The sage Zeng Guofan often warned his younger brothers not to be too obsessed with fame and scientific examinations, saying, "Many people will be mistaken for life." He has always advocated in (Zeng Guofan's Family Letters) that reading is important to understand the truth. Only by understanding the way of self-cultivation and the way of doing things through the writings of the sages can it benefit oneself and the world. His views on the imperial examinations can be summed up in one sentence, "Don't waste your life by taking exams."
In Zeng Guofan's view, if you can understand the truth through reading, you can still write books and establish theories even if you don't pass the exam, or If you work as a staff and do practical things (a staff is equivalent to today's secretary), you will not be afraid of not having enough to eat. On the contrary, if you don't have real knowledge, even if you are lucky enough to pass the exam, your life will be a failure. He said: "If a person does not study, that is, if he calls himself a scholar, he must be engaged in (university). There are three principles for (university): enlightening virtue, new people, and achieving perfection. These are all things that I am responsible for. If reading cannot be considered personally, then what is the use of reading if it is not related to my body? Is there anyone who can understand and be useful?”
After reading Mr. Zeng’s views on reading, my eyes lit up and I felt like I was enlightened. In the past, I thought that reading only allowed us to read, write, and learn new knowledge. I thought that how to deal with others and how to be a human being should be taught by parents, and that we need to go out into the society and grow up to understand it. It turns out that we can learn these things just by reading. , understand this!
Nowadays, when we are students, we also focus on exams when we study. All the books we read are mainly for the purpose of getting into a good school and getting a good job in the future. It is not like what Mr. Zeng said. , with the goal of understanding reason, Mingde, and being a human being. As a result, many students now have grown up, including teenagers and college students, but they do not know how to behave in the world, and they are very unfamiliar with others. Some etiquette still needs to be taught repeatedly by their parents, but they still do not agree with it in their hearts. The knowledge learned in school cannot be flexibly applied to life to solve problems encountered in life. Some good moral qualities are not passed down well and require re-education by parents. This deviates from the original intention of studying. They do not realize the cultural qualities that young people should have.
This is also the current national situation in our country. The shortcomings of examination-oriented education are difficult to improve in the short term. We still have to rely on ourselves to understand the true meaning of reading, break down barriers, study hard, learn from books how to cultivate ourselves as a human being, understand how to work in the world, and embark on the road of being useful in the world!
In the future, if someone tells us that reading is not important, we will be able to use Zeng Lao’s words to refute it powerfully, instead of simply saying that reading is useful and these few unconvincing words ?