On Whitehead’s AIM Of Education And Its Enlightenment

The aim of education is the starting point and the ending point in educational work. Which kind of person the education should cultivate is the main topic among people. Nowadays, the aim of education becomes material, utilitarian and myopic, which makes its meaning of cultivating real person drift away. As a great philosopher and educator in20th century, Whitehead put forward that we should cultivate the talents who have culture and master the specialized knowledge. Specialized knowledge is the foundation of them, and the culture can lead them to a profound position. Whitehead’s aim of education has abundant practical basis and rich theoretical basis. His massive organic philosophy system is one of the most important theoretical sources of his aim of education. He stressed that the world is organic as a whole and attached the intrinsic value of the spirit. So Whitehead’s aim of education highlights the culture as a mental state, making up the narrow limits of specialized knowledge. Therefore, Whitehead’s aim of education brings us a lot of beneficial enlightenment. This research is divided into following four parts:The first part is the introduction, the main contents include:the reason of selected topic, the research status’ review, the main contents of research, research methods and its innovation.The second part summarized the forming background of Whitehead’s aim of education, including the realistic background and the theoretical background, the former includes his growth experience, the critical thoughts of the British educational situation at that time and his thoughts of the time and the society; the latter has five aspects:the first three aspects derive from his organic philosophy system. He criticized the thinking way of entity, emphasizing the link and process; He overcome the binary opposition, realizing the unification and integration; He believed that everything has intrinsic value. The last two aspects derive from his sociological thoughts of the factors in forming a civilized society:People have to improve comprehension in order to satisfy the demand of nature, and they should have transcendent spiritual goals to promote social civilization. The reasons above explain the reason of Whitehead’s aim of education.The third part enumerated and analyzed all the description of Whitehead’s aims of education, then concluded that the core aim of education of Whitehead is that we should cultivate the talents who have culture and master the specialized knowledge, and then analyzing its connotation thoroughly.The last part expounded the beneficial enlightenment of Whitehead’s aim of education, including three points:The implementers should be ambitious, the formulation should increase the attention to the individuality, and the study of the aim of education should go beyond reality.