A Comparative Study of Confucian Junzi Education and John Locke’s Gentleman Education

Both in ancient China and Western countries educators emphasized cultivation of students’emotions, personalityand character, among whom Confucius, the great Chinese thinker and educator and Locke, the famous Britishpolitical thinker, philosopher and educator are two representative figures. The former contended the primaryconcern on cultivation of Junzi, an idealized personality with virtue and righteousness and the latter pushed themodern Western gentleman education to the summit under the unique British noble system and the tradition ofelite education. This paper makes a contrastive study of Confucius’s Junzi education and Locke’s gentlemaneducation. Through analyzing and comparing the unique Confucian moral principles and Locke’s insights intogentleman education, the study finds that although there are common grounds and similarities between ConfucianJunzi education and Locke’s gentleman education, they are different from each other in teaching target groups,teaching methods and teaching contents. This study helps to bring a significant rethinking for charactercultivation and enrich the contemporary educational ideas from a cross-cultural perspective.