The Story of Mencius and His Mother's Cloth

As I'm trying to learn Mandarin, I recall the story of Mencius' mother. I remembered how a Chinese language teacher told me, "I wonder how your mother will react if you told her you don't like school." I revisited the story of Mencius (also known as 孟子, read as Mèng Kē) when he was younger.

It was said that Mencius was once a lazy student. The story had it that Mencius became truant about school. What Mencius' mother did to get rid of his lazy behavior was to make him rethink his way of thinking. This was what the Shen Yun Performing Arts says about the story:

Her name was Zhang. She became a widow when Mencius was young, and legend has it she moved homes three times in search for a location suitable for raising her son.

When Mencius was a child, he came home early one day, obviously cutting class. He walked in to find his mother weaving at her loom. Surprised to see him back, she asked if school was out early. “I left because I felt like it,” he said. This usually calm mother suddenly took a knife and slashed her finished cloth, shaking the living daylights out of Mencius. After recovering, he asked her why she did that. She then replied that his skipping school was like her destroying her cloth—all the hard work put in comes to naught if you become slack just because “you feel like it.”

Her advice hit the spot. Mencius became responsible in his studies and, with his mother’s nurture and wisdom, eventually emerged as one of the greatest philosophers in China and beyond. He was one of the most notable men in Chinese history, but not without the help of a special woman.

Pretty much, it might shock you that some brilliant scholars weren't always doing well. I think about how I did hate school in my earlier years. Maybe, I can blame the Philippine education system. Yet, if I didn't persist in my studies, I wouldn't be able to criticize it.

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