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What is education? What is the most important principle in education?

Now I list my favorite educational ideas, a total of seven. I might as well call it the seven proverbs of education.

The first maxim: education is growth, growth is the purpose, and there is no other purpose except growth.

Education is Growth tells the original meaning of education: let everyone's nature and innate ability grow healthily, instead of instilling external things, such as knowledge, into a container. Knowing the truth that "education is growth", we also know what education should do.

For example, intellectual education is to cultivate curiosity and rational thinking ability, not to instill knowledge; Moral education is to encourage lofty spiritual pursuit, not to instill norms; Aesthetic education is to cultivate rich souls, not to instill skills.

If we must use utilitarian goals to regulate growth, such as adapting to society and seeking career, we will achieve something in the future, and the result will inevitably be to inhibit growth.

The second maxim: children are not immature adults, and childhood has its intrinsic value.

It is a long-standing common misunderstanding that children are "future beings" and immature adults. The idea of "growing up" is ridiculous, as if children are not human before they grow up!

Every stage of life has its own irreplaceable value, and no stage is just preparing for another stage. Childhood, in particular, is the most important stage of physical and mental growth, and it should also be the happiest time in life. The greatest merit that education can achieve is to give children a happy and meaningful childhood, thus creating a good foundation for their happy and meaningful life.

The third maxim: the purpose of education is to get students out of the slavery of reality, not to adapt to reality.

This is Cicero's famous saying. It is of course necessary for people to live in society and adapt to reality, but this should not be the main purpose of education.

Montaigne said: learning is not to adapt to the outside world, but to enrich yourself. Confucius also advocated that learning is "for oneself" rather than "being a person". Philosophers of all ages have emphasized that learning is to develop one's inner spiritual ability, so as to gain freedom in the face of external reality.

Of course, this is only a kind of inner freedom, but it is with this inner freedom, this independent personality and independent thinking ability that those excellent souls and hearts have played a huge role in changing the reality of human society.

The fourth maxim: The most important educational principle is not to cherish time, but to waste it.

"Misuse of time is more costly than wasting time. Children who receive wrong education are farther away from wisdom than children who have no education." Rousseau said this, of course, has his own reason. If education means growth, the mission of education should be to provide the best environment for growth.

What is the best environment? The first is free time, the second is a good teacher. In Greek, the word "school" means leisure According to the Greeks, students must have enough time to experience and think in order to develop their ideas freely.

Nowadays, teachers and parents always force their children to do endless homework, but Rousseau asks you: What is waste? What is happiness? Jumping around all day is nothing. If meeting the requirements of nature is a waste, let them be wasted.

The fifth maxim: forget everything you learn in class, and the rest is education.

I first saw this sentence in Einstein's article, and later found that it was probably derived from Whitehead's sentence to the effect that only by throwing away textbooks and handouts and forgetting the details memorized for the exam will the rest be valuable.

The details of knowledge are easy to forget, and once needed, they are easy to find in books. Therefore, it is laborious and worthless to focus on memorizing the details of knowledge.

Aside from the details of knowledge, the rest is called education. In layman's terms, a person has become a hopeless thinker and scholar, and no matter what career he is engaged in in in the future, he can no longer change his habits and hobbies of learning, thinking and research.

The sixth maxim: Universities should be places where masters gather, so that young people can grow up under the influence of masters.

The essence of education is not to impart knowledge, but to cultivate the habit of intellectual activities and the ability to think independently. The only way to cultivate is to be influenced by people with this quality-we might as well call them masters in general. The master is in two places, one is the bookshelf and the other is the university. Universities should be places where masters gather.

Lin Yutang has an image saying: the ideal university should be a dining place with extraordinary personality. Here I met a Newton, a Fruit, a Russell in the East Room and a Lasky in Westinghouse. The front yard is Hui's study, and the backyard is Dai Dongyuan's house.

The seventh maxim: Teachers should regard students as an end rather than a means.

This is Russell's principle of correct teacher-student relationship.

The reason why students are regarded as a means is that teachers have the power to decide students' further studies and graduation. So I agree with Einstein's suggestion that teachers should be given as little power as possible to use coercive means, and the only source of students' respect for them is his humanity and rational quality.

Correspondingly, students are allowed to choose teachers freely within the scope permitted by the syllabus; The assessment of teachers should also mainly look at whether they are loved by students, not whether they are favored by administrative departments.