The emergence of the concept of "education returning to the life world" has brought a new perspective and vitality to the research and practice of educational theory, but at the same time it has also caused some confusion in understanding, theory and practice, and even led to the ideal loss and functional dislocation of educational self. Education has its special mission. It should not simply return to life, but pursue ideals, lead life and eventually surpass it. This transcendence is to guide students to identify with truth, goodness and beauty on the basis of examining, criticizing and reflecting on real life, thus creating a better life. Keywords: education returns to the life world; Educational concept; Curriculum reform. What kind of life world should education return to? The concept of "returning to the life world" originated from western philosophy and was first put forward by Husserl. In his view, since modern times, rational spirit has been confined to positivist science, and the life of people who explore the meaning and value of life, such as philosophy, and provide practical basis for science, has been excluded from the recognition of science and rationality. "This not only led to the crisis of science and humanities in Europe, but also led to philosophy since ancient Greece and Rome. To save this crisis, the only solution is to return to the life world and return to the true rational spirit. " [1] This philosophical trend of thought meets the needs of Chinese educational theorists to explore how education can get out of the misunderstanding of attaching too much importance to book knowledge, and forms the theoretical view that "education should return to the life world", which holds that "contemporary education should take human life as its fundamental foothold and improve the relationship between people and the world as its fundamental direction, and build an educational theoretical system integrating humanities and utilitarianism to return to the life world." [2] Scholars who hold this view point out that returning to the life world from instrumental rationality is an inevitable trend of education development, and "education returning to the life world" should become an important concept of school education reform today. However, there is no consensus on what kind of life world the world education should return to. To sum up, there are three main ways. The first road thinks that the life world is daily life, that is, the real life in the sense of experience that we live in every day. It is a comfortable world, and it is a field of human existence composed of free factors such as tradition, custom, experience, common sense, simple feelings and natural resources. It has six characteristics: intuition, freedom, repetition, experience, simplicity and practicality. [3] Education returns to the life world, in terms of content, that is, "reforming curriculum content is difficult, complicated, biased and old" and paying too much attention to the present situation of book knowledge, strengthening the connection between curriculum content and students' life, modern society and scientific and technological development, and paying attention to students' interest and experience in learning "[4], that is, education should return to Japan and often live in the world around students, especially to realize the change of curriculum value orientation and solve the problem of school teaching and learning. This road can be called "body appeal". The second line holds that the life world "does not refer to the living environment, nor to the natural world and social world, but to the world that is meaningful to life and in which people live, and is a world in which the process of life and the living mind and matter are unified." [5] This is the world with personal significance. The life world in this sense is "an immaterial category, which only gives us a new dimension to understand teaching". Based on this, the common point of the proposition of "education returns to the life world" is that the teaching world is a meaningful "life world" created by teachers and students in their own life activities. [6] Emphasize that education should restore people's life process, give teaching the meaning of "life", pay attention to people's living conditions and life value in educational life, "highlight the generative nature of teaching, and highlight the process attribute and value of teaching. Returning to the life world means returning to people themselves. " [7] This proposition reflects the concern for teachers and students as complete human beings and their life significance, which is conducive to establishing people's ontological consciousness and life consciousness, and to changing the tendency of focusing only on students' knowledge and intelligence while ignoring people's emotions, attitudes and values, and instrumentalizing teachers and students while ignoring the needs, experiences and meaning pursuit of life, so that teaching activities can be carried out in a more humanized way, thus realizing "scientific humanitarian teaching". [8] This road can be called "metaphysical pursuit". The third way holds that education should return to the future life, which is neither the daily real life nor the conceptual life. It believes that the life world is a constantly developing and newer world, and the return of education to life is to prepare students for their future life. Life knowledge is meaningful only if it is oriented to students' future. Those life knowledge that can't be connected with students' future life and meaningful connection can only be abstract symbols left in students' minds. If education can't face the future life world and students' future, it can't turn the life knowledge learned into possible life. Facing the future life world, education is to expose and analyze the puzzles and problems in real life through education, so that the conclusions determined in the curriculum are constantly questioned and the conclusions in students' minds are constantly impacted, so that students can learn to criticize and reflect, actively seek new answers and actively construct new life prospects. [9] These three roads have their own rationality. But the question is, first, what is the era of "life"? What person's life? What kind of life? Second, should education return to the life world? Can you go back to the life world? What kind of life world should I return to Return to or beyond the life world? Third, is man or life an abstract idea or a concrete reality, a present existence or a future existence? If it is an abstract life, then how can the realistic and concrete education return to that life? If it is life that will exist or appear in the future, it is life that does not exist now. How can the current concrete education "return" to the life that does not exist yet? If it is a concrete and realistic life, then the existence of concrete people is multi-level, multi-type or even multi-level, and their lives are concrete and different. How can education be satisfied with "returning to life"? Even if it is "return", what kind of people should be returned to what kind of life? If we return to everyone's own "comfortable" life, education will not become a tool to maintain everyone's real life in the real society. In that case, the unfortunate living conditions of people in socially disadvantaged situations will not be in that state forever, and education will become a tool to maintain the real unequal living conditions intentionally or unintentionally. It should be said that education should not be a tool to maintain people's real life, but should lead people to a better life and become an important force to lead people beyond real life to a rich, civilized and beautiful life. Education should play the role of guiding students' life development and perfection, and guide people to yearn for, pursue and create a better life in the future. This means that education does not return but leads and transcends real life, that is, education should "transcend" real life rather than "return"; For the future life, it is not "returning" but "leading". Second, should education return to the life world? Education originated from the needs of human survival and development, and its development has gone through the process from naturalized life education integrated into daily life to specialized and institutionalized school education independent of daily life. Since its birth, school education has guided people step by step away from the original life, beyond the reality, that is, the present life, and towards an ideal rather than an ideal future life. It is the most effective way to promote human development and progress, and it has played and will continue to play this unique role in the long history of human development. If "education returns to the life world" is understood as guiding people to real life, it is to confuse education with daily life, or to restore education to daily life. From a historical perspective, it will reduce the ideal pursuit of education, which is undoubtedly a retrogression and doomed to no result. If we understand "education returning to life world" as guiding people to "ideal life", we will regard education as an ideal rather than a reality. Education will become weak before solving the contradictions in people's lives, changing their poor living conditions and improving their living realm. In reality, it will reduce the practical value of education, which is undoubtedly doomed to be fruitless. From another perspective, if "education returns to life" is understood as "education is life", then life is enough, and education becomes redundant and loses its reasonable meaning and value. If "education returns to life" is understood as guiding people to "future life", it means that education ignores people's real life and makes education adopt an evasive and shrinking attitude when solving people's real life contradictions and bad life situations, which will also reduce the practical value of education and will be doomed to have no positive effect. At the beginning of the 20th century, Dewey advocated that education is life and school is society, and schools should become the base camp of daily life practice, so as to reverse the disadvantages that school education does not attach importance to children's interest and emotional experience, and does not attach importance to the cultivation of children's practical ability in life. Objectively speaking, in theory, he thinks that school life is different from life in the real natural state. "Spontaneous (realistic and natural) life itself, only through the transformation and promotion of teaching activities, can become a means and tool for children's development. ""Real life is so complicated that children can't touch it without getting confused. "The solution is to let schools create a conscious life." As a system, schools should simplify the real social life. [10] However, in practice, because school education is too routine, children fall into the present, accidental and trivial life, which makes his theory and experiment deviate from the original intention and fail. Education needs to maintain independence in the world of life and keep a proper distance from life. Because people in education come from daily life, continue to live in education and return to daily life, the relationship between education and life is bound to be close, and education must pay attention to real life. But this kind of "closeness" and "care" is by no means to dissolve oneself and integrate with life, but to maintain one's independence. Education can never restore itself to the world of daily life, but can only better improve its own character, thus promoting people to realize the turn of life and mind and create a better life. Otherwise, it is to belittle and obliterate the unique role of education. Of course, education cannot be immersed in the life world in a purely philosophical sense. Of course, education should pay attention to the significance and value of human existence, but this is only part of the educational ideal. Paying attention to it does not mean returning to the world of meaning and value. The world of meaning is the world that life pursues, not the world where people really exist. Moreover, the world of meaning is generated, and the pursuit of meaning can only be manifested in the educational process and results, and teaching cannot be carried out in the pure world of meaning and value. As an idea, abstract meaning and value, the world can't be fertile ground for educational activities, but can only be the background and fruit of educational activities. We can't imagine how teaching activities and the life value and survival significance of people living in them can be embodied and developed without the inheritance and guidance of knowledge. The return of education to the meaningful world is also a distortion of the essence of education, which not only has no way to operate but also leads to the nothingness of education. Education has its special mission. Since its birth, it has been endowed with the sacred mission of inheriting knowledge, bearing value, leading life and pursuing ideals. Education should guide students to pursue truth, goodness and beauty, so as to promote the continuous growth of life, constantly transcend reality and generate new self. Education comes from life and is higher than life, and in this process, it guides students to abandon current practical interests to realize the meaning of life and pursue the promotion of life value. No matter how widespread the demand for education in human society is, no matter how the specific contents of school teaching and courses change with the development of the times, the nature and purpose of the basic task of "learning and growing in the teaching process" will not change, which is different from "learning and growing in daily situations". Perhaps this is one of the important reasons why there have been many thoughts and practices in the history of human education that focus on the complete return of school teaching to the life world, or organize school teaching in the way of life world learning, which can not last long. "[1 1] Investigating the deep ideological source of the proposition" Education returns to the life world ",I am afraid that the theory of educational adaptation and instrumentalism are at work. Although the proponent of "education returns to the life world" criticized instrumental rationality. But this idea itself is precisely the expression of taking education as a tool for students to adapt to social life. We used to blindly believe that education was restricted by social, political, economic and cultural conditions, and education should adapt to and serve the requirements of social, political and economic development. When education goes too far in the field of knowledge and deviates from the original intention, we naturally think of returning to the life world, adapting education to modern life, adapting to students' life and serving students' adaptation to life, thus forgetting our independence and transcendence. This will weaken the ontological function of education, thus making it difficult to assume the responsibility of guiding the society forward in theory, thought and morality, making education lose noble and detached moral quality and indifferent value judgment in the face of social real life, which means the decline of educational spirit and the loss of educational mission. Education exists not only to adapt students to real life, but also to guide their development and lead them to build a new and better life. Third, whether education will return to or surpass life education must of course face the reality. But for education, real life is only the foundation and premise of education, and will eventually be transformed and surpassed under the guidance of education. This is the essential value of education. " As a practical activity to cultivate people, education is bound to have the characteristics of transcendence. The focus of education is not to make people "accept" and "adapt" what they have, but to make good use of what they have with the aim of "transforming" and "surpassing". [12] In other words, education should not only "return" to real life, but also "use" and "transform" real life to serve the purpose of "transcendence". Education is based on inheriting knowledge, carrying value, leading life and pursuing ideals, and guiding students to constantly surpass themselves, transcend reality, realize ideals and create a new and better life. In this process, students constantly open their horizons of knowledge, gradually deepen their understanding of the world, others and themselves, understand real life and their yearning for a better life in the future, constantly improve their life realm in a bright vision, gain the meaning and value of survival, and freely become themselves and real people. He should not be satisfied with real life, but a person who enjoys real life, and should be a person who creates a better life in the future. Education should face the future. Education is essentially a kind of guidance and transcendence to life. Because, a person's life not only means "being alive", but also means that people should be smart, decent and noble "like people". This is the uniqueness of human beings, which is related to the significance and value of human existence. Education is the power to make people richer, smarter, more capable, stronger, nobler and more perfect. The purpose of education is to make people transcend the natural and social existence of animals and constantly expand and enhance the meaning of human life. "Education is to make people become people", "education helps individuals to become themselves freely" and "make people become themselves through cultural inheritance". [13] Therefore, education should not only provide proper preparation for solving people's real survival problems, but also face people's future problems, and guide people to constantly surpass reality, realize themselves, pursue higher quality survival and pursue a higher life realm as people. "People need education or education, because people need external forces to achieve self-transcendence. Therefore, transcendence is not only the external tradition of education, but also the internal essence of education. "The transcendence of education comes from the essence of human transcendence." Man is the product of transcendence, who is born of transcendence, who is human because of transcendence, and who realizes and creates himself because he is more and more fully aware of his transcendence. "[15]" The difference between man and other beings is that he is not blindly and randomly dominated by external conditions. His essential feature and the essence of his consciousness are that he always has a directivity based on reality and beyond reality. Everything that exists in reality can never satisfy people, and people will always change it ... The basic function of education is to show and fully develop this basic feature of its target people. Education endows people with knowledge and ability and the need to transcend reality. " "Education, as an activity of cultivating people, is to cultivate people who can transform the real world, that is, to have practical consciousness and ability beyond the real world and the real society. [16] The mission of education is to "cultivate unknown children for the unknown world". [17] This shows that although education originates from life, it exists to transcend life, make people more like people, and become real people because of transcendence. This transcendence is not to establish an idealized "castle in the air" on the basis of real life, but to guide students to identify with truth, goodness and beauty on the basis of examining, criticizing and reflecting on real life, thus creating a better life. However, the concept of "education returning to the life world" is facing a self-evident practical and theoretical dilemma. First, "education returns to the life world" requires that curriculum design should focus on selecting content around students' life world; In the process of curriculum implementation, it is emphasized to connect with students' real life, take care of students' original life experience and emotional experience, and let students participate in practical exploration activities in daily life to grow up. This understanding is reasonable, but in practice, due to the lack of guidance beyond the concept of life, this "return" often tends to become routine, formal, superficial and short-sighted, losing the essential characteristics and taste of education, such as deepening, long-term and idealization. Second, "education returns to the life world" requires that courses, teaching materials and teaching should also take the life world as their destination. In other words, everything students have learned through textbooks and teaching can return to their own lives, so as to solve problems in life, change their lifestyle, and enhance their understanding, attitude and values of life, and so on. "Come from life and then go back to life ... If students learn in class and say the same thing, but they are not prepared to implement it in life at all, such a class is divorced from life. This kind of classroom learning can not only play a positive role in students' life, but also cultivate the false character of learning life and teaching by example. "[18] The" return to life "mentioned here is aimed at transcending real life. We know that not all curriculum contents can directly come from students' real life world, but more contents are the essence of highly concentrated systematic cultural achievements in human history, and they must be "detached from children's real life". Not all the course contents can return to the real life world. Among the knowledge that students need to master in their development, some are directly related to life, such as moral character, common sense of life and basic life skills. While others are far away from real life, but they may affect their future growth direction and even promote human development. The former knowledge can follow the principle of new curriculum reform from life to life, while the latter knowledge can't be directly applied to real life by students anyway. Can we say that they are useless to real life or to the growth and development of students and exclude them from the curriculum content system? Too much emphasis on "education returning to life" will lead to indirect and long-term useful knowledge being excluded from education? In the process of emphasizing the "homogeneity" connection between practical courses and children's lives, will children be satisfied with real life (even bad life) and unable to choose and pursue a new life, or will they lack the consciousness and ability to reflect on the rationality of the real world and transform it because they only pay attention to adapting to real life? If this "return to life" education is not enough to form students' consciousness and ability to pursue high-quality life, does it also explain the weakness of this education? Third, a large number of life-oriented courses in the real education situation not only stay in contact with the real life world, but also have misleading facts (for example, courses are related to false, adult, strange, vulgar, empty, narrow and patterned life). [19] This shows that if there is no in-depth thinking about the unique transcendence of education itself in promoting students' growth and social development, the practice of linking students' life experience, leading students out of life practice and infiltrating daily life knowledge in curriculum compilation will only deepen the understanding and understanding of knowledge at best, which will inevitably make education a simple copy and superficial explanation of real life, and it is difficult to achieve its purpose of guiding students to surpass real life and achieve higher life goals. Fourthly, the return of life world based on ideas requires that educational practice be based on students' existing spiritual world and point to the generation of students' higher spiritual world; It is emphasized that teaching should not only guide students to master knowledge and skills, but also cultivate emotions, attitudes and values, that is, to generate people with complete significance; Emphasize that the content of education is oriented to a complete life and constructs a complete life experience; Emphasize that the teaching method should be changed from giving and receiving to dialogue. However, without the guidance of transcendental ideals, these stresses will eventually become superficial and difficult to improve. The practical and theoretical dilemma of "education returns to the life world" shows that education can only contact and pay attention to real life and surpass it, but can't return to or even restore real life, let alone return to or even restore future life. This is not only because there is confusion between theory and practice in the theory of "returning to life", but also because the essence of education determines that it needs to keep a proper distance from daily life and even meaningful life. It can only restore its inherent essential functions and characteristics, transcend daily life and abstract world, lead students to broaden their horizons, think deeply, expand their imagination, know the world, know others and know themselves, enhance their life realm in the pursuit of truth and freedom, and achieve healthy and harmonious growth and development. The reason why the call of "education returning to the life world" has been heard all the time has aroused people's resonance and concern is not because the formulation itself must be rigorous and reasonable, but that the real education has become rigid in the development process and neglected the existence of people living in it (life education, experiential teaching, inquiry learning, etc.). They all reflect people's concern for the real educational life and their yearning for the ideal educational life. However, this problem cannot be solved by returning to life. In the educational reform, what we need more is to find the reasons from education itself, examine the internal functions of education itself, and examine how education itself transforms knowledge into wisdom, increase the humanity of teaching, humanize the teaching operation mode and realize the transcendence of education. We should make more efforts to study the development of people and the diversified development of each student in the educational scene, and devote ourselves to how to provide better knowledge nourishment, broader thinking space, purer value care and create better conditions for survival and development for students' healthy and harmonious beyond growth. Education can only restore its own characteristics and return to the self that promotes the all-round development of people and society and realizes transcendence. To sum up, although the viewpoint of "education returning to the life world" is of positive significance to reflect on the tendency of "classroom-oriented", "knowledge-oriented" and "teacher-oriented" school education to ignore practical activities, individual experience and students' subjectivity, and imprison the development of individual fresh life, it is supplemented because of the lack of solid theoretical basis and practical support. Vague formulation can not only fundamentally solve the drawbacks and contradictions existing in the real society, real people and real education, but also distract people's attention from the deep rational thinking on the essence of education itself and the ultimate exploration of promoting students' all-round improvement in material, spirit and personality, which not only brings theoretical confusion to people's thinking about education, but also brings some misleading to educational practice. On the basis of exploring the characteristics and historical mission of education itself, the research of educational theory needs to accurately reveal the true meaning of education on the one hand, and provide clear direction and ideas for educational practice on the other. Education needs ideals, which should not only be rooted in the soil of real life, but also transcend real life and focus on guiding and constructing a better life in the future of human society.