| In Tang Dynasty of China, although Emperor Taizong and his wife, Empress Zhan sun, paid much attention to the instruction to their princes, yet they couldn't cultivate a satisfactory heir to the imperial throne. This is haphazard as well as inevitable. Nowadays, the soil for such inevitability still exists. In this essay, the author tries to analyze the failure of the instruction of crown prince from outer surrounds to inner psychological activities, including Emperor Taizong's ideational source, content and methods of the instruction of the crown prince. The instruction of the crown prince, though it has lost its reality sense with the dynasty dying out, has its important function of reference, if treated as a case study of domestic education.The whole essay consists of the preface, the body (four chapters) and the conclusion. The prefaces focus on the methods of the research of the instruction of the crown prince and its meaning.In the body, Chapter One probes Emperor Taizong's ideational source of instruction of the crown prince. After hundreds of years of convulsion caused by war before Tang Dynasty, there was a tendency of variety in people's thinking. So the first emperors of Tang Dynasty were all open-minded. One of The ideational sources of Emperor Taizong's instruction of the crown prince was primarily Confucianism, and other ideas. The second source was Emperor Taizong's idea of reference, that is the reference to ancient times or the reference to human societies. The reason is that after seeing for himself how Sui Dynasty, even if so economically and militarily formidable, came to destruction soon after. For the sake of permanently consolidating his empire, Emperor Taizong educated the crown prince by constantly adopting this idea of the reference to the ancient times or the reference to human societies.Chapter Two analyzes the content of the instruction of the crown prince... |
