In Plato's view, nous often refers to "kindness" or "awareness", which is a special ability of human mind and a manifestation of wisdom. In Krati Lu Si, Plato said that the name of the goddess of wisdom (Atheonóa) refers to the rationality of "God". In the Phaedo, Socrates said before he died that he had learned the wisdom of the universe from the Athenian philosopher Anaxagoras and arranged the order of everything, which was a major turning point in his thought. Aristotle regards intellectual knowledge as a kind of ability associated with "reason" that only human beings have. In the fourth part of Ethics, he regards intellectual knowledge as an ability to grasp the basic principles and essential definitions of things. Wisdom is the ability of people to strengthen with the growth of experience, which is consistent with the fact that age and experience can increase wisdom.
Although the knowledge in the humanities education classroom is not unrelated to this ancient view of knowledge, it emphasizes the general ability of others related to general learning or knowledge learning, and the most basic thing is the ability to think and judge independently. In the Internet age when knowledge is becoming more and more "easy", the importance of independent thinking and judgment is more prominent.
Larry Sanger, one of the founders of online Wikipedia and the founder of online Citizendium Collection, said in the article How the Internet changes what we know, "A good search engine is like Oracle Bone Inscriptions. No matter what you ask, there will be an answer. Some answers are just what you are looking for. However, some answers, I'm sorry, are just Oracle Bone Inscriptions-hard to understand and may be wrong. ..... knowledge and information are different. It's easy for you to get information from the Internet, but knowledge is quite another matter. " Similarly, it is easy for students to acquire professional knowledge in class, but it is another matter to improve their intellectual knowledge of independent thinking and judgment.
The large amount of information easily available on the Internet has caused the phenomenon of "knowledge depreciation" that Larry Sanger is worried about. He said, "The more information accumulated by Internet services all over the world, the easier it is to obtain information. In contrast, knowledge is less unusual and less attractive. I am worried that the Internet has greatly weakened people's feelings about the uniqueness of knowledge and why knowledge is worth pursuing. " A lot of knowledge that used to be considered valuable is easily available on the Internet. As far as the accumulation of professional knowledge is concerned, it is no longer difficult for young scholars to surpass those who accumulated knowledge in the past. However, their knowledge may not have increased to the same extent. Knowledge is not equal to intellectual knowledge, not in the Internet age, but has become more prominent in the Internet age.
Distinguishing the authenticity of knowledge requires not only knowledge, but also wisdom, and wisdom is more difficult to obtain. Sanger pointed out that the "surplus" of information actually increased the difficulty of acquiring knowledge. Of course, he refers to real knowledge that is reliable after thinking and judgment. True knowledge is a kind of "belief" and must be tested. In the era of spreading knowledge by paper media, readers can rely on the help of experienced and discerning editors and their test of knowledge to a considerable extent.
Today, such inspection tasks often fall on the readers themselves. The key is to be able to tell the truth from the false. We use reasons or evidence to make decisions. Sanger said, "It is very difficult to provide a test for knowledge and belief. This requires us to have a good source of information, critical thinking, and sometimes we need to know statistics and mathematics, and pay great attention to details when understanding the text. These things need time and energy. Others can give you some help, but these are things you must do yourself. " Humanistic education should not only let students accept ready-made knowledge, but also let them learn how to test knowledge and establish a belief in reliable knowledge, which is the requirement of humanistic education for students' knowledge-seeking quality and ability. The difference between it and general education is that it does not teach people to fish, but to teach people to fish.
In the university where I teach, the Outline of Humanities Education for Giving People Fish has more specific, systematic and comprehensive provisions than Sanger's suggestion. Humanistic education includes two interrelated and different parts. The first is class discussion (collective knowledge activity), and the second is writing (individual independent knowledge behavior), both of which are based on reading, including questioning, analysis, understanding and explanation, evaluation and criticism of the text. Humanistic education attaches great importance to the close combination of classic reading and writing. These two courses are not subject courses, and both aim at teaching people to fish. This is reflected in the specific teaching objectives. For example, the common writing requirements of these two courses are divided into "critical thinking learning objectives" and "communicative learning objectives". The school syllabus has specific instructions on this.
The requirement of critical thinking refers to "critical thinking necessary for understanding and acquiring knowledge, including analysis, synthesis and evaluation." Therefore, students should learn how to identify, form and raise meaningful questions in their own and others' thoughts, and how to combine logic, careful observation, reflection and experience in the reasoning process. The order of the two writing courses helps students to gradually improve their reliable judgment in the face of different viewpoints, and provides them with a forum for critical thinking about different parts of reasoning. "There are three specific requirements: first, find and identify the positive and negative evidence of arguments and claims; Second, put forward meaningful questions for the topic; Discover, evaluate and prove that there are no clear assumptions and respond to them.
The requirement of communicative competence refers to "improving students' writing communicative competence". "Only when a person can effectively communicate his knowledge with others can his thoughts be truly free. Students should develop communication skills, recognize the power of language to form ideas and experiences, and learn to write and speak logically, clearly and creatively. " There are four specific requirements: first, to be able to identify and write fluent articles, which are characterized by clear and meticulous organization, coherent paragraphs and correct sentences; Second, effective written communication should consider who is the reader and the communication situation; Third, reasoned reasoning, clear and powerful exposition, and focused and orderly topics; Fourth, in the process of writing, improve your intelligence and enhance your ability to analyze and understand complex ideas.