Discipline integration is a new term, but it reflects an old problem.
This old question can be expressed as: Why is knowledge not unified, but divided into history, geography, astronomy, Chinese and other disciplines? In life and work (unless work happens to be teaching), when we encounter problems and need to understand and solve them, why do problems and their understanding always appear in an interdisciplinary way?
Perhaps Dewey was the first educational philosopher who recognized and expounded the integration of disciplines, and he had countless incisive expositions on it. For example, in the section "Social Nature of Discipline", he said: "Facts themselves have no dividing line to divide them into science, history or geography. At present, the pigeon-cage classification (the classification that students are divided into different disciplines contained in a large number of different textbooks from the beginning to promote) has developed a completely wrong concept in the relationship between disciplines and the relationship between disciplines and the whole intellectual education to which they belong. In fact, these disciplines must be related to the same ultimate reality, that is, related to people's conscious experience. " (School and Society Tomorrow's School, People's Education Press, john dewey, translated by Zhao Xianglin, Ren, 2nd Edition, 1, 2005, pp. 147~ 148. )
Combined with Dewey's many discussions in other places, his words have two meanings: first, facts are always holographic, and knowledge is mostly one-sided; Secondly, in children's experience, that is, in the process of cognitive development, these artificially separated knowledge needs to be re-integrated.
One hundred years ago, the vigorous "new education" movement in the world was based on the contradiction between "knowledge center" and "children center". The new education movement believes that the "knowledge center" ignores the integrity of the origin of knowledge and the cognitive characteristics and initiative of children in the process of accepting knowledge. Therefore, they believe that the solution lies in taking children's interests and life as the center, and gradually introducing and increasing knowledge of various disciplines in activities.
At the beginning of last century, Dewey was the mentor of the New Education Movement in the United States and even in China, but Dewey himself had a clearer understanding of the New Education Movement. He is clearly aware that it is dangerous to teach different subjects without considering the unity of children's experience and knowledge, but the new education movement centered on children is also in danger of being naive. In this sense, we can say that "discipline integration" is not a repetition of the child-centered theory or the new education movement-the theory of discipline integration itself is to give priority to thinking from the perspective of discipline.
Although Dewey's exposition of subject integration is exquisite, he always stands in a clear and narrow angle: children's experience. In fact, subject integration has become a core issue, which is not only the contradiction between subject knowledge and children's experience. At least, at the forefront of science, similar problems have been puzzling scientists: to build the most advanced aircraft, involving aerodynamics, materials, machinery, chemistry, electronics and other countless fields; People-oriented and market-oriented mobile phone manufacturing has to integrate aesthetic, psychological and cultural factors into a small mobile phone manufacturing. That is to say, in real life, problems always need to be solved by subject integration, and our education only teaches knowledge of sub-subjects, but does not give them the ability to integrate.
The appeal of subject integration also comes from higher-dimensional thinking. Nearly a hundred years after Dewey's viewpoint was published, the French philosopher edgar morin once again criticized the over-refined branch knowledge in his article "Seven Kinds of Knowledge Necessary for Future Education": "Our education system separates humanities, culture and science, and divides science into various disciplines, and these disciplines themselves have become super specialized and closed. So the whole complex reality is shattered and human beings are dismembered. The biological aspects of human beings (including the brain) are enclosed in the department of biology, and their psychological, social, religious and economic aspects are sent to various departments of humanities and separated from each other, while their main body, existence and poetic characteristics are placed in the department of literature and poetry. Philosophy, essentially a reflection on any human problem, has become a closed field. Basic and holistic problems are withdrawn from subject science. They are only preserved in philosophy, but they have stopped nourishing scientific achievements. ..... Super specialization makes you unable to see the whole thing (broken by it) and the fundamental thing (dissolved by it). " (Complexity Theory and Education, Peking University Publishing House, edgar morin, translated by Chen Yizhuang, first edition, September 2004, pp. 28-29. )
He went on to criticize sharply: "Because our education teaches us to separate, divide and isolate knowledge, instead of connecting them, the totality of knowledge has formed an incomprehensible puzzle. Interaction and feedback. Background and complexity become invisible in the no-man's land between disciplines. ..... is divided into small pieces, boxed, mechanized, decomposition, restore intelligence, the world's complex things into small pieces, split the problem, separate things together, unilateral things. This is a kind of nearsighted intelligence, which often ends in blindness. " (Complexity Theory and Education, Peking University Publishing House, edgar morin, translated by Chen Yizhuang, first edition, September 2004, pp. 30~3 1. )
We find that Moran's criticism of subject curriculum is different from Dewey's. Dewey reflects on the disadvantages of subject curriculum from the perspective of children, and Moran reflects and criticizes from the perspective of adults; Dewey reflected from the perspective of learning; Moran reflected from the perspective of solving the current major problems. Dewey basically admitted the rationality of current knowledge and its division, and he questioned the division teaching only from the practical problems of students learning knowledge; However, Moran directly questioned the rationality of the whole subject knowledge. Although he thinks that the division of subjects is necessary, he only admits "division" and forgets "combination". He only saw the part, but didn't see the whole and the whole, which is a dangerous signal for mankind. We will try to understand the brand-new present and even the uncertain future from the perspective of the past. Facing the future situation that has not been labeled as a discipline, we need a basic intelligence and an overall vision.
In other words, Dewey is criticizing the subject teaching aimed at children's growth needs, while Moran is criticizing the subject curriculum aimed at adults and even scientists who can represent the forefront of human thought. We can say that they are standing at the two poles of something, and both of them have fiercely criticized the "division of subjects". What should this thing be? Is there a unified theory of curriculum criticism between these two philosophers? Or is there another better perspective to give an overview of this issue?
Whitehead, a mathematician and philosopher, once wrote a short book for the education circle called "The Purpose of Education and Other Papers". In the book, according to his own process philosophy, he briefly put forward a general principle of cognition, which is a complete cognitive formation process and should go through three stages: romance, accuracy and synthesis. This principle applies not only to the understanding of a text, a word and a math problem, but also to the understanding of the whole subject (that is, the complete learning process of the subject course), and even to the overall cognition of a person. If we generalize it as an abstraction of philosophy, it can also be applied to the process of human cognition. We can say that, relatively speaking, taking us as the boundary, primitive thinking is romantic, modern scientific thinking is accurate, and post-modern thinking is comprehensive. But for humans in the distant future, for them today, we may still be at a certain romantic or precise stage-it depends on how they will develop and use our knowledge today.
The main characteristics of the romantic stage are that knowledge is not divorced from the background and the disciplinary boundary is not clear. The main feature of the precise stage is that knowledge is getting farther and farther away from the background and presented in some way. The main feature of the synthesis stage is that the knowledge that has been understood in some way has returned to the background-but now the whole background has actually changed because it contains this accurate knowledge.
We can find that this understanding mode can be used to understand the subject integration and the subject integration. In this model, primitive humans, young students, and any new theme are all in the romantic stage at the initial stage of cognition; Modern science, every subject and any course in the school, is in a relatively accurate stage when it is pushed to a critical stage; To a stage beyond modern philosophy and science, to integrate or complete various school courses (such as high school graduates) and a complete stage of a specific course, then it is in the comprehensive stage at this time.
We can also find that Dewey emphasizes the protection of the romantic stage, that is, accurate knowledge and accurate stage can not be promoted, which hinders and destroys the romantic stage of children's cognition; What Moran emphasizes is a reminder beyond the precise stage, that is, as long as knowledge is put back into a broader background, we can realize the true meaning of knowledge and use it to understand and solve the next upcoming problem.
As a philosophical model of cognition, "romance, accuracy and synthesis" is extremely simplified, and simplification itself is an accurate result. If we don't return to rich facts, if we don't understand ourselves as a cognitive model and never understand ourselves as an objective truth, then it may be dogmatic and become a cover of facts.
But if we don't regard philosophy as truth, but only as a "viewpoint" to grasp human thoughts from a very long distance, then philosophy is always very enlightening. If we change the mode and use Yin-Yang Tai Chi to understand it, then "chaos" or "Tai Chi (infinity)" emphasizes romance and integration. Moreover, it is an accurate process to differentiate into yin and yang and into gossip such as Gankun. In this process, "Yin" continues to emphasize the protection of romanticism and integrity, while "Yang" promotes accurate understanding. Finally, a whole that has been clarified contains both romantic elements and precise elements, so it can be understood as synthesis. In other words, chaos is not divided into romance, yin-yang differentiation is precision in romantic background, and the whole schema is comprehensive.
It can be seen that China's philosophy and China's thinking really emphasize integrity and integration more than western thought, while western thought emphasizes process, history and constant differentiation, refinement and accuracy.
In this highest dimension of human thought, we can see that behind the integration of disciplines is actually a rhythm of cultural thought, or a law of thinking is self-evolving. But at the same time, we should also realize that subject integration and scientific differentiation are like yin and yang in taiji fish, which are interdependent and indispensable. Today, we emphasize the integration of disciplines again, just because the past teaching thinking movement was too biased towards distinction, specialization and local accuracy. Now, whether for the needs of education or to meet the uncertain future, we need to have a global vision and understand knowledge in the background.
Three Issues on Discipline Integration (Ⅱ)