China needs big educators

Tang Xiaomin

Some people say that there are no educators in China at the moment, and I think this is a shrine of indignation. China has scientists, writers and, of course, educators. However, although China has educators, there are no big educators. Not only are there no great educators like Confucius, Han Yu, and Zhu Xi in history, there are no educators like Rousseau, Dewey, Pestellozi, and Ohara Guofang and Sukhomlinsky in modern times in the West, and there are no first-class educators like Tao Xingzhi and Chen Heqin. This is hard to deny.

 What are the characteristics of the great educator? I think that there are at least a few aspects of the characteristics:

The great educator is a person with compassion. Sure enough, he must also have educational theory, practical experience, outstanding achievements in education, and have ..., but all of this adds up to not enough, if there is no "feeling", he cannot be called a great educator.

 Great educators are "maverick" people. They have strong self-confidence, firmly believe that their "set" must be correct, "the world's reputation without persuasion, the world's non-judgment without discouragement." In their actual educational actions, they have shown great courage in "turning the tide of obstacles in the east and turning the tide against the tide of collapse." Great educators pursue lofty ideals, so that they often manifest themselves as some incompatibility with reality. Sometimes they don't even succeed, so great educators may not necessarily succeed in cultivating many talents, and their students may not be able to understand their teachers (confucius is like this). The average educator is not so "extreme", they pursue success, and generally can get the sense of achievement they want.

No matter how insightful the great educators are at the technical level, what they attach the most importance to is not the technical level, but the "Tao". Confucius said that "when you hear the Tao, you can die at night", Han Yu said that when he wrote the article, "the shortness of the words and the height of the voice are appropriate", and Ouyang Xiu said that "the Tao is victorious, the text is not difficult and self-sufficient". Both. The so-called "Tao" is the inner root of things, and it is also the sublimation of human temperament and realm. Historically, the "Tao" that Confucians attach importance to is not only a strong will, a spirit of courage to forge ahead, a boldness of "although there are tens of millions of people, I will do what I do", but also a kind of benevolent heart, a kind of concern and sympathy for the fate of compatriots and even all things in nature, and a feeling of "worrying about the world before the world, and enjoying the happiness of the world after the world". Therefore, in the eyes of the great educator, this is the foundation of education. Big educators are really cultivating "people", while general educators pay more attention to technical things and pay more attention to people as "tools".

 Great educators are people with a deep sense of history. We often say that a successful person must have a realistic concern, must have a deep understanding of reality, and his theory must be realistically targeted and solve real problems. This is certainly true, but it is not enough to really understand the problem of reality by only knowing reality itself. It is said that fish cannot see water, and in the same way, people only live in "reality" and cannot truly understand reality. Hegel said it best: "Knowing is not true knowledge." To truly understand reality, you must transcend it. How to go beyond? It is the introduction of the frame of reference of history. It is not difficult to understand that people who have made great achievements in reality in ancient and modern China and abroad are often "good ancient"! Confucius is good and ancient, Han Yu is "not the book of three generations and two Han dare not be viewed", and the great masters of the Italian Renaissance all admired ancient Greece. Big educators have a deep sense of history, while ordinary educators only care about practical problems.

 Great educators are people who, on the basis of understanding the world, can cherish the educational wisdom of their own nation, and summarize and enhance the educational wisdom of their own nation, their greatness is not only out of their own painstaking and lonely thinking, but also the result of summing up the educational wisdom of their own nation, and they have their own nation's long-standing historical and cultural wealth behind them. Ordinary educators often only import a little theory and a little ideological resource from the West, so as to form and establish their own theory, and use this to guide practice (this is the current guide of language education reform). Or they only understand some of the educational materials of their own nation, because there is no world perspective, it is difficult to have a deep understanding of the precious educational wealth of their own nation, and the result is to cling to the deficiencies.

The great educators are also such people, who have a really in-depth study of a certain local field of education, a particular problem, and are extremely outstanding experts (such as Montessori's study of children, Sukhomlinsky's study of the spiritual growth and development of middle school students), on the other hand, they have transcended this local field, sublimated the value of this specific research, and made their local research have more significant and universal significance. These two aspects are mutually reinforcing: they extend and expand from "their own" field of possession and have a big vision, and the big vision helps him, so that his local education has a different response. The average educator is biased. Show your achievements in only one of these areas.

Finally, it can also be said that the great educator is still such a person: he is also another family, that is, he certainly made a great contribution to education, but without these, he will also be recorded in history by other achievements. For example, Confucius can be said to be a master of philology, and his collation of ancient documents is very remarkable in itself. Han Yu is an educator and a literary giant, and Rousseau abroad is an educator and a literary master. It can also be said that the great educators are not limited by "education", while the general educators are people who take education as their profession.

Chinese education needs great educators!