Fukuzawa also encouraged to acquire certain skills that could be practically used in everyday life, such as reading and writing, calculation, fundamental ethics, rather than learning Chinese and classics that had long been encouraged to learn but were rather abstruse and unpractical, and were good and appropriate only for Confucian or Neo-Confucian scholars, while Fukuzawa never denied the value of those classics, just implying that they were good, but were not the subjects you really had to study diligently.
更に漢文・古文などを「よきものではあるがそこまでして勉強するものではない」（意訳）として、その意義を否定こそしないが、世間で扱われている程の価値があるものではない、と言って儒学者や朱子学者が言う様な難しい字句のある漢文や古文を学ぶより、まず日常的に利用価値のある、読み書き、計算、基本的な道徳などの「実学」を身につけるべきだと書かれている。