At the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, hundred schools of thought had a heated debate about the concept of heaven. In this debate, Laozi put forward the theory of "Tao" for the first time, thus forming an educational thought centered on "Tao", which has a great influence, but there are many regrets in educational purposes, contents and principles.
Laozi asked people to take Tao as the goal of understanding and pursuing, and the most essential feature of Tao is inaction, so he hoped to cultivate people with the quality of inaction, be able to let nature take its course and never make positive progress.
Therefore, education must be carried out from three aspects: non-contention, contentment and gentleness. Don't strive for personal fame and fortune, don't be greedy for money, and don't pursue personal desires. At the same time, I think that if a person wants to be full of vigor and vitality, he must be "gentle", which can make people change from softness to rigidity and from weakness to strength. On the contrary, people who are overbearing are prone to disaster. These three virtues advocated by Laozi, although they have the enthusiasm to educate people not to be utilitarian and not to go to extremes, make people muddle along, do not make progress, stand still, be weak and backward, and take a passive evasive attitude in the face of contradictions and difficulties, which is not worth it.
Lao Tzu believes that sensory organs are evil ways that cause selfish desires and lead people astray. In order to prevent selfish desires and set things right, he advocated closing his ears, putting an end to his senses and turning off the evil door that caused selfish desires. He further pointed out that educating people to know the way of "inaction" does not need to go through any sensory organs such as eyes and ears. This educational principle completely denies sensory experience and perceptual knowledge, which is a fundamentally wrong idealistic educational principle. Moreover, in order to oppose unreasonable selfish desires and even abandon reasonable desires, this is also a kind of asceticism that violates human nature and directly affects the Taoist idea of cultivating immortality in the future.
Laozi not only advocates closing his eyes and resting his mind, but also advocates abandoning his studies and wisdom and damaging his knowledge. He believes that knowledge, like selfish desires, seriously interferes with people's going to the highest state of Tao. He put "for learning" and "for Tao" in opposition, and thought that "being a scholar in Japan" meant "being a scholar in Japan". Learning knowledge will affect the pursuit of Tao. If you increase your knowledge every day, you will lose your understanding of Tao. Therefore, knowledge must be "damaged" to achieve "inaction", that is, ignorance. He also believes that "there is no need to worry about learning." If you don't learn knowledge, you can worry. He even thinks that learning not to learn is the biggest learning in itself, so you can avoid making mistakes made by others. Of course, it contains dialectical ideological core, and it is also a dissatisfaction and criticism of the education of poetry, calligraphy, etiquette and music at that time, but he separated "learning" from "Tao", denied the importance of knowledge, and had a negative impact on later education.
After turning a blind eye to knowledge and abandoning wisdom, Laozi further put forward the educational principle of abstinence, that is, people are required to clean up their hearts without any external interference and firmly hold a quiet and ethereal heart to the extreme. In this way, the mind is in harmony with the Tao, and people grasp the Tao. This not only excludes perceptual knowledge, but also excludes rational knowledge. It is idealistic to focus on inner intuition and should be criticized.
In a word, Lao Tzu advocates "inaction", and there is no dispute and ignorance. This kind of negative thinking is very harmful and can only make people fall into ignorance and backwardness.