VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 15, SECTION 3
Teaching Grows Heavier, Steeping Drains Away
The last two sections laid out both operations by which a culture is handed down. Teaching is the entrance, steeping is the extension, and only with the two together is it handed down. This lesson sets the two back into the days we live now, and looks at a thing that is quietly happening. Teaching has grown heavier than at any time in thousands of years. And steeping is draining out of our days, little by little.
One. How heavy teaching has grown
Look at one child's day. Six fifty in the morning, up. Seven thirty, through the school gate. Four classes in the morning, three in the afternoon. Out of school at five thirty. At six, into the after-school class, two hours. Home at eight thirty. Dinner, a bath. At nine, the homework comes out. Eleven, bed. Saturday, the whole day, two classes. Sunday, one class in the morning, practice papers in the afternoon. Winter and summer holidays, another timetable, packed even fuller.
From kindergarten at three to graduating from university at twenty two, a full nineteen years. For most of this child's waking hours, he sits in the position of "someone is teaching him". In thousands of years, the human race has never carried this weight. Look back at Confucius's three thousand disciples. How much of their day was spent being taught? Mostly three or five sentences. Confucius said a line, and they each went their way. Went back to do what? Farm, trade, drive carts, run a large household, carry out official duties. The hours they spent soaking in life far outnumbered the hours they spent soaking in the classroom.
That is to say, two thousand five hundred years ago a person was steeped much and taught little. Today, it has turned around.
Two. How steeping drains away
Take them one by one. The first, the three generations have scattered. Before, three generations crowded together in one courtyard. When the child opened his eyes, he could see how his grandfather got up, how he drank that mouthful of tea, how he quarreled with someone and then made it up. He could see who his grandmother gave the last piece of meat to. Today, the grandparents are back in the hometown, seen twice a year. On the video call, the old man's hand holding the phone shakes, the picture jitters until you cannot make out his face, and before three minutes are up the child says, Mom, I'm going to do my homework.
In his whole life, this child will have no chance to see with his own eyes how an old person slowly grows old. Old age, illness, death. These three, every child used to watch in his own home, year after year. Today he no longer watches. And when one day it is his own parents' turn, he will know how to do none of it. The second, the parents' hours have been taken. At the end of the day, how many hours does a couple have left? They come home from work, the dinner is ordered in, each holds a phone, the child does homework in his own room. The time a family truly sits together, chatting about this and that, may be less than an hour a day, and it is the most tired, least patient hour of all.
The father of the last section crouched to tie his child's shoelace, undid it three times, and did not scold. Many fathers today do not have the hours for those three times. They have one. The first time it is not tied right, the temper flares. Move, I'll do it. The child steps aside, hands hanging. What he steeps in is not how to tie a shoelace. What he steeps in is this: if I can't do it right, someone will do it for me, and be impatient about it.
The third, the neighborhood has broken off. Before, a child on a lane was raised under the eyes of the whole lane. Whoever's child fell, whoever's grown-up was nearest would be first to pick him up. The child steeped in the ways of dozens of adults. The uncle who sold vegetables was straightforward. The old man who mended shoes would not take a cent more, all his life. The aunt next door liked to get the small advantage, and she was also the first to bring you ginger soup. Good, bad, uneven, alive.
Today, you live somewhere ten years and do not know the name of the family across the hall. Meet in the elevator, each looks down at his phone, from the first floor to the eighteenth, not a word. The adults this child can see up close in his whole life may be just two, his parents. Two samples, and from those two samples he has to guess at the whole human world.
The fourth, the seasonal festivals have faded. Qingming, the Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn, the Winter Solstice. Before, every festival came with a whole set of things to do with your hands. Soak the rice, strip the bamboo leaves, the family around the table wrapping. A clumsy child wrapped one that leaked, scattered rice over the table, got laughed at, and wrapped another. Today, the festival is still there, but all that is left is a name and a box of bought mooncakes. The child knows the festival exists, but he has never once done it alongside anyone. Those jobs for the hands were the very carriers of steeping. If the hands do not move, there is no steeping.
The fifth, the extended family no longer gathers. Before, at New Year, a big family of dozens crowded into one place. The child ran about among them. He watched how the adults received guests, how they handled that most difficult distant relative, how they rounded off a sentence while raising a toast, how they stood between two uncles who had started to quarrel and, smiling, pressed the matter down. These are the highest skill there is, and not one lesson in the classroom teaches it. Today, a family of three eats New Year's Eve dinner out. The food is good, the words are few. In his whole life the child has never seen how "a crowd of people" gets along.
Put the five together, and you see it clearly. The grounds of steeping have fallen in, one after another.
Three. But the child has not stopped being steeped
Here there is one thing, the most important, that has to be said clearly. If the grounds of steeping have fallen in, does that mean there is no steeping? No. Steeping has not stopped for a single day. The child is still steeping. Only what he steeps in has changed. Before, what the child stared at longest each day was his father's face, his grandfather's back, his mother's figure in the kitchen. Today, what the child stares at longest each day is a screen.
Hundreds of faces pass through that screen in a day. Every one has been edited. Every line has been picked. Every person is in his best-looking second. Not one of these faces is a living person. They do not grow old, do not fall ill, do not tire, do not fail, do not quarrel with someone at the dinner table and make it up, do not sit in the living room late at night staring at nothing for a while. And the child soaks right here. Four hours a day, six hours. The dye vat called in last section has never been closed. Only, in the past the vat was the home, and today the vat is the screen. The silk is still the same silk, and from first to last it has never made any choice of its own.
This is the most important line for today. It is not that the child is not being steeped. It is that we are no longer the vat. We have given up the vat's position. And we ourselves have stepped back to the side of "teaching". Every day we stand over his homework, every day we lecture him on principles, every day we send him to more classes. We have piled the heaviest work onto teaching, and handed the deepest operation, steeping, to someone else.
Four. Confucius's four words: it is beautiful to dwell among the benevolent
In the last section, Mencius's mother moved house three times. What did she go by? Confucius had already said it.
It is beautiful to dwell among the benevolent. If a man chooses a place and does not settle among the benevolent, how can he be called wise? — Confucius, the Analects, Li Ren
Where you live, choose the place whose ways are kind and generous. If you choose a place to live and do not choose for this, how can you count as a clear-sighted person? Two thousand five hundred years ago, Confucius was speaking of a lane, a village. Today, the lane you live on may no longer matter. Where does your child truly "live" in a day? He lives in that screen. So today, in "it is beautiful to dwell among the benevolent", what is it you must choose? What you must choose is yourself. Because if you are not there, that screen will be there in your place.
This is not asking you to curse the screen. This set of books passes no verdict, from beginning to end. It only sets out a plain thing. The vat, someone has to be it. If you are not, something else will be, as a matter of course.
Five. If you mend it, mend the plainest few things
So what is to be done? This book gives no plan. But here are three plain lines, set out for you to look at yourself. The first: steeping does not need hours of its own. Steeping is not a thing to add to the timetable. It is in the hours you already have. The half hour at dinner, do you look down and scroll your phone, or look up and say a word to the child? That half hour is already there.
The second: steeping does not need acting. You do not need to make yourself a "good example" on purpose for the child to watch. That is called acting, and the child sees through it. You only need, in the second you would lose control, to steady yourself. In the moment you want to throw the keys down, to set them down gently. A thing of one second. The first semester spent thirteen whole chapters, and at the bottom of it all, it came to this one second. The third: steeping is done with your own self. You cannot outsource this. You can outsource teaching to the school, to the after-school class, to every kind of tool. But steeping, only you can do it. Because what the child steeps in is not the words you say. It is the person you are.
Six. The position this section sets, the fifteenth stake, a bridge to the next chapter
The three sections of the fifteenth chapter are done here. Now nail this stake down.
Teaching today has grown heavier than at any time in thousands of years. Two thousand five hundred years ago, a person was steeped much and taught little. Today it has turned around. And steeping is draining away. The three generations have scattered, the parents' hours have been taken, the neighborhood has broken off, the festivals have faded, the extended family no longer gathers.
But the child has not stopped being steeped. The dye vat has not been closed for a single day. Only the vat has changed, from the home to the screen. It is not that the child is not being steeped. It is that we are no longer the vat. Confucius said, it is beautiful to dwell among the benevolent; if a man chooses and does not settle among the benevolent, how can he be called wise? The place to choose today is, in fact, yourself. If you are not there, the screen is there in your place.
Put the three sections together, and the fifteenth stake is nailed down here. A culture is handed down by two operations, teaching and steeping. Teaching is the entrance, steeping is the extension. Today teaching grows heavier, and steeping drains away. And steeping, no one can do for you. You can only steep with your own self.
So, in speaking of education, did only our ancestors speak this way? Over the last four hundred years the West also produced several great scholars of education. They spoke loudly, and they shaped the schools of the whole world today. Which layer did they see, and where did they stop? The next chapter calls them out. Comenius, Rousseau, Dewey, Illich, Foucault. Let us see how each of them walked half the way. See you in the next chapter.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.