On The Understanding Of The Curriculum Of Morality In Schools

The efficiency of moral education has been an ancient and everlasting subject constantlypursued by the educationists. During the ancient Greek period, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle conducted their ontological, epistemological and pedagogical pondering of the subject Is virtue knowledge? Can virtue imparted? These are the two important propositions of the "Socratic questions." Socrates, through the metaphysically logical argument, brought the problem of the possibility of moral education into the field of rationality, became a sire figure of the western rational ethnics. In the modern history, the British philosopher Hume expressed his doubt about the rationality of the paradigm of the rational ethnics. In his view, there is no necessary or intrinsic logical relationship between "be" and "should be". The Hume problem which direct the goal of exploration to the dimension of sensibility.In China, the controversy between Menzi's "theory of kind human nature" and Xunzi's "theory of evil human nature" continued without cessation. In the South Song Dynasty, the controversy reached its summit. Lujiuyuan's "respect of one own original virtue" and Zhuxi's " acquisition of virtue by learning" eventually became two schools of moral education: one is the school of "the discover the one own original virtue", which concerns about the " original virtue" of the human-the horizon of the virtue. The method which matches the school is the "the discovery of the one own original virtue" and "casting off the fallacious cover of the virtue" which is characteristic of the "intrinsic cultivation." The other school is "the acquisition of virtue by learning of moral knowledge" represented by Zhuxi, which concerns about the horizon of cognition. The method which matches the school is "knowledge antecedent to action" which is characteristic of "the extrinsic learning." Wang Yangming of the Ming Dynasty evolved the controversy between Lu and Zhu into the problem of "knowledge and action" and advanced a solution to the controversy through the integration of Knowledge and Action." The "Yangming problem" composed of the relationship between "Knowledge and Action" partakes of the orientation of "moral action," concerning about the horizon of moral action in moral education. At present, the scholars have expressed different views on the controversy between the "degressiving " and the "progressiving" of the school moral education as well as the problem of the "casting off of the charms" and "the returning of the charms." Nevertheless, whether the historical unsettled problem in the field of education or the obfuscation in reality involve in directly or indirectly the problem of the efficiency of moral education.Indeed, moral education is a horizon of problems, whose achievement of the efficiency of moral education must be conveyed in the curriculum of morality. Viewed from the horizon oftheory of modern curriculum, the different proposition contained in "the Socratic problem", "the Hume problem" and "the Yangming problem" constitute the three dimensions of moral education in schools: (1) The morality of rationality; (2) The morality of sensibility; (3) The morality of action. Besides the content of the moral curriculum contains the courses of purposes, procedures and evaluation, but rationality of the construction of the moral curriculum is the basic guarantee of the efficiency of the moral education of the school. The argumentation of the rationality of the construction of moral curriculum in school should be theoretically based on philosophy, pedagogy and psychology whereas the understanding theory containing humanism and significance of life can act as reasoning the rationality.The theory of understanding is the core of hermeneutics. In the protracted process of the evolution of the theory, understanding developed from epistemological hermeneutics into a scientific understanding paradigm, developed from methodological hermeneutics into a paradigm of humanistic understanding and developed from ontological hermeneutics into a practical under...