Chapter 43 Section 5 Wang Yangming's Tutoring

Wang Yangming (AD 1472-1529), named Shouren and styled Bo'an, was born in Yuyao, Zhejiang in the middle of the Ming Dynasty. He was an outstanding educator and thinker in the Ming Dynasty.The Yangming School he founded influenced education and ideology for more than a hundred years in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, and is recognized by the world as a master of the generation. The reason why Wang Yangming has achieved such a great achievement is inseparable from the good family education he received when he was young.He was born in a bureaucratic family with generations of scholars. His grandparents were all scholars. Wang Yangming was only 10 years old when his father won the number one scholar.Growing up in such a family environment, he was naturally influenced by a good cultural education.

Generally speaking, civil servant families pay great attention to the culture and education of their children and grandchildren. They invite teachers to enter the library, impose strict restrictions, read sentences and explain sentences all day long, and practice calligraphy and composition. ".However, the Wang family has a different way of teaching children.First of all, Wang Yangming's grandfather paid attention to the education and discipline of his grandson to let his nature take its course.For example, the young Wang Yangming was very naughty, didn't respect his teachers very much, often skipped school and was tired of studying, and spent his energy on war games and listening to fairy tales that little boys liked.His grandfather was more accommodating, unlike the strict control of those scholar-bureaucrats, on the contrary, he created appropriate conditions for him to play after class to his heart's content, and unconsciously instilled some military knowledge while playing, and told some stories that opened his imagination. Bizarre fairy tales.Through these extracurricular intellectual developments, he has been lively since childhood, with elegant interests, questionable and suspicious, and independent thinking.

Secondly, Wang Yangming's grandfather was good at giving him opportunities to show his talents without losing the opportunity, and cultivated his sense of striving for strength.Once, Wang Yangming went to the capital with his grandfather and passed by Jinshan Temple. Some literati made an appointment with the temple to drink and compose poems.Wang Yangming is only 10 years old, socializing is naturally not his business.His grandfather deliberately showed poor talent and clumsiness when rewarding poems, and let Yangming deal with it.Wang Yangming walked out from behind his grandfather calmly and blurted out a poem, which surprised everyone in the audience.As a result, my grandfather greatly encouraged him, and then doubled his guidance to learn poetry.

When he entered the school in the capital, the teacher of the school often urged Wang Yangming to study with his heart because his father was the number one scholar in the new subject.One day, Wang Yangming asked his teacher, "What is the most important thing in life?" The teacher said, "Only reading books is the best thing!" Yes!" The husband was shocked, thinking that such a young age dared to utter wild words, and he would be an arrogant person when he grows up, and he needed to be taught severely to stop his desire to study.So he sounded the alarm to Yangming's grandfather and father, asking them not to be too indulgent in raising Yangming's character.

Wang Yangming's grandfather and father were quite happy after hearing what Mr. Wang said.After Mr. Yangming left, they called Yangming to the inner study and taught him: "You have the ambition to learn from sages, but sages are not so easy to do. To be a sage, you must read the books of sages carefully and understand the meaning of sages. The truth; second, you must practice yourself and hone yourself in everything.” Wang Yangming remembered it in his heart, and since then he has established a great ambition to be a sage, studied hard, cared about world affairs, dared to take the world as his own responsibility, and had a more bold and unruly personality. Ambitious.

When Wang Yangming was 15 years old, when the beacon smoke started at the northern border of the Great Wall, Wang Yangming, despite his father's dissuasion, ventured through hardships alone. ambition.After returning to Beijing after a month, I wanted to write to the court many times at home.This is unimaginable in ordinary literati families, but Wang Yangming's father tolerated it, and only politely criticized him for "great ambition and lack of talent" and the need for "mechanics". When Wang Yangming was 17 years old, his father began to strictly require him to study the works of Cheng Zhu Neo Confucianism, and allowed him to leave the capital to visit famous teachers in other places.Thus, Wang Yangming began his difficult academic exploration and pursuit of life value.

Twenty years later, Wang Yangming got rid of the shackles of Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism and started the construction of his own school.At the same time, while teaching his disciples, he educated his son in the form of a family letter: Whether a person can become a useful talent does not lie in gnawing at the words and sentences of the ancients, treating scholars as prisoners, whipping them, and shaping them into false moralists. Instead, we must obey human nature, let things be natural, release human potential as much as possible, "give my conscience and ability", learn from school and go up, heart and reason are united, "knowledge and action are united, and the most important thing is to practice learning."Reading does not care about being greedy, but contentment is the most important thing.Wang Yangming's thoughts on children's education and views on family education aroused strong social repercussions at that time, strongly impacting the traditional customs of family education and children's education, and became popular among people.