Chapter I Cultural Environment Necessary for Human Beings
Educators can't ignore the actual situation and psychological state of students, but think that they are superior to students, respect their lives, treat them equally, and can't open their hearts to them. The lesson plans made by such educators will inevitably take me as the center. In the existence and generation of human beings (differentiated by age, education and quality), educational environment is indispensable, because this environment can affect a person's life-long value orientation and the generation of love ways. However, the current education itself is increasingly lacking in love, so that engaging in education is not a loving activity but a mechanical, cold and lifeless way. Understanding of love is a factor in the sublimation of the value of both teachers and students, but the way to realize it now seems to be not education, because the application of education now just hinders the exchange of love. Therefore, how to combine the cultural function of education with the casting function of soul has become the source of people's reflection on human education. Young students feel that life is severe, because for him, the present is more decisive than the future, and he also has full plasticity and the possibility of development. He has clearly realized that to be a complete person depends on his unremitting efforts and continuous transcendence, on the direction of daily life, every moment of life and every impulse from the soul. Undoubtedly, young people want to be educated, benefit from teachers, educate themselves, and communicate with people with equal personality who seek knowledge and wisdom.
First, the difference between training and communication.
There are several kinds of resistance that people need to break through with all human nature in self-generation: first, absolute resistance, that is, everyone is essentially unchanged, but only changes in appearance; Secondly, internal plasticity; The third resistance is the primitive self-existence of human beings (corresponding to these three resistances, there are three different ways of education: the first is training, which is similar to training animals; The second is education and discipline; The third is the communication of existence. Everyone has to go through the process of self-training, self-education and open communication with themselves before they can meet these three obstacles. If you want to communicate with others, then in the first method (training), people will become pure objects; In the second method (education), people are in relatively open communication, more precisely, in a planned educational environment; The third method (existential communication), people associate themselves with the fate of others, and they are in an open and completely equal relationship. Therefore, training is an activity of spiritual isolation, while education is an activity in which people's spirits fit together and culture can be passed down. The communication between people is the dialogue and openness between the two sides (you and me), and this relationship between me and you is the core of human history and culture. It can be said that any interruption of this dialogue between you and me will shrink mankind. If the existing communication becomes a reality, people can learn about others and history as well as themselves and reality through education, instead of becoming a tool of others' will.
Second, the difference between education and care and control.
There are several different ways for human beings to know the world and themselves.
(1) Caring and cultivating people always change the game of physical and mental freedom and liberation through various practices in order to seek answers to life. This activity of constantly surpassing for the sake of renewal can be said to be an act of listening to the rhythm of life. The gardener's experience, knowledge and feelings are immeasurable. These knowledge and feelings are accumulated from long-term experience and play an important role in people's life activities. However, if this tendency in "experience" is close to becoming a mechanical "doing" in the modern world, it means that life will shrink, be unrestrained, and become dark, ignorant and vulgar.
(2) The so-called education is nothing more than interpersonal communication between subjects (especially between the older generation and the younger generation), including imparting knowledge content, understanding the connotation of life, regulating will behavior, and imparting cultural inheritance to the younger generation through the cultural transmission function, so that they can freely generate and enlighten their free nature. Therefore, the principle of education is to guide the origin and foundation of people's soul awakening through all cultures in the existing world, rather than things that originate from original and mediocre knowledge (except, of course, the ability, language and memory content as the basis of education). Real education never allows rote memorization, nor does it expect everyone to become a thoughtful thinker. The process of education is to let the educated practice, learn and grow themselves in practice, which is characterized by free play and constant trial. In this way, the manual class develops students' dexterity through labor; Physical education class expresses his life by exercising students' physical quality and physique. Philosophy class cultivates keenness and transparency of thought and spirit, clarity and conciseness of speech, preciseness and conciseness of expression, grasping the shape and characteristics of things, understanding the focus of both sides of ideological debate, and how to clarify problems with "thinking". Through contact with great works, we can grasp the true spiritual connotation of mankind (great works include Homer's epic, Bible, works of Greek tragic writers, works of Shakespeare and Goethe), while the teaching of history class is to cultivate students' piety and love for ancient culture, inspire them to strive for higher goals of mankind, and form a sober historical view that criticizes reality. The course of natural science is the basic methodology to master and understand natural science (including morphology, mathematical view and experiment).
In my opinion, the key to all education is to choose the perfect educational content, and strive to make students' "thinking" not go astray and lead to the source of things. Educational activities focus on how to mobilize and realize human potential to the maximum extent, and how to fully generate human inner spirituality and possibility. In a word, education is the education of human soul, not the accumulation of rational knowledge and understanding. Through education, talented people can choose and decide what kind of person they want to be and grasp the root of their lives. Anyone who simply limits himself to learning and cognition, even if his learning ability is strong, his soul is deficient and unsound. If a person wants to change from emotional life to spiritual life, he must study and learn, but in terms of loving wisdom and finding spiritual roots, all learning and knowledge are secondary to him. Education can only be forced learning, and learning often occupies a dominant position, because people believe that the educated person has acquired knowledge that he did not understand at that time, but one day he will understand this knowledge, endow it with spirituality, and gradually approach the essence behind the knowledge, just as people did not understand its profound meaning when they first read Luther's religious pamphlets, but over time, they became fascinated and unconsciously transformed into. But this blind trust in coercion is a self-deception statement. Only the self-compulsion that leads to education will have an effect on education, and all other external compulsions will not have an educational effect. On the contrary, it will do great harm to students' spirit and eventually lead to their pursuit of usefulness and secularity. In learning, only what is accepted by the soul will become a spiritual treasure, and other vague things can't enter the soul at all and can't be understood. But we should also pay attention to another wrong view, that is, overemphasizing spirituality and ignoring students' experience. We believe that people express their meaning of existence through their own history, and only in books, books and schools can they grow.
(3) Control is aimed at nature and people, and its method is to impose my (subject) will on others when the subject and object are completely alienated. Control and creation are very different, and so is production. Control is the confrontation between two forces. Some people forcibly suppress others and make arrangements with each other in a planned way, so that these opposing forces can interact during the controller's term of office.
Control is not love. Control sticks to the distance between people without communication and isolation, which makes people feel that the controller is not out of public interest, but using cunning at the expense of the personality of the controlled. Love is liberated from the bondage of human freedom. It is precisely because of the existence of the lost personality that equal communication between people through education is the most favorable form to expel ignorance and shape personality. The behavior of love and communication is an important dimension of human nature. Cowardice is the opposite of human love, but cowardice will only make others control themselves, and love and communication under people's conscience and conscience rules will gradually decrease.
An important way of cowardice. People should be alert to the most extreme tendency, that is, control becomes the constraint of people's behavior and makes the love of education invalid.
Chapter II Types of Basic Education
First, scholastic education, mentoring education and Socrates education can be summarized into the following three basic types of education if the social and historical background is not considered.
(a) scholastic education: this kind of education is limited to "imparting" knowledge, and teachers just follow the book and have no innovative spirit. Textbooks have formed a fixed system. People worship authoritative writers and their books. The teacher itself is insignificant, just an agent, and can be replaced at will. The content of the textbook has become a fixed pattern. In the Middle Ages, teachers taught by dictation and explanation. Dictation is no longer needed because books can be used instead. But the meaning of dictation still exists. People attribute their thoughts to a concept system in which they can live and lose their fresh personality. Because knowledge has been fixed, students always hold the idea that going to school means learning fixed knowledge and learning some ready-made conclusions and answers. "Take it home in black and white." The deep-rooted foundation of this school education is rational tradition.
(2) Apprenticeship education: This kind of education is characterized by a teacher-centered personal tradition. Students' respect and love for their teachers is shown as absolute obedience. This kind of subordination distance is not only the difference of degree and generation gap, but also the essence. The authority of teachers has magical power, which meets the needs of people who are unwilling to be responsible for themselves but willing to be attached to others, makes people belong to a group to reduce their sense of subordination, improve their self-awareness and achieve strict education beyond their power.
Socrates education: In the sense of education, teachers and students are in an equal position. Both teachers and students can think freely, and there is no fixed teaching method. Only through endless questioning can they feel that they know nothing about absolute truth. Therefore, teachers inspire students' sense of responsibility to explore knowledge and strengthen this sense of responsibility. This is Socrates' educational principle of "induced labor". In other words, it is necessary to awaken students' potential power and urge them to generate an automatic power from the inside, rather than exerting pressure from the outside. This is not relying on accidental and temporary experiences to give full play to students' specialties, but to let students find themselves in exploration. Socratic teachers have always opposed becoming the biggest supplier of students; The teacher should shift the students' attention from the teacher to the students themselves, and the teacher himself should retreat to the suggested position. There is only a well-intentioned polemic relationship between teachers and students, and there is no subordination and dependence. Teachers are self-aware and ask students to distinguish between God and the world. All these three types of education require students to have awe of absolute truth and teachers, who are the guides of seeking truth. This awe-inspiring mood reached its peak in the traditional scholastic education, and even it is deeply rooted in the current hierarchical system; In mentoring education, students' awe is manifested in the master himself; In Socratic education, students' awe is manifested in infinite spirit. In this infinite spirit, everyone should assume the responsibility of transcending their own existence.
Second, the educator Socrates.
Until Kierkegaard discovered the origin of Socrates' educational thought and the deepest significance of Socrates in the modern world. Socrates' educational thoughts include irony (stimulating students to feel far away from the truth), oxytocin (gradually revealing the truth through questions and answers), and exploring the truth rather than transmitting it. If a person really realizes Socrates' educational thought, it will affect his basic way of thinking. Unreasonable phenomena in today's world, whether democratic, aristocratic or authoritarian, cannot be eliminated through major political actions. Every prerequisite of social progress requires everyone to be educated, so that they can educate themselves. Teachers should awaken people's potential essence, gradually realize knowledge and explore morality. An upright person will also be an upright citizen. Because everyone is born with opportunities for development, Socrates always puts others and himself on an equal footing. He doesn't like the discipleship system, so he even uses self-mockery to cover up his own advantages.
Socrates never gives students ready-made answers, but lets students draw their own conclusions through exploration. He made those self-righteous people aware of their ignorance and discovered real knowledge, so people got what they thought they didn't know, but actually had. Therefore, it can be said that knowledge must have self-knowledge, and self-knowledge can only be awakened, unlike the transfer of goods. Once a person has self-knowledge, he will recall what he knew a long time ago.
Socrates' greatest feature is also worthy of our deep thinking. He mercilessly criticized the wrong things, but he was strict with himself, set an example and adhered to the faith of truth, goodness and beauty. This is the bounden duty of a thinker; Socrates didn't know what God was, but he talked about God. No matter how the world changes, he still adheres to this principle.
This is Socrates' piety. First of all, he believes that the truth will be revealed in the right questions. Self-knowledge and ignorance will not lead to ignorance, but will produce knowledge that determines the meaning of life. Secondly, Socrates' piety is manifested in his respect for the patron saint of the ancient Greek city-states.
People who have been influenced by Socrates make themselves a different person through subtle thinking. This kind of thinking enables people to maintain an independent position in the process of uniting with Tao. In thinking, we can get the greatest possibility of human development, but with this kind of thinking, we may also enter nothingness. Therefore, the truth of thinking lies in that it is the "pre-present" of beautiful human nature and ideal society, and it shows what will become a reality through "thinking", which exceeds the thinking itself.
Third, dialogue is a way to explore truth and self-knowledge.
Dialogue: Socrates' dialogue is the basic fact of his life: he often discusses with craftsmen, politicians, artists, wise men and geisha. Like many Athenians, he spent his life in the streets, markets, gymnasiums and banquets. This is a life of dialogue with everyone, but this kind of dialogue is extremely novel and unusual for the Athenians: a dialogue that is both exciting, uneasy and depressing in the depths of his soul. If dialogue is a free and unrestrained Athenian way of life, then the way of reasoning as Socrates' philosophy is different now. Therefore, only through interpersonal communication and understanding the essence of things can we get the truth. In order to pursue the truth, Socrates needs the masses, and he is convinced that the masses also need him, especially teenagers, so Socrates is determined to devote himself to the education of teenagers.
Socrates argues that education is not for the knowledgeable to drive away the ignorant casually, but for teachers and students to seek truth together. In this way, teachers and students can help and promote each other. Teachers and students look for problems in specious self-understanding and are forced to think independently in complex confusion. The teacher pointed out the way to seek answers, raised a series of questions and did not shy away from answering them. When the basic knowledge is well understood, the truth will be obvious and become the link and source to maintain people's spiritual beliefs and settle down. This is the basis of Socrates' post-death dialogue prose creation, and Plato is the mentor of this creation.
In the pain of "thinking", you will have your own independent judgment. In MINO (Plato's Dialogue), there is an example: there was a slave who was absolutely sure of a math problem at first. After repeated questioning, he fell into a dilemma, thus awakening his absurdity and ignorance. After further questioning, he suddenly realized and got the correct answer. According to this example, truth can be distinguished in the form of dialogue. The two interlocutors don't know where the truth is, but the truth is already there. The two interlocutors revolved around and were guided by the truth. Dialogue is the clarity of truth and the realization of thought itself. Dialogue focuses on people and environment, and finds the logic and meaning of existence in the dialogue.
Four. Irony and indirect communication
Irony and Game: If Socratic irony is expressed in a direct way, irony is superfluous. In order to feel the meaning of irony properly, we need to cultivate philosophical sensitivity besides rational thinking training. In the diversity of irony, confusion and truth are intertwined and have various meanings, which makes people fall into constant misunderstanding and only let those who really understand know the truth. At this point, Plato's original intention seems to be: those who cannot understand the truth, let them misunderstand. Sometimes there seems to be a passion hidden in irony and humor. Here, where rationality cannot be achieved in communication, it is impossible to force rational deduction to obtain correct understanding. The deep meaning of irony is to pay attention to the original truth, which makes us avoid the mistake of distorting the truth, which is often based on specific knowledge, works or images.
When publicly testifying for the truth, the appearance of form conceals the truth. If people regard those false truths with beautiful appearance as absolute truths, it is all wet.
Philosophical irony expresses the yearning for the origin of truth. In the face of complex polysemy, the unidimensionality of rational explanation has become pale and powerless, and irony can find the truth by removing the false and retaining the true, but it can be realized by arousing the senses. Philosophical satire is a hint to hide the truth, but nihilistic satire is glib and meaningless. Meaningful irony hopes to lead to unspeakable truth in many complicated phenomena. On the contrary, meaningless satire will be involved in unfathomable nothingness by complex phenomena. Philosophical satire takes its own point of view as its support.
The practice of truth is regarded as taboo, because what is easy to obtain is not truth, but misunderstanding and even fallacy of truth.
All of the above can be found in Plato's dialogues. Here we define irony in three stages. First of all, Socrates used irony in the dialogue, so that all ignorance was clearly displayed before his eyes, and irony made Socrates transparent. Therefore, he can make people wake up at the end of the road, or attack others' obvious untrue statements for reflection. The second stage is the basic position (attitude) of irony adopted by Socrates, that is, to let people know their ignorance (and think they know a lot). In the third stage, Plato created an overall atmosphere that shook the fundamental beliefs of others. In this atmosphere, all the ready-made things expressed by irony become ambiguous, and only between these two poles, in a purely ironic atmosphere, will the essence (core) of existence appear. What irony can't achieve is not real thinking. The light of thought is projected to the source of existence. Philosophy has the value of existence only if it speaks for uncovering. This kind of philosophy is serious, but it is not the sanctimonious seriousness of dogmatists who think they have truth, nor the boring seriousness of nihilists, but the seriousness that claims to be optimistic, confident and full of exploration spirit.
V. Education is the art of epiphany
Epiphany is a concept related to human reason. It is not manifested in the sensory level of being given or within reach by others. On the contrary, it is the soul's eyes that pull back to itself and see through its spiritual body from the inside, and knowledge must also rotate around the field of existence with the whole soul. Therefore, education is the art of guiding "turning back" or epiphany. Because of this sacred source of education, there has always been spiritual wealth in its hidden power, but education can only save the whole life through epiphany, otherwise this wealth will lose its usefulness.
Sixth, education is generated.
A generation comes from the accumulation of history and repeated efforts. The formation of human beings seems to be realized in the unconscious, but this unconsciousness was once the result of doing something with clear consciousness in a difficult situation. We live in a habit-forming past, and constantly forming and breaking habits is the solid foundation of our generation. Without habits as the foundation, every progress of our spirit will be impossible. At present, the unconscious ideological connection inherits the conscious thought, and custom is the bearer of virtue. The static form generated is habit, while the dynamic form is transcendence. Habit has two possibilities: one possibility is that habit serves us as a foundation, and its content can be mastered by us at any time. At the same time, the connotation of habit is that we rely on the guidance and knowledge of life foundation. The form of habit is only the guarantee of natural desire, but habit does not occupy a dominant position, on the contrary, it is in a subordinate position. Another possibility is that habit not only consolidates tradition, but also weakens it. The traditional connotation itself can't be pushed out, and only accumulated habits can have this effect. In a calm situation, the need to survive is obsessed with some irrelevant habits, but this is just self-deception. Once encountering a fundamental impact, that is, exposing the connotation of a habit to broad daylight, it will lose its resistance, and the meaning of a habit in a difficult situation will no longer have vitality, and people will lose themselves in simple habits.
However, habit is still a reliable and necessary means to continue. In the original sense, people can't live in a re-created environment all the time. Therefore, many habits are established as rules, customs and forms of behavior in decision-making, and are generally accepted by people. These have become the way of life of human beings. Education, children's playrooms and professional habits
Human society has become possible. Without them, human society will shrink to a helpless state forever. Although the established forms are not absolutely effective in the new situation, and every form can be destroyed, it is intended to protect them and prevent them from being destroyed. Easily and naturally following the customary form as second nature is the keynote of a social and historical foundation and also the keynote of reliable unity and cooperation. Generation is the continuous formation and renewal of habits, and it is an important process for a person to be sincere and self-sustaining. Letting himself go is depravity. Therefore, form is form and discipline is discipline. Even if they have impurities on their surfaces, they are still the authoritative conditions for their functions.