由兴趣通往意志:威廉·詹姆斯的教育思想及其社会理论内涵

From Interest to Will:William James'Educational Thought and Its Meanings for Social Theory

“意志”与“兴趣”在教育界的长期对立衍生出“意志训练说”与“兴趣说”两种教学法,前者使得教学内容与儿童的主观兴趣相断裂,后者则是将兴趣简单等同于感官刺激下的快乐,使得自然冲动和目的混为一谈,二者都意味着学习对象和自我的分离。詹姆斯从“意识流”理论出发,走出了近代哲学的身心二元论,明确好的教育不是压制性的规训,也不是过度使用取悦式的技巧趋乐避苦,根本在于由兴趣导向意志,在行动展开过程中塑造社会性个体,调和了长久以来教育中的兴趣与意志以及个人与社会、自由与纪律等社会理论层面的冲突。兴趣和意志的统一表明,自由不等同于放任自流的状态,还应包括进入社会后个体运用明智的观察判断做出自我选择、自我控制和自我行动的能力。

The long-standing opposition between“will”and“interest”in the educational field led to two pedagogical approaches:the“will-training pedagogy”and the“interest pedagogy”.The former severed the content of instruction from the subjective interests of the child,while the latter simply equated interest with pleasure from sensory stimulation and confused natural impulses with educational purpose;both implied a separation of learning objects from learners themselves.William James stepped out of the mind-body dualism of modern philosophy from the“stream-of-consciousness”theory and made it clear that good education is not repressive discipline or excessive use of pleasurable techniques to avoid pain,but that its fundamentals lie in the interest-oriented will and in the shaping of the social individual in the process of action development,reconciling the conflict between interest and will in education,as well as the conflict between the theoretical dimensions of the society,such as the individual and the society,and freedom and discipline.The unity of interest and will suggests that freedom is not the same as a state of laissez-faire,but includes the ability of the individual to use wise observation and judgment for self-selection,self-control,and self-action when he or she enters society.