Attitude Of Confucius

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Every person in this world has different attitudes towards learning. There is someone who wants to study for his or her own benefit and there are some people who use learning as a reason to fulfill desire such as gaining a title and money. Learning for external benefit is totally against the Chinese teaching, especially when it comes to Confucius. Confucius is well known as one of the most influential Chinese philosophers and teachers. His teachings are focusing on the social relationship such as how an individual should behave properly in society and Confucius also puts his attention to the issue of education. Most of Confucius teachings are recorded in the forms of Analects. Analects (Lunyu) classify as teaching or recording conversations. …show more content…
However, it does not happen in a current situation because people learn to impress other, and thus is not actually learning anything. The Master said: “Do not worry that you are not recognized by others: worry rather that you yourself lack ability” (Analects, 14.30). People should not learn because they want to be recognized as smart or high-class people, but they just need to focus on their tasks and do their best. In other words, in order to truly learn, people should focus on what they need instead of what they should do to make themselves look good. We can relate this idea to the modern days issue. A lot of students attend UCLA because of the prestige. In fact, they do not really have the desire to learn since they only learn for the sake of looking good. Moreover, we also know there is a high rate of competitiveness among UCLA students. However, it does not mean students should always compare their grades with one another. Good grades and smart title are not important. The significant thing is what students can learn from the school. It seems useless if students graduated from one of the top rank Universities in the world, but they cannot apply the knowledge that they learned in a real life situation. It will be better for students to fail in the exam and can learn from their mistakes, rather than get 4.0 GPA but they do not know what they are lacking. At this point, we can see many people use learning as an excuse to gain prestige and status. Confucius does not want his disciples to have this kind of attitude; he wants people to learn because of realization that they need improvement in order to become a better

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