On The Importance of Ritual in Time Management for Today's Student

Confucius 孔夫子- one of the greatest educators in history.

How relevant is a word like 'ritual' to college students when less than 30% of them in the US don't sleep regular hours and the vast majority don't eat a well rounded breakfast. The short answer is, not relevant or important enough.

As important as it is for us here at Neopaedeia to make sure the most appropriate educational solutions are found and applied to reflect the needs of today's students, this is not something that is done by reinventing the wheel or actively ignoring the past. In fact, many of the most important lessons are found in the oldest of texts. The value of these texts have proven themselves if only by their ability to withstand the test of time if nothing else. These are ideas that are as relevant to the human condition (of which education has always been a large component) when they were written thousands of years ago as they are today.

Being able to effectively use time has been an issue for some members of the population since the invention of the plough ushered in the agricultural revolution freeing large parts of the population from the burden of food production so they could do other things like invent writing systems and the State as well as philosophies and legal systems and wage war. In China, the Confucian scholar gentry class (士- shi) would have been one of the first to deal with the problem of a flexible work day as the nature of their work was different from the other social classes in ancient China. Peasants (农- nong) had their work day dictated by the rising and setting of the sun. Their work was physical and honest as was the work of the artisans (工- gong). The reviled merchant classes (商-shang) shared in common with the gentry, a work day that was not physical but the biggest distinction between these two occupations, respectively at the top and the bottom of the Confucian social hierarchical system, would have been on the importance of 'li' or rituals observed by the Confucian scholar and barely understood by the merchant.

The Confucian classics dedicate much space to the importance of 'li' (理) or 'rituals'. Much of it does not necessarily read in a way that is immediately accessible to the modern student but as old ideas are recycled and repackaged as they are in this article in a Harvard Business Review blog, the most immediate benefits to developing rituals become more obviously applicable to people in the 21st century.  The examples of rituals provided in the article are set up for business people with families but the principle of developing "highly specific behaviors, done at precise times, so they eventually become automatic and no longer require conscious will or discipline" are as important to the 21st century student as they are to the business person. In fact, they become doubly important to students because they are important to business people.

Education should not only be seen as the epistemic transfer of knowledge in its most abstract sense, it should be about the incorporation of practice for developing skills and behaviours required to be successful in the professional, cultural and social climates of our times. Though it requires discipline to develop these rituals into habits, once they have become behaviours as such, the rituals are observed as a matter of course. Like drilling in sports, ritualised elements in other facets of life become effortless and automatic when applied. They are the basis upon which civilisations grow and make possible what otherwise might not be.

"People's natures are alike, it is their habits that carry them far apart."
- Confucius (551-479 BCE)