Learning and good conduct

Lesson plan

2 class periods of about 45 minutes.

1. Day 1 · 45 min

   The gentleman and the petty person

   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.

2. Day 2 · 45 min

   Two kinds of teacher

   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.

Read these sources

In this order. Each opens in Hearth Library with the original beside plain English, and a History tab on who made it and how far to trust it.

1. 1

   Sayings on learning, friends and family

   Confucius, 450–300 BCE. Moderate.

   Very short sayings, but the reader often has to work out who is speaking and why; the footnotes explain the key terms.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   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

   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?

   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.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

2. 2

   A young wife learns to run the house

   Xenophon, 370–350 BCE. Moderate.

   The reported speech (“he said,” “I said”) can make it hard to tell who is speaking; reading the parts aloud helps.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   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

   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?

   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.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

To finish

Come back to the question: How did ancient teachers say people should learn and treat one another? Ask students to answer it with evidence from at least two of the sources, and to say which source they trust most and why.

Standards

Students build a picture of Confucius's gentleman from the sayings, compare it with Ischomachus's teaching, and ask whose voice each book gives us.

Go further

Other units

Running a home and a farm

Encyclopedia

Confucius · Slavery in ancient Greece and Rome

Play

Word for Word

Collection

Every source in Kitchen, Farm and Fable