Search results

Recently in China there has been a problem of “excessiveness of education”, i.e. parents′ education of their children exceeds certain limits. This is considered under three categories: (1) excessive attachment to children in daily life; (2) excessive care for children′s study; and (3) use of excessive regular methods. Category (1) can lead to priority being given to the child to the detriment of other family members and at extreme financial cost. Category (2): in addition to following school studies closely, parents often set extra‐curricular tests and studies for their children and work out “unrealistic objectives” which they expect their children to achieve. This exerts great pressure on the children and has even led to cases of suicide. In Category (3) children are taught at home pre‐school to the degree that they are well‐advanced in studies when they enter primary school. This has the negative effects that children are tired of study before they even attend school or are bored because they have already learned what they are now being taught. This continues throughout education with parents acting as “second teachers”. Excessive family education is seen to end in failure; producing negative influences on the development of children′s intelligence and personalities.

This study aims to understand the epistemic foundation of the classification applied in the first Chinese library catalogue, the Seven Epitomes (Qilue).

Originating from a theoretical stance that situates knowledge organization in its social context, the study applies a multifaceted framework pertaining to five categories of textual data: the Seven Epitomes; biographical information about the classificationist Liu Xin; and the relevant intellectual, political, and technological history.

The study discovers seven principles contributing to the epistemic foundation of the catalogue's classification: the Han imperial library collection imposed as the literary warrant; government functions considered for structuring texts; classicist morality determining the main classificatory structure; knowledge perceived and organized as a unity; objects, rather than subjects, of concern affecting categories at the main class level; correlative thinking connecting all text categories to a supreme knowledge embodied by the Six Classics; and classicist moral values resulting in both vertical and horizontal hierarchies among categories as well as texts.

A major limitation of the study is its focus on the main classes, with limited attention to subclasses. Future research can extend the analysis to examine subclasses of the same scheme. Findings from these studies may lead to a comparison between the epistemic approach in the target classification and the analytic one common in today's bibliographic classification.

The study is the first to examine in depth the epistemic foundation of traditional Chinese bibliographic classification, anchoring the classification in its appropriate social and historical context.