First, the period of "religious impulse". The combination of ethics and religious education has always been the characteristic of moral education in western countries, and the traditional religious education in the west is moral education. After the Renaissance, the Reformation and the deconstruction of the Enlightenment, religion, as the spiritual weapon that dominated the Middle Ages, gradually became a slave of capitalism. Although Locke, Pestalozzi, Stilwell's democratic education theory and Spencer's pragmatism theory have great influence on religious education. Like Daniel? Bell pointed out that the religious impulse of asceticism and the greedy economic impulse constitute the two spiritual pillars in the rising period of capitalism. This situation lasted until the middle of19th century. "The interweaving and mixing of these two primitive impulses formed the modern rational concept. The tension between the two created a moral constraint, which led to the tradition of severely suppressing luxury in the early conquest. "

Second, the shock period of moral education. /kloc-from the middle and late 0/9th century to the early 20th century, it was a major turning point for the western bourgeoisie from striving for domination to maintaining domination, from progress to conservatism, and from capitalist free development mode to monopoly development mode. The theory of moral education began to move from rationalism to irrationalism; From traditional empiricism to formalism. In a sense, the characteristics of contemporary western moral education are opposing religious education and advocating secularization of moral education. With the loss of revolutionary and progressive nature in the early stage of capitalism, the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has become the main contradiction in society. "The rapid development of science, technology and economy has exhausted the religious impulse. After the economic impulse became the sole master of social progress, it developed into everything, and everything in the world was stripped of its sacred color. "

Third, the desolate period of moral education. At the beginning of the 20th century, with the development of capitalist commodity economy in the world, ethnic contradictions among major capitalist countries rose and intensified, and two world wars followed one after another, and the economic crisis raged. "The idea of emotionalism has been implicitly accepted by society, morality has fallen into disorder, and morality has become an incommensurable existence. Since the beginning of the 20th century, universal morality has become unexplained, and moral relativism has replaced traditional absolutism and become a universal ethical trend of thought. This made the theory and practice of moral education fall into a "desolate era" in the early 20th century and 1950s and 1960s. During this period, Dewey's pragmatic moral education theory and Piaget's moral development theory put forward the theories and methods of moral education from different disciplines. Their construction of moral education mode began with the rebellion against the traditional direct moral curriculum, but it caused a series of problems. " First, the traditional direct moral education curriculum has been cancelled or despised, and moral education is mainly carried out by indirect infiltration; Second, the values advocated by the traditional direct moral education curriculum have been ignored, and the concept of moral relativism has begun to rise. "

Fourth, the revival period of moral education. From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, there was a trend that moral education returned to schools and society in the west. In the face of the "beat generation" seeking new stimulation, seeking absolute freedom, indulging in sex, taking drugs and sinking, thus challenging the decent traditional value standards, we should build a moral code consistent with the capitalist market economy and cultivate "moral people" suitable for the development of capitalism from the source. There are also some countries that adopt moral legislation to clarify some moral standards and requirements in the form of legislation, so that moral standards can better regulate people's behavior under the compulsory protection of the state.