Principles of Pedagogy talks about eight principles of education and teaching, one of which is the principle of ability, also called the principle of acceptability. Basically, education and teaching need to arrange learning content according to the age characteristics of students. Generally speaking, this certainly makes sense. However, we should also see that this principle contains several unnamed concepts: first, children's "acceptance" of learning content should be "understanding" and "understanding" of learning content. Second, "acceptability" is related to the age of the child. Children will be more receptive when they are older. Thirdly, "acceptance" refers to the acceptance at that time, and the teaching process is the process of asking students to "accept". Students are required to "understand at that time".

It is not difficult to see that these requirements are based on science teaching. Science education and teaching really need this. But the education and teaching of Chinese is not like this.

The ability to learn Chinese is not directly proportional to the age of the child. It is not that the older a child is, the stronger his learning ability will be. A typical example is that language learning is precisely because children have stronger learning ability and better grades when they are young. Vygotsky noticed that a 3-year-old child's language learning ability is not as good as that of a 1.5-year-old child.

The "acceptability" or "ability" of Chinese learning cannot be limited to "understanding". Can "feel" and "accept". In ancient China, there was a saying that "when you can call", children can understand it if they can understand it, and they can recite it if they can. That makes more sense.

Chinese learning can't just let students learn articles and literary works that they can understand at that time. In other words, "immediate results" cannot be pursued. This is because Chinese learning, even learning a small poem, is often meaningful. Some of them can "understand" at that time, while others need them to have rich life experience in the future. Excessive pursuit for children to understand immediately, can only choose the simplest things, lost the classical requirements of the text.

For many years, the principle of "acceptability" or "ability" has been misused in education in China.