A Study On The Liberal Education Of Whitehead

Since the beginning of the modern times, science, technology and rationality have been esteemed unilaterally, so the human being gradually loses the value rationality and the subjectivity. At last, the human being is alienated and loses the liberty. In education, the utilitarian value is pursued, the career training initiated and the relationship of 'controlling' and 'being controlling' between subject and object prevailed. Whitehead deeply reflects the clear-up of the liberty of the human being and the dissimilation of education. And he recognized the human being and their liberty in his philosophy of organism. All his viewpoints are applied into education and the thought of liberal education is formed.Whitehead was very dissatisfied with the state in education in his times. He opposed the outworn and backward education and the inert ideas in education. In his liberal education, he suggested that education should aim at 'making people own the active wisdom'. He designed two kinds of educational modes——the Platonic mode of liberal arts education and the Benedictine mode of professional technology education and they should be interpenetrated together. He held that the rhythm of education including the stage of romance, precision and generalization should be followed. He advocated that education should be regarded as a sort of art.After studying the train of thoughts, theoretical basis and main contents, we can recognize that Whitehead's liberal education has some distinct features: the entity of 'general training' and 'professional education', the unity of 'for the true' and 'for the good', the creativity of education and the transcendence of the value ideal of education.In the educational history, Whitehead's liberal education has made some great contributions. It drove the rise of 'general education' in America during the 1930s and 1940s. And it has provided the constructive postmodernism, which emerged in the second part of the 20^th country, with some valuable ideological resources. Of course, in the view of Marx existentialism, we think that Whitehead's educational ideology...