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.
Most people who decide to grow personally find their first mentors in the pages of books.
All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
He had been so busy getting away from the library, he hadn't paid attention to where he was going.
We may not be able to prepare the future for our children, but we can at least prepare our children for the future.
Education from the lowest to the highest form must have for its object the training of the individual so that, in seeking the fullest satisfaction of his own nature, he will harmoniously perform his function as a member of a corporate society.
All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
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