From The Lofty Bottom Line—the Context And Problems Of Our Teacher's Morality In The Past Forty Years

In modern time, people always want to structure out a system of teacher' morality combined the bottom-line nature with the sublime nature to solve teacher's moral issues, such as the moral anomie, the teacher's oppression and the teacher's banality. However, what we should do actually is to clarify the history of teacher's moral issues and restore the sublime and the bottom-line morality of teacher as their real state and the relationship between them by a historical perspective.This article reviewed the ideas of teacher's morality during the nearly forty years in china by hackling,summarizing, analyzing the history of society, the historical document of teacher's morality and the ethical and political philosophy theories. Generally speaking, during the nearly forty years of china, the idea of teacher's morality has been changed from the sublime ( 1967-1984) to the high standard (1985-1992)then to the bottom-line (after 1992) . Therefore, this article is divided into three parts mainly except the instruction and the unfinished comments.In the first part, this article reviewed the idea of teacher' morality in the late seventies and the eighties in China. By hackling the documents of teacher's morality and the teacher's moral norms, this article found the recognition of teacher's sublimity came from its identity as a model, but the content of teacher's sublime morality which came from its identity as people's teacher was filled with the people's ethics. Meanwhile, by tracing the source of teacher's devotion and love requirement, this article found both of the two requirement were based on the people' ethics.In the second part, this article reviewed the idea of teacher's morality in the late eighties in China. And this article found the idea of teacher's morality had a shift from the sublime to the high standard by analyzing the research and the related norms of teacher's ethics in that period. The researchers confused the ideal nature and the bottom-line nature of teacher's morality, which led to the sublime teacher's morality into a high standard of teacher's morality under the social background of Culture Craze in China. Meanwhile, this article also found the universal ideal-oriented in the teacher's moral norms led to the the teacher's oppression by analyzing the nature and content of these norms.In the third part, this article reviewed the idea of teacher's morality after 1992 in China. By focusing on the discussion of the "Humanistic Spirit" in the early nineties of China, this article found the Chinese society began to show a clear shift to "avoid the sublime". This fundamental shift of idea didn't only mean the rejection of one common ideal, but also meant the invert of the value relationship between sublime and ridiculous. And corresponding to this, a bottom-line idea of teacher's morality, which considered the teacher(in the sense of profession) shouldn't and needn't to be sublime,also appeared in the teacher's moral area.Furthermore, by deep analysis, this article found the basis of the bottom-line idea was actually derived from the principles of Liberalism, such as the dichotomy principle of public and private , professional career and personal life. Although the dichotomy between public and private solved the problem of teacher's oppression,it also caused much issues.And in the end, this article found the bottom-line morality of teacher must suspend the sublime nature of teacher's morality by comparing the bottom-line idea of morality to the related ideas of Liberalism, if the bottom-line morality wants to realize its function which means the logical priority to sublime morality.But this approach also dispelled the sublime nature of morality. On the other hand, if the bottom-line morality of teacher adds a sublime dimension,it would become a kind of teacher's moral system that contained one ultimate good. Therefore, the bottom-line nature and the sublime nature of teacher's morality can not be combined easily as people think. To realize the logical priority, the bottom-line morality of teacher must suspend and reject every ultimate good, which may makes itself to be compatible with a variety of ultimate goods, but it also implies the deconstruction of the sublime morality actually.