Confucius taught that one the key to self mastery was through scholarship and study. He stated “He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.” (Analects 2.15) 
In his own teachings, Confucius did not expound, but rather used asked questions of his pupils and used analogies to classic texts. According to Confucius “I only instruct the eager and enlighten the fervent. If I hold up one corner and a student cannot come back to me with the other three, I do not go on with the lesson.” (Analects 7.8).
In exhorting men to become gentlemen or Superior Men, Confucius recommended diligent study under a master familiar with the rules of correct behaviour. He recommended learning from the classics. In time, Confucius’s emphasis on education and his belief that position and rank should be based on merit, led to the establishment of an imperial bureaucracy in which admission was based not on birth but on how well the applicant did on the imperial examinations.
This was an admirable system which in theory at least rewarded merit and therefore recruited the best candidates; however in practice, the school curriculum, which was based on meeting the requirements of the state examinations became stultified. Too great an emphasis was placed on knowing and being able to quote classical authors while science and economics were neglected. Although this had not been Confucius’s intent, the result was that China’s education system produced a traditionalist bureaucracy which was ill equipped to deal with military and economic problems.
China was eventually conquered by neighboring barbarians, who established their own dynasties, though they maintained the educational and examination system. When the rapidly rising European powers came to China, China was slow to adopt Western technological innovations and as a result China suffered further humiliations as it was partitioned among spheres of influence by Germany, England and other European powers from the 1800s to World War 2.
