Youth education is one of the focuses of modern education. To do a good job in youth education, we must attach importance to studying the value of China's excellent cultural traditions in youth education. From the perspective of attaching importance to people's survival value in cultural tradition, this paper discusses the relevant reasonable factors in cultural tradition, and explains the overall consciousness of youth education by combining tradition with modernity.
Keywords: excellent cultural tradition, survival value, integration of youth education
Education itself has its own cultural character. As the main manifestation of education, youth education permeates, embodies and pursues value in every link, which is closely related to a broader and deeper historical and cultural background. Cultural tradition is a relatively stable basic spirit hidden in the system of cultural concepts and dominating its structure. It has the basic spirit of connecting the preceding with the following. Of course, the key to the development and continuation of cultural tradition is to realize tradition, and education is the most fundamental carrier and way to realize this tradition. Youth education is the core component of education, so it also shoulders the heavy responsibility of discovering and inheriting China's excellent cultural traditions.
First, attaching importance to the values of human existence in cultural traditions is the direction that youth education should follow.
"Who am I? Where am I from and where am I going? " Nietzsche's proposition is put forward from the dimension of human existence value, and our ancient cultural tradition has made exquisite thinking and answers in this dimension. We can get a glimpse of the concepts of success and happiness in China culture, that is, "longevity, wealth, fame and wealth, and intellectuality". As the concept of success and happiness in life, intellectuality reflects a person's self-awareness of life, and it should be the core of all concepts of success and happiness. Confucius said, "Benevolent people live long". If a person can't consciously realize the meaning of his existence and live in a daze, it is worthless. Zhuangzi also said: "If a person does not reflect on the meaning of life, even if he accumulates a lot of wealth, he may not have great happiness, but will only deepen his troubles." . Cao Cao explores the meaning of life in short songs, and Li Bai interprets life with Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Therefore, Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism are reminding people to recognize the meaning of life and attach importance to the value of life!
The values of existence are undoubtedly the outstanding accumulation of China's cultural tradition. Today's youth education should adapt to social development and treat young people as fresh people with different personalities. Therefore, youth education focuses on the education of survival value. Man is a developing animal, and his existence value is constantly changing and developing. Therefore, in order to grasp the value of existence, youth education must explore the corresponding educational ideas, educational contents and educational methods.
Second, based on the survival value, we should tap the reasonable factors in the cultural tradition and promote the healthy development of youth education.
China has always been a country that values morality, with a strong sense of "isomorphism between home and country", caring and thinking about life, scientific spirit of continuous exploration and unique aesthetic character. Mining these factors has laid a theoretical foundation for the development of youth education.
(A), Confucius' wisdom and moral education
1988 65438+ 10, 75 nobel prize winners issued a joint statement in Paris, appealing to the world: in 2 1 century, human beings need to learn the wisdom of Confucius two thousand years ago to survive. Confucius' ethical thought of "faith" can be used to measure the individual quality and value of the subject, coordinate the relationship between the group and the self, and standardize the interactive process of youth education. The "faith" in China's cultural tradition is neither dogmatic preaching nor rigid bondage. On the contrary, it is the character of "honesty, trust and fairness" derived from "trust and trustworthiness" Honesty, as an aspect of morality, firstly affirms the universe, humanity and human morality, emphasizing human existence, and human morality is completely consistent with humanity and the nature of heaven and earth. Secondly, it expounds that the harmony between man and nature, man and society, and man and nature is a cognitive achievement and self-reflection of human spirit on the universe, society and life.
Where should school moral education go in a pluralistic society? The most important thing is to pay attention to the existence of teenagers. Some scholars believe that we should "pay attention to the life world of individual students" (see Educational Research 200 1 No.9, School Moral Education in a Pluralistic Society: Pay Attention to the Life World of Individual Students). 2 1 century is a prominent era in life. Paying attention to students' individual life, school moral education must face students' real life, which will make people feel embarrassed, stressed and afraid. Applying Confucius' ethical thought of "faithfulness" to moral education can alleviate these tensions.
In the past, people generally paid attention to moral principles and norms, but ignored or ignored students' life experiences, feelings and experiences. However, contemporary teenagers have become a "drifting" generation. Instead of paying attention to heroes, they fall in love with idols and care about brands. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out "body" humanistic care in moral education.
According to the second meaning of honesty, the moral education of teenagers should also become a kind of friendship activity that develops relations harmoniously and naturally. According to the laws of nature, towering trees coexist with grass, moss and shrubs. This is the law of nature's original ecology: harmony and fairness, but why don't human beings develop harmoniously and fairly inspired by the laws of nature? Similarly, cultural traditions allow China people to gain their own existence through coordination. "Those who are far away refuse to accept it, then morality is cultivated and people are served" (The Analects of Confucius Ji Hui Pian Bian) is based on the premise that a country can survive: Xiu De; "Words without deeds, deeds without results, righteousness without obedience" is the personality charm of gentlemen and heroes to attract others. Today's moral education for teenagers should follow the moral requirements of Confucius' "faithfulness". The so-called "I am for everyone, and everyone is for me", when one first considers the society, the society also gives positive feedback at the same time, thus making the subject develop better. Therefore, it is the purpose of adolescent moral education to let teenagers feel morality, choose behavior mode, enrich life experience and develop interpersonal ecological emotion and ability. At the same time, there is "interaction" between educators and educatees, which promotes the growth of students' emotional awareness and respect awareness, and also enhances the personality charm of teachers. "It's right, not right". This is also beneficial to the construction of contemporary moral education.
(B) "isomorphism between home and country" and patriotic education for teenagers
In the long course of China's culture, generally speaking, facts are centered on "home" and "country" and embody various norms. Things in the world are just family affairs and state affairs, and home is the cell of a country. The reason is still related to the survival value of our nation. "Culture is nothing more than a coping strategy that people choose in a specific living environment". We can trace back to the source according to such clues: the way of cultural representation-the unique way of mastering the world-the type of human self-consciousness-the living structure of human beings-the living conditions (natural environment) of human beings.
China culture is an ethical culture that grows out of the social soil of "agriculture-patriarchal clan system", and the foundation of agricultural society and agricultural economy is family. A strong sense of home and country is the premise and foundation to unite and carry forward patriotism, which is conducive to establishing national self-esteem and self-confidence and enhancing national cohesion and centripetal force. It is with the support of this consciousness that the Chinese nation can unite and rise up against the current enemy.
With the passage of history and the changes of the times, patriotism education has different contents and forms of expression today, but the spirit of infiltration is homogeneous. Patriotism education for young people can't erase national self-esteem, self-confidence, cohesion and centripetal force, just as believers of various western sects can't forget their beliefs. This provides a dimension of survival value for youth orientation, from country and nation to family and individual.
(C) Zhuangzi's "tourism" wisdom and innovative education for young people
In the excellent cultural tradition of ancient China, Taoist culture shines with the brilliance of ultimate concern for the suffering life, and Zhuangzi school is a philosophy of "saving people". The "danger", "heavenly monarch", "justice", "Taoism" and "ring" in Zhuangzi are all round things. Making it the main body is a spiral movement. How to grasp this movement, Zhuangzi emphasized "transformation". His thoughts include "wandering" wisdom, "field thinking" and "butterfly thinking" (see Wei Chuanxian's explanation of Zhuangzi's thinking method), with the intention of "changing", "changing" and "using".
In connection with youth education, it is not difficult to put forward the concept of "innovative education" in a changing pluralistic society. The essence of innovative education is an education aimed at cultivating pioneering personality, based on the all-round development of people's comprehensive quality, and aiming at improving the quality of life, so as to comprehensively improve the national quality and competitiveness. As far as teenagers are concerned, the main goal of innovative education is to cultivate students' innovative personality, and the basic task is to cultivate students' innovative spirit and ability. The humanistic spirit in China's "Tao" cultural tradition embodies the ultimate concern for the value of life subject, advocates respect for people's independent personality and spiritual freedom, and the basic goals and tasks of innovative education are completely consistent with this. Innovative education is a systematic project, involving the reform of educational ideas, curriculum materials, teaching methods, educational evaluation, teachers' quality, school management and so on. From the perspective of training objectives, we should first cultivate teenagers' exploration spirit, then cultivate comprehensive practical ability, and finally achieve the goal of cultivating innovative consciousness and ability; From the perspective of learning in the field of knowledge, creative education should penetrate into moral education, aesthetic education, physical education and labor education; From the specific educational methods, the current innovative education for young people should comprehensively promote quality education; From the aspect of school management, we should completely get rid of the rigid and oppressive management mode in traditional education and implement "heart management", that is, win the hearts of young people and manage them to achieve "win-win". In the words of enterprise management strategy, employees are regarded as creators and change forces, and leaders and employees challenge themselves, set their own limits, complete self-transcendence and live the meaning of life. Therefore, the education management mode in 2 1 century is also soft management (heart management). The book "Learn to Live" points out: "Education has both the power to cultivate creative spirit and the power to suppress creative spirit". As an important undertaker of education, the improvement of teachers' own quality is also a factor that affects the smooth development of innovative education for teenagers.
(4) The scientific spirit, respect for morality and unique aesthetic character in the cultural tradition have inspired the unity of seeking truth, goodness and beauty in youth education.
Today, the Chinese nation has explored nature and human existence and created a splendid national culture. This cultural chain is branded with the unique psychological and aesthetic characteristics of the nation.
As we all know, the development of ancient natural science in China experienced three peaks: the Northern and Southern Dynasties was the first peak, represented by Zu Chongzhi, Tao Hongjing, Li Daoyuan and Jia Sixie; Song and Yuan Dynasties are the second peak, represented by Song Ci, Qin and Guo Shoujing. The late Ming Dynasty was the last peak, represented by Li Shizhen, Xu Guangqi, Song and Xu Hongzu. In the ups and downs of the three peaks, many scientists have the courage to explore and actively seek truth, and have experienced a book all their lives. It can be said that the scientific spirit runs through the tradition of China. Today, youth education cannot but call for this scientific spirit and vigorously carry forward the fine tradition of seeking truth from facts. In the field of social science, the scientific spirit of the ancients is often embodied in "reality" and "persistence", and Historical Records and Guoque are such models. History is a three-dimensional history. "Seeking utility" is based on "seeking truth"; Youth education is also a three-dimensional education. Implementing innovative education in youth education is not an out-of-nothing and whimsical innovation, but based on "seeking truth" and "seeking truth".
At the same time, China also has a strong tradition of thinking, emphasizing the importance of reason and wisdom, and pursuing truth and dialectical thinking. "A hundred schools of thought contend", "Zhuang Hui's debate" and "the debate on justice and reason" are all good proofs, and this thinking tradition contains scientific spirit. Therefore, stimulating teenagers' thinking and guiding them to practice is helpful to cultivate teenagers' belief in science and enhance their rational consciousness and enthusiasm. Moreover, doing these well from an early age can also guide and help them to form correct philosophical thoughts and attitudes towards life in the future.
Of course, respecting knowledge and technology is the material content of "seeking truth". In the era of knowledge economy, knowledge is power and identity. "Science and technology are the primary productive forces", and science and technology are the navigation lights leading the development of the world. From 198 1, China began to implement "three small" activities: small inventions, small papers and small activities, which promoted the development of science and technology and cultivated the ability of young people.
In the cultural tradition of China, in the concepts of Confucianism and Taoism, people attach great importance to the value of human existence. Confucianism "saves the world" to "save people", and the content of Confucian ethics has been summarized as three cardinal guides and five permanents. The five permanent members are benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom and faith. This is a tradition of respecting morality and emphasizing righteousness, with the most emphasis on virtue, morality and ethics. Confucius declared that "the three armed forces can't win the handsome, and ordinary people can't win the ambition." ; Mencius advocated the noble integrity of "wealth can't be lewd, poverty can't be moved, and powerful people can't be bent", saying that "wealth is unjust to me" ... Confucianism provided a favorable environment for people's survival by regulating the relationship between people and society, thus perfecting itself. Taoism advocates frankness. But no matter which one, it is not divorced from people's real life, from groups, from nature, but from the understanding of people's survival value into secular life.
For thousands of years, China's cultural tradition has interpreted the meaning of goodness, and there are countless concepts and examples of promoting goodness and restraining evil. Mencius advocated that "human nature is evil" and believed that people's moral thoughts and qualities such as morality, benevolence, goodness and faith were inherent in human nature. Although there are differences between different viewpoints, on the whole, pursuing lofty ideological quality, yearning for ideal moral personality and cultivating beautiful spiritual sentiments are the leading ideas of China culture. From "I save myself three times a day-cheating on others?" Don't believe in making friends? Can't you learn? "In the introspection of the Analects of Confucius, we see the pain of the ancients' pursuit-yearning-self-restraint. The core of doing a good job in youth education is to seek goodness. " On the one hand, it is the infinite pursuit of establishing one's own personality and the pursuit of knowledge. On the other hand, it is an unconditional and unlimited responsibility to others. ..... that is, the mentality of demanding self-achievement and success at the same time. "This kind of pursuit of goodness makes people gain spiritual purification and personality independence, which opens the ideal realm of personality pursuit. As the old saying goes, "Walker, be the biggest first". The essence of China's excellent cultural tradition lies in its expression of the true meaning and value of life. The traditional "way of university" has pointed out the direction for youth education, but we implemented it too late. Russell said: "The desire for love, the pursuit of knowledge and overwhelming sympathy for human suffering are three simple but strong feelings that dominate my life." Expressed the "great goodness" of human beings.
If youth education only stays at the level of "seeking truth" and "seeking goodness", it is not an ideal educational concept. The author believes that youth education should also be promoted to the level of "becoming beautiful".
On the other hand, China's excellent cultural tradition contains unique aesthetic consciousness. Combined with the utilitarian study of beauty, Zhuangzi's aesthetic thought contains the thought of "beauty comes from itself, beauty comes from its beauty, beauty is harmonious with beauty, and the world is harmonious"; Confucius believes that beauty and goodness are closely related and inseparable, and even synonymous with goodness. There is a so-called "benevolence is beauty" ("standing up"); "A gentleman's adult beauty is not an adult's evil" ("Yan Yuan"); Mencius put forward the argument that enrichment is beautiful (Mencius wholeheartedly); Combining art to study beauty, ancient Chinese music theory has long put forward the idea that "beauty lies in harmony"; Learning beauty in combination with practice, everything has its own beauty due to different conditions. The aesthetic character of education is intended to (1) train the educated to become the beauty of wisdom (2) publicize the beauty of life vitality (3) be harmonious and natural among individuals. To realize the beauty of youth education, we must respect different individuals, fully tap their own potential, give play to their talents and publicize their individuality. We should consciously transform the objective world and the subjective world according to the law of beauty, combine aesthetic education with moral education, and cultivate ourselves into virtuous people.
Fourthly, youth education should expand its direction in the integration of modernity and tradition.
Undeniably, today we carry forward the national cultural tradition and carry out excellent traditional culture education among teenagers, and we must see the historical limitations of cultural tradition. Because cultural tradition itself has its duality, it is more caused by the integration of tradition and modernity, and integration does not mean fracture. Tradition, whether it is criticism, utilization or inheritance, is closely related to the process of modern education. The relationship between modern education and traditional education is changing, continuous rather than broken. Today, although all kinds of education show modernity in educational concepts, theories, contents and methods, they also retain some aspects of traditional cultural education to some extent. In addition, many ideas are in the same strain. We examine and choose the basic content of cultural tradition in order to transform this traditional cultural spirit into modern cultural spirit and become an important part of modern youth education.
In the past few years, the implementation of quality education for teenagers has not achieved ideal results. One of the reasons is that under the integration of tradition and modernity, no new direction has been put forward. Quality education includes four elements: ideology and morality, science and culture, labor skills and mental health, with ideological and moral quality as the core and the cultivation of innovative spirit and practical ability as the focus. I have already talked about the first two-ideological morality and scientific culture, so I won't repeat them here. As far as labor skills and physical health are concerned, these are two weak items of youth education in China. In fact, it is also a manifestation of China's traditional education emphasizing theory over practice.
With the development of society and the progress of human beings, today's labor skills are not only manifested as professional skills, but also as the cultivation of thinking and ability. When yesterday's sense of survival is no longer suitable for today's or even tomorrow's lifestyle, we should keep pace with the times and develop labor and technical education, starting with dolls and starting with teenagers. Because labor technology education is not only the education of technical culture and competitive consciousness, but also the education of a person's viability. The thought of labor technology education is interlinked with STS thought in the world, so we should explore an educational method that conforms to China's national conditions. The task of youth labor technology education is mainly to cultivate students' ideological and moral character and development ability. Through students' independent choice and study, they can experience and accumulate a scientific training process in the choice of thinking methods, personal potential, problem-solving methods and technical routes. Pay attention to the cultivation of students' consciousness, emotion and habits; Extensive involvement in social science and humanities knowledge; Open up scientific horizons; Only by cultivating technical savvy and making the transfer of thinking mode more diversified can we find a foothold in this diversified society. For a time, Chinese people lacked cultural literacy and shallow non-professional knowledge. Developing labor education technology can make up for these shortcomings.
People's physical and mental health is a necessary condition to adapt to society. In the ancient cultural tradition of China, the way of health preservation and "self-cultivation" were emphasized. Confucianism once expounded the maintenance and health care of the body; Taoism emphasizes the supplement of physical fitness; Confucianism also emphasizes "self-cultivation" and "introspection" to achieve ideal personality. In modern youth education, we still adhere to this idea, and talk about the improvement of diet, hygiene and health and personality quality in health education. But these obviously can't satisfy the health education of teenagers. The author believes that adolescent health education is still relatively lacking in sex education throughout the ages. Although some achievements have been made in propaganda work in recent years, the ideological consensus has not yet been formed.
Cassirer thinks: "Man is declared to be a kind of existence that should be constantly explored-a kind of existence that must be interrogated and examined at every moment of his existence. The value of human life lies precisely in this kind of inspection and in this kind of criticism of human life. " Therefore, people's consciousness of self-awareness, self-reflection, self-evaluation and self-transformation itself contains people's understanding of their own bodies, which is a kind of understanding of returning to the true nature and an unavoidable problem in adolescent health education.
Mental health education is not only introspection and self-discipline. In modern times, health education should also emphasize communication, exchange and cooperation. Confucianism not only emphasizes that the world should have a "sense of hardship" (Mencius said that "people are born with hardship and die of happiness"), but also encourages the spirit of "responsibility" (Gu said that "the world rises and falls, and everyone has his own rules"). Today's teenagers may not realize the above truth in "introspection". Therefore, we should let them enhance their sense of social responsibility and justice in communication, exchange and cooperation, and improve their moral cultivation in practice.
(5) follow the cultural tradition of human survival value and define the teaching activities of youth education.
Teaching activities can be divided into conscious teaching and unconscious teaching from the perspective of motivation. Dewey said in My Educational Credo: "All education is carried out through personal participation in human social consciousness, and this process begins almost unconsciously at birth. It constantly develops personal abilities, cultivates personal consciousness, forms personal habits, exercises personal thoughts and stimulates personal feelings and emotions. " If there are three factors that affect youth education: school, family and society, then generally speaking, school education is undoubtedly the most direct and conscious teaching.
The essence of teaching is to inherit and create the art of human existence, which is understood from the perspective of human groups. From the individual point of view, teaching is an activity to promote people's innovation and development, and innovation is also based on the ultimate development consciousness and for the needs of human survival value. Many scholars have put forward teaching ideas and activities suitable for the development of youth education, such as "participatory teaching" and "heuristic teaching", all of which emphasize teacher-student interaction, teacher-student linkage and teacher-student equality; Both emphasize the formation of students' learning ability. Some scholars put forward "research study", which is of course a teaching activity that attaches great importance to the individual existence of teenagers. However, in the concrete implementation, it is necessary to combine the education with the students' stage and pay attention to guiding and enlightening them. One of the practical methods is to take labor technology education as the operating platform, introduce "research education" into it, and integrate other learning fields with information technology. First, make the content of labor technology education richer, more practical and extensible; Secondly, it also makes "research-based" learning fall into practice.
There is a famous saying in society that quality education is vigorous and exam-oriented education is impregnable. For this phenomenon, it is not entirely a matter of educational concept, but also involves the evaluation of the education department by the society, the evaluation of the school by the educational leading institutions, and the evaluation of the teachers by the school team, which is often called the baton problem. From this point of view, the development of quality education depends on what attitude society takes towards cultural traditions and youth education. Under the fusion of tradition and modernity, we should go beyond the cultural tradition and make the modern youth education "culturally internalized". Encyclopedia americana (1973): "Culture is the behavior and lifestyle of groups", Spanish Encyclopedia of the World (1978): "Culture is the organic whole of all kinds of ideas and values shared by people in a certain society." That is, it mainly focuses on the behavioral culture layer and the mentality culture layer, focusing on the endless movement process of culture, which is both tenacious and self-sustaining, constantly purifying and self-optimizing cultural vitality. The cultural internalization of modern education can not only inherit China's excellent cultural traditions, but also enable the educated (this article is about teenagers) to absorb the essence of China culture, including ideas and material contents. In recent years, some scholars have lamented the "decline of Chinese studies". China's splendid culture cannot decline in the process of modernization, which is a problem that society should pay attention to. Teenagers are the future and hope of the country, so it is wise to introduce "internalization of modern educational culture" into youth education. 1993, the United Nations proposed that "in the 2 1 century, people should be emphasized as development resources". Learning is not only for making a living, but also for the harmonious development of society, which is a higher survival value. This idea is embodied in China's excellent cultural tradition, which traces back to the traditional culture for the training of young people in the 2 1 century.
We often say: "The flowers in the greenhouse can't stand the wind and rain." China's unique family structure is easy to be veiled with affection, but it is the soil for the formation of feudal paternalism and the hotbed for the cultivation of closed, narrow and conservative consciousness. The education that teenagers receive in this unconscious environment often has many negative effects. Therefore, creating an open, free and democratic family atmosphere and breaking some stereotypes are important conditions for the good development of youth education. Let the child live not by the food he hunts, but by giving him a shotgun and teaching him how to hunt.
6. Look at cultural traditions and youth education from a developmental perspective, bring forth the new and keep pace with the times.
Someone pointed out: "Tradition is created by a group of people, recognized by most people, and has stood the test of time, so it has become the content of ordinary people's cultural life." It shows that tradition contains historical consciousness, which is diachronic and synchronic. Tradition is not something far away from us, but exists among us; Tradition is not stagnant, but constantly innovates and breaks through with the changes of social life. Only by looking at cultural traditions from a developmental perspective can we promote the continuous development of youth education and make young people's thoughts historic and forward-looking.
However, no matter how it develops, youth education should absorb the consciousness of individual survival value in the cultural tradition, and always infiltrate the blending of truth, goodness and beauty into the personality psychology, thinking method and aesthetic taste accumulated in the tradition to form a harmonious whole.