The Modern Value Of Moral Education Of Initiatory Textbooks In Song Dynasty

The Confucian culture is the mainstream of Chinese civilization for thousands of years and the traditional ethical and moral education thought is the cultural origin of the modern thought of ethical and moral education. The initiatory textbooks, pursuing the traditional objective of "enlightening and cultivating good virtues" in ancient China, are the carrier and secularization form of traditional ethical and moral education thought. As the peak time of the development of ancient initiatory textbooks, Song Dynasty served as a link between past and future in which many textbooks sprung up like mushrooms based on predecessors’ experience of compiling the initiatory textbooks. With the initiatory textbooks as the carrier, the initiation education in Song Dynasty made a solid foundation for children to acquire knowledge, develop wisdom, behave words and deeds and intensify the idea of morality, which has developed moral idea as a kind of deep-rooted good cultural tradition. Therefore, it is of some theoretical significance to make a deep research on the features of moral education brought by initiatory textbooks in Song Dynasty, analyze its content and methods which are suitable for modern society and take a new look at the modern value of traditional ethical and moral education.This paper contains five parts:The first part is preface, which introduces the reason why the topic is chosen, the definitions of relevant concepts, research overview and research thoughts and methods.The second part which explores the historical origin of the initiatory textbooks in Song Dynasty and briefly describes the types of these textbooks through reading and sorting relevant literatures and documents. Plus, combining the historical background, this part also analyzes the foundation which brought prosperity to the initiatory textbooks in Song Dynasty from different angles.The third part is the core part of the paper, which analyzes the features of moral education brought by initiatory textbooks in Song Dynasty and its value which is suitable for modern society. The key point of analyzing the features of moral education is the contents which align themselves with moral education in the modern time and the feature of compiling the textbooks.The fourth part which discusses the modern value of moral education brought by the initiatory textbooks in Song Dynasty. This part starts with the tendency of current school moral education, advocates the combination of traditional ethical and moral education and modern ethical and moral education by combining those contents and methods of the initiatory textbooks in Song Dynasty which are suitable for modern society and provides enlightenment for modern school moral education in contents and methods.The last part is conclusion, which put emphasis on valuing the good part of traditional ethical and moral education and its modern value. In the meantime, this part points out that the initiatory textbooks in Song Dynasty are historical products which have their historic limitations in which some contents are not suitable for modern moral education. We must abandon those unsuitable parts, avoiding blind worship.