‘Human natures are close; practice makes them diverge.’ Beside that open sentence stands another: ‘Only the highest wise and the lowest foolish do not change.’ The first makes difference a history. The second can be used to install exceptions at both ends, including a class of people for whom education is futile.

Nothing in the first sentence must be edited for the second to narrow it. Add one neighboring qualification and ‘natures are close’ becomes ‘except at the top and bottom.’ ‘In teaching there should be no classes’ becomes ‘except for those already judged unteachable.’ An open door acquires an invisible admissions policy.

That use conflicts with the scenes. Confucius receives a young person from Huxiang, a place considered difficult to speak with, and rebukes students who distrust the visitor. Approve the person’s coming forward, he says; do not endorse everything behind him, but do not refuse the attempt to enter. When Ran You says he lacks strength, Confucius accuses him not of incapacity but of drawing the line in advance.

The contested sentence need not have only one sense. ‘Not changing’ might describe extreme stability rather than an innate caste, and the historical speaker cannot be settled here. What this essay opposes is the application that uses it to license abandonment: some kind of person cannot learn, so no teacher need try.

People are genuinely different; otherwise teaching according to the person would be meaningless. But difference calls for different approaches, not different eligibility for being treated as a learner. Difference does not authorize rank. When the neighboring line is used to close the door opened by ‘no classes,’ the closure is the reader’s action and should be judged as such.

Research basis: this reader-facing essay is an independent reconstruction of the Chinese original. The underlying structural argument is documented in the research edition ↗.