When people lack teachers, their tendencies are not corrected; when they do not have ritual and moral principles, then their lawlessness is not controlled.
Interpretation
The importance of educators and moral principles in guiding behavior and promoting order in society.
Xunzi emphasizes the crucial role that teachers and moral guidance play in shaping individuals' behaviors and tendencies. Without education and established ethical standards, people may behave lawlessly and fail to correct their improper tendencies, leading to chaos in society.
In practice
During a community meeting about educational reform, you might share this quote to highlight the need for skilled teachers.
When a man sees something desirable, he must reflect on the fact that with time it could come to involve what is detestable. When he sees something that is beneficial, he should reflect that sooner or later it, too, could come to involve harm.
If what the heart approves conforms to proper patterns, then even if one's desires are many, what harm would they be to good order?
A person is born with feelings of envy and hate. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to violence and crime, and any sense of loyalty and good faith will be abandoned.
If the gentleman has ability, he is magnanimous, generous, tolerant, and straightforward, through which he opens the way to instruct others.
In antiquity the sage kings recognized that men's nature is bad and that their tendencies were not being corrected and their lawlessness controlled.
Human nature is such that people are born with a love of profit If they follow these inclinations, they will struggle and snatch from each other, and inclinations to defer or yield will die.
The book must of necessity be put into a bookcase. And the bookcase must be housed. And the house must be kept. And the library must be dusted, must be arranged, must be catalogued. What a vista of toil, yet not unhappy toil!
If you educate a boy, you educate a person, but if you educate a girl, you educate a family and benefit an entire community.β An entire community - now that is really interesting! Then I found the quote changed a little more on the Kingdom of Jordan website by her Royal Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan during her interview with Oprah Winfrey. Queen Rania relates the quote in these words: βAs you educate a woman, you educate the family. If you educate the girls, you educate the future.
I guess thatβs the beauty of books. When they finish they donβt really finish.
If you don't give your kid freedom to make choices with money, including stupid choices, he'll make plenty when he gets to college.
While the books I read as a child lacked diversity in the strict sense, they didn't lack values. Reading, I didn't see me externally, but I felt me - my humanity.
Our system rewards specific talents more than anything. I got pushed forward for having certain capacities. Others had their horizons systematically lowered for having capacities that our academic system had no use for. I've seen countless people lose heart and feel like they should settle for less, that they don't deserve abundance.
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