How to Educate Children

How to Educate Children

Confucius said, “In education, there should be no class distinctions.” Every child is unique, so from a strategic perspective, teaching according to a child’s individual aptitudes is essential. But parents’ own circumstances also vary enormously, so we cannot measure everyone by the same standard. At the most basic level, companionship and love should be the most important things. When circumstances do not allow parents to spend long periods of time with their children, the key becomes how to make use of the limited time they do have. And companionship may not take only one form. As for love, it is an indispensable condition for mental well-being. A lack of material resources may affect a child’s physical health to some extent, though in today’s society that gap is gradually narrowing, but a lack of love and care can be fatal to a child’s emotional and psychological development. Parental indifference and violence may be major causes of a child’s difficulties in adapting to society, while neglect and lack of care can make a child far more vulnerable to bullying, violence, or abuse during their growth.

On the foundation of companionship and care, if parents have the energy and capacity, they should hold themselves to higher standards. The Chinese language is rich in meaning, and even a literal reading of the word “education” reveals much wisdom. The two characters for “education” point to both teaching and nurturing, placing mental health and physical health on equal footing. The character for “teaching” can be seen as containing elements of morality and learning: one part suggests moral education, the other intellectual education, and both deserve equal emphasis. The ancient seal script form of the character for “nurture” resembles a woman giving birth, one large figure and one small, which can be extended to mean raising and caring for a child, emphasizing physical well-being.

Physical health is the foundation of everything, yet our parenting ideas often still remain trapped in hearsay, baseless traditions, and various taboos. These may bring children more harm and suffering than health. Even more disheartening is how many parents refuse to learn. If one raises children by instinct alone, then what difference is there from primitive people? No parenting challenge any parent faces is truly unique, but without sufficient learning, one is bound to stumble again on the same old road where countless others have already fallen. In the basic task of raising children, continuous learning may matter more than all kinds of supplements and secondhand advice.

For parents, moral education, cultural or intellectual education, and physical health are all aspects of education that must be taken seriously. This is especially important in today’s society. Technological and commercial development has fractured traditional values and moral concepts, while new ethical norms have not yet been firmly established. Written and formalized rules alone are not enough to guide action. Parents need to learn through personal practice, explore, communicate, and uncover the principles of humanity that ought to be upheld. This was originally the sort of work philosophers were meant to do.

Beyond morality, the education of knowledge is even more important. Educational institutions exist, but they are not something we can fully rely on. If we look back twenty years and compare that time with the present, the speed of the world’s progress is astonishing. Yet education, in most cases, still remains rooted in the achievements of human civilization from fifty, one hundred, or even two hundred years ago. How can such an education cultivate children who are suited to contemporary society? Outside school, most outside institutions are driven largely by profit and cannot provide children with education that is both genuinely adaptive and truly valuable. In many biographies of famous people, education was largely carried out by parents, and many talents and skills were passed down directly from parent to child. Today, parents have a responsibility to pass on the life skills and practical abilities best suited to the present age. Personally, I am also trying to explore how to teach my son the most competitive skills of our time, such as computers, programming, and even artificial intelligence.

Although not every parent has the same foundation, resources, or skills, modern society has also given us an opportunity more equal than ever before. The internet and online learning platforms have given everyone fairer access to education. And even for parents, in a rapidly changing era, education should be a lifelong undertaking. Through these platforms, parents can give their children educational opportunities they themselves may not possess. Yet selection and judgment are still necessary, because we no longer live in an age of information scarcity, but in an age of information overload. Choosing is more important than learning.