Confucius Reexamination Of The Aims Of Education,

Confucius was a great educator, and his thoughts on education have been playing a profound role on Chinese history. For his educational objective, most scholars agree that it had been developing a " gentleman " , but for the " gentleman " , they lean to emphasize his moral impact. I am trying to re-examine Confucius' educational objective from analyzing the XueEr Chapter of the Analects of Confucius, and make the conclusion that Confucius' educational objective is to train his student to become a gentleman " . who has knowledge, ability, morality and leadership position.Confucius' educational objective succeeded and developed the educational objectives Of Xia Dynasty, Shang Dynasty and Zhou Dynasty . And their school education systems were " official study " . The main targets were for the children of the aristocracies and the contents were mainly " Six Arts " and ethics which were closely related to the political activities, so their educational objectives were to develop students' political talents and make them to be officials.Confucius' educational objective serviced to his political ideals. During Spring and Autumn Period, the social was unrest and it need to unite and become stability again. Confucius who thought he succeed to the fate to accomplish the object traveled around the world to promote his own political theories to many kings in order to achieve his political ideals. He had also been a series of officials, it can be said that Confucius would like to achieve his own political ideals through these, which was to re-create a new millenarianism. However, he failed to achieve his own political ideals so he had to concentrate his great efforts to culture and education. He taught his disciples, and of course, very much hoped that them be able to finish his unfinished business. His educational objective was clear and simple, which was training his disciples to be officials at all levels He hoped them to achieve his own political idealsConfucius founded a private school, and the biggest difference from the " official study " lied in the expansion of the education targets. Confucius' disciples, mainly corned from the decline aristocracy' s families. The status of their social position made their main purposes of learning from Confucius was to regain the social status of aristocrats which they had lost in the era of social revolution. Confucius disciples' political experiences had also proved this point.Confucius' educational objective had also made far-reaching consequences to the following dynasty' s educational objective. Educational objectives of the Qin Dynasty, Han Dynasty and Sui and Tang Dynasties and the following dynasties were to train officials .So the impact of Confucius' educational objective was obvious.Today, education has become a universal education for all the people and the educational objective is to improve the whole nation' s scientific and cultural qualities. Although the educational objective is no longer to train officials specially, but Confucius' educational objective is still an important reference for our officials training education. Now we have Party schools, Administration Institutes and Socialist Colleges to train our leading officials at all levels. Leading officials at all levels have been trained in the Officials Training schools and before they enter the schools they have been in various leadership positions, they accept the training and education, so they should leave no stone unturned to increase their knowledge, abilities and morality and so on and become the officials who both have abilities and political integrities in order to serve the people better.