Source: China HowNet Author: Shen Wanrong Time: 2008-03- 12
The popularization of higher education has brought new opportunities and challenges to China's economic and social development. Social morality has become a serious problem that restricts the harmonious development of economy and society at present, and college graduates will surely become pioneers in leading the healthy development of social morality. This paper analyzes the present situation and reasons of social morality in China, especially the present situation and reasons of college students' morality. On this basis, this paper puts forward some concrete measures to strengthen public morality education and cultivate public morality consciousness in colleges and universities in the new period.
Keywords: popularization; College students; Public virtue
China Library ClassificationNo.: G64 1 Document ID: A DocumentNo.:1002-6908 (2008) 010169-02.
In the stage of elite education, the enrollment rate of colleges and universities is very low, and students who enter universities are basically good students with excellent academic performance from primary school to middle school. Good students often have strong self-discipline, and through gradual cultivation, they have a good sense of social morality. Moreover, the employment situation of college graduates in the elite education stage is that demand far exceeds supply, and only a few units can allocate a small number of college students. College students have little influence on the social morality of the whole society, and even are assimilated by bad social atmosphere. But at present, China's higher education has entered the stage of popularization [1]. In 2006, the average gross enrollment rate of universities in China exceeded 2 1%, and the enrollment rate of college entrance examination in some developed areas exceeded 60%. The quality of students is not like the previous elite education stage. At the same time, with the changes of the times and environment, college students' awareness of social morality is indifferent and they don't even abide by basic laws and regulations. Moreover, the proportion of college graduates in the total population of society is also growing rapidly. They are not only a new force in social and economic development, but also pioneers in leading the healthy development of social morality.
First, the status quo of social morality in China and its analysis
(A) the status quo of social morality
Social morality is a norm that all members of society must abide by, and it is the simplest code of conduct and minimum moral standard formed by people in order to safeguard public interests and social life order and coordinate the relationship between people [2]. In modern society, social morality, as the basic project of spiritual civilization construction, is very familiar to us. Whether it is the adjustment of social order, the adjustment of interpersonal relationship, the development of economy or the protection of natural environment, it is inseparable from the normative role of social morality. Since the reform and opening up, China's economy has made great progress and people's living standards have been greatly improved. However, due to various factors, it has become an indisputable fact that social morality has declined to a certain extent. Such as ignoring collective interests and blindly pursuing extreme personal interests; Infringe on the interests of others and even the safety of life; Say one thing and do another, words and deeds are different; Do not talk about credibility; Do not pay attention to the protection of natural resources, deforestation, sneak attack on rare wild animals and plants; Never consider others in public, smoking, spitting, littering ... all these have a bad influence on social morality. There is a strong demand to solve these problems. In order to build a harmonious society, to stabilize people's lives, to continuously improve people's quality of life, and to the survival and development of future generations, we must strengthen social moral construction.
(B) Analysis of the causes of social moral crisis
1. After the establishment of the socialist market economy system, we don't know the values, competition, interests and opportunities suitable for the market economy, and we don't know the public morality that the market economy should abide by. In addition, the introduction of foreign bourgeois bad ideas has caused the prevalence of money worship and the decline of social morality in a certain period and scope. Its specific manifestations are mercenary, cheating, and harming others. This has led to the proliferation of fake and shoddy goods, the weakening of interpersonal relationships and the credit crisis, and its consequences have had a great impact on China's socialist market economy construction, especially foreign trade and economic cooperation.
2. In recent years, immoral thoughts have a popular trend in China, mainly manifested as immoralism. It advocates extreme individualism and decadence in thought, is self-centered, opposes any moral constraint, advocates laissez-faire in behavior, and treats social moral ideals and codes of conduct in a nihilistic way. Its social performance is to ignore the interests of others and not talk about social morality. Due to the spread of immoralism, the immorality of people's behavior has intensified, which has done great harm to people's behavior and social stability in contemporary China.
3. Imperfect legal system and weakening of social moral control mechanism. Because China has been in a feudal society for a long time, it did not directly enter the socialist period without the full development of capitalism. Therefore, there is no perfect legal system and moral control mechanism, and people's legal moral concepts are weak. The phenomenon of replacing law with power and morality with power occurs from time to time, which not only greatly weakens the power of justice and morality, but also corrupts the social atmosphere, and indirectly causes the proliferation of immoral thoughts rather than moralism. It is precisely because of the imperfection of the legal system and society.
4. The moral education method is wrong and the intensity is not enough. After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), China still attached great importance to moral education. Schools of all levels and types offer ideological and moral courses, and units regularly organize political studies. At least one person in each unit is responsible for managing the ideological status of its members. However, it has been proved that the effect of civic moral education in China is not good, and it is often a mere formality, which has not achieved its due effect. Generally speaking, there are two aspects: mistakes in methods and insufficient efforts. The method error is mainly that our moral education often focuses on ideals and the future, but rarely mentions practice and the present, ignoring the most basic public morality. When people receive education, they feel that they have little to do with themselves and have indifferent thoughts. If the intensity is not enough, the current moral education covers a wide range, the content is relatively empty, and it is often practical, so it is difficult to arouse the educated's * * *, let alone profound reflection, and often it will not have the due effect.
5. Public opinion guidance is not strong enough. Since the reform and opening up, China's national policy centered on economic construction has been misunderstood by many people as "everything is for money". This mistake has not been corrected in time, and there has been a bad social atmosphere such as "laughing at poverty rather than prostitution". Various evaluation indicators and various media have not played a role in promoting healthy trends.
Second, the status quo of college students' social morality behavior and its causes
Generally speaking, contemporary college students have a certain sense of social morality and social responsibility, and most young students can agree with the importance of observing public order, caring for public property, paying attention to public health, respecting others and coordinating interpersonal relationships reasonably. However, in the above-mentioned behaviors of public moral awareness, some college students have a low level of social morality, which is mainly manifested in [3,4]: self-centeredness, lack of civility and politeness, and you can still see many uncivilized phenomena on the university campus. Boys and girls ignore others and do harmful things in public; Some people lack basic hygiene habits and are informal; The phenomenon of students smoking is not uncommon, and it has been repeatedly banned; Teachers and leaders ignore them when they arrive at the dormitory, go their own way, don't respect others, and lack the minimum courtesy and moral cultivation. Although these uncivilized behaviors are only done by some people, they have a very bad influence on the construction of spiritual civilization on campus. Moreover, because social morality is a kind of public service with strong psychological implication, this uncivilized behavior also affects the improvement of the overall level of college students' social morality consciousness. At the same time, although some people have a strong sense of public morality, they rarely put it into practice and lack self-discipline and team consciousness. The reasons for the problems in college students' moral behavior mainly include the following aspects:
(1) College students think that they are beyond the knowledge level and will ability of ordinary members, and their self-awareness is high. In reality, it is difficult to grasp yourself rationally, but put yourself in a blind state. Due to the internal division of self-cognition, some college students have double standards of self and others, self and society. Many college students tend to point more utilitarian scales at themselves, demand themselves with realistic moral standards, and demand others and society with ideal moral standards. It is precisely because of this deviation in self-cognition that many college students may be correct in their cognition and evaluation of public morality, but their behavior habits are not satisfactory or even contradictory.
(2) There are defects in family education. In family education, some parents only pay attention to learning and ignore moral education. In the past, they were considered to be wrong, such as lying, laziness, arrogance, vulgar behavior, cheating in exams, destroying public property and so on. In the eyes of many parents, it has become insignificant, which has led to some college students' unhealthy personality and the phenomenon of being strict with themselves and lacking social responsibility; In other families, parents and elders overindulge their children or younger generations, meet their unreasonable demands unprincipled, and are partial to negligence. Some even have an "inverted pyramid" family structure, and the only child is at the core of the family. Such a family environment can easily make them go their own way, be self-centered, lack sympathy, respect others and lack a sense of responsibility.
(C) There are some defects in school moral education. Due to the orientation of exam-oriented education, students have not been educated in the basic norms that should be followed as members of society since childhood, and even do not understand the basic principles of "being a man". Due to the neglect of basic public moral education, school moral education has been in an unresolved state, which has neither a foothold nor operability. It can be seen that moral education in colleges and universities should focus on the cultivation of civilization and qualified citizens, which is also a supplementary course for college students' basic moral education and has important practical significance.
(4) the influence of bad social atmosphere. Some people say that "morality is a public service", especially social morality. This shows that the maintenance of public morality is an unstable state. Generally speaking, services will only be provided if everyone believes that others are providing such services. If we lose this confidence, the moral standards of society will lose their support immediately. It can be seen that this kind of public service also contains great psychological hints and will be greatly influenced by social atmosphere.
Third, the basic countermeasures to strengthen the education of college students' social morality consciousness
(A) improve social morality education methods. Influenced by traditional educational ideas, the task of moral education in colleges and universities can be summarized as: preaching, that is, instilling ideas and norms into people, ignoring the cultivation of people's ability and personality, and even tending to deny and obliterate people's personality. Especially in the process of social moral education, the phenomenon of simple preaching and hard injection is widespread, ignoring the inherent needs of the educated for self-development and self-progress. College students' social morality education should adopt the following educational methods according to their own characteristics: First, persuasion education method. Persuade education should be patient, avoid mandatory orders, and let students have psychological buzz. The second is the behavior training method. Only by transforming moral knowledge into behavior habits can ideological morality be embodied. In order to transform moral knowledge into intrinsic motivation, the educated should gain positive experience through practice [5, 6]. Meanwhile, we should teach students to work hard. It is not difficult for a person to consciously abide by social ethics in public places and under the supervision environment. It is difficult to adhere to ethics and morality without supervision, and not to do anything that goes against social ethics and one's conscience. Of course, the practice and cultivation of good social morality can not be achieved overnight, but can be achieved in one exercise, which needs repeated practice and long-term cultivation.
(2) Strengthen the education of cultural quality and humanistic quality. For college students, cultural quality should be the basis of all qualities, which has great influence on people's ideological quality, professional quality and psychological quality. Therefore, it is the basis for the correct establishment and development of college students' world outlook, outlook on life and values. Only when a person has good cultural accomplishment and profound knowledge can he have a broader vision in this professional field and form noble sentiments, broad mind and great tolerance. Only on the basis of good cultural accomplishment can people establish lofty ideals, be knowledgeable, be polite and abide by the law. Compared with cultural quality, humanistic quality basically teaches people how to be human. Only people with rich cultural background can understand historical knowledge and traditional culture, and only then can they have a sense of social responsibility of "worrying about the world first, and enjoying the world later". Reading more books will broaden your mind and improve your moral feelings. Therefore, in addition to strict teaching work, schools continue to improve the quality of teaching and integrate social morality education into professional teaching. In addition, humanities courses such as literature, art, history, philosophy and psychology should be added to cultivate students' sentiment and improve their taste.
(3) Educators should constantly improve their own quality. In schools, teachers are the decisive factor in implementing social morality education. The ideas, concepts, contents and methods of social morality are all changed by teachers. Without the role of teachers, even the best educational ideas and plans will be greatly reduced or even completely lost. Under the condition of the same educational content and teaching requirements, the education of high-quality teachers can be deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, have a profound impact on students and achieve the expected goals. On the contrary, the education of teachers with low quality will often get twice the result with half the effort. Therefore, improving teachers' own quality is the fundamental guarantee for implementing public morality education. As far as the present situation of colleges and universities is concerned, social morality education for college students is mainly implemented by moral education teachers, especially political counselors and class teachers. Some counselors like to use administrative power to ask students what to do and what not to do. Facts show that the most effective influence of social morality education lies not in administrative power, but in non-power factors such as teachers' temperament, knowledge and self-restraint. This requires teachers to be knowledgeable, knowledgeable, persuasive, well-cultivated, approachable and humorous, so that students will be close to you. Harmonious teacher-student relationship can directly improve the acceptability of education and help to mobilize students' enthusiasm. In a sense, in the process of education, teachers' personality charm is more important than teaching ability. Therefore, teachers should constantly strengthen personality tempering and improve their ability to communicate with students.
(4) Optimize the social environment and strengthen the guidance of public opinion. The government and universities should give correct guidance in the media such as radio, movies, television, newspapers, and the Internet. When evaluating successful people and college students, don't talk about heroes by money, but change all wrong ideas about money. Create a good educational environment, correct the direction of public opinion, and improve the level of social morality education for college students.