Why the four great masterpieces are not suitable for children

The Four Great Masterpieces may not be suitable for children

First, let's look at "Water Margin" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". These two books can be said to be a household name in China, especially the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", even illiterate old ladies know the "Peach Orchard" and "Three Guan Yu" and several other stories. When I was a kid, the first thing I did was to turn on the radio and listen to Yuan Kuaocheng's commentary "Romance of the Three Kingdoms".

However, the old saying, "If you don't watch Water Margin, you don't read Three Kingdoms," has long been circulating among the public. Water Margin is full of robbers, bandits, and kings. Young people are young and vigorous, the heart is not yet determined, it is inevitable that the monkey will not learn the same way; Three Kingdoms is full of intrigue, power and trickery, and deceit. "The old read the Three Kingdoms is a thief", the old man who is well versed in the ways of the world read more and more sophisticated, old and cunning.

Such values and spiritual connotations should be guarded against by adults, not to mention children who cannot distinguish right from wrong and are easily influenced!

By definition, Journey to the West should be the most suitable for children to read. The Tang Monk, the Monkey King, Porky Pig, the Sand Monk, and all kinds of gods and demons are vividly portrayed, and the plot is twisting and turning, which is the easiest way to arouse children's interest in reading.

However, this book is fundamentally about Buddhism and life, and its hidden meanings are extremely far-reaching and vast, far beyond children's comprehension. The words "practice," "bodhi," "spirit," and "zen mind" can be found everywhere in the book, which implies a strong Buddhist flavor. The book is not suitable for children.

Finally, let's look at Dream of the Red Chamber. This is regarded as the pinnacle of Chinese classical literature, and also enjoys a very high status in the history of world literature. Its profound thought, exquisite writing and high artistic value are almost unmatched. From princes and generals, scholars and masters, down to peddlers and village women, all of them are fascinated by it.

However, from an educational point of view, this book is not necessarily suitable for children to read, especially adolescents.

First of all, although a thousand people have a thousand interpretations of "Dream of the Red Chamber," the theme of "color," "emptiness," "illusion," and "destruction" is universally recognized. " themes are universally recognized. For children, these concepts are either not understood or, if understood, will affect their expectations of future life. Education should ignite hope in children's hearts and encourage them to pursue a better life in the future, rather than reminding them how cruel reality is.

Secondly, according to Cao Xueqin's original intention, the society and the family described in the book move step by step from prosperity to collapse, and finally "the earth is so clean that it has fallen into a white haze". This is a very sad, sad, cold, and heartbreaking story, and while it is a profound revelation of life, it is not necessarily conducive to fostering an optimistic outlook on life for children.

Finally, it is not advisable to expose children to sexually explicit passages in books too early. I am certainly not a pedantic defender, and classes on physical hygiene have long been offered in schools. However, there is nothing wrong with a scientific understanding of the human body and sexuality, but it is precisely those descriptions of sex in literature that are most likely to seduce young men and women, and this is the key to why "pornographic books" are so harmful.

In fact, from the "Jinpingmei" of the "Stone Book" in the initial copy of the time was indeed listed as "obscene book" and banned, and Confucius has long been because "less when the blood is not yet determined" and "color" as a gentleman of the three precepts. Confucius had already listed "color" as the first of the three precepts of a gentleman. In the children's sex education, we can not go from one extreme to the other.

Enlightenment is not the same as indulgence, guidance should pay more attention to methods and approaches. Today, teenagers' ignorance of sex, irresponsibility and the accompanying proliferation of campus rapes is a major worldwide problem, and the world's top universities, including Harvard and Stanford, are having a major headache with it. Although the community and many scholars have done a lot of research and discussion, but so far lack of effective response.

What I analyzed above is the content, and in terms of text alone, I don't think it's necessarily suitable for children -- especially small children -- to read. The four great masterpieces are half-literary and half-white, and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is almost entirely literary, and there is actually quite a distance between it and the vernacular language of today, which makes it very difficult for children to read. Even if they can barely read it, they will swallow it whole and finish the story alive.

As for the structure and layout of the novel, the vividness of the characters, the use of language, these aesthetic values are not something that younger children can understand and comprehend.

Literary classics for children are also limited

In fact, the so-called "four great masterpieces" have not been around for long. The reason for the great influence of Water Margin and Dream of Red Mansions is directly related to the New Culture Movement at the beginning of the 20th century. Hu Shi and other giants of the new culture promoted these two books based on their own ideological and artistic value, but more importantly, the theme of "the government oppresses the people" and the criticism of feudal families objectively fit the political demands of the revolution and anti-feudalism at that time.

On the other hand, although Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi and others carried the banner of "Literary Revolution" and advocated the vernacular language against the vernacular language, and the new literature against the old one, except for a few masterpieces such as The Water Margin and Dream of Red Mansions, there were almost no other classic vernacular language works.

So, at least before 1949, there was no such thing as the "Four Great Masterpieces". The "Four Great Wondrous Books" and "Four Great Books of Talents" of the Ming and Qing dynasties did not exactly coincide with the "Four Great Masterpieces" of later times. The large-scale popularity of this claim is a cultural phenomenon that emerged only after the publishing boom of the 1980s.

Of course, the masterpieces have their own ideological, literary and artistic value and status, but due to the limitations of the times and society, as well as the fate of the writers, even the best representatives of traditional culture inevitably contain a mixture of dregs that do not fit into the modern civilized society, so we shouldn't, and can't, demand that the writers take into account the children's reading and education in their writing. They are not obliged to do so.

But as educators and parents, we cannot ignore the age and physiological and psychological characteristics of our children, as well as the values that guide them, and critically help them to choose works that are suitable for them to read, whether they are classics or non-classics. We have this responsibility.

Expanding the scope a little further, apart from the "Four Great Masterpieces", there seems to be a very limited number of works suitable for children to read in our literary classics. The Classic of Poetry, the Chu Ci, and the Records of the Grand Historian are too difficult, the Tang poems and Song lyrics are not easy to understand, and the Liaozhai Zhiyi is full of ghost stories, which children may have nightmares when they listen to them. As for "Talking about the Tang", "Talking about Yue Quanzhuan", "Seven Heroes and Five Heroes" and so on, they are even more equal.

Yes, these literary classics are indeed classics, except that they are classics for adults, not for children. Of course people should read the classics, but not people of all ages should read the same classics.

In addition, there are other stories that have been widely circulated that are not necessarily appropriate for children to be exposed to at an early age. For example, the story of "Tian Ji's Horse Race". Tian Ji was able to defeat King Wei of Qi because he secretly altered the rules of the race by not providing horses that met the requirements of the race, which were "top team against top team, middle team against middle team, and bottom team against bottom team". This is actually cheating. After hearing these kinds of stories, it is inevitable that children will not think that honesty and adherence to the rules of the game are unimportant as long as they can win the game.

Another example is the "Thirty-Six Stratagems," a popular folk tale that describes how to trick your opponent into winning. The "36 Stratagems" certainly had military value in the Cold War era, but in modern society, if they are used in daily life, they can seriously undermine mutual trust between people and social harmony.

Some schemes, such as "killing with a borrowed knife," "robbing while the fire is burning," "hiding a knife in a smile," "pulling a ladder out of a house," "counterattacking," and "fighting against the enemy," have been used in the past. " "countermeasures" and so on, regardless of its specific content, only from the word on the creepy.

If children are exposed to these schemes too early, it will be a terrible picture for their spiritual growth!

Let's get more modern and contemporary Chinese classics on our children's bookshelves

So which literary classics are suitable for children to read? I searched the Internet and saw that most of the results were the four great masterpieces plus some world literature classics, such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and so on.

It's not that children shouldn't be allowed to read foreign literature, but there is always a layer of separation between the translated work and the original. Even if the translator's skills are high, it's hard for a child to appreciate the charm of Chinese literature, let alone the depth and breadth of Chinese civilization. When I read "Virginia Bunny" to my daughter, I had no idea what "Virginia" meant to her.

I would have preferred to tell her about "The Rabbit of Ningxia," which at least she knew was where her grandparents lived. Where are our vernacular classics? Why is there so little purely vernacular literature by contemporary authors in the classics recommended for children?

This question may have to be answered by scholars who specialize in literary history. One reason, I suspect, is that in the 5,000-year cultural history of the Chinese nation, the vast majority of literary works have been handed down in the form of vernacular languages and traditional poems and songs. Since the "New Culture Movement", the history of genuine vernacular literature is still less than a century. The short period of time has resulted in the accumulation of fewer works, even fewer classics, and even fewer classics that are suitable for children to read.

Like Latin in the West, the vernacular languages are very distant from today's reality. It is difficult for students to make an effective connection between them and real life. There are very few opportunities nowadays that require people to do a high level of literary or metrical poetry.

In fact, students cannot master the writing and expression of vernacular language by learning the literary language. Why is it that students are "afraid of the literary language and the writing language"? Fear stems from unfamiliarity, and unfamiliarity stems from lack of use.

Of course, I don't mean to say that students shouldn't study classical Chinese literature. On the contrary, students nowadays have almost lost all their traditional Chinese cultural skills, which must be strengthened. This is our cultural lineage.

What I mean is that in order to effectively improve students' reading and writing skills in real life, we need to pay more attention to the dissemination of the classics of vernacular literature and reading guidance. This is a more urgent task.

Another reason may be that we seldom provide children with literature suitable for their reading in terms of their education and reading psychology. Such works are not necessarily children's literature - of course excellent children's literature is even rarer - but rather, it is important to provide children with works that are easy to read in terms of their age and characteristics, that help to establish correct values, that improve literary appreciation.

These works should have at least the following three characteristics: First, the text should be as simple as possible. Simple means that the words have few strokes, are easy to memorize and have a single meaning. The most elementary readers can have only a few words, and then pick up the pace and gradually deepen the difficulty. Let the child in the process of reading to recognize the words, in the process of recognizing the words to develop the habit of reading; secondly, the storyline should be vivid twists and turns, able to arouse the child's desire to read and interest; thirdly, the values should be positive and positive.

The child's spiritual growth needs to be guided and protected. As much as possible to let the child in the process of reading to experience love and goodness, integrity, honesty, responsibility, independence, bravery, and the glory and greatness of human nature, and so on; as little as possible to let the child to contact the hypocrisy, insidious, cunning, deception and other human nature in the ugly side of the, even if they really reflect the cruel reality of society. Life will teach children how to see society, but it is difficult to have the opportunity to let them regain the good.

These are not easy tasks, but they have to be done, and done consciously by professionals. In my opinion, in order to effectively improve children's Chinese reading and writing skills, the focus needs to be on strengthening the following three areas.

First, university scholars engaged in the study of modern and contemporary literature should act more actively to carry on the torch of the "New Culture Movement" sages and giants, to guide society to pay more attention to children's reading life and experience of vernacular literature, and to recommend and form a group of new vernacular literature classics, so as to take on a greater social responsibility.

As far as I know, the works of Mr. Cao Wenxuan of the Chinese Department of Peking University are very popular among children. Unfortunately, there are too few writers of such a high level of sentiment. More excellent scholars should join Mr. Cao, not only to recommend to parents and children the classic masterpieces of modern and contemporary literature, but even necessary to personally create a number of excellent works suitable for children to read. Just like Mr. Hu Shih did 100 years ago, who composed the Trial Collection for the dissemination of vernacular literature.

Secondly, scholars engaged in the study of child psychology, scholars engaged in the study of modern literature, and literary creators should work hand in hand in order to promote literature suitable for children's reading for the society from the perspective of children's psychological characteristics and cognitive abilities. Writers have the desire and ability to create, but often lack specialized knowledge of child psychology.

Their works are imaginative and artistic, but may not conform to science. Child psychologists can provide effective professional support and help to "correct" them, so that they can provide children with higher-quality, more educational work.

Thirdly, the publishing industry should recognize and take up its own cultural mission, and should not abandon its moral and educational responsibilities for the sake of economic interests, nor should it blindly cater to social hotspots and wrongly push the envelope.

Currently, there is a plethora of publications stuffed to parents and children under the banner of "national classics", and the fallacies and shoddiness of these publications are shocking. Parents often lack the awareness and ability to recognize this. It is good to guide children to read, but if they are reading in the wrong direction, it is better not to read at all.

I think, after a number of years of hard work, if in the children's bookshelf, can be placed more excellent modern Chinese classics, even more than foreign classics, then perhaps we can be pleased to say: we have done their own educational responsibility, at least did not let down this era and live in this era of children.

(The author is the director of the Peking University Examination Institute)