The Research On Educational Objective Of Universities For The Aged In China In The Initial Period Of The 21^st Century

Universities for the Aged(UA) is a new type of adult higher education, which rose inthe early days of 1980s in China. The People's Republic of China Guarantee Law of theSenior Citizens' Rights and Interests, promulgated by National People's Congresscommittee in August 1996, Stipulates: "The senior citizens have the right of continuing tobe educated. Our nation develops the aged education, and encourages our society to manageall kinds of the aged schools well." Since then, the legal position of the aged schools hasbeen acknowledged. However, because the history of UA in China is very short, the agededucation was originated first on practice without any theory's guidance. As we know,scientific theory has a great effect on practice. Then it is necessary for us to study anddiscuss the questions about the aged education, mostly about UA in theory. The subject ofthis paper is educational objective which plays a leading role in running and developing UA.Being concerned in questions such as what kind of senior citizens we should train, and whatkind of social needs the senior citizens should fit in with, so educational objectives of UA isa core problem in educational thoughts. The initial period of the 21st century is flood tide ofpopulation structure's aging, and is also the key time of developing UA. Therefore, it is animportant subject that scientifically establishing educational objective of UA. Firstly, the paper uses the questionnaire to investigate the education actuality of UA inChina, which includes four aspects, namely, students' basic circumstances, study intention& study content, teaching quality, and expectation for UA's development. Afterwards, thepaper analyzes the existing questions of courses setting and teaching quality which lead tothe result that UA's educational objective is vague and restrained, and points out theproblems in UA's educational objective, in knowledge, it is mistaken; in practice, it is easyto apply mechanically other education type's educational objective. According as the foregoing statements, the paper probes into the practical andtheoretic conditions which can be used as the bases to establish educational objective of UAin the initial period of the 21st century. In praxis, on the one hand, the paper analyzes threerelations between the social development of the initial period of the 21st century and theuniversity's educational objective, for example, high-tech knowledge economy and theuniversity's educational objective, market economy and the university's educationalobjective, and modernization build and the university's educational objective. On the other IIhand, the paper analyzes the new challenges and requirements for UA's educationalobjective according to the population aging characteristics of the initial period of the 21stcentury and demands of UA's development. In theory, the paper reviews forepassededucational objectives in order to obtain some suggestions, and then summarizes UA's threeeducation characteristics, for instance, width, interest, and lifelong. Based on the above study, the paper considers that UA's educational objective iscultivating knowledge senior citizens with body and mind health who can adapt to society.Therefore,the paper puts emphases on discussing the targets and standards that moraleducation, aesthetic education, intellectual education and physical education should reach.In the end, the paper makes four suggestions to realize UA's education objective, namely,attaching importance to human social science education, creating favorable schoolenvironments, enhancing UA's teaching quality, and optimizing UA's courses setting.