An Introduction To Cultural Learning

"How to promote students'learning"is one of the essential questions in education. Along with the exchange between education and society, this question has already expanded to"how to promote human's learning". To give a systematic answer, we must discuss the question based on a full understanding of learning. Researches on learning have already been done gradually in the perspectives of brain science, psychology, anthropology and philosophy. However, previous researches focused more on static investigation but less on becoming thinking, emphasized the single viewing but lacked the holistic approach, and stressed the scientific method but neglected the axiological way. From the perspective of cultural philosophy, the re- search of learning can"see"what previous researches"have not seen", and expand and deepen people's understanding of learning. The learning research in the perspective of cultural philosophy, based on four approaches such as"analyzing the relationship between people and culture""taking the diachronic consciousness""insisting on the holistic orientation"and"giving prominence to the value knowing", concentrates on the philosophical pondering of learning culture, and comes up with a new learning formation, namely cultural learning.First, this dissertation explores the nature of learning from the relationship between human and culture. The becoming of human requests human to integrate with culture on account of compensation and development, changes human from the living beings to beings in reality and further to beings in ideals. The being-for-people of culture also requires an integration of human with culture so as to enable culture to give human the abundant external tool system and strong internal meaning. The two factors, human and culture, trends the other from oneself, and requires an"integration"in- trinsically. And the learning is"original foundation""intermediary of communica- tion"and"factor of restriction"of integration between human and culture. In this sense, leaning is the noumenon of integration of human with culture. Cultural learning is highlighted exactly in the related field of human and culture. The denomination of cultural learning shows that the basic direction of learning is to pursue an integration of human with culture. At the same time, it also strongly appeals that it should take learning as the noumenon in this kind of education which is to take the promotion of human integration with culture as the essential function or take"the forming of human"as the ultimate aim.Second, this dissertation expounds the transformation of learning from diachronic dimension. In the primitive society, the learners who were learning from life, the learning content and the learning modes constituted the learning-in-life formation. Human and culture can integrate limitedly. On the basis of the primitive formation, there appeared the formation of learning-at-school that had been the main formation gradually. The learning formation has limitedly integrated the privileged learning subjects, limitative learning content and prescriptive learning methods. Cultural learning which has common earners, overall learning content and diverse learning modes, enables all individuals to carry out the"limitless"integration in various ways in their life and all-direction living spaces, and then make individual life optimized"limitlessly"through the integration with culture. Cultural learning neither leads to the learning-at-school rejection of the learning-in-life nor causes the learning-in-life overturning of the learning-at-school. Its aim is to enables them to renew themselves and develop coordinately. It tries hard to break the state of"being self-existent"of learning-in-life and make it self-conscious, also tries hard to ameliorate learning- at-school and make it more effective, still tries hard to make the two types permeate and integrate mutually, and enrich the learning mode and promote learning effective- ness through a variety of middle types between high structural learning-at-school and high nonstructural learning-in-life, at last makes learning become a main way to im- prove human's life and their activity.Third, this dissertation analyzes the structure of learning from synchronic dimen- sion. In the past most learning theories mainly focused on the cognitive dimension, the emotional dimension or social dimension. They treated learning as only cognitive process, psychodynamic process or social interactive processes. In the recent years, researchers have started to pay attention to the mutual communication of cognition and emotion; they elaborated the emotional source of knowing, the emotion-loaded in cognitive process, the physiological mechanism of interaction between emotion and cognition, etc. They also started to pay attention to the integration of individual acquisition of learning and the social interaction in learning; they pointed out that a certain amount of learning took place beyond the confines of the individual mind and appears to involve social aspects, and they tried to integrate the"individual acquisition"and"social participation"with"situated cognition", or try to make plural metaphors of"acquisition-participation"contain acquisition metaphor and partici- pation metaphor. Some researchers even have suggested that we should treat learning as the holistic orientation. Cultural learning surmounts the theory which thinks that learning is only enables learners to acquire individually the knowledge and ability based on cognitive and emotional factors, and mainly construct identity with social interaction. Furthermore, cultural learning considers holistically that learning is a process in which the learner utilizes the cognitive, emotional and social factors to interact with the culture, acquire knowledge, ability and value carried by culture, and then contribute to the process of self development and renewal by continuous reflection. The interaction, acquisition, reflection and the cognitive, emotional, social factors exist in the process of integration of human with culture by a variety of actual pattern, which makes cultural learning become a dynamic structure which is filled with different opportunities and potential for learners'life fulfillment.Fourth, this dissertation studies the value of learning from axiological dimension. Generally, the value of learning contains three dimensions: the truth, the good and the beauty. In ancient China, the ethics culture is the predominant cultural pattern. The value orientation and aim of education, learning content and the treatment of the relationship between knowledge and virtues are influenced intensively by ethic culture, which rules that the value of learning must be predominant by the good. By the end of 19th century, scientific culture has reformed, criticized, deconstructured and even refused the ethic culture that was dominated by Confucian culture. As scientific culture was embedded, rooted, gradually became stronger and played a more and more important role, the value of"the truth"has been taken on stage and taken the predominant place. But the value of the learning should not be one-sided. The learning, which would be monopolized by ethic training because the value of the good was absolute, means that human is controlled by ethic without limit; the learning, which would be controlled by the aim of knowing because the value of the truth was absolute, means that human is controlled by rationality without limit; the learning, which would be operated by the mind of personal experience because the value of beauty was absolute, means that human's feeling is flowing wildly without limit. The cultural learning has broken through the value of one-sided trend such as only establishing the good with integrating ethic culture, only purchasing the truth by integrating scientific culture and so on. Its tendency is to realize all-sided integration of learners with the holistic culture which contains"the truth""the good""the beauty", and then arrives in a free realm by way of"exploring the truth""establishing the good"and"experiencing the beauty".Cultural learning is a new formation of learning, which enables learners to utilize holistic force of learning life to pursue limitless integration with culture, and which helps learners to get an access to freedom with the media of culture. To realize cultural learning, we should change the idea, the method and the practice, that is, we should keep constantly expounding specific content of culture learning, deeply research the related themes, and effectively fulfill the multi-way pursuit of cultural learning.