Culture And Education

As a relatively independent social phenomenon, education is influenced most by culture among all the other social phenomena which education relies on. Taking the human being as media, Culture and education are connected and have a mutual effect. However, the influence which culture has on education exceeds obviously the function which education reacts to culture. In some sense, culture is the matrix that breeds education. Since 1980s culture has been used to analyze and explain a series of issues such as the modernization of different countries by many scholars in the west and cultural prominent role as forerunner in all the social reforms is confirmed. At the same time, such presupposition value of culture has not drawn due emphasis in contemporary modern transformation of our society and the development of our education and this results in the confusion of modernity culture and the dilemma of education. Aiming at such phenomenon and taking the cultural transformation in the process of modernization as clue in the background of contemporary social modern transformation, this dissertation tries to construct a series of practical education ideas based on cultural philosophy meditation to guide contemporary educational reform in the context of modern cultural transformation by analyzing theoretically and inspecting practically the culture philosophy and education ideas. The further purpose is to return the natural value of education to human being to become rational individual with free personality, and then to realize the social value of education by bettering and speeding up the modernization process of our society. The ultimate goal is to construct a harmonious modern society.The dissertation is composed of seven chapters besides preface and epilogue. These seven chapters can be divided into four sections according to some certain logic.In the preface, the study background together with the reason why to choose this topic and how to organize the writing is introduced. A necessary interpretation to the title is also displayed.The first section includes chapter1 functioning as the basic part of the whole passage. Firstly, this section outlines the relative theories to the study. Human being exists as the media between culture and education in such theories as follows: the relationship between human being and culture studied in special cultural philosophy as a branch of philosophy, cultural anthropology and cultural sociology; or argued by those prominent educationists all over the world from ancient times to modern times. The intention is to display the complex circular relationship among culture, human being and education in order to establish theoretical relation between culture and education and offer methodology support of cultural philosophy to meditate education idea. Secondly, the literature of study is displayed. The current study on the culture and education as well as the relationship between them is reviewed all over the world. This provides a reflecting base and a thinking starting point to the subject. The foreign study literature does not limit to the relationship between culture and education. The study of culture theory itself is also reviewed because it is the necessary theoretical base to the research. The domestic study focuses mainly on the conclusions of educational research in recent years. Based on the above, at the end of this section, the cutting-in point of research is confirmed: taking the relationship between the cultural transformation and educational reaction as clue, the meditation to education idea is undertaken at the level of cultural philosophy.The second section consists of chapter2 only. The history of the cultural transformation and educational reaction both in China and western countries is run back over to provide a theoretical support to the main chapters of the dissertation. Facing such long history as lasting thousands of years, this chapter focuses on some critical periods when culture transformed greatly and education developed accordingly. The details are as follows: From the splendid Pre-Qin culture through the blooming culture of Han &Tang dynasty to the comedown of feudalist culture in Ming & Qing Dynasty in ancient China; from the invasion of western culture at the end of Qing Dynasty to the loss of cultural center in the world; from nature philosophy in Pre-Socrates period to human philosophy during Socrates period, from religious culture in Middle Age to worldly culture in Renaissance, etc. Along with the retrospect to cultural transformation, related education improvement is reviewed to display the transition of education idea in the field of cultural philosophy. Taking the history as mirror, this chapter compares and contrasts respectively the culture, education and human being of the western and of China so as to provide evidence to criticize the untimeliness of our traditional culture as well as reference to the contemporary education ideas.The third section is composed of chapter3 and chapter4. The concepts regarding two levels of the research subject are interpreted elaborately to make a necessary preparation for the main chapters. Chapter3 explores the historical transition characters of contemporary culture in the view of cultural philosophy and provide precondition and base to topic debase. Starting from two influential culture theories, the author meditates the relationship respectively between contemporary culture and traditional culture, modern culture as well as post-modern culture. After this, the author argues the untimeliness of traditional culture and the identity crisis of contemporary culture, the rational dispute of modern culture and the rational deficiency of contemporary. The post-modern cultural false image of contemporary culture is clarified and the logic of educational idea in contemporary culture is raised at the end of this chapter. Viewed from language philosophy, Chapter4 analyzes the different language types in narration of idea to display the special meaning conducted in different diction model and interpret the education idea elaborately based on this methodology. The author points out that the static and dynamic analysis to language may transfer to interpret and understand the immutability and mobility of education essence in daily educational behavior. Based on such analysis and discussion, the chapter brings forth another precondition of topic debase: necessary clarification and confirmation to three important education ideas. They are the ideas of education value, education aim and development of human being.The forth part is made up of chapter5, chapter6vand chapter7. This part is the core of the whole dissertation. Based on the theories and investigation raised above, these three chapters undertake cultural criticizing on the three core education ideas respectively. Chapter5 criticizes the crisis of contemporary cultural deficiency in setting a value model from the view of culture philosophy. The reason why the crisis exists is that the culture as value matrix has lost itself in the transformation of contemporary culture and this results in the confusion of education value idea. Facing this, with the support of cultural philosophy, the author argues that the cultural logic of contemporary educational value idea is supposed to be established on developing the useful and discarding the useless of traditional and foreign culture. In Chapter6 the author reviews the rivalry between the individual-center and the society-center on education aim, and explores the dispute between science and human education aim. A culturally analyzing to such contradiction is made in order to solve the problem. After this, the author points out that the practical education aim should be the reality aim of education, that is to say, taking the human being as the sole education aim. Regarding to the abstract education aim, the author tempts to construct an education aim with practical value after deeply interpreting the connotation of freedom and mind, that is, taking the freedom of human being's mind as education aim. In Chapter7 the development idea of human being is differentiated and analyzed in educational process and the author raises that human being in educational process should be the double subjectivities including both teachers and students. Some problems and phenomena exist in the developing status of teachers and students such as knowledge-center as the sole appraising criteria and narrowly developing in social cognition and ethics. Aiming at this, the author takes Rousseau's naturalism education idea as blueprint to raise and prove that the criteria of human being's development in contemporary should convert to the culture where they exist.Finally, in the epilogue of the dissertation, the cultural reflection is extended to educational developing idea beyond the educational idea in the sense of Ontology. The invisible power of culture outside school determines the educational behaviors inside school in great part. Thus, people have to meditate the theme "culture is the criterion of everything".