A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education

learner’s own efforts).”54 In classical Chinese pedagogy, the teacher’s goal is not simply to get the student from point A to point B. It is to help the student get from point A to point B by himself. The teacher does not drag him. She “opens the way” to point B by asking questions that require him to use his own ingenuity and critical thinking skills to walk there by himself. We understand a truth best when we discover it ourselves. We can tell a child that three times three equals nine, and he might memorize the formula after much practice. But he will not understand why three times three equals nine. He will know the “answer” but he will not understand the concept. But if we give him three pieces of candy and ask him how many pieces he would have if we did this two more times, then he will discover both the answer and the concept. The next time he is asked what four times four equals, he will be able to reason his way to the answer, even if he has never memorized the formula 4×4=16. This is what it means “to lead students forward through reasoning and inspiration rather than to drag them” (dao er fu qian 道而弗牵). The student who simply memorizes multiplication tables will only be able to answer the question if he has previously memorized the formula 4×4=16, and even then he still will not be able to explain why four times four equals sixteen. The classical tradition does not discourage memorizing multiplication tables or other facts. What it discourages is mindlessly memorizing them.

So far, we have only discussed the basic principles of Chinese classical Christian education. In short, it is the pursuit of the Dao. It seeks wisdom primarily through the testi- mony of God and our ancestors. The goal of Chinese classical education is to restore our natures, which we attain through moral, intellectual, and physical cultivation, and this comes through broad study. But we are still left with a problem. We’ve discussed why to teach and how to teach, but we do not yet know what to teach. The classical tradition encourages us to seek to understand all areas of knowledge, but our time and abilities are limited. We cannot teach fifty different subjects on the first day of elementary school. We must discriminate between them and decide which subjects are most worth teaching. Our goal is not to turn our students into world-class scholars by the time they graduate high school. Rather, we want to lay a foundation upon which students will continue to build after they graduate. As Dorothy Sayers says of the classical tradition in the West, our primary goal is to equip our students with the “tools” of learning so that when they leave high school they will be able and eager to study on their own without the need of a teacher. It is after they leave high school when their true life of study begins. So how should we build this foundation? What subjects can best prepare a child for a life of learning? The ancient Chinese were unanimous: the six arts.

For the ancients, six arts education is simply an extension of the Dao. “The Bao clan has the authority…to raise up the children of officials according to the Dao. Therefore, the following six arts shall be taught…”55 These arts are at the very heart of Chinese classical education. They encompass everything we have discussed above. In the same way that the seven liberal arts embody the Western classical tradition,

55 “ 保氏，掌谏王恶。而养国子以道，乃教之六艺：一曰五礼，二曰六 乐，三曰五射，四曰五驭，五曰六书，六曰九数。 ” Zhouli 周礼 [Rites of Zhou] 14.113.352, author’s translation.