Learning and thinking

In plain language: The Master said: “Learning without thinking leaves one bewildered; thinking without learning leaves one in peril.” Zhu Xi’s commentary explains: “Not seeking it in the mind, one is in darkness and gains nothing; not practising the matter, one is in danger and not at ease.”

Confucius treats “learning” and “thinking” as the two legs of study, neither dispensable. In the context of this book the saying can be set beside the results of Chapter 4: merely taking in information again and again (rereading, listening to lectures) readily produces the fluent feeling that “it all makes sense” without turning knowledge into something one can use; this is somewhat like being “bewildered”. Conversely, puzzling alone without learning, and without being tested, easily leads to “peril”. It should be said, though, that Confucius’s “thinking” is repeated reflection on the meaning of what has been learned, not “retrieval practice” in the modern sense; what the two share is an emphasis on the learner actively working on what has been learned, not merely receiving it.

Striving and stammering: waiting until the learner reaches the edge

In plain language: The Master said: “I do not open the way for one who is not striving to understand, nor help out one who is not struggling to put it into words. If I hold up one corner and he cannot come back with the other three, I do not repeat myself.” Zhu Xi’s commentary: “Fen is the state of the mind seeking to get through and not yet succeeding. Fei is the look of the mouth wanting to speak and not yet able. To qi is to open up the meaning; to fa is to bring out the words. A thing with four corners: hold up one and the other three can be known. Fan means to come back and confirm by one’s own effort. Fu means to tell again.”

This is the passage with most room for dialogue with modern research. Fen and fei describe a learner who has tried their hardest and is still just short: neither knowing nothing nor having mastered it, but stuck exactly at the edge. Confucius chooses this moment to “open the way” and “help out”, which resembles the “just beyond current ability” of Chapter 1, Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, and the advice of Chapter 6 to let learners try first and give feedback afterwards. “Holding up one corner” can be set beside transfer: having learned one case, can one extend it to others of the same kind? The trial in Chapter 8 takes a transfer test as its primary outcome.

But the differences matter just as much. Confucius’s fen and fei are a teacher’s observation and judgement of a particular student, an understanding between teacher and pupil; they have, and need, no “accuracy rate”. “I do not repeat myself” does not mean giving up on the student, but that the teacher will not spell out the other three corners; the student must “come back” with them. This is an attitude to teaching, not a threshold that can be calculated.

The Record of Learning: knowing one’s insufficiency, and “not overstepping the proper order”

In plain language: Though there be fine dishes, if you do not eat them you will not know their flavour; though there be the highest way, if you do not learn it you will not know its goodness. Therefore only by learning does one know one’s insufficiency, and only by teaching does one know one’s difficulties. Knowing one’s insufficiency, one can turn back and examine oneself; knowing one’s difficulties, one can strengthen oneself. Hence it is said: teaching and learning advance each other.

“Only by learning does one know one’s insufficiency” can be set beside an observation of Chapter 4: rereading makes people feel they understand everything, and only actually recalling and solving problems exposes what has in fact not been remembered. Part of what retrieval practice does is to let learners “know their insufficiency”. “Only by teaching does one know one’s difficulties” also fits a familiar experience: only when explaining something to someone else do we find that we have not truly understood it. Yet the Record’s “insufficiency” and “difficulties” lead in the end to “turning back on oneself” and “strengthening oneself”, that is, to self-examination and effort in moral cultivation, not merely to better memory.

In plain language: The method of the great learning: preventing faults before they arise is called “forestalling”; teaching when the learner is ready is called “timeliness”; teaching without overstepping the learner’s level and order is called “following”; letting learners observe one another and improve is called “polishing”. These four are why teaching flourishes. … So the noble person, in teaching, guides but does not drag, encourages but does not press, opens the way but does not take the learner to the end. Guiding without dragging makes for harmony; encouraging without pressing makes for ease; opening the way without taking them to the end makes them think. Harmony, ease and thought: that may be called good teaching.

“Teaching when the learner is ready is called timeliness; teaching without overstepping the proper order is called following” concerns timing and sequence: teach when the learner “can”, without skipping stages. This connects with Chapter 1’s idea that difficulty should keep pace with skill. “Opening the way without taking them to the end makes them think” is closer to the retrieval practice of Chapter 4 and the “delay the answer” of Chapter 6: open the door, but do not explain everything, and let learners walk the remaining stretch themselves. The Record also warns “encourage but do not press”, which matches the concern that “too hard leads to collapse”.

Zhu Xi: advance step by step, read until familiar and reflect with care

In plain language: In reading, follow the proper order and advance step by step; read until familiar and reflect with care. In general, in reading one must first read until familiar, so that the words all seem to come from one’s own mouth; then reflect with care, so that the meaning all seems to come from one’s own mind; only then can one gain something.

Later scholars condensed Zhu Xi’s many remarks on reading into “six principles of Master Zhu’s method of reading”: follow the order and advance step by step; read until familiar and reflect with care; with an open mind, steep oneself in the text; examine it against one’s own experience; apply oneself with urgency; hold to reverence and keep one’s resolve. According to the prefaces that Zhang Hong and Qi Xi wrote for Master Zhu’s Method of Reading, Zhu Xi’s disciple Fu Guang (courtesy name Hanqing) had first compiled a collection on the method of reading, drafted but never revised; in 1265–1266, late in the Southern Song, Zhang Hong and Qi Xi enlarged Fu Guang’s draft with further sayings of Zhu Xi and arranged it under these six headings. In the Yuan dynasty Cheng Duanli made them the guiding principle of his Daily Schedule of Graded Reading for the Cheng Family School. The book’s original framework attributed the six principles to Fu Guang: that he compiled the first collection is documented, but the arrangement into six principles was the work of Zhang Hong and Qi Xi, and the attribution is corrected accordingly.

“Follow the order and advance step by step” connects in form with the adaptive difficulty of Chapters 1 and 8: rising in order, step by step. “Read until familiar” seems at first to clash with Chapter 4’s finding that rereading has low utility; but Zhu Xi’s familiar reading means reading until “the words all seem to come from one’s own mouth”, that is, until one can recite them and say them oneself; elsewhere Zhu Xi also says that reading must reach the point of reciting from memory. This is closer to retrieval than to simply looking again. “Reflect with care” asks that “the meaning all seem to come from one’s own mind”, close to organising knowledge into one’s existing understanding. Zhu Xi’s method, however, was devised for reading the classics, grasping their principles and transforming one’s character; principles such as “steeping oneself with an open mind” and “holding to reverence” concern the attitude and cultivation of the reader, which modern experiments in cognitive psychology have not tested and cannot test.

The limits of reading together

Reading these texts beside modern research has three limits. First, the aims differ: the classical texts speak of “learning for oneself”, whose purpose is moral self-cultivation; modern learning science studies how memory and skill are acquired and retained in measurable tasks. Second, the methods differ: the classical texts rest on long teaching experience and moral reflection and are normative (how one ought to teach and learn); modern research rests on controlled experiments and statistics and is descriptive and explanatory. “Not opening the way for one who is not striving” resembles the zone of proximal development, but neither can be used to prove the other. Third, the plain-language explanations in this chapter are the author’s readings and, unless noted, do not represent the only interpretation in the commentarial tradition.

Chapter summary

“Learning without thinking leaves one bewildered; thinking without learning leaves one in peril” stresses the learner’s active work on what is learned. “I do not open the way for one who is not striving” describes teaching when the learner is stuck at the edge, and “holding up one corner” can be set beside transfer; this is an attitude to teaching, not a calculable threshold. The Record of Learning’s “only by learning does one know one’s insufficiency” can be set beside retrieval practice exposing gaps in knowledge; “teaching when ready, without overstepping the order” concerns timing and sequence, and “opening the way without taking them to the end” concerns guidance that does not tell all. In Zhu Xi’s “advance step by step, read until familiar and reflect with care”, familiar reading means reading until one can say the words oneself, closer to retrieval than to rereading. The classical authors were concerned with moral self-cultivation, not with experiments in cognitive psychology; reading them together only lets each illuminate the other. The next chapter offers a checklist and a trial protocol.