A Study On The College Humanities Education Restrained By Discipline

It has been some time since importance was attached to college humanities education in the education theory field in China. Viewed historically, since normal college recruitment was restored in 1977, college students have been devouring the nectar of science and culture as the dry ground absorbs rains after a long drought. "With a good command of mathematics, physics and chemistry only, one would fear nothing while traveling around the world" is becoming a predominant assumption in society. "Overestimating science but overlooking liberal arts" has become a social abnormality. What's worse, in reality, college students' misbehavior in morality and poorness in cultural quality have become more and more prominent. Since the 1990s, scholars have conducted studies from different angles on what a college should be, the importance of college humanities education, and the quality education of humanities, and so on, expecting that with the problems with college humanity education being sorted out, Chinese college humanity education would be restrengthened, the lost humanism regained, and spiritual paradise reconstructed. Among other questions, some agreements have been seemingly reached among scholars: the decay of college humanities education results from the exclusive occupation with science education that results from the development of science and technology; we must strengthen college students' cultural quality education, especially learning traditional culture, enhance colleges students' humanity cultivation and humanism; only by combining science education and humanity education can there be a way out for college humanity education; only by holding humanity as the scientific guide can we human beings get the lost humanism back, and forth. However, on the one hand, reviewing the documents ever studied, there are not enough theoretic studies concerning college humanity education either in the logical development of colleges or the changes under the modern discipline system. On the other hand, it seems far off the best from the effects of college humanity education was carried into execution. By inspecting the development of college humanity education from a new angle of view, some useful enlightenment might be acquired. "Discipline", a concept in western knowledge sociology that developed from various subjects, formed into a rather mature discipline system through the efforts of M. Foucault, Immanuel Wallerstein, Keith W. Hoskin and David R. Shunway. "Discipline" is a principle employed to categorize a knowledge system, a system of knowledge production, a kind of educational training system, including the training instruments, ways and estimate standards, and a practical educational activity that is established on the basis of a modern knowledge categorizing system. There is a kind of interaction relationship between discipline and knowledge production, disciplinary development: discipline promotes knowledge production and disciplinary development, knowledge production and disciplinary development , in turn, impulse the systemization and refinement of discipline, and the systemization and refinement of discipline will result in being restricted and defiladed of metaphysical parts of disciplinary. Taking discipline as an angle of view, we can have a glimpse of the historical process of evolution of Chinese college humanities education by reviewing how Chinese classical humanities education has evolved into a modern humanities education, and also we can see clearly how humanities of college humanities education were restricted and defiladed by discipline. Both in China and the west, classical humanities knowledge involves the knowledge of natural science. Ancient science was on the margin of the world of knowledge, mainly subject to religious and philosophic cultures, and not having achieved independence. With the systemization of science and discipline, science started to advance forward from its standstill and backwardness in development. On the one hand, science separated from the humanities and became an independent knowledge system as a counterpart of them; on the other hand, with the development and mutuality of discipline techniques, humanities knowledge have evolved into a pure knowledge system. Because of the restraints of their disciplines, the metaphysical and the material parts of human culture separated. In college humanities education, as more attention is paid on the material part, humanity culture is initiated as a "physical tool", and humanism, morality and life experience, which are related to the spirit, are overlooked by discipline. From Confucius' enrolling students, to the colleges of Ming and Qing Dynasty, the ideal Chinese classical humanities education was meant for moral enlightenment and personal cultivation. With morality as its first task and personal cultivation the main one, Chinese classical humanities education aimed to cultivate administrators who obtained their official positions through feudal examinations and practiced the doctrine of being a saint inward and emperor outward. After the introduction of western academia into China, systematic learning transformation and the establishment of colleges, the classical humanities education went through a academic transformation and then embraced its development of subjects. Especially, with the influence of discipline on it, Chinese classical humanities education has experienced a process of evolution: from the "study of Si Bu" to the "study of seven disciplines", from scholar-officials and man of honor to professional clerisy, from the moral education to the disciplinary knowledge, and so on.The emphasis on humanity cultivation, morality, ideal personality and the doctrine of being a saint inward and emperor outward in the classic humanities education has shifted to knowledge accumulation, scientific research methods, and subject models, which has led to the deprivation of humanism and morality in the classical humanities education. In other words,Chinese college humanities education, after going through a transformation from the ideal traditional classical model, has gradually followed a scientific development route in the process of educational discipline practice. The history of the evolution of Chinese college humanities education indicates that modern college humanities education, excluded and restrained by discipline, has great difficulty in taking on the heavy responsibility of molding ideal morality and personality, and popularizing humanism. Humanities education is a kind of moral practice, it is to enlighten the human relations, tend to the sovereign good, and then improve the life bourn by moral practice. In fact, the humanity spirit carried forward by humanities education, is also the ethic with human nature as its core. Under modern discipline, the metaphysical parts of humanity culture carried by humanities education was restricted, the practical character of humanity knowledge, humanities education were defiladed. Humanities education of ideal traditional classical model we are calling can not show itself in colleges. College humanities education nowadays, has not broken through the humanities knowledge education with discipline as its model, it is just delivering liberal arts knowledge under modern disciplinary system. So we must return to the practical character of humanities knowledge and humanities education, return to the practice-based education, only in this way can we make up lessons of college humanities education. Facing with the difficulties of college humanities education, only when college humanities education enters a period of post-scientific development, restraints of discipline on humanities education are lifted, and humanities education full of life experience is restored, can college humanities education regain its past glory.