As the opening work of Xunzi, Encouraging Learning is a short article that discusses the significance of learning and exhorts people to learn with correct purpose, attitude and methods. Based on simple materialism, the article makes extensive comments and inferences, which embodies some correct views of pre-Qin Confucianism in education, and also embodies Xunzi's artistic style as a master of pre-Qin philosophers' thoughts. He emphasized the role of learning and advocated modesty.

The article puts profound truth into a large number of concise and appropriate metaphors, which are extremely flexible and natural, vivid and vivid, without boring pedantry. For example, at the beginning of the article, four metaphors are used to illustrate "green, blue, green", "ice is water, cold is water", "wood is straight" and "gold is sharp" from different angles and sides. It received a strong sound effect. It is worth pointing out that almost all the vehicles used in this paper are common and easy to understand. These easy-to-understand metaphors will naturally remind people of some intuitive and simple image things, and then even compare things, enlighten their thinking and accept the profound truth said by the author.