This process begins almost unconsciously at birth. It constantly develops personal ability, cultivates personal consciousness, forms personal habits, exercises personal thoughts and stimulates personal feelings and emotions. Because of this unconscious education, individuals gradually share the wisdom and moral wealth accumulated by human beings. He became the inheritor of the inherent cultural capital. The most formal and professional education in the world is really inseparable from this universal process. Education can only organize or distinguish this process in a certain direction.
The only real education comes from the stimulation of children's ability, which is caused by the various requirements of the social situation that children feel. These requirements stimulated him as a member of the collective and made him emerge from the original narrow range of actions and feelings; But also enables him to imagine himself from the collective interests to which he belongs. He knows what these activities mean in social language by others' reactions to his own activities. The value of these activities is embodied in social language. For example, because of others' reaction to his voice, children gradually understand what that voice means, and this voice gradually becomes a language with clear syllables, so they are guided to the unified and rich thoughts and emotions summarized in language now.
This educational process has two aspects: one is psychological and the other is sociological. They are equally important and cannot be neglected. Otherwise, bad consequences will follow. Both are based on psychology. Children's own instinct and ability provide material for all education and point out the starting point. Except that the efforts of educators are related to some activities that children actively do not rely on educators, education has become an external pressure. Although such education may have some superficial effects, it cannot be called education. Therefore, without in-depth observation of individual psychological structure and activities, the process of education will become accidental and random. If it happens that children's activities are consistent, it can play a role; If not, then you will encounter resistance, disharmony, or restrict your child's nature.
In order to correctly explain children's abilities, we must understand the social situation and the present situation of civilization. Children have their own instincts and tendencies, and we don't know what they mean until we can turn them into something equivalent to their society. We must be able to bring them into the past society and regard them as the legacy of the previous generation of human activities. We must also be able to project them into the future and see what their results will be. In the previous example, it is in this way that children's hopes and abilities for future social communication and conversation can be seen from their voices, so that people can treat this instinct correctly.
Psychological and social aspects are organically linked, and education cannot be regarded as a compromise between the two or one is superior to the other. Some people say that the psychological definition of education is empty and formal-it only gives us an idea of developing all mental abilities, but it doesn't give us an idea of how to use them. On the other hand, some people firmly believe that the social definition of education (that is, understanding education as adapting to civilization) will make education a compulsory and external process, and as a result, individual freedom will be subordinate to a predetermined social and political state.
If one aspect is considered isolated and has nothing to do with the other, then both opposing arguments are correct. In order to know what ability is, we must know what its purpose, purpose or function is; And these are impossible to know unless we think that individuals are active in social relations. On the other hand, under the current circumstances, the only adaptation we can give children is the adaptation they get by giving full play to their abilities. Because of the emergence of democracy and modern industry, we can't clearly predict what the culture will look like in 20 years, so we can't prepare our children to adapt to certain stereotypes.
Preparing children for future life means enabling them to manage themselves; We should train him to make full use of all his energy at any time; His eyes, ears and hands have become tools to listen to orders at any time. His judgment can understand the surrounding conditions in which it must play a role, and his action ability can be trained to the extent of economic and effective activities. Unless we constantly pay attention to personal abilities, hobbies and interests-that is, unless we constantly turn education into psychological terms, this adaptation is impossible to achieve.
In short, I believe that educated individuals are individuals in society, and society is an organic combination of many individuals. If we take away social factors from children, we will only have an abstract thing left. If we give up personal factors from the social aspect, we will only have a rigid and lifeless collective. Therefore, education must begin with the psychological exploration of children's abilities, interests and habits. Every aspect of it must be mastered with reference to these considerations. These abilities, interests and habits must be constantly clarified-we must understand their meaning. They must be explained by social things equivalent to them-by what they can do in social affairs.
The school is mainly a social organization.
Since education is a social process, school is a form of social life. In this form of social life, all the means that can most effectively train children to share the wealth inherited by mankind and use their abilities for social purposes are concentrated. Therefore, education is a process of life, not preparation for future life.
Schools must present the present life-that is, a life that is real and full of vitality for children. Just like the life they experienced at home, in the neighbor's house and on the playground.
Education that is not realized through various life forms, or education that is worth living in itself, will always be a poor substitute for real reality, resulting in a dull and lifeless situation. As a system, schools should simplify real social life and shrink it to an embryonic state. Real life is so complicated that it is impossible for children to get in touch with it without being confused; He was either overwhelmed by the diversity of ongoing activities, so that he lost his ability to respond in an orderly way, or stimulated by various activities, so that his ability started prematurely, resulting in improper deviation or disintegration of his education.
Since school life is such a simplified social life, it should gradually develop from family life: it should adopt and continue the activities that children are already familiar with at home. Schools should present these activities to children and reproduce them in various ways, so that children can gradually understand their significance and play their role in them. This is a psychological need, because it is the only way for children to continue to grow up, and it is also the only way to give the new ideas taught by the school an old experience background.
This is also a social need, because the family is a form of social life, in which children are educated and morally cultivated. The task of the school is to deepen and expand his values associated with family life. Nowadays, many aspects of education have failed because it ignores the basic principle that schools are a form of social life. Modern education regards the school as a place to impart certain knowledge, study certain courses or form certain habits. The value of these things is considered to depend mainly on the distant future; Children want to do these things because they want to do other things in the future; And these things are just preparation. As a result, they have not become a part of children's life experience, so they have no real educational significance.
Moral education focuses on the concept of school as a social way of life. The best and deepest moral cultivation is precisely the result of people getting along with others properly in the unity of work and thought. The current education system, in terms of its destruction or neglect of this unity, makes it difficult or impossible to achieve any real and normal moral training. Children should stimulate and control their activities through collective life. Under the present circumstances, teachers have too much stimulation and control because of neglecting the concept of taking school as a social way of life. The position and work of teachers in schools must be clarified according to the same basic point of view. Teachers don't want to impose a certain idea or habit on children in school, but as a member of the collective, they choose the influences that work for children and help them to respond appropriately to these influences.
The training in the school should take the school life as a whole, instead of being carried out directly by teachers. The teacher's job is only to decide how to train children in life on the basis of more experience and more mature knowledge. All issues concerning the placement and promotion of children should be decided with reference to the same criteria. Examinations are only used to test a child's adaptability to social life and show where he is most effective and helpful.
Children's social life is the basis of all their training or growth.
Social life gave him the unconscious unity and background of all his efforts and achievements. The content of school curriculum should be gradually differentiated from the initial unconscious unity of social life. We offer children many professional subjects that have nothing to do with this social life, such as reading, writing, geography, etc., which goes against children's nature and is difficult to achieve the best ethical effect. Therefore, the real center of school subjects is not science, literature, history or geography, but children's own social activities.
Education cannot be unified in scientific research or so-called natural research, because without human activities, nature itself is not a unity; Nature itself is all kinds of things in time and space. If nature itself wants to make itself the center of work, it is to provide a decentralized principle, not a centralized principle. Literature is the reflection and clarification of social experience; Therefore, it must be after the experience, not before. Therefore, it cannot be the basis of unity, although it can be the sum of unity.
Thirdly, history has educational value in providing all aspects of social life and growth. It must be controlled with reference to social life. If we simply regard it as history, it will fall into the distant past and become a lifeless thing. If history is regarded as a record of human social life and progress, it will become something with rich significance. But I think it is impossible to look at history in this way unless children are directly introduced into social life. Therefore, the most fundamental foundation of education lies in children's dynamic ability, which is along the same general construction route as the origin of modern civilization.
The only way to make a child aware of his social heritage is to let him practice the activities that make civilization the main model of civilization. Therefore, the so-called performance and construction activities are the center of mutual connection. This provides a standard for the status of cooking, sewing and handicrafts in schools.
These subjects are not attached to many other subjects, but are put forward as a means of entertainment and rest, or as special subjects of secondary skills. I believe they represent the types and forms of social activities. In addition, it is possible and desirable to introduce children into more formal courses through these activities. Scientific research is of educational significance because it shows various materials and methods for producing modern social life.
At present, the biggest difficulty in science teaching is that this kind of information is provided in a purely objective form, or as a new special experience that children can add to their existing experience. In fact, science is valuable because it gives us the ability to explain and control existing experience. We should not introduce it to children as a new textbook, but use it as a tool to show the factors already contained in the old experience and provide an easier and more effective way to adjust the experience.
Now we have lost the value of many literature and language subjects, because we have abandoned social factors. In educational works, language is almost always regarded as the expression of ideas. Although language is a logical tool, it is a basic and most important social tool. Language is a means of communication and a tool for one to share the thoughts and feelings of others. If we only regard it as an individual's acquisition of knowledge, or as a tool to express what we have learned, we will lose its social motivation and purpose.
Therefore, in an ideal school curriculum, subjects are not continuous. If education is life, then all life has a scientific side, an artistic and cultural side and an interactive side from the beginning. Therefore, reading and writing are the only fixed subjects in one grade, while reading literature or science is offered in a higher grade, which is incorrect. Progress lies not in the consistency of all subjects, but in developing new attitudes and new interests through experience.
Finally, education should be regarded as the continuous transformation of experience; The process and purpose of education are completely the same thing. If we want to set a purpose other than education, such as giving it a goal and standard, it will deprive us of a lot of significance in the process of education, leading us to rely on fictional and external stimuli when dealing with children's problems.