The purpose of education is to free students from the slavery of reality, not to adapt to reality. Education should create conditions for promoting inner freedom and cultivating excellent souls and thoughts. If we just adapt to reality, what about education!

-Zhou

What is education? What is education? What is the most important principle in education? Excellent minds at all times and all over the world have thought a lot about this and made many comments.

I found that the most pertinent and wonderful words about education often come from philosophers. Specialized educators and educators, if they don't have the wisdom of insight into human nature at the same time, tend to confine their words to experience or stick to psychological details, which will appear superficial, trivial and mediocre.

Now I list my favorite educational ideas, a total of seven. I might as well call it the seven proverbs of education.

They do have the characteristics of proverbs: they point to the essence of things, which are as simple as Oracle Bone Inscriptions and as simple as common sense. Unfortunately, people are lost in the fantasy of things, preferring to believe all kinds of difficult and complicated fallacies and forget simple common sense.

However, the simple mind will feel how these proverbs hit the key point of today's education and how much our education needs to return to common sense and the most basic truth of education.

1

Education is growth.

Growth is the purpose, not beyond the purpose of growth.

This argument was put forward by Rousseau and further elaborated by Dewey. "Education is growth" simply expresses the original meaning of education, that is, to make everyone's nature and innate ability grow healthily, rather than instilling external things, such as knowledge, into a container.

Socrates pointed out long ago that seeking knowledge is an innate ability in everyone's soul. The wise men at that time claimed that they could instill knowledge that was not in the soul. Socrates sneered, as if they could put their eyesight into the eyes of the blind.

Knowing the truth that "education is growth", we also know what education should do.

For example, intellectual education is to cultivate curiosity and rational thinking ability, not to instill knowledge; Moral education is to encourage lofty spiritual pursuit, not to instill norms; Aesthetic education is to cultivate rich souls, not to instill skills.

"Growth is the purpose, and there is no other purpose except growth", especially against using a narrow utilitarian scale to measure education. Even if people seem to admit that "education is growth", they must set an external purpose for growth, such as adapting to society, seeking a job and achieving something in the future, as if without these efforts, growth would be worthless.

Standardizing growth with utilitarian goals will inevitably suppress growth. Are we still sure that "education is growth"?

Is growth itself worthless?

Isn't a person who is naturally healthy and developed both excellent and happy? That is to say, using the utilitarian scale, isn't it easier for such people to achieve real success in society? Judging from the situation of the whole society, as Luo Su pointed out, a society composed of men and women with excellent nature will certainly be much better than the opposite.

2

Children are not immature adults.

Childhood has its intrinsic value.

Standardizing education for utilitarian purposes and ignoring the value of growth itself is the most direct and harmful result of denying the intrinsic value of childhood. Seeing children as "future existence", an immature adult seems to be of little value before "growing up". The only goal of education is to prepare children for future adult life. This misunderstanding has a long history and is widely spread.

The very idea of "growing up" is ridiculous. It seems that children are not human before they grow up! Montessori first explicitly criticized this concept and established his theory of children's education on the basis of determining the value of children's personality. Dewey also pointed out that childhood has its inherent quality and significance, and it should not be regarded as an immature stage in life, just want to let it pass quickly.

Every stage of life has its own irreplaceable value, and no stage is just preparing for another stage. Childhood, in particular, is the most important stage of physical and mental growth, and it should also be the happiest time in life. The greatest merit that education can achieve is to give children a happy and meaningful childhood, thus creating a good foundation for their happy and meaningful life.

However, today's general situation is that the whole adult world has imposed its own small utilitarian goals on children, driving them to fight on the utilitarian battlefield.

I'm worried that in their future life, in the society a few years later, the consequences of being brutally deprived of the value of childhood will appear in a terrible way.

three

The purpose of education is to liberate students from the slavery of reality.

Instead of adapting to reality

This is Cicero's famous saying. Today, the situation is just the opposite. Education is trying to do one thing, that is, to shape students with the goal of adapting to reality. It is of course necessary for people to live in society and adapt to reality, but this should not be the main purpose of education.

Montaigne said: learning is not to adapt to the outside world. But to enrich themselves. Confucius also advocated that learning is a matter of "for oneself" rather than "being a man".

Philosophers of all ages have emphasized that learning is to develop one's inner spiritual ability, so as to gain freedom in the face of external reality. Of course, this is only a kind of inner freedom, but it is with this inner freedom, this independent personality and independent thinking ability that those excellent souls and hearts have played a huge role in changing the reality of human society.

Education should create conditions for promoting inner freedom and cultivating excellent souls and thoughts. If we just adapt to reality, what about education!

four

The most important educational principle is not to cherish time.

Wasting time.

This sentence comes from Rousseau's mouth, and many of us have heard it in our ears today. This is a fallacy. However, Rousseau had his reasons. If education means growth, the mission of education should be to provide the best environment for growth. What is the best environment?

The first is free time, the second is a good teacher.

In Greek, school means leisure. According to the Greeks, students must have enough time to experience and meditate in order to develop their mental abilities freely.

Rousseau defended his shocking theory, saying, "Misusing time is more costly than wasting time, and children with wrong education are farther away from wisdom than children without education."

Today, many parents and teachers are afraid that their children will waste their time, forcing them to finish endless homework and not letting them have time to play, thinking that this is the responsibility of parents and teachers. Rousseau asks you: What is waste? What is happiness? Jumping around all day is nothing. If meeting the requirements of nature is a waste, let them be wasted.

At the university stage, free time is even more important. In my opinion, there can be no good teachers and no free time. In the final analysis, all education is self-education and all learning is self-learning. This is especially true in the growth of mental ability.

I agree with john henry: For intelligent students with basic education, it is best to have neither teachers nor exams in universities, so that they can freely dabble in the library.

I want to sigh with Bernard Shaw that the bookshelves all over the world are full of spiritual delicacies, but students are forced to chew on those boring textbooks without nutrition.

five

I forgot everything I learned in class.

The rest is education.

I first saw this sentence in Einstein's article, which was a punch line that he didn't quote by name. Later, I found out that it was probably born out of Whitehead's argument, to the effect that only by throwing away textbooks and handouts and forgetting the details memorized for the exam, can the rest be valuable.

The details of knowledge are easy to forget, and once needed, they are easy to find in books. Therefore, it is laborious and worthless to focus on memorizing the details of knowledge. Suppose you forget everything you learned in class. If there is nothing left, it means that you have been educated for nothing.

What education should leave behind, in Whitehead's words, is a principle that completely permeates your body and mind, a habit of intellectual activities, and a lifestyle full of knowledge and imagination; In Einstein's words, it is the overall ability to think and judge independently.

According to my understanding, in layman's terms, a person has since become a hopeless thinker and scholar. No matter what career he is engaged in, he can no longer change his habits and hobbies of studying, thinking and researching, and then he can admit that he has received a college education.

six

Universities should be places where masters gather.

Let youth grow under the influence of the master.

The essence of education is not to impart knowledge, but to cultivate the habit of intellectual activities and the ability to think independently. Obviously, these intellectual qualities cannot be taught like knowledge, and the only way to cultivate them is to be influenced by people with these qualities.

The master is in two places, one is on the bookshelf of the library, and the other is in the university, which should be the place where the living masters gather. As Whitehead said, universities exist because there are a group of scholars who explore knowledge with imagination, which will affect the intellectual development of students and build a bridge between mature wisdom and passion for life, otherwise universities will not exist.

Lin Yutang said more vividly: the ideal university should be a dining place with extraordinary personality. Here I met a Newton, a Fruit, a Russell in the East Room and a Lasky in Westinghouse. The front yard is Hui's study, and the backyard is Dai Dongyuan's house.

He stressed that "eating place" is not a case. These masters have no obligation to the school except to eat. The school pays them to live on campus, so that students can make friends with them and be influenced by them. For example, the great professors in Oxford and Cambridge smoked pipes and talked about life and knowledge, so the quality of students was smoked out.

Nowadays, universities are competing to advertise the so-called world-class universities, and they have also drawn up various hard indicators. In fact, the matter is very simple: the most difficult indicator is teachers. A university is a first-class university with a group of first-class scholars with noble hearts and wisdom. Otherwise, no matter how big the school building is, no matter how magnificent the building is and no matter how advanced the equipment is, it will be no use.

seven

Teachers should regard students as an end rather than a means.

This is Russell's principle of correct teacher-student relationship. He pointed out that the essential quality of an ideal teacher is to love his students, and the reliable sign of love is to have a wide range of parental instincts, just as parents think that children are the purpose and students are the purpose.

He emphasized that teachers should love their students more than their country and church. In view of today's situation, I add that it should be better than loving money and fame. Today, some teachers take fame and fortune as their sole purpose, and blatantly regard students as a means to gain fame and fortune.

Whether a teacher personally loves students depends on the teacher's moral character. In order for most teachers in schools to regard students as an end rather than a means, it is necessary to establish a student-oriented education system.

The reason why students are regarded as a means is because teachers have too much power to decide students' promotion and graduation.

So I agree with Einstein's suggestion that teachers should be given as little power as possible to use coercive means, and the only source of students' respect for them is his humanity and rational quality.

Correspondingly, it is to expand the rights of students, especially research students. Within the scope of the syllabus, they are free to choose teachers and courses, change classes and be smart. The assessment of teachers should also mainly depend on whether they are loved by students, not by administrative departments. As it is now, teachers who have the ability to spend a lot of money on scientific research have the right to recruit more students and let them work for themselves, otherwise they will suffer indignities and even be deprived of the right to take students. Under this system, how can students not become means?

Source | China Education Thirty Forum

Author | Editor Zhou | China Net Education Channel

The articles reprinted in this official WeChat account are for sharing only and do not represent the views of this official WeChat account. The copyright and illustrations of the article belong to the original author. If there is any dispute about the copyright of the shared content, please contact us and we will deal with it in time.

I recommend

Depth | "After being admitted to Peking University, I still can't forgive my alma mater!" Dictation of "Rebel" in Hengshui School

Pay attention to | a generation of Fanghua! What is the equivalent of normal students more than 20 years ago?

Pay attention to | Shenzhen "college entrance examination immigration" incident! Expose the "prosperity model" behind private school enrollment.

Attention | Front-line teachers appeal: primary and secondary schools are in urgent need of full-time class teachers, and there is no need to attend classes!

Concern | Big data reveals the current situation of teachers' salary: no matter what industry is cold, it can't be cold in the education industry!

Attention | The mid-term exam is approaching, and the class group has been screened by this passage! Encourage with teachers, parents and students.