Restore My Nature:Study On The Educational Thoughts Of Ma Yifu

MA Yifu is one of the representatives of modern Confucianism and has made outstanding contributions in the fields of Confucian classics studies,Buddhist Studies,arts as well as education.His theory and practice of "restoration of humanity" is unique in modern educational history and his theory of education through the Six Classics is self-contained,which actively explores the approaches and methods of transforming individuals,strives to reconstruct relationship between man and nature and between self and others.By doing this,MA responds to the problem of distortion and transmutation of human nature in a forceful way,and thus constructs his own pedagogy of "restoration of humanity" with rich traditional traits.This paper,by combining history and logic,attempts to study MA educational thoughts systematically from the perspective of ideological history.The enormous change in modern history was unprecedented in the past three thousand years,which forced the intellectual elites to re-examine the traditional Four Disciplines,political systems and Chinese civilization.In order to save the country from being destroyed,people all across the nation were looking for ways toward reform and self-improvement.Intellectual elites such as LIANG Qichao used modern communicative tools to translate foreign academic literature and to promote mass education,which proved to be effective.Western learning flooded into China and caused impact on individual thoughts,family ethics and social ideological trend.Meanwhile,the distorted human nature and strained interpersonal relationships in turn caused alert and reflection among many people.MA Yifu met the demand of age and put forward his educational proposition of "restoration of humanity" against the back ground of east and west,tradition and modernity comparison,which tried to reconstruct the internal world of individuals,interpersonal relationships and human-nature relationships.The philosophical basis of "restoration of humanity and formation of character"is the traditional Chinese doctrine of man are born good and its curriculum basis is Confucius Six Classics.With modifications,MA proposed his own educational philosophy of "humanity restoration" and educational system of six disciplines.The new six disciplines are based on the traditional Six Classics and re-elaborate the educational implication and approaches of the Six Classics,emphasizing its function of "restoring human nature" during the process of individual transformation.Besides,he also adds thoughts of various schools and some Buddhist classics,reinforcing the characteristic of "facing one's own nature upon reading classics" carried by the new six disciplines.The new teaching by six disciplines emphasizes perception and reaction in turn,which can be divided into verbal and nonverbal teaching and extends the connotation of enlightenment of poetry.The educational philosophy of "restoring human nature" is based on the belief that human beings are born good and can thus can be good.It emphasizes that good nature and morality are innate,and therefore it constructs its own autonomous learning theory and two learning approaches,namely humbling oneself to react and experiencing self-contain.It attaches importance to pedagogical tact,on the basis of which the curriculum and teaching theory that accords with truth and age is developed.This theory emphasizes the pedagogical value of curriculum and involvement of passion;highlights the educational aim of subjectivity and nonsubjectivity;reconstructs the relationship between subject and object and between self and other;rejects the fallacious dichotomy;uncovers the perfectly fused feature of the aim of restoring humanity.MA's educational system of humanity restoration is neither the same as modern school educational system nor the western educational ideas,which pursues the wholeness and richness of humanity but at the same time sticks to conceited shortcomings.The ideas of western educational systems tend to focuses on pure forms but not reality;its eagerness to pursuit ideal education is so strong that it causes overload on students,which violates the rule of self-consciousness and self-justification.Philosophy of humanity restoration meets the debate on Way and Objects in modern intellectual history and attaches great importance to the construction of human nature.Meanwhile,it also proposes new pattern of human-nature relationship and worldviews,which can be considered as a response to the idea of cosmopolitan in modern intellectual history and reserves a cosmopolitan perspective for the renaissance of traditional Chinese culture.According to the educational system of humanity restoration,a man's cultural identity is a fully cosmopolitanized man.This is a challenge with which both China and the rest of the world need to be faced.