The Soul Of Education: Guiding Individual In Search Of Self

The life of Andersen is like a seed, which falls into the barren rubble and has trouble accessing sunshine and rain, but he still stubbornly grows up and tries to move closer to his dreams. Just at the age of fourteen, he is like “started to wander the world on his own just like the hero in all the stories.” Later on, he gradually becomes the true “Andersen” through his indefatigable efforts and under the influence of surrounding environment.Firstly this thesis sorts out the course of Andersen’s life based on the different time nodes of childhood, adolescence, youth and agedness, and tries to objectively present the actual encounter and life characteristics of Andersen at each stage without improper speculation and over-interpretation. Next, reflection is made on the actual life course of Andersen to explore how he pursues his own life and find out his self-characteristics at different life stage: self-consciousness begins to be developed during the childhood period, which is driven in large part by others’ attitudes and remarks; the self-consciousness at the stage of adolescence is featured by the gradual emergence of an ideal self, who tries to search for something beyond the actual trivial world; during the youth period, the self-belief becomes more determined, instead of allowing self-pursuit to disappear in fantasy; the true aspect of self gradually emerges during the old age, where the pursuit and grasp of the true self is realized. There are two critical transformations at the four stages, with the first one being the transformation from “you should” to “I want” and the second from “I want” to “I am”.Andersen is a master of fairy tales, but he is also a common person like all mortal beings. As a diligent genius, a poor dreamer, an outstanding thinker, and a persistent pursuer, he also adores honor, pursues money and reputation, dreams of love, and yearns for getting to Heaven. He is a real, lively, fresh and touchable person, just like anyone of us. This paper starts with the real Andersen to explore how a common person becomes himself and what forces help Andersen become a master of fairy tales. These forces may also help every common individual to pursue the true self. The final part of this paper is about the inspiration of the growing process of Andersen, which searches for the meaning of self-pursuit to education and illustrates the education pathway to help individual find out and display their own growing strength.In summary, this thesis attempts to explore some secrets of the life development through the growing experience of Andersen and make education help individual release their power and awake to their self-consciousness, instead of making education become a fetter on the way to their growth.