Public Reason And Contemporary School Moral Education,

Communication and understanding are the basis and important ways of establishing a modern social moral. The principles and spirit contained in public reason are the best embodiment of communication and understanding. Public reason is the rational use in the public domain by citizen of the public. Public reason which concerns about the theme of the public interest is based on individual. It is a rational and moral capacity of citizen.Political democratization, economic market and the value of diversity call for a public rational education in moral education, and attach great importance to cultivate public rational spirit of students. In democratic society, in addition to representing their own class interests, political parties must go beyond the limitations of their own, expressing public interests and public opinion, allowing citizens to participate in certain political activities actively and effectively. But political parties also need to seek a balance between the various viewpoints, and restrict different political views and conflict of interest greatly in order to establish the stable social order. To achieve these goals, the ruling party needs to uphold public rational criteria. Market economy has open and free features, and obeys the principle of equivalence exchange, which helps the formation of public reason. However, market economy has its own weaknesses. The free development of the market economy can bring imbalance. It is necessary to use public reason to regulate the good function of market economy.Diversification of values gives challenges to the traditional system of values and moral education. Modern social doesn't depend on a shared moral values and ideals any longer. The crisis on the content and method of moral education made some people no longer trust any moral. The conflict of interests between people increases.The controversial parties stand at their respective positions and no one can persuade others. Social moral needs to reach a consensus urgently, and the public reason provides new ideas for it.The important value of public reason makes schools start civic moral and public reason education. Students will become the citizens in future. They will participate in public life and cooperate with others to reach a consensus. Schools should re-assume their responsibilities to start moral education under the guidance of public reason. So far, China's civil society is not yet ripe for the development of public reason because of the economic, ethical and political factors. The author put forward the purpose of this study. The purpose is to study that public reason is important to moral education. In the process of start public rational education in schools, we should follow some educational principles, such as a principle of openness, practical principles and the principle of comprehensiveness. At the same time, we should emphasize to upgrade students' awareness on participation in public affairs and train their public rational thinking abilities through equal and open form of education. In view of moral obstacles which may be encountered by the development of public reason, at the end of this paper, author also mentioned some security measures that are the law supervision and institution-building on school moral education.At present, China's research in the field is lack of systematic research which is in the perspective of moral education. In this paper, the author uses the method of historical retrospective, and tries to collect first-hand information. This study will help promote the development of China's research in the field, and help grasp the relationship between public reason and moral education from the macro, and help provide some ideas on moral education for various schools.