The Multidimensional Study Of ZhangZai's Educational Thought

Zhang Zai was a famous educator and thinker in the dynasty of Northern Song. His doctrines have great influence on Song Dynasty's educational theory and the development of Song and Ming Dynasties' Neo-Confucian ideology. As a educator, Zhang Zai devoted almost all his life to the seriously lecturing and diligently writing. He concluded a series of educational theories through his long-term teaching practice, and gave us rich heritages of education. He not only inherited the materialist tradition of ancient educational theory, but also enriched the content of classical pedagory. His educational and teaching theories greatly influenced the younger generations, and are still worth our use of reference. Zhang Zai's educational theory began from his philosophical idea Ontology of vitality and derived out the Humanity Dualism, that is, the nature of heaven and earth and the nature of material. What's more, on the basis of his Humanity Dualism, he bulit up his educational aim, and devided it into three levels, i.e. the nature of being a man, pursuing the aim of becoming an eminent person and learning to be a saint. Zhang Zai held various of education opinions, such as his early educational idea, his social educational idea, and his idea of the unity of moral and intelligence. His education theoratical system took advocating courtesy as its code, erudition as its method and saints' books as its teaching material. Meanwhile, he took the method of being a teacher and the way of learning as its concerning target; its features were taking facts seriously and studying for the sake of application. As to the moral education idea, Zhang Zai also had original views. He paid special attention to the resolving education, emphasized the self-education of restraining oneself and following the courtesy and iniciating the practising morality personally way of combining the practising and training together. Zhang Zai described teaching theoty in various aspects and it concentrated on expounding the principle and method of teachers' teaching and students' learning. He considered that teachers should let students do as best they could and teach students according to their abilities, teach at proper time and progress step by step, inspire students to think and arouse their interest, exhaust students' two ends and draw inferences about other cases from one instance. While students should be erudite and learning hard, learn and doubt to master, read more to recite it and combine the reciting and thingking together, review the old knowledge and obtain new, make friends and progress constantly, and so on. This paper intends to evaluate the above ideas of Zhang Zai from different viewpoints in order to dig out the beneficial contents, and build up a platform here to make a clear list of his valuable teaching theories that excal the preceding and are good for present.