This paper discusses Confucius and Zhu Xi's poetic education, explains their similarities and differences, and finally enumerates inspirations it could have on the educational function of contemporary poetry. Confucian poetic education has four claims: cultivation of capacity, refinement of emotion and spirit, taking root of ethics, and fusion of personality. Zhu Xi's poetic education is more discreet. He uses The Great Learning (大學) and The doctrine of the Mean (中庸) as guidelines, thorough investigation of things and study of logic as methods, morals and ethics as content, Li study as area of core spirit, and finally cultivation of heart and no-evil as objective. The similarities in their poetic education: (1)Both see The Book of Songs as holding didactic function. (2)Both see the poetic education as gentle and kind. (3)Both advocate familiarization with classics and believes that it would facilitate practical usage. (4)In order to meet the demand of poetic education, both were influenced by historical contingency when annotating The Book of Songs. Differences: (1)Structure is different. (2)Core theory is different. (3)Interpretations are different. (4)"No evil in thought" targets different object. (5)Result is different. Confucius and Zhu Xi's poetic education provide six inspirations for contemporary poetry as far as education is concerned: (1)Reevaluates the educational value of classical poetry in modern society. (2)Emphasizes the necessity of modernizing classical poetry as teaching materials. (3)Reconstructs new ways of rereading classical poetry. (4)Strengthens the ties between poetic research and education. (5)Rethinks theory of poetic writing. (6)Rethinks standardized poetic teaching materials.