Fostering Individuals' Life Self-consciousness

In the modern world, man, either as a species or an individual, is always in a muddleheaded or self-considered clear state about his ignorance of his characteristic and his inability of wakening his inner power, and thus he is usually living in a self-satisfying myth. What man differs from other creatures is that he has initiativity. When he has developed to the stage where he has clear self-awareness and self-controlling ability, he can decide his own development purposefully and self-consciously, that is, he has been provided with life self-consciousness, which means a high level of man's spirit. On that level, man can not only communicate with the outer world and has initiativity in practice, but also dominate his own development. A man with life self-consciousness is active no matter he is working in the outside world or constructing his own inner spirit world. However, the cultivation of life self-consciousness is seriously absent in our education practice and education research. In some sense, we teach in order not to teach, and the aim of education should be getting the students to be responsible for the growth.There are different viewpoint about the issue of life self-consciousness. Education theory makes its integrated understanding on the ground of traditional culture, western philosophy, psychology and other related theories and cultural resources.As an education theoretical concept, life self-consciousness can be analyzed in both abstract and concrete constructions. In abstract aspect, it has the characters of intent, relationship and timeliness as its inner construction. The intent character embodied itself in the form of man's intention of active growth, the relationship character in the form of existing, assimilating, exerting and growing in different relations, while the timeliness character shows itself in the form of hoping and working for a better future while he enjoys and devotes to the present life practice, both of which are on the basis of his clear awareness of his future imagination and the possibility to fulfill his plan. Moreover, life self-consciousness has the character of noumenon, which means man has his special way of existence. All the three former characters can be included and integrated in the character of noumenon. In the course of integration, the analysis of life self-consciousness will tend towards the review and reconstruction of man's life and educational practice. As an accelerating power, life self-consciousness has a practical construction which contains several ingredients, such as integration and polarization, adjustment and balance, transformation and creation. The practical connotation of life self-consciousness also means that it is essential to foster and improve children's life self-consciousness in practice.The improvement of life self-consciousness is the responsibility of education in schools. In the period of compulsory education, the main issues should be as follows: 1) paying attention to children's adaption to the change form kindergartens to elementary schools; 2) paying attention to the penetration and transformation of games and learning to get them into the habit of being active in lower grades primary schools; 3) helping students to widen their eyesight and improve their ability of mutual activities among individuals, parties and the society in middle and higher grades in primary schools; and 4) stretching the effects of "the first time" growth experiences to speed up students adolescent growth, awakening their consciousness about their ideals of working and improving their awareness and ability of life self-consciousness in secondary schools.