What is education? We generally agree that education is a social activity to cultivate people purposefully, and it is the basic way to inherit social culture and pass on production experience and social life experience, which we have learned before. This leads to the next question: how did education come into being and where did it come from? On this point, there have been many views and theories in history, and many well-known scholars have emerged. Let's take a look at the origin of today's content education.

Where does education come from? On the origin of education.

Myth Origin Theory: This is the view held by all religions that education is created by a personified God (God or Heaven), and education embodies the will of God or Heaven, making people convert to God or obey Heaven. Simply put, the origin of education comes from God, who created education, and all education is to serve God, which is a relatively primary view. Therefore, the position of this theory is the oldest view on the origin of education.

Theory of biological origin: Percy is the representative? Yes, little. This view holds that education comes from the survival instinct of animals. For example, animals seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, and newborn deer and puppies learn to walk. It should be noted that this view holds that education comes from the instinct of animals and has nothing to do with people, and education also exists in the animal kingdom, which is different from the essence of education we know now. We have just reviewed that education is a social activity to cultivate people purposefully, so we generally think this is a wrong view now. However, the contribution of this view to us is the first formal theory about the origin of education in history. Remind everyone that if the topic is the first formal theory of the origin of education, we must choose the theory of biological origin. Although the origin of myth was mentioned earlier, it is not a systematic theory and cannot be selected.

Theory of psychological origin: The representative figure is Meng Lu. This view holds that education originated from children's unconscious imitation of adults in their daily lives. The theory of psychological origin criticizes the vulgar educational viewpoint that "the theory of educational biological origin" does not distinguish between human education and animal instinct, and holds that education exists only in human society, not in the animal kingdom. So the progress of this view is that education does not exist in the animal kingdom, but only in human society. However, its limitation lies in the fact that education originated from human instinct and did not break away from the concept of instinct.

Theory of the origin of labor (theory of social origin): The representatives are Midinsky and Kailov. This view holds that education originates from the dialectical unity of social production needs and human development needs in the process of labor. This is our general view now, and it is also widely recognized. Among the representative figures, Kailov needs to be remembered. Besides being a representative of the theory of labor origin, he also wrote the first pedagogy book based on Marxism in the world, which had a great influence on the development of pedagogy in China and the world.