Research On Spenser’s Moral Theory And Its Implications

Children are the future and hope of the nation. The healthy growth of thechildren affects hundreds of millions families, the harmony and stability of thesociety. Moral education plays an important role in the education to the children.Since the reform and opening up, China has made significant progress in the moraleducation of children. Of course there are some flaws, Which defects the actualeffect of moral education of children. The famous British educator Herbert Spencer’seducation thought is complete, in which he thought a complete education systemshould include moral education, intellectual education and physical education.Especially his thought of moral education is very rich, including aim, task, principleand approach and so on. The “natural consequences” insists that educators should letchildren experience the natural consequences caused by their own behavior.According to the response to moral education of children, educators select the bestmethods. This method which is adaptive to the children’s psychologicalcharacteristics is an effective approach to moral education of children and has aunique value of moral education of children. On the basis of “naturalconsequences”, he made some specific principles and basic approaches for theimprovement of moral education of children, which have great significance.This paper adopts the method of literature consultation and the method ofinterdisciplinary theoretical reference. First of all, the writer selects a large numberof domestic and foreign references about Spencer and his works especially histhought of moral education of children; secondly, associating the reality about moraleducation to children in our country with the Spencer’s thought of moral education,the writer gives many methods to facilitate the improvement of moral education ofchildren. There are three aspects in this paper: first, the main contents of Spencer’sthought of moral education; second, the characteristics and limitations of Spencer’sthought of moral education; third, we can facilitate the improvement of moraleducation of children by the methods derive from Spencer’s thought of moraleducation.