Derek·Bok's Thought Of University Moral Education

Harvard University,the world's leading university in higher education,has achieved the highest level of moral education in addition to teaching and research.“Harvard came before the United States.” Being the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States,it witnessed and led the evolution of American moral education.In the mid-19 th century,moral education in the United States began to decline,and in the early 1970 s,Derek Bok was appointed president of Harvard and became one of the sponsors of revitalizing moral education in American Universities.For more than 20 years at Harvard University,Bok was committed to reforming and exploring.He also wrote many books and formed his own unique theoretical system of higher education On the construction of moral education in colleges and universities,Bok expounded the relevant ideas in his works,speeches and work reports many times,and carried out many reform measures accordingly.Since the 18 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,the state has emphasized the need to carry out the educational purpose of “building up morality by virtue”,and the establishment of morality “is mainly realized through moral education in colleges and universities in China is still in the stage of exploration andinnovation,and the concept,curriculum and teaching methods of moral education need to be innovated urgently.At the same time,moral education faces more challenges in colleges and universities in the social transition period.Therefore,drawing lessons from the moral education thoughts and practice of Bok will help broaden our thinking in reforming moral education in universities in our country.Using the literature research method,the author combs Bok's classic works and related interviews,lectures,annual reports and other materials.Combined with its reform measures in improving moral education in Harvard University,the author summarizes Bok's moral education theory and practice into four parts: mission theory,methodology,curriculum theory and goal theory.The findings are as the following.Firstly,Bok attaches great importance to the status of moral education in college education,emphasizing that moral education is an important mission of the university,through strengthen moral education to cultivate the sense of responsibility and citizenship of college students,so as to revitalize the United States.This reveals that colleges and universities in China should place considerable value on the cultivation of students' sense of responsibility to undertake the construction of the motherland.Secondly,Bok put forward three ways to implement moral education: the first way is to set up the course of applied ethics,which can guide the students to discuss and think about moral dilemmas,so as to train students' moral reasoning ability.To make it,we should strengthen the training of teachers including improving teachers' reservation of ethical knowledge and the teaching literacy so that they can be able to guide the discussion in a hierarchical and logical way.This enlightens our country to set up moral reasoning courses,focusing on cultivating students' moral reasoning ability rather than transmitting moral concepts.At the same time,it is high time that we should abandon the traditional spoon-feeding indoctrination and advocate the innovation of teaching method.The second way is to create community service opportunities for students.The effective way to change moral concept into moral practice is to learn to think in others' position and care for others in the process of helping others.This tells us that we should set up moreextracurricular practice activities.Moral practice is the final result that we pursuit,while moral cognition is its premise foundation.The third way is to give full play of moral models.It is necessary that the leaders,the teachers and the universities themselves should set a good example for students.Otherwise,the effect of moral courses will be reduced.This enlightens our universities to pay more attention to the morality of teachers and leaders.Thirdly,Bok attaches importance to the cultivation of students' civic consciousness and multicultural consciousness in college and universities.He proposed curriculum system of civic education plan and advocated the construction of multicultural campus.This enlightens our universities in the era of globalization,not only to cultivate students' self-confidence in Chinese excellent culture and to encourage students to participate in public affairs,but also to cultivate students' understanding,respect and tolerance towards different culture and to qualify them with multicultural literacy and abilities.