从苏格拉底到杜威:教育的生活转向与现代教育的完成

From Socrate to Dewey:The"Life"Turning of Education and the Complete of the Modern Education

苏格拉底、柏拉图为代表的古典教育以对美好事物的追求为基本内容,以教育即回忆为基本形式,体现出对日常生活世界的超越性。从夸美纽斯提出教学论是"把一切知识教给一切人的艺术",到卢梭对儿童的发现,斯宾塞的教育是"为未来完满生活做准备",再到杜威的"教育即生活",现代教育发展的过程乃是教育转向成人生活、再转向儿童生活的过程。这个过程既是现代教育逐渐适应工业化时代和民主生活的过程,同时也是教育普及与教育民主实现的过程。现代教育的完成同时也意味着在现代知识观照下教育过程现代化的完成,教育不再是基于回忆,而是现实经验的获得与改造,儿童作为古典自然的存在也逐渐转化为现代心理化的存在,这导致现代教育对效率与技术化的追求以及儿童作为效率的主体,由此而意味着教育之伦理性基础的消解。当代教育在充分实现教育的生活取向、也就是教育的民主平等诉求之时,又需要不失去一份古典的关照,保持教育对生活的必要的超越性,保持教育过程的必要的迷魅,由此而实现现代教育的效率化追求,又不失去教育自身的伦理关怀,从而促成健全现代个体的生成。

Socrates and Plato,representative of classical education,take the pursuit of good things as their fundamental concerns,and propound remembering as a basic form of education,which reflects the transcendence of education over the everyday world. From Comenius's didactic of'the whole art of teaching all things to all the men'to Rousseau's re-discovery of children in education,from Spencer's'education as a preparation for perfect life'to Dewey's'education as a necessity of life',modern education is both a process of adaptation to the industrial era and democratic life,a course of the spread of education,and a democratic realization of education as well. The completion of modern education means the modernization of the education process under the umbrella of modern knowledge;education is no longer based on Plato's'remembering',but also on the acquisition and modification of actual experience. The claim of children as a classical natural existence was replaced by the view of children as a modern psychological sense.It leads to a change of the aim of modern education to efficiency and technology and children are regarded as the subject of the efficiency.Contemporary education lies in an entire realization of the orientation to life,in the maintaining of the transcendence of education over life,and in the preserving of some necessary enigma in the process of education.Thus a balance can be achieved between the realization of the aspiration of modern education for efficiency and the guard against the loss of ethical concerns of education in itself to facilitate cultivation of individuals with a sound mind in a sound body.