The Concept Standard (Volume 29); A Historical Survey of What Men Have Conceived as Constituting or Determining Life Values, Criticism and Interpretation of the Different Theories, Together with General Educational Implications (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV Section I The Standard Functioning In National Crises: Influence Upon Educational Systems The Chinese cycle of development bridges the crises on which other civilizations wrecked, by a titanic grasp of its social tendencies. This wresting from all its preceding civilization of elements making for social stability, and conserving them in a national classic, was an unique instance in history. The decision that this selected content was to remain intact was forced as final, and a system of education was devised that would make deviation from this standard impossible. Social progress was sacrificed to social stability. Four thousand years of continued existence as a nation where all values were determined by an unchanging standard has revealed to modern students the adequacy of an educational system for the perpetuation of a definitely conceived plan of national life. It also affords a study of the influence of a purely secular standard. Confucianism contains no reference to a deity or to a future life. It is an idealization of those forces which man's experience through centuries of trial had found contributing to social welfare. As such it bears close study in the light of modern effort to isolate and conserve those tendencies conceived by social engineers as the product of society's best expression. China affords an example of a fixed standard which, through an ordered system of examination excluding all possibility of re-interpretation or adaptation of that standard, has absolutely controlled the destinies of a many-million-souled nation for thousands of years.1 India In strikingly contrasted manner India through another cycle of development testifies to the same fact--a nation's tacit recognition of defeat to express itself on progressively hi...