There are different interpretations of education in the history of Chinese and foreign education, but there is a common basic point, that is, education is an activity to cultivate people.

The similarities between Chinese and western ancient education are mainly class, orthodoxy, autocracy, rigidity and symbolism. Education is basically divorced from productive labor; Education is hierarchical, and schools become places for the ruling class to train talents; Education is graded, people of different classes receive different education, and children of working people have no right to education.

Extended data

In the ancient literature of China, the word "education" first appeared in Mencius with all my heart, while the ancient western educational thought can be traced back to ancient Greece, and many educators appeared. However, in ancient China, educational thoughts were very different from those in the West. In ancient China, education was to train talents for the country and educate for the interests of the ruling class.

In the ancient west, education was regarded as educating people, and what they wanted to improve was personal culture and accomplishment. In terms of organizational form, China's ancient education was more centralized, while the western ancient education was more dispersed and there were many schools of education.

Education is a social phenomenon, which comes from the needs of social life and, in the final analysis, from productive labor. Education is a social activity to cultivate people, and its social function is to transmit production experience and social life experience and promote the growth of a new generation.

From this perspective, education is an indispensable means for the growth of the new generation and the continuation and development of social life, and it is necessary for all people and all societies. In this sense, education is an eternal category of human society, which always accompanies human society. Moreover, with the development of society, human beings have accumulated more and more knowledge, and the role of education in social development has become more and more obvious.

This educational phenomenon develops with the development of society. Due to the continuous development of education itself, people's understanding of the first-level education is also deepening, so the significance of education is also developing and deepening.