Reading Traditional Culture and the Problems of Chinese Language Education

# Reading Traditional Culture and the Problems of Chinese Language Education

Chinese traditional culture contains an enormous body of writing about nature, human life, ethics, politics, medicine, religion, spirits and the supernatural. Today we tend to classify these texts according to their subject matter, treating them as works of philosophy, medicine, history or other specialised fields, and then reading them through the standards of those fields.

I think there is a problem with that approach. It does not always make a sufficient distinction between the knowledge contained in an ancient text and the literary means through which that knowledge is expressed.

A considerable number of traditional Chinese works, including some concerned with specialised subjects, rely heavily on metaphor, analogy, maxims, personal impressions and descriptions of experience. Such language can be vivid, accessible and memorable. But a compelling expression is not necessarily the outcome of rigorous reasoning, and the claim it conveys is not necessarily true under all conditions.

This does not mean that every ancient Chinese technical work should be classified as literature. The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art contains recognisable mathematical methods and algorithms. The Compendium of Materia Medica has its own system of classifying medicinal substances and brings together observations, earlier sources and medical experience. Their specialised content and historical importance cannot simply be dismissed.

Even so, a work such as the Compendium of Materia Medica contains a great deal inherited from earlier writings, conventional beliefs and the experiences available at the time. Its classifications and explanations were shaped by the limits of the knowledge available to its author. Historical prestige does not make every entry valid by today's standards. Claims concerning the diagnosis or treatment of disease, in particular, still require independent assessment using modern medical methods.

This leads to a wider question. An ancient author's observations, understanding and feelings about the world are not always connected to the conclusions they draw by a sufficiently rigorous argument. An experience may make sense in a particular situation, yet fail to apply to other people, periods or circumstances.

There is nothing wrong with literary expression itself. One of literature's central purposes is to turn complicated experiences of life into evocative language, images and feelings. A literary text does not have to prove every statement as a scientific paper would, or specify every condition under which an observation might hold.

The problem begins when we treat that kind of expression as universally valid knowledge.

Traditional Chinese culture offers countless maxims about how to behave. Some praise caution; others favour decisiveness. Some counsel yielding; others insist on perseverance. Some recommend contentment; others encourage ambition.

Each sounds reasonable when considered on its own. Set beside one another, however, they can seem contradictory.

They need not be mutually exclusive. Different judgements may concern different situations and depend on different conditions. The difficulty arises when a saying is detached from its original context and circulated as a self-contained rule for living. The conditions on which it depends then disappear.

A useful example is the familiar expression san si er hou xing, usually understood as 'think three times before acting'.

It is commonly presented as an ancient injunction to deliberate carefully. Yet in the Analects, in the chapter Gongye Chang, the passage records that Ji Wenzi thought three times before acting, and Confucius responded, 'Twice would be enough.' At the very least, the original passage cannot be read as an uncomplicated command that everyone should always think things over repeatedly. Quoting only its first half can turn a contextual exchange into what appears to be an unconditional rule.

This is a recurring problem in the circulation of traditional sayings.

An elegant, compact and memorable sentence travels easily. Its very appeal can persuade readers that it expresses profound, general wisdom. Yet eloquence does not establish truth. Whether a judgement holds depends on its premises, the reasoning that supports it, its scope of application and the evidence available.

This way of reading also has some connection with the long-standing aims of Chinese language education.

Chinese language classes have generally been expected to perform two jobs. One is linguistic education: developing the ability to read, understand, communicate and write. The other is to shape students' thinking, morality and outlook on life through literature, historical stories and traditional culture.

This dual purpose is explicit rather than accidental. Chinese education authorities have described the language curriculum as combining practical language skills with humanistic education, including a role in moral development. The 2022 compulsory-education curriculum standards also identify cultural confidence as an element of core competence in Chinese language study.

Helping students understand society, recognise aspects of human character and develop moral awareness through literature is not inherently wrong. No educational system can avoid values entirely, and writing about human life inevitably engages with emotions, ideas and social relationships.

But there is a boundary that deserves serious attention.

Encountering and understanding a view of life through a language lesson is not the same as being required to accept that view as the correct answer.

A literary work may convey an idea without proving it. A celebrated figure from the past may have offered advice without establishing a timeless principle. A student may memorise hundreds of quotations without thereby learning to understand the world or make independent judgements.

If teaching repeatedly asks students to extract a moral lesson from every text, and then presents that lesson as a conclusion to be accepted, literary reading can become a fragmented form of values instruction.

One lesson may tell students to yield, the next to stand firm. Today they may be praised for accepting what they have; tomorrow they may be urged to keep striving. Each lesson could be defensible in some circumstances. Without examining the conditions, range and relationships of those claims, however, students cannot easily form a coherent understanding of them.

They may remember a large collection of maxims without learning how to judge when each is appropriate and when it is not.

That habit can extend beyond school.

A person reads a moving sentence and immediately feels that the world must be exactly as it describes. Later, another sentence expresses an opposing idea and produces the same conviction. Their views shift with the language that happens to move them, without their recognising the contradictions between those views.

This is not evidence that Chinese people in general lack logical thinking, nor does it establish that Chinese language teaching is the sole cause of such habits. Those would be broad empirical claims requiring much stronger research and comparison. Nevertheless, relying on isolated quotations as if they were independent grounds for judgement is a genuine intellectual risk.

It is also important to acknowledge that Chinese language curricula have begun to give explicit attention to logic. For example, the senior-secondary Chinese textbook series includes a unit entitled 'The Power of Logic', addressing fallacies, valid inference and sound argument. It would therefore be inaccurate to say that the curriculum simply ignores reasoning.

The more useful question is not whether a textbook contains material on logic. It is whether classroom reading and discussion actually help students learn to analyse arguments, identify assumptions, distinguish facts from opinions, and evaluate what a text says for themselves.

When I say that Chinese language education should return to the teaching of language, I do not mean that questions of human life, society or values should be excluded, or that literature should lose its educational significance.

Language education should first develop command of language and writing, an understanding of how different texts work, and the ability to distinguish factual statements, emotional expression, value judgements and logical arguments. Even when a text raises profound philosophical questions, the first educational task should be to help students understand what the author is saying, why it is being said, and what reasoning or rhetorical techniques are used — not to require them to adopt the author's conclusions.

Students should be able to appreciate the beauty of a saying and the experience that gave rise to it while still asking whether it is true, where it applies, and whether counterexamples exist.

Those habits would not weaken the humanistic purpose of education. They would give it a firmer basis in understanding and judgement.

We should approach traditional culture in much the same way.

First understand the circumstances in which a work was produced, the author's purpose, its manner of expression and the conditions of knowledge at the time. Literary expression can be appreciated and interpreted. Historical experience can be considered in relation to its circumstances. Specialised claims can be tested through the methods of the relevant discipline. Philosophical positions can be examined for the clarity of their concepts, premises and arguments.

The value of traditional culture does not depend on treating every sentence in it as a truth about life. Recognising historical limitations, mistaken beliefs and incompatible claims does not erase its cultural importance.

What needs to change is a habit of confusing the emotional force of language with the correctness of an idea, the experience of earlier generations with universal laws, and the ability to recite famous sayings with wisdom.

Chinese language education should not merely teach students to remember more statements that sound right. It should enable them to ask why a statement is right, and under precisely what conditions it is right.