Looking back on the past century, sinology can be described as ill-fated and ups and downs. During the New Culture Movement, Confucianism, as the representative of Chinese studies, was once regarded as the root of national backwardness and was severely criticized. Since then, in all previous political movements, Chinese studies have inevitably been severely impacted. This is the tragedy of the times. When a nation falls behind the times, the original classics will be subverted and the original traditions will be abandoned. When a nation is on the right track, traditional culture will become a valuable asset for a nation to embark on modernization. Nowadays, the Chinese nation has entered the fast lane of rapid development, and Chinese studies have followed the times and embarked on the road of rejuvenation. The revival of Chinese studies is the need to rebuild national culture, the need of national self-esteem, the need of the development of the times and the voice of hundreds of millions of people.

The original meaning of "Jing" in Chinese characters is "weaving straight lines", which is the forerunner of weaving a piece of cloth and extended to common sense and common way; The original meaning of "Dian" in Chinese characters is "the book of five emperors", which is extended to important documents and classics. "Classic" is a book containing common sense and common sense, which teaches people to do common things in life. These books have been handed down from ancient times to the present, and each nation has its own "classics" recognized in history. She is the direct expression of human wisdom and the core of power to create culture and promote history. Faced with the tide of market economy, driven by material desires, people become more impetuous, and excellent classic reading spirit is swept away. Not many people can really sit down and study hard, which requires us to know how to choose the most valuable things in traditional culture. These classic works of Chinese studies have stood the test of the times, are eternal standards and have eternal reading value. We believe that they are soothing medicines and spiritual wealth that we should cherish forever.

As the saying goes, "a tree can't live without roots, and a man can't stand without roots." To learn Chinese studies, we should start with the most primitive classics. "Jing" is the sublimation of wisdom, and "Dian" is the law of behavior; "Classic" is the most valuable, representative and perfect work that can best express the essence of national culture through historical selection. Classics are also the root of culture. With root culture and education, it is easy to develop a person's rationality and cultivate a broad mind and the virtues of mutual respect and respect. Human life is limited. By reading some valuable books, we can directly explore the origin of human nature, easily learn the wisdom of life, and quickly enlighten our own rationality, so as to absorb more superficial and applied knowledge with half the effort. This is what the ancients called "knowledge", which is what we call "cultural education" today. I'm afraid there is no practical way to inspire reason, broaden knowledge and cultivate culture except "reading classics". There is no doubt that the education of Chinese classics has a decisive influence on people's life. Xu Zijiao, a doctoral supervisor in the School of Education of Beijing Normal University, put it well: "The classic education of Chinese studies is the most valuable and high-quality education, and it is the foundation of a person's growth."

First, the classic education of Chinese studies is a general education, which is conducive to cultivating people's adaptability.

The relationship between general education and professional education is complementary. Professional education should enable students to learn professional knowledge and vocational skills, so as to prepare for a specific occupation. It tries to make the educated learn lifelong knowledge and skills through early school education. However, premature professional study and meticulous professional division seriously limit the development of students' imagination and creativity. Moreover, it takes a certain period, even a long time, to train talents. When students graduate with a skill after several years of school education, the vacancy of talents in specific positions in society may have been supplemented by other means such as job transfer or on-the-job training. However, people who only have professional skills lack high comprehensive quality and other skills, which is bound to be difficult to adapt to the needs of society.

General education is not to cultivate a specific skill, nor to prepare the educated for job hunting. Its purpose is not to acquire specific and useful knowledge, but to cultivate the ability of independent thinking. Not to teach people how to think, but to teach people how to think. It has carefully set up a series of courses including the principles and methods of literature, history, philosophy, art and science, aiming at promoting students' reverence for truth, goodness and beauty, arousing students' sensitivity and surprise to all great, profound and beautiful things, and at the same time enabling students to understand the major topics and basic principles of human thinking and application in the process of exploring knowledge. Therefore, the teaching method centered on classic reading is the most basic form of general education in the west. The core content of western general education is only "western civilization" and "classic research". Some specific courses were born on this basis.

In China's general education, we should also take the historical and cultural classics of the Chinese nation as the core, and Qin Shihuang's Hanwu, Tang Zong Song Zu, Qian Qian 300, Tang Poetry and Song Poetry, Four Books and Five Classics as the main learning contents. Learning the classics of Chinese studies means talking with our "sages" and infiltrating into our history and traditions step by step. Through the classic education of Chinese studies, we can get close to our ancestors, understand their interests, grasp their essence, and form a grand historical consciousness, so that we can deal with all kinds of affairs freely. Due to the rapid development of modern society, the future is uncertain. As parents, they should not simply give their children "gold" quickly, but spend the necessary time and patience to learn "touch the gold" by studying Chinese classics and receiving general education, so as to be convincingly qualified for any post and easily master any subject.

Second, the classic education of Chinese studies is quality education, which is conducive to experiencing people's comprehensive quality.

As the opposite of exam-oriented education, quality education has been widely recognized throughout the country. However, in practice, many people simply equate quality education with the study of teaching materials, and offer training courses such as piano, chess, calligraphy and painting to cultivate students' skills, so quality education is misinterpreted as the cultivation of skills.

So what is "quality"? Quality refers to the fundamental structure of people or things, which has the significance of foundation or premise and contains the possibility of unlimited development. "Su" means white, original and original; "Quality" means form, foundation and texture. The so-called quality actually refers to the activities and processes that can provide support and foundation for various specific skills, have development potential, break through limitations and have unlimited possibilities, and constantly improve and optimize the quality structure.

Only when we touch on the adjustment and development of people's quality structure can we have real quality education. For example, quality is like a piece of land, and skills are just crops that grow on the land. Land provides support and foundation for the growth of crops, so that the potential of seed germination, rooting, flowering and fruiting can be realized. Quality education is like the work of improving soil and improving soil fertility. Playing chess, playing the piano, and even learning to draw, sing and dance are just planting some flowers and plants on the fertile soil of quality, not fundamentally improving the land; Just add some plans to the quality template, instead of improving the structure of this template. In the final analysis, learning specific skills only focuses on the problems of "device", "use" and "end", not on the problems of "Tao", "body" and "foundation", and fails to grasp the crux and key of the problem.

Classical education of Chinese studies is not only consistent with quality education, but also the only way to implement quality education. On the surface, the classic education of Chinese studies is a kind of "useless skill" that does not directly cultivate a certain skill. In fact, it is the fundamental, key and fundamental education to lay a solid foundation, adjust the structure and improve the quality from a deeper and higher level. Infiltrating the classics of Chinese studies, we can feel and appreciate the ancient thinking contained in the classic world, thus gaining wisdom and strength. Therefore, the classics of Chinese studies are tools to exercise thinking ability, with loud voice and intangible significance. As Mr. Zhu Ziqing pointed out in the preface of Classic Talk, "the value of classic training lies not in practicality, but in culture", and the classic education of Chinese studies plays an incomparable role in improving humanistic quality.

Third, the classic education of Chinese studies is a general education, which is conducive to shaping people's noble character.

Chen Kunyao, former president of Lingnan University in Hong Kong, once explained that the purpose of liberal arts education is to teach people to "have knowledge and live an elegant life". The motto of Beijing Normal University is "Learn to be a teacher and be a model", which is another manifestation of liberal arts education. The word "liberal arts" consists of two words: "Bo" and "Ya", which refer to knowledge and being a man respectively. "Bo" means having profound knowledge and various skills, and "Ya" means having perfect virtue and elegant temperament, getting rid of vulgarity and moving towards Excellence.

For nearly a century, the mainstream consciousness once held a position of contempt, hatred and criticism for the traditions and cultures of our ancestors. Many people cut their "umbilical cord" and cut out their "hearts" by hand for three reasons: on the one hand, they don't understand the tradition, and people follow suit because of conformity; On the one hand, because of the weakness of national strength and the decline of national power in modern times, traditional culture has been regarded as a scapegoat; Another reason is that the classic content of Chinese studies is not practical. On the premise of judging whether it is useful, especially whether it is visible, the study of Chinese classics has long been ignored and despised.

In fact, in western education, there has always been a kind of liberal arts education which is different from China's classical education in specific content, but in the same spirit. Its purpose is to cultivate traditional elites with high classical cultural literacy, and its core content is classical text learning, classical language training and classical cultural edification. There is a famous English saying: "Although Greek and Latin are useless for managing Indian colonies, only those who are proficient in Greek and Latin can rule India." In ancient China, the eight-part essay on Four Books, Five Classics and Eight Essays did not provide specific strategies for governing the country, but it was an effective means to train the skills of governing the country. Only those who are proficient in the "Four Books" and "Five Classics" and are good at writing eight-part essays can open the door to the imperial examination and participate in state management.

There is a close relationship between knowledge and morality, and traditional knowledge represented by Chinese classics has a very strong ethical color. The so-called "those who learn well are virtuous, and those who learn shallowly are virtuous". The process of learning Chinese classics is not only a process of enhancing knowledge, but also a process of digesting knowledge into life and transforming it into life virtue, which has the significance of cultivating temperament, changing temperament and improving self-cultivation. The classic education of Chinese studies not only cultivates learned people who are familiar with literature and meaning, good at talent, familiar with classics and thorough knowledge, but also cultivates modest gentlemen with sincere friendship, correct moral conduct and diligent behavior. In a word, they should have both knowledge and manners.

Fourth, the classic education of Chinese studies is humanistic education, which is conducive to carrying forward the national humanistic spirit.

People-oriented education is originally human education, for the all-round development of people. The purpose of education is to liberate people from the immature state and bring them to a more conscious, ideal and complete situation. The so-called humanistic education is to promote the promotion of human nature, shape ideal personality and realize personal life value and social value. Humanistic education advocates the development of rich and healthy human nature while learning knowledge, so that the object of education is not only superficial knowledge, but also familiar with the cultural implications that support these knowledge; Humanistic education is not to cultivate experts without souls, but to cultivate individuals with cultural literacy.

In the long historical process, the classics of Chinese studies have been deeply rooted in the spiritual home of China people, flowing in the blood of every Chinese descendant. Classics are the bridge between us and historical traditions. Without classic education, we can't go back to our spiritual home, but we can only become culturally homeless vagrants. Learning the classics of Chinese studies is essentially to go to the spiritual home shared by the Chinese nation, feel the warmth of this home, participate in the construction of this home, and form an emotional conversion to her. The process of receiving classic education is also the process of rooting one's own life in the rich soil of traditional culture; It is the process of changing oneself from a natural person in the biological sense to a China person in the cultural sense. We advocate the classic education of Chinese studies because of the profound influence and real experience of traditional classics on the history and social life of the Chinese nation, because we respect and carry forward the blood of Chinese traditional culture, and because we admit that we are descendants of the Chinese nation and never want to cut off this blood relationship.

In a word, the classic education of Chinese studies is not only an important way to implement general education and quality education, but also an effective way to implement liberal arts education and humanities education. Through the study of Chinese classics, we can sharpen our character, improve our personality, and make us grow into modern China people with noble morality, extensive knowledge and elegant behavior; Through the study of Chinese classics, teenagers can learn from the excellent nutrients of national traditions, master the elegant language unique to the motherland, and grow into people with lofty ideals and exemplary morality; A new generation of China people with both cultural knowledge and civilized accomplishment.