A Pleasure to Have in Class

Let's kick things off with the first item in the list, then, culture.

Think of culture like the coursework you complete in a high school humanities class.

Your civics teacher might task you with learning the basics of your country's constitution, or your literature teacher might assign Dickens in order to familiarize you with the conventions of storytelling and creative writing, or Shakespeare to expand your vocabulary, challenge you to decipher unfamiliar metaphors, and warn you away from getting hoisted by your own petard.

Among the reasons for this type of study, one of the most practical is to give you the tools and knowledge to collaborate with other adults at work and in life.

Whether that means having a common set of cultural references and metaphors to fall back on, or just recognizing the names of important people, places, and things— This type of education provides you with enough context that you and those you cooperate with don't spend time puzzling over the knowns and can instead work together to understand and manage the unknowns.

Next up is xing, conduct.

The closest thing in modern education is how we train for and perform group activities, like team sports or orchestra.

Of course, you're learning to play, but you're also learning how to be part of an ensemble.

You listen to others.

You don't upstage anyone.

You show up prepared and you lose graciously.

Beginners learn these as routines.

You drill scales or passes, you shake hands after the game whether you feel like it or not, and all that stuff.

Over time, the routine becomes judgment, so you know what a teammate needs from you in a situation nobody's drilled for.

If culture and conduct are the curriculum, commitment and credibility are the qualities schools expect students to bring in.

And the modern education system mostly handles these two by measuring and enforcing them.

Keep that in mind, because we'll see later that Confucius went about this very differently.

commitment, Zhong shows up most plainly in attendance, participation, and grades.

Did you show up? Did you speak up? Did you actually engage with the work, or did you turn in a lazy essay that just happens to have the right answers? Teachers fold all of this into your marks some way or another, though in some extreme cases, it shows up as disciplinary action, like when you end up skipping too much class.

Credibility.

Xin.

First, I'll admit, I may have gone a bit overboard with the alliteration, so you can also read it as honesty and trustworthiness.

This is where schools get most serious.

Plagiarism is the cardinal sin of academic life, and at its core, it is a credibility failure.

When you claim someone else's work as your own, you lose trust when others start to view you as someone who lacks integrity.