The Great Learning

The Great Learning is one of the most important Confucian works. It is very short. The Legge translation is 334 words long. You can read it aloud in 2 or 3 minutes, yet spend years pondering its marvelous wisdom.

I studied various translations of The Great Learning over the years, but it was not until I was preparing to discuss it in a new book that I began to understand it. I saw it having three sections, with the middle section being a blue-print for society.

I was so moved by The Great Learning that I stopped writing my book. I started The Timeless Way Foundation, and I started running for the local school board. The vision of society in The Great Learning was so compelling it became an important part of my life.

The wars in Vietnam and in Iraq, and the repeated economic meltdowns in 2001 and again in 2008, are good evidence of a serious and persistent problem in America, a problem casting a menacing shadow over the future, threatening our children's safety and prosperity, a problem demanding solution.

Something has gone wrong in America. It will be up to our children to decide the source of the problems and make corrections. I believe we need to provide them the best education and communities so they will have the right mind and heart to save America, to save themselves.

I believe The Great Learning offers valuable insight. I have expressed a few thoughts on my website where I describe one view of The Great Learning, a view I call The Winding Spring Process of Education.

Here is a copy of The Great Learning in HTML and a copy of The Great Learning in PDF. Everyone should study it, think it through for themselves, then consider how it might apply in our lives today. I believe it is most pertinent.

Robert Canright