I'm sorting out the translations of Nietzsche's works. One of his early works, entitled "On the Future of Our Educational Institutions", was his five public speeches in university of basel. There is no Chinese translation yet. Let me pick something interesting to say.

German schools have long implemented a dual-track system. Middle schools are divided into liberal arts middle schools and practical middle schools. The former focuses on classical humanities education, and students can go to universities for further study after graduation, while the latter focuses on vocational training, so students are not qualified to go to universities. In Nietzsche's time, this boundary became blurred. The main performance is that liberal arts middle schools and practical middle schools keep pace with each other and expand their enrollment on a large scale, which means that universities also expand their enrollment accordingly. At the same time, in terms of teaching content, classical humanities education has been greatly weakened and vocational training has been strengthened. Nietzsche was deeply worried about this tendency. To illustrate his concern, I quote a quote from him-

"Universal education is one of the most popular modern national economic dogmas. As much knowledge and education as possible-leading to as much production and consumption as possible-leading to as much happiness as possible: this has almost become a resounding formula. Here, benefits-more accurately, income, making as much money as possible-have become the purpose and goal of education. According to this tendency, education seems to be defined as an eye, with which a person can' get ahead', identify all the shortcuts that are easy to make money, and master all the means of interpersonal communication and interpersonal communication ... According to this view, people advocate' the alliance of knowledge and property', which is completely regarded as a moral requirement. Here, any kind of education, if it will make people lonely, if its goal exceeds money and income, if it takes too much time, it is hateful ... According to the prevailing moral concept here, what is required is of course the opposite, that is, accelerated education, in order to quickly become a money-making creature and the so-called further study, in order to become a creature that earns a lot of money. The culture that a person is allowed to have is limited to the need to make money, and there are only so many requirements for him. In short, human beings have an inevitable need for earthly happiness-so education is necessary-but only because of this. "

In order to make a living, people must learn relevant skills, which is undeniable and beyond reproach. Nietzsche opposed to confuse it with education and to replace and crowd out real education with vocational training. He emphasized that "any kind of school education, as long as it regards a position or a way of making a living as a prospect at the end of its course, is by no means a real education", but only a "manual" to guide people to carry out struggle for existence, and the relevant institutions are "institutions to cope with their livelihood" and are by no means real educational institutions. The real core of education in his mind is humanistic education, the cultivation of spiritual quality and the creation of culture.

Nietzsche is not opposed to livelihood institutions, but he wants to distinguish it from educational institutions. Not all schools can be made into livelihood institutions. He predicted that since there is no difference in the overall goal between liberal arts middle schools and practical middle schools, universities should be opened to the graduates of practical middle schools soon. Thirty years later, his prediction came true. However, this fulfillment is painful for him, because in his view, it means that real educational institutions are assimilated and annexed by livelihood institutions.

The abolition of the dual-track system may be inevitable in the process of educational democratization, which is not the key to the problem. Nietzsche's fundamental question is: Does education have a higher mission than vocational training? Is education just for the purpose of making a living still not a real education? Today, with the increasing utilitarianism of education, this problem is more acute in front of people.

Nietzsche also noticed a prominent problem brought by the expansion of enrollment, that is, the quality of teachers and students has dropped greatly. He pointed out that even for excellent ethnic groups, qualified educational talents are limited, and the expansion of enrollment has brought too many unqualified people into the teaching staff. At the same time, a large number of unqualified students also poured into the school. In this case, truly excellent teachers are bound to be marginalized, because they are not only inferior to the number advantage of mediocre teachers, but also the least suitable for educating young people who gather at will. On the contrary, mediocre teachers are like a duck to water, because their endowment is in harmony with the lack of self-motivation and mental poverty of most students.

In fact, the biggest victims of enrollment expansion are students. In school, "no one can resist the kind of compulsory education that makes people tired, confused, nervous and never have a chance to breathe." Walking out of the university gate, what awaits them is a tangled and failed life. Nietzsche vividly described this kind of entanglement and failure: after entering the job, they felt unable to guide themselves, so they were hopelessly immersed in the world of daily life and work; Unwilling, they tried to cheer up and grab a support, but in vain; In a sad mood, they gave up their ideals and prepared to pursue any practical or even low-level interests; They were involved in the endless turmoil of the times, as if they had been cut into pieces, and they could no longer feel the eternal pleasure; They were teased by doubt, excitement, livelihood, hope and depression, and finally let go of the reins and began to despise themselves. ...

When making this series of speeches, Nietzsche was only 27 years old, not far from his school days, but he had been a professor in university of basel for three years. Whether as a former student or a young teacher now, he has personal feelings about the situation of school education. Enrollment expansion is just a phenomenon, the essence of which is the utilitarianism of education and the lack of real education. His main audience is college students, and he hopes that a few of them "feel the same way" and calls on them to devote themselves to education and fight for the freshmen of German educational institutions. However, after he issued this call, not only Germany, but also educational institutions all over the world went further on the road of utilitarianism. In this respect, Nietzsche was both a prophet and Don Quixote in the face of the emerging trend of modern education at that time.