How to understand Confucianism today?

Is Confucianism still relevant today? This is the question I asked my students at the University of Iowa. Many of them answered in the affirmative, although very few of them said anything convincing to support their answer.

This has been the question I've been looking for an answer to for years.

Very few historical figures have received such strikingly different evaluations, from saint to good-for- nothing, or been accused of being the source of all the country's problems today.