Education is originally human education, but we see that it unconsciously gives up the responsibility of educating people and dispels its own essence. Humanistic education has been neglected, while knowledge education and professional education have been strengthened. Once education is divorced from people, from people's soul or spirit, it is not education strictly. As Jaspers said: Education is the education of human soul, not the accumulation of rational knowledge and cognition. In this sense, the important essential feature of education is its humanity, and humanistic education cannot be separated from education, including university education, which has an important basic position in university education.
Because of this, people keep calling for strengthening humanities education. However, we are faced with different choices and orientations about what kind of humanistic education to strengthen.
Generally speaking, when people talk about humanities education, it is not a definite and recognized meaning, but often expresses a variety of meanings. There are three most common types: one is humanistic education, the other is humanistic education, and the third is education about adults. The following are the basic meanings of these three expressions.
The so-called humanistic education refers to the humanistic education in the European Renaissance. This is an educational thought and practice advocated by progressive thinkers and educators at that time. Starting from the interests of the emerging bourgeoisie and the theory of human nature, it broke through the rule of medieval scholasticism and church obscurantism education, praised people's value and strength, demanded freedom, equality and individual liberation, advocated the educational ideal of cultivating healthy, knowledgeable and versatile new people, and carried out educational innovation accordingly. It has important progressive significance in the history of modern education, and its basic spirit still has beneficial enlightenment to today's education. However, due to its historical limitations, its tendency to be divorced from reality in the subsequent development, and its increasing emphasis on mastering knowledge, this educational thought also had some adverse effects on European education at that time and later.
Humanistic education refers to education with humanity as its basic content. This kind of education is reflected in the six arts education in ancient China and the seven arts education tradition in Greece. Early humanistic education paid more attention to the value of mental training and emotional training than to training experts. However, with the development of social division of labor and the increasing differentiation of disciplines, the specialization of education has become increasingly obvious, and humanities education has also embarked on the road of continuous specialization, deviating from the original intention. At the same time, the basic purpose of humanities education is often limited by the cultural vision, which is only limited to the scope of pure humanities, which also forms an undue obstacle to the development of humanities education.
About adult education. This is aimed at ignoring people, using people as tools, or strengthening people's one-sided development and ignoring the coordinated development of people's body and mind. Based on the concept of holistic education, it strives to cultivate complete people through moral, intellectual and physical education, rather than semi-human or robot, emphasizes extensive training rather than professional training, and holds that the purpose of education is to make people's body and mind develop in an all-round way, make people become real people and realize their all-round value. In modern times, many educational reforms guided by humanistic philosophy and measures taken by some universities, such as general education, liberal arts education, general education, general education, cultural quality education, etc., have reflected this educational thought to some extent. Of course, this educational thought has never stopped the debate about people-oriented and society-oriented in practice. Second, the definition of humanistic education: the essence is humanistic education, and the core is to cultivate literati education and humanistic spirit. On the basis of the above analysis, we can make the following tentative definitions of humanistic education:
The so-called humanistic education refers to the education aimed at improving the human nature of the educated, shaping their ideal personality and realizing their personal and social values. Its essence is humanistic education, and its core is to cultivate humanistic spirit. Generally, this spirit should be cultivated through various channels, including extensive cultural knowledge, elegant cultural atmosphere, excellent cultural traditions and profound practical experience in life. This kind of education not only attaches importance to cultural accomplishment from the outside to the inside, but also emphasizes self-realization and spiritual understanding. In the final analysis, it makes people understand and attach importance to the meaning of life, gives more humanistic care to the society, and fundamentally embodies the essence, people and ideals of education. Humanistic education can be understood from three levels. The first level is humanistic education, the second level is humanistic education and the third level is "adult" education. This definition regards humanistic education as human nature education, which is an education that makes people grow up. In fact, adult education has different requirements, the minimum requirement is to make people become people; Higher requirements make people become more complete people, that is, people with all-round development in morality, intelligence and physique; The highest requirement is to make people a perfect person, which is of course an ideal pursuit. Comenius pointed out long ago that if we want to form a person, we must form it through education. This is a basic requirement. Confucius is talking about high demands. Luz asked an adult. Confucius said,' If Zang Wuzhong knows what people don't want, he will be brave in frontier villages, and Ran Qiu's skills, rites and music will also become an adult.' Say:' What is the necessity of being an adult today? See what is right, you can sacrifice your life for righteousness, and you can become an adult if you don't forget what you have said in life for a long time. "(4) There have been endless debates about the good and evil of human nature in history. In fact, both the theory of good nature and the theory of evil nature are biased, and human nature has both evil and good sides. In this regard, perhaps it is precisely because of the former that talents need education and need to constantly transform themselves, and it is precisely because of the latter that talents can be educated. It is true that human nature education is necessary. It has always been the pursuit of education to suppress evil and promote good through education and stop at the best. In other words, there are not only good and evil in human nature, but also different realms. Our education should aim at guiding students to become noble people.
Originally, the fundamental mission of education is to cultivate people. However, with the professional development of education and people's needs for job hunting and survival, people's education has been neglected, and people's education has become fashionable. Coupled with the prevalence of pragmatism and utilitarianism in education, people gradually forget the foundation of education and the human soul. We should integrate education divided into professional education and humanistic education, and regard humanistic education as the soul of education throughout education, otherwise our professional education will be difficult to succeed, and humanistic education will only become nothingness or embellishment. For a long time, there has been a misunderstanding in educational understanding and practice, thinking that humanistic education is only humanistic education. Undoubtedly, humanities education is an important aspect, but not the whole. If it is limited to this, it will not only narrow the content of humanities education, but also misunderstand education itself. It will make educators, including professional teachers and educational administrators, in a state of inaction in humanities education, and will also put some important cultural classics in natural science and social science out of the reading range, resulting in the lack of necessary nourishing elements for humanities education objects and the loss of teachers' support for humanities educators. The result is extremely unfavorable to the development of humanistic education, and it also affects humanistic education. We must broaden our educational horizons in the practice of humanistic education, establish a correct educational concept, and improve the educational effect by combining the reality of the educational object. Among them, it is an important way to guide students to read cultural classics extensively and offer necessary classic reading guidance courses, because the cultural classics accumulated by human beings for thousands of years contain rich humanistic education ideological nutrients.