Research On The Faith Education Of Chinese Contemporary College Students

As an eternal and profound topic, faith serves as the basic and essential element to distinguish human beings with other animals. Although the academia has witnessed a fruitful of researches of faith education, the recognition of the importance of faith remains still insufficient. It is a lack of clarification and definition of faith that causes many problems to occur. Such being the case, the requirements for contemporary college students to rectify their faith system to believe in Marxism and implement it are seemingly unpractical. That is why it is necessary that a systemic research on the faith education for contemporary college students be carried out.A summary of the researches on faith and faith education conducted by domestic and overseas scholars demonstrates that there are some demerits related to the findings of faith education for contemporary college students. Firstly, study of meta-faith concepts is inadequate. Secondly, there lacks abundant surveys on the faith conditions of the group of students born in 1990s. Thirdly, as far as the research methodology is concerned, empirical research method is popular, yet there has not seen insightful and authoritative outcomes as expected. Fourthly, the ability to detect problems is not so strong, let alone the solutions to address those problems. Therefore, there exists the necessity to probe into the uncultivated land and the areas where more profound academic studies are needed by taking such an approach as integrating empirical method, comparative method, literature review method, interdisciplinary analysis method as well as the combinative method of history and logic and exploiting theoretical analysis instruments such as Marxism’s Theory of Practice, the Globalization Theory, the Community Theory of Ferdinand Tnnies, the System Theory of Bertalanffy, the Ideology Theory of Mannheim, Fromm’s Theory of Eacaping from Freedom, the Aesthetic Thoughts of Schiller, or Fei Xiaotong’s Differential Mode of Association. By so doing, a comprehensive and systematical analysis of the faith education for college students will be achieved, so will progress be made on the research starting point, progress and conclusion.In the same way that concept is the cognitive basis and starting point for research, the logical and cognitive foundation for the research of faith education for current college students lies in a comprehensive understanding of the concept of "faith". After comparing the paired concepts of faith and ideal, faith and belief, faith and science, faith and religion etc,, it is found that faith belongs to the kind of psychological and spiritual phenomenon that only human beings boast and that it represents the firm faith and unswerving observance for certain outlook on world, life philosophy and value. As the most stable and long-lasting element in what people think and believe, faith manages and controls all the other ideologies. Faith stands for the satisfaction of an individual’s internal need and it signalizes the pursuit of his or her life values. Faith, as the combination of human spirit, will and emotion, serves as the engine and source of mankind’s evolution. Therefore, this dissertation holds that faith is a kind of spiritual activity that certain society, group or class of people impose the impact of what they believe and observe upon others through faith education.Based on the recognition of the nature of faith and faith education, it then comes to the deeper sense of studying faith education for college students, i.e., probing into the status of students’faith and, more importantly, the significance of faith education for college students. The significance can be realized from national, social, college and personal dimensions. At the national level, faith education performs as the safeguard for upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics. At the social level, it is regarded the need for promoting social fairness and justice. At the level of the college, faith education represents the demand for optimizing morals and cultivating talents. Besides, in consideration of the great significance of faith education and its practices, the history of faith education must be made clear and lessons and experience should be drawn from the practices of faith education, so as to apply the theoretical and practical guidance to today’s faith education for each individual student.Considering the history of faith education, there are three phases ever since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, namely, the Socialist Transformation Period (from 1949 to 1956), the Socialist Construction Period (from 1956 to 1978) and the Reform and Opening up Period (from 1978 up to now). Over the three periods, the practices of China’s faith education has acquired great achievements as well as witnessed some lessons and thus accumulating experience for us followers to exploit. The success of it reveals that scientific and comprehensive theories lay the logical foundation, right political orientation serves as the basis, integrative cooperation of all forces forms the primary requirement and practice-driven thought is the key demand for faith education. While, the lessons of it enlightens people to turn binary orientation into multiple one, to teach students in accordance with their personal characteristics, to let shine students’ strengths and avoid their weaknesses, to rectify the spoon-fed way of education but resort to flexible educational means, to formulate benign educational atmosphere and emphasize personality education, to take advantage of the Internet and to enhance students’ ideological realization in today’s faith education. Only by drawing experience and learning lessons from the historical practices, can people hope to make more progress of the contemporary faith education.Contemporary faith education for college students represents such a kind of practice that requires the integrative efforts of both students and teachers. Mr. Fei Xiaotong, the famous sociologist in China, proposed that there were a "differential mode of association" in China’s human relations network, one mode that reflects that social relations possess a self-centered quality just like a stone thrown into the lake with circles spreading out from the center, which inspires us positively in terms of the study of the relations between students and teachers within the current faith education system. That is, college students are the engines that should be prioritized and centered. Just as the stone thrown in the lake is surrounded by circles of ripples, in the faith education system there are also circles, among the primary circle, the closest one to the center, is constructed by college teachers of ideological and political courses who have the most significant impact on faith education for college students; the secondary circle which is formed by universities’ counselors who also imposes important impact; and the radiation circle, more distant from the center, which is made up by all other faculty members in universities and colleges. Although teachers in the radiation circle may not have direct influence upon faith education for college students, they do influence college students in their formulation and practices of faiths and thus making themselves indispensable in the faith education system. Contemporary college students and the three circles are interrelated; moreover, they are impacted also by the external environment and cultural atmosphere. Therefore, to ensure that faith education in our era achieves its expected outcomes, it is also important to optimize the educational environment as well as cultivate benign cultural atmosphere.Then, what should be included in the process of faith education for current college students? It is all about the content system of faith education. Neither is the content system aimless nor is it developing concurrently; the system is radioactive like circles of ripples, with the order of importance descending from the center, and thus formulating the core and key content. Faith education also has its own spiritual content, different from the education of religion. Besides, faith education boasts educational objectives and ends. This dissertation believes that the core content of faith education for college students is the establishment of Marxism Faith View; the key content is the common ideal of socialism; the spiritual content is the socialist’s value system, say, the Chinese’ national spirit (with patriotism being the core) and time spirit (with reform and innovation being the core); and that the end is the cultivation and implementation of socialist’s core value. The aim of constructing the content system lies in that there is something to be resorted to by faith education, some standard to be followed and common consensus to be reached. It also lies in that the objects of faith education, namely, the students, have an orientation so that they can learn about faith from many aspects. Then, how can college students acquire the above mentioned content in the process of faith education? Firstly, the channels for faith education should be multiplied to incorporate not only traditional education but also some new channels like the Internet or other emerging media. By introducing the mode that allows the society, college and family to impose some impacts, the theoretical saturation of faith education will be increasingly strengthened for college students. Secondly, the methods for faith education should be innovated by means of self-learning of college students, mentors’ guidance, moral affective instruction or psychological consultation etc. so that students can implant Marxism into themselves. Thirdly, the mechanism of scientific faith education system should be optimized via strong institutional guarantee so that college students can receive scientific and systemized faith education and can further their realization and practice of scientific faith standing at the heart of socialist’s core values.In a nutshell, there are some negative trends in the studies of faith education for college students and are also recommended solutions to address the negative trends. In terms of the negative trends, one is the tendency of diversification, secularization and vulgarization, the other is the tendency of exclusive faith in Marxism. Since the two trends are extremely harmful for the faith education for college students in our era, emphasis should be allotted to theoretical and practical researches. Then, this dissertation proposes the following recommendations. Firstly, the Marxism faith view should be renewed; secondly, the diversification of faith education should be realized; thirdly, the multi-layer system of faith education should be set up; fourthly, the methods and content of faith education should be constantly innovated. By so doing, the negative trends will be alleviated and rectified. What’s more, the Marxism faith will be implanted into the heart of college students; scientific faith view, formulated; and confidence in the Chinese Path, the Chinese Theory, the Chinese System, the Chinese Culture, firmly established. As a result, contemporary college students will be the qualified followers of Marxism and excellent successors for socialist’s cause.