Zhu Guang dives into reading

Education after the age of fifteen or sixteen should be understood, and education before the age of fifteen or sixteen should be re-imagined. Therefore, junior high school students should read more imaginary texts, and high school students should read texts containing academic theories.

Books are inexhaustible, and it is useless to read them all, and many books have no value in reading. Reading more than one worthless book loses the time and energy to read a valuable book, so you must choose carefully. What can really be called a "book" is probably difficult to go up to ten volumes and a hundred volumes. All you should read is these ten hundred volumes. In the middle of these books, you can not only get more accurate knowledge, but also invisibly absorb the spirit and methods of the university's governance. These books can shake your heart and stir your thinking. Instead of reading a thousand volumes of poetry, you should read a "National Style" or "Nineteen Ancient Poems", and instead of reading a thousand volumes of books on Greek philosophy, you should read a Plato's Republic.

Most of the Chinese students are teenagers and matures, and in the middle school years, they are happy to talk about a little bit of science. They—including you and I, of course—are happy not only to talk about literature, but also to study social and even philosophical questions. This is a natural tendency, and it cannot be ignored, and my personal opinion may as well be discussed with you. Education after the age of fifteen or sixteen should be understood, and education before the age of fifteen or sixteen should be re-imagined. Therefore, junior high school students should read more imaginary texts, and high school students should read texts containing academic theories.

I myself have not read a few "must-read books for young people", and I have long read some must-read books for adulthood. For example, among the Chinese books, I am most pleased with the "National Style", "Zhuangzi", "Chu Ci", "Shi Ji", "Ancient Poetry Sources", "Selected Writings", "Shi Shu Xinyu", "Tao Yuanming Collection", "Li Taibai Collection", "Huajian Collection", "Selected Words of Zhang Hui", "Dream of the Red Chamber" and so on. Among the foreign books, I rejoice in the collections of poems of Keats, Shelley, Colütte, and Browning, the Seven Tragedies of Sophocles, Shakespeare's Hamlet, King Lear, and Osero, Goethe's Faust, Ibsen's The Drama Collection, Turgenev's Virgin Land and Father and Son, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Maupassant's novel collection, Koizumi Yakumo's writings on Japan, and so on.

I cannot say more about the method of reading, but only two points must be briefly mentioned here: First, every book worth reading must be read at least twice. The first time you must read quickly, focusing on the purpose and characteristics of the whole article. The second time, you must read it slowly, and you must measure the content of the book with a critical attitude. Second, after reading a book, you must note the outline wonderful and your own opinions. Taking notes not only helps you remember, but it can also force you to be careful.

Learning is not just about reading, but reading is an important way to learn. Because learning is not only a matter for the individual but for all mankind, every scientific question at the present stage is the achievement of all mankind in the efforts of all mankind, and this achievement has not yet been submerged, but has been passed down by the records of books. Reading books is to liquidate the general ledger of human achievements in the past, to relive thousands of years of human ideological experience in a short period of decades, and to concentrate the knowledge and lessons painstakingly gained by hundreds of millions of people in the past on the reader alone. With this kind of preparation, one can always make a long march on the road of learning and discover a new world.

Reading is not much, the most important thing is to choose well and read thoroughly. Instead of reading ten irrelevant books, it is better to read a book that is really worth reading with the time and energy of reading ten books; instead of reading ten books that can only be read once, it is better to take one book and read it ten times. "A good book is not tired of reading a hundred times, and it is familiar to read deeply and think deeply about itself", these two poems deserve to be hung as a motto by every reader. Many people in the world read books only to decorate the façade, such as upstarts showing off their furniture, and more is more expensive. This is self-deception in terms of governance and inferiority in terms of being a person.

Some people read books on their own interests. Today when you encounter an interesting book, you throw away what you intend to do and read it with all your energy; tomorrow when you encounter another interesting book, you still do so, although the two books are not related in nature. This reading is like fighting guerrillas, or like bees collecting honey. Its advantage is that it makes reading a pleasure, and it can be deeply rooted in works that are on the spur of the moment, and over time, it can cultivate an extraordinary way of thinking and mind. Its disadvantages are that it floods the reader with no destination, lacks the "scholastic" systematic training necessary for specialized research, produces deformed development, attaches too much importance to one aspect of knowledge, and can be very ignorant of knowledge on the other. If a person has the time and energy to allow him to live a hedonistic life, reading is not regarded as work but only as a pastime, this kind of bee honey reading style is not indispensable. But if a person has the desire to achieve a kind of learning, he cannot but have a predetermined plan and system.

Reading must have a center for maintaining interests, subjects, or problems. When focusing on the subject, it is necessary to select the key books of the subject, and read them from the beginning to the end one by one, in order to get a general understanding of the subject and prepare for further advanced research. Reading literary works centered on writers, and reading historical works centered on the times, also belongs to this category. When the problem is the center, there must first be a problem to be studied in mind, and then the books on the problem must be read, with the intention of collecting materials and opinions of various families on the problem, so that they can weigh and draw conclusions. Important books still have to be read in their entirety, the rest of which are read here in a chapter, there in a section, and when you get the material you want to collect, you can lose your hand. This is a common method used by ordinary researchers, and it is not suitable for beginners. However, when beginners are subject-centered, they can still take a slight problem-centered approach. Read a book several times, focusing on only one aspect each time. Su Dongpo and Wang Langshu once talked about this method: "Teenagers are scholars, and each book is read several times. When there are all kinds of department stores in the sea, people's energy cannot be exhausted, but they are heard by those who want it. Therefore, may the scholar seek it every time, if he desires the role of the sages in the rise and fall of the ancient and the modern, and only to do this, and not to have any rest thoughts; Don't ask for deeds and cultural relics again, or the like. He imitates this. If you learn, you will be attacked on all sides, and you will not be able to talk the same as the seeker. ”

Zhu Zi tried to persuade his disciples to adopt this method. It is a trick to intensive reading and can develop the habit of careful analysis. Taking the novel as an example, the first time but to seek the structure of the story, the second time but to pay attention to the character description, the third time but to seek the interlude between the character and the story, so that dialogue, rhetoric, social background, life attitude, etc. can be studied one by one.

Memory has its limits, and it is often impossible to store the knowledge system formed by the books read in the brain, which is often impossible in practice. If it cannot be stored, and it is forgotten by sight, then reading is equivalent to not reading. We must set up another storage room outside the brain, and move everything that the brain cannot store there. This kind of storage room was a note in the past, and in modern times it is a card. Taking notes and making cards is like a botanist collecting specimens, which must be divided into categories and cataloged, and if one piece is collected, it will be classified into a certain category, and the time has passed, although there are many things collected, but each has its own class and is well organized. This is a very scientific method, which not only saves brain power and stores useful materials for future needs, but also enhances the organization and systematization of thought.