Important Question about Ancient Education !

[Anonymous No.19444725]

so I've stumbled upon a translated chinese novel a while ago (can't remember name for now)
In this story which is based in ancient china, the main character is the son of a lord and he has a good teacher teaching him, obviously as a kid he learned basic maths and languages, words, how to write, how to read, reading books, understanding them and applying them

But what really struck my mind was how much of a degree of importance philosophy and proper conduct in life.

As he grew to a teenager, basically everything he studied was related to wisdom, way of life, meaning of life, developing a proper way of conduct, beginning and maintaining relationships, having one's own moral code and dedicating one's self to it

It was just extremely suprising that these things were pondered upon so much to the degree where you would study just that for 4-5 hours a day
There was lots of mention of conficius, Laozi, Zhuang zou...

Now the point is, was this really true? or is it just a myth? that in ancient times people were more focused on studying the way of life rather than studying math, physics, science... similar to the modern world

am i mistaken to think that ?

[Anonymous No.19445117]

It is true and it was the same in ancient greece

[Anonymous No.19445161]

>>19445117
How would you go about doing that today?
I do feel that my mindset is a Block. a Block stopping me from liberation and freedom, stopping from reaching whatever i seek or have to do

[Anonymous No.19445176]

>>19444725
You don't have to go back to antiquity for this to be true. I was reading an essay by Whitehead where he remarked that until relatively recently a man's cultural education (especially his reading of the classics) was the mark of his erudition, and math and science were adjuncts of that education. It is quite a recent phenomenon that these subjects are considered legitimate areas of dedicated study.

[Anonymous No.19445383]

>>19444725
If it is ancient China you're talking about, yes and no. Yes, they were more focused on ethics. No, because it usually amounted to nothing more than catechism, just like religious education in the west. It's not even an effective moral education, since one thing the Chinese used to bitch about (still do to an extent) was hypocrisy among the educated. There was a pragmatic incentive for education. It allowed the poor to pass the state exam, so they could become an official, and moved up the social ladder. This was one way for poor people get power, and once that happened, they usually joined in on the corruption.

This kind of dogmatism also bred an unhealthy obsession over the concept of 'forerunners'. If you dared speak up against the established doctrines, you would likely be shunned by all the major scholars who only developed their theory upon what was advocated by the olds. It's one of the reasons why philosophy stagnated for so long in China. One of the aims of early 20th century youth movement was precisely to get rid of this obsession, and you can see this in the various critiques to Chinese-ness that sprang forth during that period of time. In fact, you can still see this obsession among nationalists to this very day, so it has never really gone away.

[Anonymous No.19446349]

>>19444725
The same exact thing was applied within the older islamic societies. Teenagers were taught to be men of honor and discipline first and foremost, and this solid personal grasp of the self allowed them to build and expand the collective knowledge in quantitative fields freely without the type of turmoil that would have wrecked their house of cards. This upstanding attitude also allowed them to have good intellectual exchanges with other civilizations (see middle ages trading) because all discussion had been established on the grounds of holistic respect. Say what you want about them in hindsight, but the fact is that almost every single educated graduate from their schools had left at least one scientific (in the purest, ancient meaning of the term) manuscript as their legacy, and i find this flourishing of citizens who were eager to collect and spread knowledge amongst their brothers to be pretty damn admirable Their model worked very well for those times. Otherwise you wouldn't have witnessed so many polymaths the likes of rhazes, avicenna, averroes, al-chirazi, al-kindi...etc all come up in such close temporal vicinities.
And as soon as this educative model started dissipating, there has been a violent dropoff in the intellectual quality and quantity of the islamic world. Guénon pointed it very well a century ago.
See also the climate that brought us the brahmins.

This is just one example of many tightly knit models emphasizing the correct priorities. The saying that people grew up quicker back then is true. They didn't have to deal with filler that kept them stuck in the limbo of internal turmoil with no real direction whatsoever. Such an advantage should never be neglected. But alas, the world today is too concerned with generating profit, and nothing else.