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An Overview of Ancient Education in China
Primitive society was taught by elders through practical activities and passed on from mouth to mouth.

Around 3000 BC, there have been "calligraphy" and "hieroglyphics". With writing, there will naturally be institutions specializing in teaching and learning, which was called "Cheng Jun" at that time, and it was the initial bud of the school.

In Xia Dynasty, there was a formal school with teaching as the main part, which was called "school". Mencius said, "Learning in summer means teaching." In Shang Dynasty, it was called "Yi Yi", but in Zhou Dynasty it became a "preface".

"Preface" is divided into "East Preface" and "West Preface". The former is a university, in the east of the capital palace, where nobles and their children enter school. The latter is a primary school, in the western suburbs of the capital, where ordinary people study. With the development of productivity, culture and science in Shang Dynasty, more schools of thought appeared, which were called "learning" and "teaching". Learning is different from Left Learning and Right Learning. The former is designed for "old people" and the latter is designed for "ordinary old people". The boundary between the state and the people lies in the nobility and the common people. "Learning" was based on human relations in the Ming Dynasty, while "Zhezong" was based on learning music.

The Western Zhou Dynasty was the heyday of slave society, and the school organization was relatively perfect. At that time, it was divided into Chinese studies and rural studies. Chinese studies are specially designed for aristocratic children, and are divided into two levels: university and primary school according to their school age and education level. Rural research mainly relied on local administrative regions at that time. Due to the different sizes of different places, there are also differences between schools, schools, schools and schools. Under normal circumstances, those who achieve excellent results in school can be promoted to township schools and learn from them; Outstanding students in or on campus may be promoted to Chinese studies and studied in universities. Chinese studies are directly under the central government, while rural studies are local schools.

In the ancient literature of China, the word "education" first appeared in Mencius with all my heart, which means "to be educated by talented people in the world". Shuowen Jiezi explains that "teaching is the effect applied to it"; "Education, training children well", education is teaching and educating people.

Education is a necessary means to transmit production experience and social life experience, and it is an eternal historical category of human society. Broadly speaking, all activities aimed at improving people's skills and influencing people's ideology and morality, whether organized or unorganized, systematic or piecemeal, are education. The education studied by pedagogy mainly refers to the school education for the younger generation; This kind of education is an activity that educators teach knowledge and skills purposefully, planned and organized according to the requirements of a certain society or class, cultivate ideological and moral character, develop intelligence and physical strength, and train the educated into talents serving a certain society or class. First of all, education is an eternal historical category of human society. Education appeared at the beginning of human society, originated from social labor, and was produced to meet the needs of productive labor and social life to impart experience. With the progress of society, education will continue to develop and will coexist with human society for a long time and will never die out.

Second, education is the reflection of productive forces, relations of production and politics, which is restricted by the laws of social development, economic and political systems and has an essential connection with social development; At the same time, it in turn affects and acts on productivity, production relations and political system. In the long history of the development of human society, education is first and foremost a tool of production struggle, but also a tool of political struggle of the ruling class in class society. Therefore, education is not only epochal and historic, but also class and political.

Third, education is also restricted by the law of physical and mental development of the object. The role of education in social development is realized by cultivating people. As the object of education, people have their own laws of physical and mental development. Only by following these laws can education get the expected results, which we can call the relationship between education and people. The role of education in human development is manifested in the interaction with heredity and environment. The leading role of education is relative to heredity and environment. Therefore, we cannot talk about the role of education in isolation from the constraints of social development and personal development. The relationship between heredity, environment and education is the dialectical unity of internal and external causes and the relationship between subjective and objective. Education is a purposeful, planned and organized activity that educators influence the educated according to the requirements of a certain society (or class) and the laws of children's physical and mental development. In education, we should attach importance to inspiration, mobilize children's learning consciousness, initiative, enthusiasm and creativity, and pay attention to children's "zone of proximal development" so that the role of education can be closely combined with the needs of children's development. According to different standards, education can be divided into different types:

Education can be divided into three forms: family education, school education and social education.

According to the different forms, contents, time, objects and administrators of education, education can also be divided into general education, professional education, amateur education, overseas Chinese education, minority education, special education, and national education, collective education and private education.

According to different historical periods, education can be divided into primitive social education, slave social education and feudal social education (collectively referred to as ancient education), capitalist education and socialist education.

The lower limit of ancient education in China was 1904. On the eve of the Revolution of 1911, the Qing government promulgated the Regulations on Playing Schools (also known as "Guimao Academic System"), namely 19 1 1. The transformation of modern education in China began after the Opium War, with foreign churches, westernization and reformism. It was not until 1902 that the Qing court published the Charter of Wang School drafted by Zhang Baixi, a senior minister of the Department of Education, which was called "non-Yin academic system" and was not implemented. 1903, the Qing court ordered Cecilia Cheung, Rong Lu, Zhang Zhidong, etc. Based on the Japanese academic system, the Regulations on Playing Schools was drafted and promulgated and implemented in the following year (1904), which marked the transformation.

Second, the official education in ancient China.

The ancient official school education in China refers to the school education system directly established and governed by the central government in past dynasties with the aim of cultivating all kinds of ruling talents. The former is called central education, and the latter is called local official school. The emergence, development and decline of the central official school were adapted to and served the political and economic development of China feudal society.

Although there was a saying in the Western Zhou Dynasty that "learning lies in official learning", the central official learning established by the imperial court was formally founded in the Han Dynasty. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the political situation was chaotic and official studies were fashionable and outdated. By the Tang Dynasty, the central government had a complete erudite system and reached its peak. After the Southern Song Dynasty, official learning gradually declined. In the late feudal society, the central official school gradually declined and actually became a vassal of the imperial examination system, which existed in name only. In the late Qing Dynasty, the ancient official schools in China were completely replaced by western schools and school education.

Central official education can be divided into the following categories: imperial academy and imperial academy.

The Han Dynasty paid special attention to the development of official learning, with emphasis on imperial learning. From the fifth year of the Yuan and Shuo Dynasties (BC 124), the number of doctoral students in imperial academy was set at 50, which increased to 3,000 when the Han Dynasty proclaimed himself emperor, and the number of students in imperial academy increased to more than 30,000. The scale of Imperial College in Han Dynasty is rare in the world. Guo Zi Temple was established by Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty, and it was renamed as imperial academy when Emperor Yangdi of Sui Dynasty. This was the beginning of the establishment of specialized education management institutions in China, which lasted until the Qing Dynasty. Imperial academy and imperial academy were the main places where feudal dynasties trained talents. They have accumulated a lot of valuable experience in running schools and educating people, prospering academics and developing imperial examinations, which occupies an important position in the history of education in China and the world. In the central official school system of feudal society, there are a few schools, which are neither institutions of higher learning, junior colleges nor aristocratic schools, but schools temporarily established by kings or ruling ministers for a short time without a system, so they are called short-term schools. For example, foreign studies in the Song Dynasty (also known as Biyong), Wenguang Museum and the four major schools all belong to this short-term school.

In addition, the ordinary ethnic primary schools established by the central government in Kyoto in the Song Dynasty also belong to the scope of the central official schools. China ancient private school education was born in the Spring and Autumn Period, among which Confucius private school was the largest and had the most far-reaching influence.

The Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period is the historical period of the transition from slavery to feudalism. Education has also undergone drastic changes with the economic and political changes, that is, from "learning in the official" to "learning in the four foreigners". Private schools came into being under such historical conditions. Because the people in this class represent the interests of the class they serve, and their theoretical inheritance systems are also different, there has been a situation in which various schools compete with various schools. Among them, Confucianism, Mohism, Taoism and Legalism have the greatest influence. Academically, each school has its own strengths and weaknesses, but on the contrary, they complement each other. Kong Qiu gave lectures in Xingtan, Qufu in the Spring and Autumn Period, and studied in Xia Ji, Linzi, the capital of Qi State, in the Warring States Period, which is of great significance to the development of school education in ancient China. Among them, Kong Qiu, who founded the Confucian School, was politically conservative, but made great achievements in sorting out cultural heritage and establishing private schools. Kong Qiu is a famous educator in ancient China, with 3000 disciples and 72 disciples of saints, and has trained a large number of talents with cultural knowledge. Confucianism, represented by Kong Qiu, attaches importance to education and takes the Six Classics as a textbook. Poetry-Literature, Book-Politics, Yi-Mathematics, Etiquette-Morality and Ethics, Music-Music Art Aesthetics, Spring and Autumn Period-History. Confucius didn't want to talk about the chaos in Machamp, and he rarely talked about religious content. The private school of Confucianism headed by Kong Qiu did not attach importance to the research and teaching of production knowledge and science and technology, which was the deficiency of Confucian education and had a long-term negative impact on ancient China culture. Kong Qiu's teaching attitude is serious, and he never tires of learning and teaching all his life. He has created a set of teaching methods that focus on teaching students in accordance with their aptitude and cultivate their awareness, such as paying attention to individual differences, being good at inspiring and inducing, combining learning with thinking, and combining learning with doing. Therefore, the long time of running private school education, the concentration of private school activities and the rich experience of private school education have far-reaching influence on future generations, which is beyond the reach of any other private school. At the same time, he also has Mohist thoughts that represent the interests of agricultural craftsmen and attach importance to science and technology education. Mohist school also called it an outstanding school in the Spring and Autumn Period. The Qin Dynasty adopted the suggestion of Prime Minister Li Si, and promulgated the "Prohibition of Private School", which denied the role of education and violated the law of historical development, which was one of the reasons for the rapid demise of Qin Ershi. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty deposed hundreds of schools, respected Confucianism alone, and took Confucian classics as official learning, but private learning was not prohibited. Therefore, China's ancient Confucian Classics was a private school taught by a private person, and by the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, it had achieved an overwhelming position in official studies. For example, Ma Rong, Zheng Xuan and other ancient classic masters in China have more than 1000 students. Teachers in the Han Dynasty attached great importance to the inheritance of family laws, which were cultivated by private schools from Kong Qiu. The study of China's ancient classics focused on exegesis and textual research of famous things, which became known as Sinology. In terms of organizational form, private schools in Han Dynasty can be divided into two types: "enlightened learning" and "elegant residence". The former is a primary school-level library and a learning library, which belongs to enlightenment education; The latter are Jingshe in Jing Guan and Lu Jing. , specializing in Confucian classics, belongs to the improved education. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, official learning declined and private learning flourished. Famous Confucian scholars still occupy an important position in lectures, with hundreds or thousands of students. The teaching content of private schools in this period broke through the traditional Confucianism, and also included metaphysics, Buddhism, Taoism, science and technology. Xiao Liang and Zhou Xingsi edited the far-reaching enlightenment reading "Thousand Characters" and Yan Tuizhi's "Yan Jiaxun", which became the representative works of family education. Textbooks such as The Five Classics, The Analects of Confucius and Thousand-character Works were also introduced into Japan. In the Tang Dynasty, private schools spread all over urban and rural areas, with different systems and degrees. Some famous scholars and scholars, such as Yan Shigu and Kong, were all private school teachers before they became officials, taking professors as their profession and taking professors as their service. A generation of famous scholars and research doctors, such as Yin, have taught students in their hometown after returning to China. On the other hand, there are also private primary schools for rural enlightenment and literacy.

After the Tang Dynasty, the private school education in the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, on the one hand, was the emergence and development of the academy system, forming an important form of private school; On the other hand, Mongolian education is mainly private schools, rural schools and Mongolian schools. The enlightenment textbooks in the Song Dynasty included Hundred Family Names and Three-Character Classics, and later they were compiled with Thousand Family Poems and Miscellaneous Characters. There are three forms of learning in Ming and Qing Dynasties: sitting in a library (or teaching a library), studying at home (or a private school), and studying at will (or a private school). The Law of Teaching Children, written by Yijun in Qing Dynasty (1783~ 1854), is a book devoted to enlightenment education, which comprehensively discusses the teaching methods of Mongolian studies and puts forward original opinions on the general principles of Mongolian studies.