Friendship: Voice From Moral Integrity

Friendship is a kind of good moral quality of an individual and at the same time a fundamental quality for acquiring other moral qualities in social interacts. Friendship consists in the extensive interaction and emotional attitude between human beings and between human and nature. For a long period of time, the one-sidedness existed in our education system and the lack of friendship education have resulted in the absence of friendly quality in children. This thesis deals mainly with the mutual care and love between one another. Friendship education is the education cultivating the friendly moral quality of an individual. This thesis proposes friendship education for children in light of the needs of promoting the cultivation of good virtues in children and their social development as well as their ability to participate in modern social life. We holds that friendship education is the education to develop the quality of friendship of individuals. Friendship education, on the basis of children's social life, focuses on the needs of children in their growth and their life experience places great emphasis on the active participation of children so as to extend and elevate their experience, enrich their friendly emotions, foster their spirit of cooperation, and promote the healthy development of their personality.Starting from summing up the implication of friendship and friendship education and through analyzing the necessity of friendship education, this thesis investigates the basic principles of friendship education and probes into how to solve the existing problems in current friendship education according to these principles.This thesis is composed of four parts.Introduction: Friendship is the basic virtue of children.Part I Friendship and Friendship Education This thesis explains the meaning of friendship and friendship education and thinks that friendship consists of four basic elements-care about, responsibility, care-giving, and respect, while friendship educationis, on the basis of the reality of children, to develop their capacity of friendship and cultivate the qualities of caring about others, respecting others and being responsible for others. In line with the requirements of times and the healthy growth of children, friendship education should be included into the perspectives of contemporary education as an important part of humanized education.Part II Basic Structure of the Theory of Friendship EducationThis thesis analyzes, from the perspectives of interact practice, the practice of life, emotional education and humanist psychology, the theoretical basis of friendship education and proposes that friendship education should adopt such basic conceptions as basing on real life, giving priority to children's independent interact, and appealing to the emotion of caring for others, and adhere to the principles of respect, initiation, appropriateness, practice and independence so as to cultivate children's quality of friendship.Part III Basic Strategies of, Approaches to and Methods of Friendship EducationThis thesis holds that we should deepen children's understanding of friendship, exert a favorable influence on children's friendly emotion, enhance children's sensitivity to friendship, and cultivate children's positive and progressive quality of friendship through establishing a friendly outlook of education, encouraging children to associate with one another, creating an atmosphere favorable to the growth of friendship, constructing and utilizing the interpersonal or social circumstances, building an integrating training mechanism to cultivate children's quality of friendship, and developing approaches to friendship education.