Why They Teach

What on earth is the goal of teaching,to teach the learners knowledge or to develop their thinking? This seems to be a question which does not need any further explanation. But the fact is that the teaching materials and their contents are taken for the very goal of teaching while the development of the learners' thinking is "the wasteland of teaching".To get rid of the bad side of the traditional teaching needs a rational attitude towards both knowledge and thinking. The true value of knowledge lies in its process of solving problems. When knowledge is used to solve problems,it is likely to have its role. Although teaching is closely related with knowledge as well as to impart the basic knowledge and skills,its fundamental goal is to instruct the learners to bring their thinking faculty into full play in the process of "applying","appreciating" and "interacting" with knowledge instead of forcing the learners to master large amount of it.Questions as "How do we think?" and "How do we develop our thinking?" have been in the consideration of educators. Herbart advocates that learners develop their thinking in the process of "active learning" and "free imagination",proposes the formula of "understanding-association-system-methodology",and has set up a framework of "scientific thinking". Dewey generalizes "the scientific thinking" as "five phases of thinking":hint-question-hypothesis-inference-hypothesis test. Though they state differently,they have the same idea,which is to "solve problems" with "hypothesis-test".Teaching in approaches of "hypothesis-test" and "problem-solving" require teachers to shift from the traditional monologue teaching to "dialogue teaching". "Dialogue teaching" means that the teacher keeps examining the learner's explanation of questions so as to put the learner in the situation of thinking and seeking solutions. But the problem with these two ideas is that "dialogue" only takes place between the teacher and learners,and the learners have little chance to question but thinking of and answering the questions put forward for them. Therefore,"dialogue teaching" only opens half instead of the whole of the gate to active learning. The real effective way to active learning is to encourage learners to find problems and solutions,to make teaching a process of research and finding. "Teaching for the sake of thinking" also requires learning of knowledge,yet here the learning is to examine critically the knowledge and understand it in the process of problem solving. Knowledge acquirement is one part of the teaching goal,but the ultimate aim is "to teach for the sake of thinking". Knowledge acquirement is for better development of thinking and better problem solving.The finding or exploration model of teaching can be applied to the courses of the traditional subjects as well as some special courses of thinking such as "imaginative artistic education" and "children philosophy". The course of thinking itself is not the ultimate goal. Its goal is to investigate how to cultivate thinking ability effectively and apply these effective experiences to the teaching of the general subjects. The subjectsof literacy and mathematics are much more important in the primary and secondary education in China,different approaches can be applied to train learners' thinking ability in these courses.The prerequisite to teach learners to think is the change of teachers' thinking pattern. Their thinking has to shift from experiential pattern to retrospective thinking and,henceforward,the daily " teaching with retrospective thinking".