academics are monopolized by the government.Therefore, with the drastic changes in the social system, the social division of labor divided the social members below the ruling class into four types: scholars, farmers, workers, and merchants.

"Guanzi Xiaokuang" refers to scholars, farmers, workers, and merchants as the "four peoples", and proposes that they should be placed in schools, fields, government offices, marketplaces and other places according to the nature of their occupations, and let them be passed down from generation to generation according to their family business. needs to carry out their own family education and vocational training.According to the research of later generations, the book "Guanzi" is probably not or not entirely the work of Guanzi or the Guanzi School, but it objectively reflects the emergence of social division of labor and the existence of scholars, farmers, workers, and businessmen during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods.

Scholars’ tutors, scribes and samurai have been mentioned above, they pay attention to the training of cultural knowledge and official qualities, and the “six arts” (ritual, music, archery, royal, book, mathematics) education is the main content of education.In addition, there is also a kind of scholar who makes a living with a certain skill, that is, intellectuals called "chouguan" in history, whose family education is worth introducing. "Chouguan" was originally an official of the Zhou royal family who mastered science and technology to serve the nobles. Their sons learned from their fathers and passed down their careers.However, in the Western Zhou Dynasty, due to the decline of the royal family and insufficient financial resources, they could not support the officials, so the officials and their children scattered among the people and became scholars who relied on family skills to make a living.These literati are different from those scribes who wrote books and "flashed their lips and tongues". They possess unique skills, such as deep knowledge in equipment manufacturing, astronomy, calendar calculation, medicine, metallurgy, royal chariot, and agriculture.With the skills he has mastered, he can not only make a living, but also enter an official career.Therefore, the tutoring of this kind of scholars is mainly the teaching of skills, and the education method is mainly based on the teacher leading the apprentice, and pays attention to the observation and experiment of basic skill training.Generally speaking, the family education of this kind of scholars is quite confidential, and they are passed on to their sons but not to their daughters. Some special skills are only given to the eldest son and not to the second son, let alone outsiders.This kind of confidential tutoring, once there is no successor and the family business is interrupted, it will cause the unique skills to be lost.Chu Shaosun of the Han Dynasty once pointed out: "Father and son are officials, and they are passed down from generation to generation. Its subtlety and profoundness are lost." ("Historical Records Gui Ce Biography") This phenomenon is very obvious in medicine and smelting.

Farmers' tutors mainly focus on agricultural production technology and production experience.Such as judging the timing of farming, making farm tools, using land, identifying seedlings and weeds, planting density, timely fertilization, and timely harvesting and storage.In addition to production techniques, farmers' family education also pays great attention to observing the changes of the four seasons and the law of planting. At the same time, it also attaches great importance to the education of their children's labor attitudes. Simple and hardworking. The tutors in Gongmin's Home depend on their occupations.It is also mainly the teaching of workmanship.Between father and son, "communicate with each other with deeds, show each other with merit, tell each other with cleverness, and know each other with excellence", so that the family business is passed on.

The home of merchants, the content of their tutoring is mainly about businessmen in the market.It includes the understanding of famine, national change and four seasons, the observation of commodity origin and market conditions, and the understanding of the laws of commodity purchase and sale, etc.The purpose of Shangmin's family is to make profits, and the teaching of father and son, "talk to each other to benefit, show each other to time, and talk to each other to know Jia", aims to enable their children to master business skills.