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补充材料:
教育的目的及其他
具有自由精神的教育必是尊重个体差异并相信每个人都有发展潜能的教育。每个人的资质不同,发展的方向也会有所差异,如果你的孩子或学生可以成为一块好铁,为什么你一定要逼他去做一块劣质钢呢?
教育的目的
教育应该给人什么?教育的目的——不仅仅是大学教育,而是教育可以一以贯之的目的——是什么呢?如果说,教育的责任是培养人,随之而来的问题是,我们的教育所追求的是培养什么样的人?有多少人,经过了小学、中学、大学甚至取得了更高的学位以后,在人生的旅途上仍茫然不知自己应走向何方,不知在这茫茫宇宙间,人又是怎样的一种存在。这些终极问题不是时隐时显地叩问着我们的心灵么?
在我看来,教育就是启发每一个人对“我是谁?”“我从哪里来?”“要到哪里去?”的问题做出自己的回答,教育的目的就是启发人不断地去“认识你自己”——古希腊巴特龙神庙的神谕,成为多少西方圣哲探讨人生的起点。
哲学、宗教、科学、艺术都在各自的领域探索着它的答案。而对于每一个人来说,这是人生的终极问题,逃避不了。
教育的目的即在于培养自我认识、自我塑造、自我负责并具有社会责任感的和谐发展的人。如果将孩子们比作卫星,那么,成功的教育就如同运载火箭,让孩子们在星箭分离后自主地在求知的轨道上运行。
自由的精神
教育与学术自由,教育不仅给老师以讲授的学术自由,给学生以选择的空间,更是对学生独立思索与判断能力的培养与信任,学校与教师相信学生可以通过独立的思考,在尽可能多的思想交锋中,了解认识世界有多种视野,从而祛除偏狭的观念,并最终形成自己所认同的观点与信念。
具有自由精神的教育必是尊重个体差异并相信每一个人都有发展潜能的教育。
科技教育与人文精神
文化、教育界探询着融合人文与科学技术教育的途径。如果说,这一次,我们是在为人文教育寻求价值的话,那么,回顾历史,往昔的图景很有意思,就在百年以前,人们还曾孜孜以求,为科学与技术教育正名,以求得与人文教育同等的地位。
曾几何时,人文精神曾被视为教育的灵魂,在古希腊的自由教育中,由贵族子弟与自由公民享用。这种教育被认为与精神性、理性和高尚相关联,通过非功利的科目如音乐、哲学、文法、修辞等,训练学生完善身体和心灵,解放精神和思想;而接受职业与技术训练的是奴隶与工匠,他们的活动被视为物质的与低级卑贱的。
二十世纪颇具影响的美国哲学家与教育家杜威认为这种区分阻碍了人道和自由的发展,故而毕生致力于打破这种反映在教育中的政治、经济的不平等及精神与物质分裂的二元论。在他生活的年代,科学已在众多领域取得进展,而在文化、教育界,科学与技术教育仍然不能取得与人文学科同样的地位。他提倡广泛开展技术教育,在实验学校里开设商店、车间,让孩子们在做中学,倡导从生活中学习,将学校作为一个简化的雏形社会,孩子们在这样的环境中学习的一切,将有助于他(她)们自身的自由发展,成为能有效促进民主的社会公民和能承担责任的家庭成员。杜威的这些常被视为“标新立异”的激烈反传统思想与行为,实际上只是他试图在学生学习的内容与其社会生活之间建立联系的一个尝试,使学校不再是与生活隔离的场所,而学生所学习的不再是脱离人生的高高在上的内容,藉此打破人文教育与科学技术教育的鸿沟,打破由这种区分带来的不平等的阶级之别。
随着二十世纪科学与技术的飞速发展,人们不必专门劳神为科技的重要性奔走呼吁了,人们在一次次科技革命带来的新的世界里尽情享受着它带来的福祉。但是,二十世纪两次世界大战的降临打碎了人们的梦想。以科学技术为先导的武器成为屠戮生命的刽子手,原子弹的蘑菇云冲破了科学与伦理的屏障,科学领域还可以保持“伦理中立”的价值观吗?二十世纪的人们忧郁地意识到,科学技术是一把双刃剑,它既可能扫除无知的愚昧和黑暗,为人们带来前所未有的福祉;也可能刺破和谐,成为人类毁灭自身的工具。让科学促进生存与死亡,在于人类的选择。学生——尤其是理工科学生——应当具有对于人类终极价值的关怀,而这种关怀正是人文精神所系。
科技与人文的关系是什么呢?如果说,科技是一辆飞奔的汽车,那么,它将驶往何方,它的方向是助益人的幸福还是给人类带来灭顶之灾,则由人文关怀决定。
现代似乎是一个需要为人文精神与教育寻求生存理由的时代,幸耶悲耶?
那么,在科技教育中,如何融合人文精神呢?
让我们听听二十世纪有着传奇色彩的大科学家爱因斯坦怎么想的吧。爱因斯坦在论教育的演讲中表达了他的观点:学校的目标应当是培养和谐发展的人,而不是专家(《论教育》),技术学校的培养目标亦当如此。他反对学校直接教授那些在以后生活中直接用得到的专业知识和技能。在他看来,生活所要求的东西过多,学校不大可能采取这样那样的专门训练,何况单纯的专业知识教育,只能使人成为有用的机器,不能成长为和谐发展的人。他认为学校应当把发展学生独立思考和独立判断的一般能力放在首位,需要使学生理解社会伦理准则并对之产生热烈的感情,需要养成对美和善的辨别力,同时还必须学习去了解人们的动机、幻想与疾苦,以此获得与别人和集体的适当关系。他认为,这些价值观主要不是通过教科书传授给年轻一代,而是通过“人文学科”,通过同教育者亲身接触得来的。过分强调竞争制度,以及依据直接用途而过早专门化,会扼杀包括专业知识在内的一切文化生活所依存的那种精神(《培养独立思考的教育》)。他认为,如果一个人掌握了他的学科的基础理论,并且学会了独立地思考和工作,他必定会找到他自己的道路,而且比起主要以获得细节知识为其培训内容的人来,他一定会更好地适应进步和变化。
与专业科技知识及人文教育相关的另一个问题是,两者是否必然为教育中对立的内容呢?我以为,如果将人文精神的最高境界视为对真善美的追求,那么,科学知识、科学精神与科学方法教育融汇而成的科学教育,正需要以人文精神为其价值内核。人文与科技教育实可互为促进。
科学教育启真。在诸多领域,强调“科学性”似乎已经成为人们衡量其正确性的标准。人们似乎忘了,科学研究发现本身也许并非是终极真理,它们可能有所局限。对此,英国哲学家波普尔倡导用“证伪法”对科学发现加以检验,将所有科学定理、定律均视为暂时的假说,时刻等待着新的发现来否定它。这种开放的科学研究态度将疑问和批判视为科学的基本态度和基本精神。事实上,科学史上的许多伟大发现都建立在对某些被认为是经典结论的怀疑和检验中。在科学知识教学中,使学生了解探索科学的过程中一个不断发现新的领域、原则的过程,了解理论是可错的,从而对科学问题产生探究和质疑的态度,甚至对伟大科学家的方案也不盲目崇拜,有可能为他们进行新的探索奠定自由思考与开放视野的心理准备。
科学教育启善。科学的应用不再是一个可以回避“善恶”的问题,战争中用搀杂了科技高含量的武器杀人是一个最为极端的例子,而当计算机病毒以“爱(love)”的名义来传播时,科技带来的阴影已成为当代人心中抹不去的忧虑。也许我们可以说,科技带来的问题——环境污染是另一个例子——只能用科技来解决,但科技本身不能回答解决的方向和价值取向,回答来自于对人文精神的关怀,甚至冲破以人为本的意义,而上升到对于整个地球上的一切生命的关怀——这是对“善”的尊崇。
科学教育启美。在学校教育中,科学一直是以严谨、抽象和纯理性的形象出现的。而在许多科学家眼中,追求科学真理的过程,就是追求自然世界的简洁性、对称性与和谐性,也即追求美的过程。缺乏艺术的熏陶,缺乏诗人般的想象力和气质,就不会成为独创性的、第一流的大科学家。
在科学教育中,通过对科学知识、科学精神、科学方法的教育的平衡,对教材作史论结合的改进,对各种促进学生思维、情感发展的教学方法的应用,我们才能有望造就将人类的幸福,将“真善美”的追求作为起点和终点的科技人才。因为科学之真、道德之善、艺术之美的理想原是不可分的“三位一体”,正如拉丁箴言所说的那样:“简单是真的标志,美是真理的光辉。”而善——“适用于道德经验的东西,必然在更高的程度上也适用于美的现象。”(席勒)
原版材料:
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION
Webster defines education as the process of educating or teaching (now that's really useful, isn't it?) Educate is further defined as "to develop the knowledge, skill, or character of..." Thus, from these definitions, we might assume that the purpose of education is to develop the knowledge, skill, or character of students. Unfortunately, this definition offers little unless we further define words such as develop, knowledge, and character.
What is meant by knowledge? Is it a body of information that exists "out there"—apart from the human thought processes that developed it? If we look at the standards and benchmarks that have been developed by many states—or at E. D. Hirsch's list of information needed for Cultural Literacy (1), we might assume this to be the definition of knowledge. However, there is considerable research leading others to believe that knowledge arises in the mind of an individual when that person interacts with an idea or experience.
This is hardly a new argument. In ancient Greece, Socrates argued that education was about drawing out what was already within the student. (As many of you know, the word education comes from the Latin e-ducere meaning "to lead out.") At the same time, the Sophists, a group of itinerant teachers, promised to give students the necessary knowledge and skills to gain positions with the city-state.
There is a dangerous tendency to assume that when people use the same words, they perceive a situation in the same way. This is rarely the case. Once one gets beyond a dictionary definition—a meaning that is often of little practical value—the meaning we assign to a word is a belief, not an absolute fact. Here are a couple of examples.
“The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.” ~Eric Hoffer
“No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.” ~Emma Goldman
“The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life-by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past-and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.” ~Ayn Rand
“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think—rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.” ~Bill Beattie
“The one real object of education is to leave a man in the condition of continually asking questions.” ~Bishop Creighton
“The central job of schools is to maximize the capacity of each student.” ~Carol Ann Tomlinson
These quotations demonstrate the diversity of beliefs about the purpose of education. How would you complete the statement, "The purpose of education is..."? If you ask five of your fellow teachers to complete that sentence, it is likely that you'll have five different statements. Some will place the focus on knowledge, some on the teacher, and others on the student. Yet people's beliefs in the purpose of education lie at the heart of their teaching behaviors.
Despite what the letter writer might have wished, there is no definition of education that is agreed upon by all, or even most, educators. The meanings they attach to the word are complex beliefs arising from their own values and experiences. To the extent that those beliefs differ, the experience of students in today's classrooms can never be the same. Worse, many educators have never been asked to state their beliefs—or even to reflect on what they believe. At the very least, teachers owe it to their students to bring their definitions into consciousness and examine them for validity.
Purposes and Functions
To make matters more complicated, theorists have made a distinction between the purpose of education and the functions of education.(2) A purpose is the fundamental goal of the process—an end to be achieved. Functions are other outcomes that may occur as a natural result of the process— byproducts or consequences of schooling. For example, some teachers believe that the transmission of knowledge is the primary purpose of education, while the transfer of knowledge from school to the real world is something that happens naturally as a consequence of possessing that knowledge—a function of education.
Because a purpose is an expressed goal, more effort is put into attaining it. Functions are assumed to occur without directed effort. For this reason it's valuable to figure out which outcomes you consider a fundamental purpose of education. Which of the following do you actually include in your planning?
As Tom Peters reminds us, "What gets measured, gets done." Regardless of the high sounding rhetoric about the development of the total child, it is the content of assessments that largely drives education. How is the capacity/ability to think creatively assessed in today's schools? To what extent is the typical student recognized and given respect? How often are students given the opportunity to recognize and evaluate different points of view when multiple choice tests require a single 'correct' answer?
Teachers who hold a more humanistic view of the purpose of education often experience stress because the meaning they assign to education differs greatly from the meaning assigned by society or their institution. It is clear in listening to the language of education that its primary focus is on knowledge and teaching rather than on the learner. Students are expected to conform to schools rather than schools serving the needs of students.
Stopping to identify and agree upon a fundamental purpose or purposes of education is rare. One sees nebulous statements in school mission statements, but they are often of the “Mom, baseball, and apple pie” variety that offer little substance on which to build a school culture. Creating meaningful and lasting change in education is unlikely without revisiting this basic definition. At the very least, educators must be challenged to identify and reexamine their beliefs in the light of present knowledge.
It is time for the focus of education to shift from what's "out there—the curriculum, assessments, classroom arrangement, books, computers—to the fundamental assumptions about and definitions of education held by educators and policymakers. NASA did not send men to the moon by building on the chassis of a model T. In the same way, education cannot hope to move beyond its present state on the chassis of 18th century education.
[ 本帖最后由 nostrum 于 2007-2-1 01:44 编辑 ] |
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