Studies On Realistic Educational Thought During The 17～(th) Century In Europe

The 17^th century was a turning period in Europe. The rapid development of technology and philosophy brought an entire look to the educational thought. In the history of education, we name it the realistic educational thought, which bourgeoned in the 15^th and 16^th century, sprang up in the 17^th, and influenced the educational thought in the next two century.The realistic educational thought has a deep connotation. It has close relationship with humanistic education, new religious education and vocational and technical education in early days. Its essence embodies three points, that is, the educational aim tends to realism, the means of education tends to science and the content of education tends to practicality. On the one hand, it brings natural science knowledge into school education, which makes the content of curriculum broader and the teaching method rational, on the other hand, it strongly advocates popularizing the teaching of mother tongue, so the practicability of language learning is emphasized here. All these are the efforts the realistic educational thought made in the history of education. Therefore, in education, what the realistic educational thought seeks for is the all-round reform of school, which opens to people of all class.The paper is divided into three parts. Part One is about the background of the realistic educational thought. The profound impact of the rising of modern science and philosophy on the educational opinion and the teaching method is analyzed here.Part Two probes into three expressional forms of the realistic educational thought, namely, humanistic realism, social realism and sense realism.In the third part, I made some estimations on realistic educational thought by analyzing its effect, both in theory and practice.