Learning and good conduct

Big question: How did ancient teachers say people should learn and treat one another?

A unit from Hearth Learning, built on Kitchen, Farm and Fable in Hearth Library. Every source page has the original beside a plain English translation, notes on who made it and how far to trust it, and page images where they exist. Sources marked “Early version” have not yet been checked by a separate review.

Lesson plan

Day 1: The gentleman and the petty person (45 minutes)

  1. Read 15.23 in Sayings on learning, friends and family aloud. Show the original and the older translation by Legge beside our English.
  2. Read the History tab: Confucius did not write the Analects, and the sayings were collected after his death.
  3. In pairs, students collect every saying that names the gentleman or the petty person and set them in two columns with the chapter numbers.
  4. Each pair writes a short description of the gentleman using only its chart.
  5. Read 1.14, 2.13, 4.22 and 4.24 and discuss how these sayings connect speech and action.

Day 2: Two kinds of teacher (45 minutes)

  1. Read 7.7, 7.8, 7.21 and 15.38 aloud. Students note what Confucius expects of a student and whom he will teach.
  2. Read 7.5, 7.14, 7.15, 8.2 and 8.3 in A young wife learns to run the house. Students note how Ischomachus teaches his wife and how she answers.
  3. Discuss the connection question on Sayings on learning, friends and family: who chooses what is learned in each text, and what the learner is expected to do.
  4. Discuss the reliability question on A young wife learns to run the house: her answers reach us only through Ischomachus, in a book by Xenophon.
  5. 15 minutes: Students answer the big question with evidence from both sources: how these ancient teachers said people should learn and treat one another.

Sources

Sayings on learning, friends and family

Confucius, about 400 BCE (sayings of Confucius, who died in 479 BCE, collected after his death). Moderate.

  1. Comprehension. In 7.8, what does Confucius expect of a student before he will go on teaching him?
  2. Analysis. Several sayings compare what a person says with what he does (1.14, 2.13, 4.22, 4.24). How do these sayings connect speech and action, and why might Confucius judge a person this way?
  3. Analysis (reliability). Confucius did not write the Analects. Some chapters describe him from the outside (7.4, 7.37), and scholars disagree about when and by whom the book was put together. How far can we tell Confucius’s own words from those of the people who collected them?
  4. Connection. In A young wife learns to run the house, Ischomachus teaches his wife, who came to him not yet fifteen and had been raised to see, hear, and ask as little as possible. Compare this with what Confucius says about his students in 7.7, 7.8, and 15.38. Who chooses what is learned in each text, and what is the learner expected to do?

Key terms: gentleman (junzi, a person of fine character, whatever his birth; the opposite of the petty person); petty person (a person of narrow, self-serving character, whatever his rank); filial duty (the care and respect children owe their parents); goodness (ren, the highest quality of character in the Analects: a person at his best in dealing with others, kind and fully human); ritual (li, the proper form of ceremony and manners for each occasion); the Way (the right course for a person to follow, in his own conduct and in government); virtue (moral goodness; here, the moral power of a person’s character, which draws others without force)

Activity: In pairs, students collect every saying that names the gentleman or the petty person and set them out in two columns, with the chapter number beside each line. Each pair then writes a short description of the gentleman using only its chart. Pairs share one quality the sayings leave unclear and look for a saying that might settle it.

A young wife learns to run the house

Xenophon, about 360 BCE; the exact year is not known. Moderate.

  1. Comprehension. Which tasks does Ischomachus say belong to his wife, and which belong to him?
  2. Analysis. Ischomachus uses a beehive, a chorus, and a Phoenician ship as comparisons. What does each one help him argue?
  3. Analysis (reliability). Everything the wife says reaches us through Ischomachus, telling Socrates, in a book written by Xenophon. How far can her answers tell us what a young Athenian wife thought? What would we need to know to check them?
  4. Connection. In this text the wife must see that any household servant who falls ill is looked after, and she hopes they will be grateful. In How to run a farm, Cato says sick slaves should not get full rations and lists an old slave and a sick slave among the things to sell. Compare the two. What reasons does each writer give, or leave unstated, and whose point of view is missing from both?

Key terms: household (oikos, the house together with what belongs to it and the people who live and work in it); sensible (here, sōphronein: of sound mind, self-controlled, and modest); household servants (the enslaved men and women who worked in the house); women’s quarters (here, the part of Ischomachus’s house kept for the women, shut off from the men’s quarters by a bolted door); pulses (the dried seeds of plants such as beans, peas, and lentils, eaten as food); chorus (a group of people who sang and danced together in a performance)

Activity: Using 9.2 and 9.4, students draw a floor plan of Ischomachus’s house and label each space with what he says belongs there, such as the inner room, the dry and cool rooms, the living rooms, and the women’s quarters behind a bolted door, and they mark which way the house faces. Beside each room they note who would have worked or slept there, and they mark with a question mark anything the text does not tell them.

Standards

Printable worksheet for any source: https://hearthinteractive.com/learning/worksheet.html

Translations drafted by Claude (Anthropic). Free to use in class. Hearth Learning, https://hearthinteractive.com/learning/