教育的异化与高等教育的危机

The Alienation of Education and the Crisis of Higher Education

教育活动内含着两个目的:一方面教育要培养人具有全面的知识和才能,另一方面教育要培养人具有真正合乎人性的健全的人格和体魄。教育的职能依据其作用的层次和性质分为实质性职能和工具性职能,分别体现着教育的本质目的和表象功能。教育的本质和社会职能并不是一回事,背弃教育的本质片面强调教育的社会职能,结果会使教育发生扭曲。在一定的社会物质条件下,教育也会产生一种异己的违背自身本质要求的统治力量,使教育与其本质、与人的本性相对立,这就是教育的异化。市场经济体制的建立为转轨时期的高等教育带来了挑战和机遇,如果高等教育不顺势推进改革,没有必要的制度约束和社会机制的调节,大学就会背弃教育的本质目的和实质性职能而出现异化,教育者和被教育者也会在这个过程中被异化,这就是高等教育真正的危机。

Educational activities have two goals: on the one hand, education aims to cultivate people s all-sided intelligence and talents; on the other hand, education should help form and refine complete personalities and physical faculties. In accordance with the functional layers and characteristics, the functions of education include material function and instrumental one, which embodies educations essential purpose and presentational function respectively. However, the essence of education and social function are not the same thing; education will be distorted if we desert its essence but one-sidedly emphasize the social function. Under the certain social conomic conditions, education itself tends to generate the alienation of education. Although higher education is facing chances as well as challenges when China is experiencing a change from a planned economy to a market one,higher education institutions may be dissimilated or distorted owing to abandoning its essential purposes and material functions, and both educators and educatees are going to be dissimilated or distorted accordingly if there are no corresponding reform initiatives, no necessary disciplinary restraints and no sound social mechanism-this is the real crisis of higher education.