Teachers Awakening

Who is the teacher? It is a question which seems to be unnecessary to be asked, for there is already a quite consentaneous answer, that is, teacher is the one with both high knowledge and moral integrity. However, these questions — who the teacher is, what the high knowledge is and what the moral integrity is are often reasked under the specific social and historical circumstance and from both the macroscopical view of social development and the microcosmic view of the relationship between the teacher and the students in the course of education. The discussion on these questions helps to justify the expectation of the social public towards the responsibility the teacher shoulders and the function he/she exert, and the further introspection on them also helps the teacher to accurately define the scope and depth of his/her influence on students which determines its approach as well.In Chinese feudalist society, teachers were regarded as the embodiment of morality and courtesy, who represented the governing class and performed as the model of moral standard of the ruling class. After the foundation of new China, the teachers were expected to play the similar roles in the society by all the social fields due to the tremendous influence of traditional cultural psychology. Thus, the teachers themselves are still vague about, or even lack of the positive to know about their citizenship entitled by the ConstitutionHowever, since 1980's, the society of China has been facing a greatest reform with the economic system transforming from the central government-dominated economy to the market-oriented economy and thanks to the rapid development of political system, all of which are pushing China to the forestage of political culture of the world.Under this circumstance, all the classes in the society are flowing frequently and the personnel identifications change greatly. It is the high timethat the teachers re-recognized their identifications under this new situation.The paper illustrates the cause of the formation of the holy role of the teachers in feudalist society and its confusion and harmfulness to the students caused by the teachers posed as self-esteemed saints. It argues that the expectation to be the sage formed by the tradition of the feudalist society restrains the self-development of the teachers and obstacles the teaching performance when carrying out educational activities. It is also pointed out in this paper that they are two absolutely different social systems between feudalist society and modern law-governed society. In the latter society, the governors whose power over-dominates the law no longer exist and the main body of a nation is citizen. Hence, if the teachers still stick to the traditional consciousness of being sages, they will be trapped in a moral dilemma and maintain great psychological pressure; furthermore, they will fail to achieve good educational result. As the model of people, the teachers should meet the requirement of the age, study the Constitution and law positively and voluntarily so as to arouse the consciousness of citizenship and conduct as model citizens but the model of the subjects. Being the members of society is by no means the degradation of the teachers but the only approach to achieve self-liberation of them which is the preparatory request by the modern law-governed society and, therefore, is the requisite of the realization of quality-oriented education and the spur of the creativity of the teachers and the students.