The book consists of six chapters, including the purpose of education, the rhythm of education, the rhythm of freedom and discipline, technical education and its relationship with science and literature, the position of classical culture in education, universities and their functions, covering higher education and secondary education. He advocated that education should be full of vigor and vitality, opposed to instilling knowledge into students, and guided students to develop themselves; He emphasized the importance of classical literature and art to the development of students' intelligence and personality, and advocated the all-round development of educated people in science and humanities. He also attaches importance to the significance of aesthetics in moral education, and thinks that the educated "can't always witness the greatness and sublimity, so there is no moral education".
The purpose and background of education
1837- 190 1 year, Queen Victoria came to power, which was the golden age of Britain. At that time, the most advanced industrial country in the world ranked first in production and trade, and pursued gunboat policy everywhere, seizing maritime hegemony, occupying colonies and plundering the wealth of other countries. The British Empire dominates the world, and its overseas rule covers Europe, Asia, Africa, the United States and Australia. Known as "not falling empire." Most of the chronicles of British events listed here are scientific inventions. It is the application of these scientific inventions that makes the British Empire dominate the world.
Under this background, due to the influence of industrial civilization, materialism and mechanism, there are various rigid drawbacks in British education, such as one-sided pursuit of exam-oriented education, rigid educational process, and stifling individuality and freedom. Whitehead criticized this in his series of papers on education. These situations are very similar to our current national conditions, or even worse. Therefore, reading them today still has positive reference significance for us.
Whitehead said in the book The Purpose of Education: "The disappearance of ideals is a sad proof of the failure of human efforts. In ancient schools, philosophers were eager to impart wisdom, but in modern schools, we lower our goals and teach subjects. From sacred wisdom (which is the goal of the ancients) to school textbook knowledge (which is the goal pursued by modern people), it marks the failure of education for centuries. " "As long as we only regard intellectual education as acquiring mechanical intelligence or merely stating practical truth systematically, there can be no progress."
Whitehead said: Nothing is sadder than the disappearance of ideals. Looking back on the past, our sages passed on wisdom wholeheartedly in schools, but now, our purpose in universities has become so humble, just to impart some knowledge, from the wisdom of God to the knowledge of several subjects today, which marks the failure of education.
1. educational purpose: it is pointed out that the purpose of education is to promote a person's self-development and cultivate people with both cultural accomplishment and professional knowledge in specific fields. Professional knowledge lays the foundation for personal development, and cultural literacy aims to lead students to the depth of philosophical thinking and the height of artistic realm.
Education is the art of teaching people how to master knowledge. In this process, special attention should be paid to avoid formation.
Idle thinking: just accepting knowledge through the brain without applying, verifying or organically integrating with other new things. That is, learning without thinking.
The disadvantage of lazy thinking is that knowledge cannot be transformed into wisdom, and the learned knowledge becomes dead knowledge and metaphysical knowledge, which leads to the opposition between body and mind and between thought and behavior. The common phenomena in our life, such as high marks, low energy, nerd's eyes, exquisiteness and self-interest, are the products of this kind of thinking.
Wisdom and knowledge: without knowledge, there can be no wisdom, and the absorption of knowledge may be easy, but it is not necessarily wisdom. Knowledge does not equal wisdom. Wisdom is the mastery of knowledge, and it can flexibly apply the theory of knowledge to the art of life. The application of knowledge is to connect knowledge with life events, with our feelings, perceptions, hopes, desires and spiritual activities that can adjust our thoughts.
Cramming education's exam-oriented education has separated the relationship between disciplines and violated the law of children's psychological development. In order to get good grades, teachers and parents force students to memorize and practice over and over again. These practices have greatly destroyed the minds of teenagers and made their minds dull, which is an important reason for the formation of inert thinking. Under this educational mechanism, it is not a group of knowledgeable disabled people who are trained the most.
How to prevent the formation of lazy thinking and make knowledge full of vitality in education? The answer is that the knowledge of education should be less but better. In order to obtain the most abundant information with the least means, various possible combinations can be formed between knowledge.
Education is to let students deeply understand the power, charm and basic organization of knowledge, and to let students master some professional knowledge and apply it to their own lives. In the process of learning and mastering certain professional knowledge, students will gradually understand the structure of knowledge, thus forming a certain cultural literacy. This kind of cultural accomplishment can make students have the vision of overlooking the overall situation and the thinking of drawing inferences from others. What we want to achieve in education is to make students' thinking more concrete and abstract.
Finally, Whitehead put forward the significance of aesthetics to education. He believes that style is the most important and useful part of educational literacy. Style is the best virtue of thought. Style comes from the love of things themselves and the focus on style itself. Only when you are professional enough can you have style. Amateur painters and amateur poets have no style.
Second, the rhythm of education.
Whitehead believes that the development of human mind is cyclical. According to the development of human mind, he divided the rhythm of education into three stages: romantic stage, precise stage and comprehensive stage. Combining the relationship between freedom and discipline in the third chapter, he thinks that both the initial stage and the final stage of education should be based on freedom. In the initial romantic stage, we should freely accumulate a large number of perceptual and intuitive educational materials and form a wide range of contacts. Because education is basically based on what students have already thought in their minds, if they face an empty mind, education can do nothing.
Through the free exploration in the romantic stage, students will be curious and interested in the structure and system of knowledge, thus entering the precise learning stage. At this stage, they will continue to collect materials, but it is more important to understand and analyze the materials they have. The theoretical system of mastering knowledge. Learn what is the right way and what is the wrong way, and learn the exact truth. The learning method at this stage is mainly discipline, that is, continuous practice, supplemented by appropriate freedom.
When students fully master the theoretical system of the knowledge they have learned, they enter the final stage of educational development, that is, the comprehensive stage, which is mainly the concrete application of the knowledge they have learned. At this stage, learning should be based on freedom, that is, applying the learned theory to concrete facts through certain imagination.
In the process of education, these three cycles are a cyclic process, which is ubiquitous, interrelated and inseparable from beginning to end, and will alternately occupy a dominant position.
Specific stage: 0-8 years old is the early childhood of intellectual development, and the process of acquiring and perceiving language learning is less disturbed, which is the natural state of learning because it is perfect.
8- 12 years old is the romance of adolescence, which is the most important romantic stage of human beings, during which a person's personality is basically solidified. How a person spends his adolescence, what kind of ambition and dream he has will determine the future life path of this young man. Proficient in using mother tongue, observing things and arranging things.
12- 15 is an accurate stage of language learning and a romantic stage of science.
15- 16 is the comprehensive stage of language and the precise stage of science.
University stage is a comprehensive stage of intellectual development cycle. The university stage is a period of knowledge empowerment.
Learn the basic principles through details, form internalized habitual thinking, solve corresponding problems with appropriate thinking, turn knowledge into strength, and train children into adults.
The key word of university is imagination. Through imagination, we can test the law of discovery in concrete practice and create a new world in new fields. The direction of imagination is new, one is the updating iteration of knowledge, and the other is the application of knowledge keeps pace with the times. Without knowledge, only imagination is a fool; Without imagination, only knowledge is a pedant. The function of a university is to combine imagination and experience perfectly.
Middle school students' learning is the abstract generalization of training from special to general, while college students are the concrete application of training from general to special.
The three cycles of educational rhythm are accompanied by the relationship between freedom and discipline: in ideal education, discipline is self-choice and really effective self-restraint, and whether self-restraint can be realized depends on whether students' minds are really free. Education must start with freedom and end with freedom. Positive and innovative thinking habits will only be produced in a relatively free atmosphere, while casual discipline will only make students' thinking more chaotic.
Education should treat students as living people, and the growth of a living person depends on the internal motivation of self-development. The creative internal motivation of a person's development and change always comes from his own heart, and everyone has his own completely different characteristics. Therefore, in the process of education, art and aesthetics can not be ignored.
Third, the relationship between technology education, science education and humanities and arts.
Whitehead believes that science education, technology education and humanities education are the three main forms of education, which complement each other and are indispensable. Science education is the art of training and observing nature, focusing on logical thinking (using the brain); Technical education is the art of training and producing material products, focusing on the application of knowledge. Humanistic education is the art of learning to observe society and then learn to live through the study of language, literature, history and philosophy. However, modern education, which originated from the binary opposition between spirit and body, thought and action in modern philosophy, has separated the internal relations among them, or set science education and technology education against each other, or set them against humanities education, resulting in narrow specialization, which is a kind of "worst education". We see a large number of students with high marks and low energy, or students with certain scientific and technological literacy but lack of social responsibility, which is the deformed product of this modern education. In Whitehead's view, only one kind of education is bound to be biased, but the mechanical mixture of the three is also difficult to reach the truth. The key is to grasp the necessary tension of the three and achieve their best balance.
Fourthly, the tradition and development of classical culture.
In education, we should avoid inculcating students with dry dogmas that have nothing to do with their experiences.
The learning order of classical culture is to learn the language of classical culture first, then the logic, philosophy and history in the classical cultural system, and then the literary aesthetics.
In education, we should pay attention to the ever-changing concepts, imitation and thinking, complex aesthetic consciousness and ethnic conflicts in the long history. It is these factors that determine and influence our human development.
Through the study of classical culture, we can understand our society, history, culture, ideas and how to evolve, so as to understand the historical process of human civilization, which may directly or indirectly promote the historical development of human civilization, thus having practical and historical significance.
Five, the main points of mathematics curriculum, aiming at telling the removal of "abstruse and difficult to understand" in mathematics curriculum, through the study of some basic mathematical principles, let students be familiar with abstract thinking mode, understand the practical application of theory and master the correct use of methods. Through the understanding of logarithm, quantity and spatial relationship, the basic literacy of philosophical thought is formed.