A unique phenomenon, it is a social practice to cultivate people.
On the one hand, because the social phenomenon of education develops with the development of society, people's understanding of education is also deepening; On the other hand, education itself is developing.
Therefore, in the history of Chinese and foreign education, people have different views on "what is education". Etymologically, the word "education" in different languages is related to the cultivation of children. The words "teaching" and "education" first appeared in Oracle Bone Inscriptions in China, and "teaching" means ""in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. The left side indicates that the child is in the classic (because the Book of Changes has authority on gossip, which may represent the classic here), and the right side indicates that the child's words and deeds must not deviate from the norms, otherwise they will be punished (. "Fertility" means ""in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which means that a woman is pregnant. Its original meaning is that women have children. In pre-Qin ancient books, "teaching" and "teaching" are rarely used together, and most of them only use the word "teaching" to discuss educational matters. For example, Xunzi believes that "a good ancestor is called teaching"; "Xue Ji" said: "Teachers are also good at saving their losses." The explanation in Shuo Wen Jie Zi written by Xu Shen (58- 147) in the Eastern Han Dynasty is more complete: "Teach, practice, and effect." "Educate, train children and make them better." Mencius was the first person to use the word education together. He said, "It's three pleasures to be educated by talents in the world." It can be seen that the word "teaching" given by ancient scholars in China means that educators should teach and educatees should follow suit, while the word "teaching" means that educatees should develop in a good direction under the guidance of educators; The word "education" has many meanings, such as management, teaching, training, demonstration, learning and training. In the west, the word "Education" in English and French is education, which comes from the Latin E-ducêre. In Latin, the initial e means "out" and the stem ducêre means "introduction", so the word "education" contains the meaning of "introduction", that is, educators guide the educated to make their inherent characteristics develop independently. Comenius, an educator in Czechoslovakia, said: "A person can only become a person if he receives a proper education." Lu Jun, a famous French thinker, said: "Plants are formed by cultivation, and people are formed by education." "Education should follow the natural development of children and cultivate their natural abilities of observation, thinking and feeling." Pestalozzi, a Swiss bourgeois democratic educator, said: "The purpose of education is to develop all the natural strengths and abilities of people." Kant, a German thinker, said: "Man can only grow through education, and man is the result of education." Herbart added: "All the problems of education can be defined by one concept-morality includes." There are obvious differences in the above understanding of education between China and the west: the west pays attention to the "endogenous theory", that is, it emphasizes that education lies in guiding the development of the educated's internal nature; Our country pays attention to the theory of external causes and thinks that education is the shaping of children by external forces. But they all regard education as an activity to cultivate people and a process to promote their physical and mental development. This understanding of * * * is a correct reflection of the similarity of education at home and abroad: as long as human society exists, the attribute of education as a person will not change or disappear. Education is human.
The category of eternity. Education is unique to human society. On the one hand, education is necessary, occurs and develops because it plays an important role in human development and social sustainable development. "In the face of future challenges, education seems to be an indispensable trump card for mankind to move towards peace, freedom and social justice." "Education is not a' master key' that can open the door to realize all human ideals, but it is indeed the main means to promote more harmonious and reliable human development. Through education, human beings can reduce poverty, exclusion, incomprehension, oppression, war and other phenomena." "The research of Marxist philosophy and scientific psychology proves that only the most basic reflection form of biological matter in the animal kingdom, namely stimulation and simple animal psychology, is conscious only by the master of human society. And education is just under the control of people's unique consciousness, divorced from people's consciousness.
Social needs rather than instinctive needs are essentially different from animals' love and care for the next generation. Because animals' love and care for the next generation is a pure instinctive activity of reproducing offspring, it is innate and inherited as a simple behavioral stereotype, which does not exist in consciousness. On the other hand, education is different. Whether it is to arouse the needs of education or to lead educational activities, it is not a biological instinct, but a unique consciousness of human society.
On the other hand, transmitting experience through education is also unique to human society.
Children's information is mainly stored in genetic genes and passed down from generation to generation in a genetic way rather than in the way of education and learning.
. A large number of adaptive actions of animals to the surrounding environment can be said to come from instinct.
In higher animals, besides instinct, there is of course some kind of "intellectual" activity. But these acquired experiences are precisely because there is no unique consciousness and language.
Therefore, education cannot be mastered by the next generation of animals, so the experience as an individual can only disappear with the death of an individual. However, people are different. In the development of human species, the long-term adaptation to the environment is also manifested in genetic quality, but for human beings, heredity is not the main form of transmitting experience. The experience accumulated by human beings in social production and social life is mainly transmitted through education. People can do this because.
Human beings have consciousness, writing and language. With the help of the material shell of language and abstract rational thinking, human experience can not only exist in individual consciousness, but also exist outside individual consciousness and independently of each individual. This externalized experience will not disappear because of the death of an individual. Therefore, education is a unique social activity to cultivate people in human society.
. (2) Education in broad sense and narrow sense, as a concrete scientific concept, can be divided into broad sense and narrow sense. Education in a broad sense refers to all social activities that purposefully enhance people's knowledge and skills and affect people's physical and mental health, ideological and moral formation and development. The object of this activity is multi-level, both children and adults; Its organizational forms are diverse, from school education with fixed organizational forms to social education and family education without fixed organizational forms. Education in a narrow sense refers to the education specially organized, that is, according to the requirements of a certain society (or class) and the development needs of the educated, it aims to guide the educated to acquire knowledge and skills, cultivate ideological and moral character, develop intelligence and physical strength, and thus cultivate people needed by a certain society (or class). Education in a narrow sense does not refer to school education, but mainly refers to school education. The emergence of school education is much later than education in a broad sense. As a kind of "specialized institution that carries out systematic education purposefully, planned and organized"-school appeared in slave society and is the product of the development of human society to a certain stage. The education studied in this book mainly refers to this narrow sense of education, especially modern school education. Second, the elements of education Education is a relatively independent subsystem in the social system composed of space and time occupied by people, money, things and things. This system consists of several categories, several levels and several factors, which are linked together in a certain way and become an organic whole. As a system (represented by institutionalized school education system), education is composed of subsystems at different levels: the overall system of a country or region is composed of several subsystems (school systems at all levels and various school systems); The basic unit of each subsystem is a large number of grassroots educational entities (i.e. institutions, such as schools); Each grass-roots educational institution is equivalent to an organ of the subsystem, and each "organ" consists of various organized educational activities (such as teaching); Every organized educational activity consists of a series of individual educational activities. This single educational activity is just like the cells of human tissues. So what elements are the "cells" of education made of? The basic elements of educational activities are educators, educatees and educational measures. (1) Educators can be called educators who have an educational influence on the educated in terms of knowledge, skills, thoughts, morality, intelligence and physique. Family is an important place for a person to receive education. Parents are children's first teachers and the first and most frequent educators. Teachers engaged in social education and other people who play an educational role are educators. Since the emergence of school education, the school is a special place for the educated to receive education, and teachers and other educators in the school have become school educators. Educators are the basic elements of educational activities. Without educators and their purposeful activities, there is no education. Education is a purposeful activity to cultivate people, and educators influence and promote the physical and mental development of the educated in a certain direction and goal with their own activities. Educators are the leaders of educational activities, the purpose is an important feature of educational activities, and educators have a guiding role in all aspects of the educated. (2) Educated Educated refers to people who are influenced by education in various educational activities. Including children, teenagers and adults studying at school, children in family education, and people affected by education in various forms of social education. Educated people in school education mainly refer to students who are engaged in learning in school. The educated is the object of education, the subject of learning and the basic element of educational activities. Without this element, educational activities cannot be formed. With the modernization of education and the expansion of educational concepts, the objects of education have also expanded. Not limited by any age, you can start with prenatal education. You can study for life if you like. With the progress of science and technology and the development of society, individuals as members of society are increasingly inseparable from education. In order to learn to survive and adapt to development, people should not only receive basic education and professional education, but also continue to receive continuing education. Educational activities are the process of making the educated internalize certain external educational contents and activities into their own wisdom, talents, thoughts, viewpoints and qualities. Without the active participation of the educated and giving full play to their subjective initiative, educational activities will not achieve good results. Once the educated have acquired the corresponding knowledge and ability, their subjective initiative will be more clearly manifested in educational activities, and they will be able to actively and consciously absorb knowledge and carry out moral cultivation. (3) Educational measures Educational measures are also called educational materials. Among the three elements of education, the purposeful activities of educators and the activities of educatees should be mediated by educational measures. It includes "educational media, educational materials, educational means, educational organization forms and activities, educational venues and equipment". Educational scale is the scale to measure the level of educational development. "Educational media" is the carrier of cultural information in the process of education, that is, materialized knowledge forms, such as books, radio, videos, movies, television, newspapers, multimedia software and so on. "Educational materials" are the content of education and the same basis for educators and educatees to carry out educational activities. Educators exert influence on the educated through specific educational content, so that they can achieve the expected educational purpose. The educational content is selected and processed, and delivered to the educated through certain educational media. The selection and processing of educational content is based on the needs of society, the age characteristics and acceptance level of the educated, the logical order of scientific knowledge and the requirements of educational methods. In different stages of social and historical development, different levels of science and technology and different educational objects, the specific content of education is not the same. But for school education, it is nothing more than physical, intellectual, moral, aesthetic and labor education. "Educational means" refers to all material conditions used in educational activities such as experimental means and modern audio-visual education means. "Educational organization form and activity mode" refers to the ways and methods adopted by educators and educatees in educational activities, such as individual teaching, class teaching system, program teaching, group discussion, lectures and experiments. With the development of social productive forces and the progress of science and technology, educational materials have changed from simple to complex and from complex to simple. For example, before the adoption of audio-visual education, educational activities were relatively simple, but after the adoption of audio-visual education such as radio, video recording, film, television and computer multimedia, the educational process gradually became complicated, and at the same time, the replication of the educational process became possible, thus showing the prospect of simplifying the educational process. In radio schools and TV schools, teachers themselves are only educational elements in the occasions of recording and shooting, not learning scenes. When computer multimedia is used in teaching, the design and programming of multimedia software are not necessarily undertaken by teachers. Under these circumstances, special education places are no longer a necessary part of education. It can be seen that with the complexity of the educational process, the educational elements are constantly changing. What is the relationship between the three basic elements of education? We believe that any activity is the interaction between subject and object, but different activities have different subjects and objects; Conversely, the interaction between different subjects and objects forms different activities. Therefore, to correctly understand and grasp the relationship between educational activities and their three elements, the key lies in correctly understanding and grasping the subject and object of educational activities and their relationship. The educational theorists in China also have different views on the subject and object of educational activities, among which the dominant view is that educators are the main body of educational activities; Educated people are the objects of educational activities; Educational measures (educational materials) are the means of educational activities. This view is obviously one-sided and only comes down to the activities of educators. As we all know, educational activities promote students' development purposefully. The development of students is inseparable from the activities taught by teachers and the activities learned by students. Therefore, educational activities are not only the activities of educators (teaching activities), but also the activities of educatees (learning activities). Educational activities are the combination of learning activities and teaching activities. Generally speaking, teaching is the leading activity and learning is the active activity. Accordingly, educators, as the main body of teaching activities, play a leading role in the whole educational activities. Educated people are the main body of learning activities and play an active role in the whole educational activities. Moreover, educators and educatees are not two parallel subjects, but two "composite subjects" in different positions and playing different roles. The relationship between them is essentially dominant and active. A new understanding of the subject of educational activities will inevitably lead to a new view of the object of educational activities. We believe that the complexity of subject and object in educational activities is mainly manifested in its relativity and variability, rather than absolute and unchangeable. Educators and educatees are both subjects and objects of educational activities. Educators and educatees play dual roles in educational activities, which is the unity of subject and object. As far as an educator is concerned, he is both the subject of teaching and the object of learning. In teaching activities, educators are the main body, teaching content constitutes the object of cognition, and students constitute the object of cognition and practice. Educators play a leading role in teaching. Educators, while exerting influence on the educated as the subject, also become the object of students' understanding and play a role as the object. As far as the educator himself is concerned, he is also the unity of subject and object. In educational activities, educators improve themselves and develop themselves by understanding and transforming the educational content and students, which is the so-called "learning after teaching". As far as the educated is concerned, he is the object of teaching and the object of educational influence exerted by educators. At the same time, it is the subject of learning, cognition and development. In this case, educators and educational content are the objects of learning activities. Students regard educators as their own objects and educational content as their own objects. For students, learning activities are their own activities, and students themselves will inevitably become the main body of activities. The purpose of learning is to change and develop people themselves, so learners take themselves as the object. To sum up, the three basic elements of education play different roles in educational activities, but they are interrelated organic whole. One of the research topics of pedagogy is to explore the internal relationship among educators, educatees and educational measures (educational materials), so as to make them cooperate tacitly and be in the best control state, ensure the smooth and efficient development of educational activities, and thus promote the educational activities to achieve the expected goals. The characteristics of education can be analyzed and summarized from different angles and levels. (A) the essential characteristics of education Education is a purposeful social practice to cultivate people. This is the essential feature of education. Education is mainly carried out through language and writing, which are the products of human society, unique to human society and social. In primitive society, education was not separated from other social activities, but closely linked with productive labor, the most basic social practice. Since education is different from other social activities, it has assumed an independent social function and become a social activity dedicated to transmitting social life experience and cultivating people, with the ultimate goal of socializing people. Education has two social functions since it came into being, namely, to teach the experience of social production struggle and social life; Promote the growth and development of the new generation. Therefore, education is one of the indispensable means to promote the new generation and social development. It is not only the need of social material production and reproduction, but also the need of social people's production and reproduction. As long as human society exists, there must be education, and education and human society are eternal. From the viewpoint of contradiction theory, "any form of movement contains its own special contradictions." This special contradiction constitutes the special essence that distinguishes one thing from other things. "Although the phenomenon of education is very complicated, the form, nature and purpose of education. Although the contents, methods and organizational forms vary widely, there is a basic point in any education, that is, the qualitative difference between education and other social phenomena or its qualitative feature is that education is a purposeful activity to train people. Educating people is the foothold and fundamental value of education. The special contradiction that education contains and needs to be solved is the contradiction between the educated individual and the requirements of social development. The basic function of education is to transform the requirements of society into the quality of the educated, or to improve the quality of the educated to the norms and levels required by society. Specifically, education is to urge the educated to change from ignorance to knowledge or from little knowledge to much knowledge, from never having a certain moral quality to having a certain moral quality, from weak body to strong body, from knowledge to ability, from thinking to behavior habits. In short, education is to transform the cultural achievements accumulated by human beings from generation to generation into the personal wisdom, talent and morality of the educated, so that their body and mind can develop and become the people needed for social development. Educational activities are activities to promote transformation, and this transformation process is a process to promote the socialization and individualization of educated individuals, and a process to solve the contradiction between human development and social development by cultivating people. (2) Other educational characteristics 1. Education has a class nature. This is one of the attributes of class social education. A certain education reflects certain class requirements and serves them. The class nature of education is mainly reflected in the purpose, system, content, policy and even method of education. The politically dominant class uses education to consolidate its dominance; The ruled class should also use education to fight for its own interests. However, the ruling class always firmly holds the leadership of education and uses it to spread the ideas of the ruling class. The class nature of education will die with the death of class. 2. Education is national. Generally refers to the embodiment of national traditions and characteristics in education. For example, the basic education of all ethnic groups mostly uses their own language, and the educational content largely retains the national cultural traditions. Students' ideological and moral quality is influenced by national psychological characteristics such as national consciousness and national self-esteem. The nationality of education generally reflects the excellent traditions and characteristics of the nation suitable for the development of the times, while the backward, conservative and ignorant factors accumulated in national culture can be eliminated through the filtration of education. All ethnic groups have their own excellent traditions, and there must be historical precipitation. It is necessary for all ethnic groups to learn from each other and learn from each other's strong points to enrich and develop the nationality of education. 3. Education has a history. With the emergence and development of human society, education has its own history. China's traditional education takes the Confucian educational tradition as the mainstream, takes "self-cultivation, keeping the family in order", "keeping the family in order, governing the country and leveling the world" as the goal, and takes Confucian classics as the main educational content. In the west, ancient Greece and Rome formed an educational tradition different from our country. This educational tradition has become a historical legacy that affects the development trend of Chinese and western education. The tendency of "examination-oriented education" in modern school education in China and the long-standing tendency of "internalization" in the history of western education can be found in their respective educational history. This is the historicity of education. Education has been delayed. Education investment can not be immediate, and it takes a long time to train talents to receive certain economic and social benefits. Education is a potential and indirect productive force, and educational achievements can generally be transformed into direct and materialized productive forces through the actual production activities of the educated; At the same time, the knowledge and skills acquired by the educated in the process of learning and training also have an adaptation process to the actual work. Generally speaking, it takes a long time for education investment to gain benefits. 5. The advanced nature of modern education is one of the attributes of modern education, also known as "education first". Generally speaking, the formulation of educational goals must refer to the requirements of social development, and the development of education must take precedence over economic development. The current education work serves the needs of the future, and the students' study now is to prepare for their future life. Therefore, the choice of training objectives and educational content should not only obey the realistic social needs, but also proceed from the needs of future social development. The development of education should go ahead of economic development and prepare talents for economic development. Education planning ahead and giving priority to development is a driving force for human beings to consciously promote social progress. To sum up, education is a unique social activity to cultivate people in human society, which is eternal, social, historical, national, lagging and class-oriented. Modern education is advanced.