Toegye drew ten diagrams to teach a young king how to become good. Can moral education be done by diagram?
Its coordinates: 6.3 Philosophy of Education
My students see Toegye every time they pay with a 1,000-won note, and almost none of them know about his last great work.
In 1568, near the end of his life, Yi Hwang (Toegye) presented the Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning to the young King Seonjo. It is exactly what the title says: ten diagrams, each with a short text and Toegye's comments, meant to set out the whole of Neo-Confucian learning in a form a busy king could keep in front of him. It opens with Zhou Dunyi's Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate and Zhang Zai's Western Inscription, and moves through the Elementary Learning and the Great Learning to diagrams of the mind, of nature and feelings, and of daily practice from rising early to going to bed.
He suggested the king have them made into a folding screen.
I teach ethics. I have tried mind maps and flowcharts with fifteen-year-olds, and they produce beautiful posters and no change at all. Yet Toegye clearly thought a picture of the mind, studied every day, could help shape it.
For discussion:
- Does a diagram teach anything a text cannot? Or is it only a way of remembering?
- Toegye's diagrams were meant to be contemplated daily, not learned once. Is the daily return the real method?
- Is there any modern equivalent that actually works?
Book corner: Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning.