After teaching undergraduate students for a few semesters, I have realised that the greatest paradox for educators today is the trade-off between being an adaptive and a principled teacher.
The educators of Confucianism recently have confronted the same dilemma. In China, a heated debate has erupted between those who wish to preserve the authenticities of Confucianism and those who popularise Confucian studies through the mass media. Yu Dan, a young professor from the Beijing Normal University, is a recent victim of this controversy.
Unlike me, teachers of Confucianism aimed to educate the great many Chinese, adults and children alike, in the basic Confucian values of propriety, righteousness, loyalty and filial piety that centred around the thought of humanity.
But the underlying difficulty of teaching for all educators is the same: it is extremely challenging to effectively communicate with an audience that has become so immersed in modern living, and values knowledge as mere instruments.
As one of the guest presenters in a television programme produced by the CCTV last year, Yu Dan became a star lecturer for her presentation of The Analects, a book that recorded the conversations between Confucius and his disciples. Interpreting Confucianism values and principles in layman's language, Professor Yu proclaimed that Confucian teachings are practical tools to resolve problems of modern life, such as untangling relationships with superiors and subordinates at work, making sound decisions and achieving happiness in a complex modern society.
Professor Yu's book based on the scripts of these televised lectures has topped all other new releases, with more than two million copies sold since its release in November last year. New Confucian converts have flooded into bookstores for scholarly studies on the Analects, effectively boosting the annual sales of these books to over one million from the usual 400 copies.