Quick answer
The chapter opens where the book always opens: on whether a person can be told anything. The wise son listens; the scoffer does not.
Read both lines
The word behind "instruction" is musar, this book's formation word, and it will frame the whole chapter, returning at verse 18 and again at verse 24. What the first line describes is not obedience but attention, a son who takes in what he is given. The second line names the alternative and does not soften it. A scoffer is not someone who disagrees; he is someone for whom correction does not register, and the book has already said at 9:8 that correcting him only costs the corrector. The chapter begins by sorting its readers into those two categories and spends the rest of its verses on what follows from each.
Related: Proverbs 9:8 · Proverbs 13:18 · Proverbs 15:5
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.