All schools emphasize the great political role of talents. Wang Anshi regards training talents as the premise of political reform. He said, "the law can't go its own way." His Records of Emperor Renzong's Words and Actions is a complete classical literary work. All factions oppose the tendency of the state to attach importance to the imperial examination and neglect school education, and demand that the central official school be rectified and reformed, local schools be developed, talents be trained, and a good social atmosphere be formed. Different schools have different views on what kind of talents to train and how to train them. Fan Zhongyan, Wang Anshi, Chen Liang, Ye Shi and so on. They are all important theorists of feudal ethics. They emphasize the cultivation of feudal virtues of talents, attach importance to all kinds of practical training in governing the country, managing money and being a general, and require both civil and military skills and knowledge of history and law. All knowledge that can be used by all countries in the world should be the teaching content of schools in order to strengthen feudal bureaucrats at all levels. Neo-Confucianism and psychologists, on the other hand, pay one-sided attention to the feudal ethical quality of talents and despise all kinds of practical knowledge, such as military, legal, agricultural and other knowledge and skills. Cheng and Zhu pointed out that the fundamental task of the school is to teach people to "manage tomorrow and destroy human desires". Because Zhu Cheng's Neo-Confucianism educational thought is more in line with the ruling needs of the landlord class, it became the dominant educational thought in feudal society after the end of the Southern Song Dynasty. However, the Neo-Confucianists have made many explorations on education, thus enriching the ancient educational theory.
Zhang Zaiji, a materialist educator in the Northern Song Dynasty, and Wang Chong tried to explain the physiological reasons for the difference between good and evil and wisdom and stupidity with the "qi" of material, and put forward the propositions of "the nature of destiny" and "the nature of temperament" for the first time, which divided human nature into two parts. Cheng Hao, Cheng Yi and Zhu in the Northern Song Dynasty reformed and developed Zhang Zai's view of human nature according to their respective objective idealism philosophy. They endowed the feudal moral concepts such as benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and faith with the form of "righteousness" as an independent objective reality. "Nature between heaven and earth" is the embodiment of "natural justice" in people's minds. Temperament is formed by the influence of qi, that is, the body of blood and the nature of destiny. The Nature of Destiny is the best; The good and evil of "temperament" depends on the clarity, purity and massiness of the innate qi when people are born. Natural pure, pure and thick people are unified in "temperament" and "nature of heaven and earth" They are not only morally perfect, but also wise. This is a kind and wise saint. However, in the real society, Neo-Confucianism believes that there are almost no natural saints, and the "temperament" of ordinary people is turbid, controversial, biased and thin to varying degrees, which not only shows the difference between wisdom and stupidity, but also germinates "selfishness of human desire" once it comes into contact with the material world, covering up "justice" and becoming a person with moral defects. But after reading the books of sages, I am self-cultivated, changeable, stupid and wise, and people want to go, and saints can learn. This argument reverses the relationship between social existence and social consciousness, out of the need to safeguard feudal laws. However, starting from this basic point, Neo-Confucianism demonstrated that everyone has the innate goodness of education. Congenital temperament can be changed through acquired education. This not only broke through the class boundary of the theory of "three qualities of sex" formed since the Han and Tang Dynasties, but also adapted to the expanding trend of educational sociality after the Song Dynasty, touched on the study of human physiological endowment, and deepened the ancient educational theory.
Neo-Confucianism emphasizes that the purpose of education is to cultivate people, that is, people with perfect feudal moral cultivation. The specific requirements are embodied in the Learning Rules of Bailudong Academy formulated by Zhu. In order to train people effectively, they discussed the educational tasks of primary schools and universities and their relations. For the first time in China's educational history, Zhu regarded primary schools and universities (that is, the education of children and adolescents) as a unified educational process. He put forward that the basic task of primary education is to instill moral concepts in children and cultivate feudal moral behavior habits, and the latter is the key. The basic task of a university is to "learn from the times", that is, "materialism", so that the moral habits formed in primary schools can be adhered to at the height of moral belief. They criticized leaving the tasks that should be completed in primary schools to universities. Neo-Confucianism's viewpoint on the process of moral education has dialectical factors, and it is also the development of ancient moral education theory.
Based on their view of knowing and doing, the Neo-Confucianists quoted and reformed the words "erudite, interrogative, thoughtful, discerning and persevering" in The Doctrine of the Mean as the teaching order of universities, that is, the educational process. The basic feature of this teaching process is re-knowledge, but it requires the organic unity of imparting moral knowledge, learning and moral practice. According to this "teaching order", the Neo-Confucianists further summarized the problems of how to read, understand the Tao and cultivate one's morality. "Zhu Zi's reading method" and its cultivation theory of "respect" have ruled in the field of educational theory for more than 700 years, serving the feudal rulers to cultivate obedient subjects. However, there are still many correct summaries of reading and self-cultivation experiences, which involve the discussion of psychological qualities such as attention, thinking, emotion, will, honesty and moral self-evaluation. It is a valuable historical heritage in the history of ancient education in China.
Many neo-Confucianists attach importance to the editing and research of educational books in primary and secondary schools and universities. They broke through the tedious study of transmitting and annotating Confucian classics prevailing in the Han and Tang Dynasties, and paid attention to the selection of teaching materials. Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi chose The University, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects of Confucius and Mencius as the basic books for teaching. Zhu reinterpreted the above four kinds of books and called them "Notes on Four Books". In addition, he co-edited Children's Notes, Primary School Notes and Jinlusi Notes with Lu Bogong. Zhu's self-report Elementary School provides a "way of life" for children, and it is a basic book for elementary schools. Jin Lu Si is a popular reading of Neo-Confucianism, compiled from the speeches of Neo-Confucianism in the Song Dynasty, which is convenient for teenagers to "enter the door" and is characterized by "eager to cut". In addition to giving full play to the ideas of Neo-Confucianism, Notes to Four Books also strive for concise annotations and accurate words. Neo-Confucianism in Song Dynasty compiled a set of teaching books, from childhood education to youth education, from primary school to university. After the Song Dynasty, this set of textbooks became law textbooks, which spread the feudal thoughts of Confucianism and severely imprisoned the thoughts of feudal scholars. However, the principles embodied in editing thought, such as few but precise materials and appropriate and concise language, have certain theoretical significance.