A. Education Should Guide the Soul of Human Being

The picture by Gorgon, a 19th century artist of the Dalist, is entitled Who Are We? Where Are We from? Where Are We Heading for? The philosophical title speaks of a meditation on the origin of universe and human kind, a probe of the outside world where mankind exists and also an exploration of Man’s soul. For years, our education has focused on the propagation and accumulation of knowledge. The examination system in imperial China intensified this trend and solidified it as an iron-cast pattern of China’s education. Have we ever taken into consideration Gorgon’s question which points to human’s soul? This is my conviction that education in the 21st century should thoroughly free itself from the mold formed for thousands of years to become a search for the soul of mankind. Let education guide effectively human soul and let the guidance be life long.

​In my career as an educator, I have seen many gifted students who contributed much to various fields both at home and abroad. Meanwhile our school system also created many people who have various psychological problems and defective personality. There is little doubt that our students have accumulated large amount of knowledge and developed certain skills through education in elementary school for six years, secondary school for another six years and university for three or four years.However, they generally lack a world outlook and wholesome attitude, a mind that is critical and tolerant at the same time. Because of this, their soul is somewhat distorted. This is where the tragedy came from that Lu Gang, a student studying in the United States who killed his compatriot Shan Linhua and his professors in cold blood because his desire was not satisfied and that some pupils and students have psychological and behavior problems.

​The ultimate goal of education is the molding of human soul. Propagation and learning of all disciplines should enable the educated to get to know deeply and widely the outside world, to turn the cognition of the outside world into rich nutrition for their inner-heart. This process, in turn, produces boundless imagination power. Knowledge is limited but the depth and width of thoughts and imagination are boundless. They may trace back to the origin of universe and may penetrate time and space to approximate limitlessness. Who am I? Where do we come from? This is a question that is to be answered philosophically and also a question that should be answered in our school. If we shift the focus of education from the propagation and accumulation of knowledge to molding of the soul of the students,we may find that the above said questions provide our education with a broad probing space of inquiry where the roles of both the educator and the educated change dramatically. From the two opposite roles of knowledge giver and knowledge receiver they will work together and do research work about one project one after another, one field after another, one space after another, all evolving around the search for the soul of human beings. The International Baccalaureate Organization founded after World War II has made a significant start. Mr. Rogon .M. Pell, President of the IBO said, “The end result, we hope, is a more compassionate population, a welcome manifestation of national diversity within an international framework of tolerant respect. Ideally, at the end of the IB experience, students should know themselves better than when they started while acknowledging that others can be right in being different.” I think this is just an exploration through education to the three questions put forth by that picture drawn by Gorgon.

B. Education Should be Further Concerned with the Happiness of Mankind and Nurture People Who Are Happy and, at the Same-time Beneficial to the Happiness of Our Society

What is the ultimate purpose of all that humankind pursues? What is crucial and indispensable to mankind? Through great effort of research done by psychologists, the following three aspects they put forth are closely related to human happiness:

1. Love: Psychological research shows that whether for man to woman, young or old, love affects the standard of their happiness in live. An international investigation shows that over 90% of the people who are happy with their love, are generally happy with their life.

2. Marriage: Marriage is a crucial factor for the extent of happiness in our life even though the role played by marriage is happiness is disputable, especially in modern life where crisis turns up more often than not. According to data from research conducted by present psychologists, marriage does provide a very important base for our happiness.

3. Job: Psychological research concerned shows that people who are happy with their job tend to enjoy higher extent of happiness in the nature of people’s jobs. Job indeed has an important base for people’s happy life. The above said three aspects are so closely related to human happiness, however, education in our country shows lack of concern to them whatever much less any guidance to the educated. The juvenile become premature nowadays. Early love affair is pretty popular among high school students, even among primary school children. Young persons do not know much of true love and schools are lack of correct and effective guidance, thus resulting in abnormal behavior from curiosity and naïve, or spiritual suppression because of heavy psychological burden. It is, therefore, very important to establish courses related to the discussion of love and happiness. In the first place, let the juvenile know that love is the most colorful and most beautiful flower in the garden of human happiness; that love is noble and precious and that everybody has the right to seek love and happiness. The juvenile must be trained to have correct world outlook for happiness and love. Through all approaches, let them get correct guidance in the field that is closely related to their life standard. The same is true to marriage. Courses concerning marriage should be open for senior high and college students. Why so many marital crisis and broken marriage turn up? Lacking of education and correct guidance is one of the reasons. Quite a few people prove how important the marriage is with their own life and a great deal of sufferings. If correct and timely guidance is given before the juvenile enter marriage, is it not possible to reduce or avoid such tragedies?Vocational education should also be open to high school and college students. Job selection is very important for the life of a person. In profession selecting course, let students fully understand themselves; their personality, their individual characteristics and their inclination towards profession, and have a fully understanding of their own selves. Only when they have a deep understanding of themselves can cautious selection of job be made. Aspects mentioned above are related to the prosperity of our society and nationality. If our education pays more attention to these problems, it is doubtless that our education will cultivate people who are more happy and beneficial to the society.

C. Further Concerns Should be Given to People’s World of Feeling and Emotion

With the satisfaction of people’s materialistic desire, they may pay more attention to their spiritual and emotional world. Emotional world is the most sensitive, richest and most colorful world in human’s inner heart world. Rich feeling and emotion can brighten people life, enrich their imagination and their creative abilities. It can also make communication among people delightful, harmonious and warm. It can inspire people’s enthusiasm towards their work and study, and it can also make people more sympathetic and more tolerant, more charitable and willing to help others. As afore Mr. Roger .M. Pell said, we hope more sympathetic people are to be nurtured through education. This is a much wiser outlook about education. Nowadays people pay increasing attention to the study of emotional quanta. Psychology begins to show how feeling and emotion affect people’s thoughts. The second generation of “Spock”in the Treck War has become “Data”,which exactly reflects this trend. Data was surprised to find that his cool logic is unable to find a suitable explanation for mankind. It is just feeling and emotion make the human beings be human beings. Therefore, Data is striving for the possession of feeling of human beings.

The noblest values of human soul which including hope, belief, sacrifice and love are all existing in the domain of people’s emotional world rather than in the domain of rational cognition. So education should pay special attention to the feeling and emotion of people. The afore said Lu Gang, studying in the United States, who killed his compatriot and instructors, is an example that reflects the defect in our education. Lu Gang can be regarded as high IQ type person with psychological problem. People with high IQ tend to be a giant of knowledge tut an idiot in life. They are featured with wide interest in knowledge, high efficient and ambitious, and they are usually blockheaded and stubborn and are easy to be troubled by his own problems. Moreover, he is proud and arbitrative, and unable to enjoy erotic feelings. They are cool and far away  from other people. Since our education has attached much importance to intelligence, that is, pays attention to acquiring and accumulation of knowledge, thus resulting  in a very narrow value orientation. We may nurture many “geniuses” but whether these geniuses have the normal feeling and emotion and whether they are as sympathetic as common people are is very questionable. Sympathy is a factor of the moral belief of juvenile. Lu Gang is just such a deformed product of our education. He has high IQ and is diligent, but he is lacking of sympathy and moral concept he should have had. We may assert that if he had a love affair, this love would not be happy because compassion is helpful to one’s emotional life. Education has molded ice-cool people with knowledge but not created people who are happy and beneficial to society. Is it not a kind of tragedy?

D. Exchanging between Oriental and Occidental Culture and Education Should be Enhanced

Nowadays the world has become increasingly smaller. Along with daily development of science and technology, exchanging among peoples of the world becomes broader and deeper daily. We often use the term “the villagers of the Earth Village” to describe the close relation among peoples of various countries. The term is pretty close to what it means. Along with progress of the world’s civilization, discrepancy among people will be smaller and smaller and they will finally converge into a grand community. On the road for thousand years of similarities and dissimilarities, the Oriental and the Occidental have come to recognize that something in common makes them in agreement. The Occidental culture originated from two major sources: ancient Greek culture and old Hebrew culture, which are very strong in religion and whose main boy has been in search and praise of the ultimate origin that is beyond human world, supernatural and super rational. The Western culture originated from Greek and Hebrew cultures is a religious culture embodied by Christianity in a long period of over one thousand years. After the Renaissance, impacted by science and worldly spirit, the position and the role of religion reduced. Up till now, however, it has been still a force which is not negligible in Western culture and occupies an important position in people’s social and spiritual lives. The Western education corresponds with Western culture, while the Chinese Culture which is the most representative in Oriental culture, has not brought forth any religion as the Western Christianity or Arabian Islam, but has been normalizing peoples behavior and thought with ethics and art. The culture of early Qin Dynasty is referred to as the culture of “Ceremony and Music”. After Qin and Han Dynasties, the culture is actually the inter-compensation among the three schools of Confucianism, Taoism and Legalism, which form the framework of the Chinese culture and an educational structure corresponding to it. It is obvious that “morality”, the only one word, can count above everything in the exchange and fusion of Western and Eastern cultures and educations except science. “Moral education” should be stressed in exchange of education (here I refer to broader meaning of moral education). Since human soul should be concerned and guided as I stressed at the beginning of the article, and the very core of human soul is “morality”. In a report “Case Study Value on Education: International Comparison of Value on Education” by Wenings and other American scholars, moral education in the US, Western Europe, China, Malaysia and Singapore was analyzed. Singapore’s moral education may be summarized with the words of its President, “(the educated) with cultural cultivation, be diligent, hard-working and cooperative”. The Malaysian moral education may be summarized as (1) pure physically and mentally (2) sympathetic and empathetic (3) cooperative (4) courage (5) temperance (6) diligent (7) gratitude (8) upright (9) honest (10) modest and prudent (11) just (12) rational (13) self-determining (14) love (15) respect (16) public-benefit spirit. Chinese moral education contains a lot which is not repeated here. The American patriotic education stresses on patriotism and civic consciousness. The Western European moral education, the same as the Chinese moral education, is realized through imperceptible influence of religion, history, society and literature and the educated is required to be upright, respecting others and the law. In regarding of humanity, moral education is so important in influencing humanity that both the Western and Eastern education should put stress on morality. In China there arises such an opinion that “morality” not only falls in the domain of spirit but also is a kind of material itself. This explains the reason why the great giants such as Einstein, Tolstoy, Laozi, and Confucius possess lofty moralities.

E. The 21st Century’s Education Should Be Able to Give a Full Play of People’s Personality and Latent Ability.

The modernization of Chinese society requires modernized people and education plays a special role in promoting people’s modernization. 21st century needs persons with modern thoughts and ideas and distinct personality, who are able to exercise personal talents to the contribution of the society, making it prosperous and colorful. One of the purposes of education is to nurture the nature of human beings and to develop their personalities. So we should advocate an education which should give a full play of one’s personality and help grow something unique in his nature. Through such an education which is to be accepted by the educated willingly, it can promote them to develop their positive personalities and characteristics. Education should pay special attention to subjectiveness, uniqueness and creativeness of the educated which are advocated by Ban Hua and Li Tianping in their article: “The Personality Development and Personality Education”. The above idea, I think, shows a deeper understanding of education. Of the three points in the article, to my view, the subjectiveness of the educated is cardinal. Under the precondition that people’s subjectiveness has been fully nurtured and developed, their uniqueness can be also given full play. So-called subjectiveness is itself-consciously recognizing, grasping and surpassing various restrictions controlled by the outside world and obtaining domination of it. Nowadays, many crises turning up in the process of modernization calls for the development of people’s subjectiveness, requires people to control natural and productive forces, to control social force and, thus, control people themselves, control their decision and action. Without distinct personality, without personality power and just echoing the views of others, being ambiguous and dubious, one is unable to meet the above requirements. Persons with great success at home and abroad, as we study them, are all persons with distinct personality. They dare to challenge convention, not subject to the binding of customs and fixed models. They have rich imagination, clear awareness of themselves. Their strong self-consciousness calls them to break conventional restricts. The 21st century is a century full of stimulation and challenge. It may well be predicted that in the new era many new things will turn up before people which people dared not to imagine and dared not to do in the past. People who brave the new things, who can surpass time and space and who can even predict these new things and dominate them, are those whose personality and latent capacity have been fully displayed. How, then, to develop full personality? This is a question once asked to the master psychologist Freud who answered resolutely: Those who can love and work will have a full display of their personality. Here we unknowingly connect Personality Education with the afore said four problems. The subject “The Scientific Research Project on Education in the Ninth-Five-Year Plan of Liaoning Province” we are undertaking is just “The Study on the Educational Mould of Juvenile Personality in the New Era”. In this project, we initially put forth 25 concrete education contents including (1) education of self-confidence (2) education concerned with feeling and emotion (3) psychological education (4) education of courtesy (5) education of independent daily-life management (6) education of love for their own motherland, history and culture and respect for other country’s history and culture (7) education of charitable behavior (8) education of children philosophy (9) education of roles played in society, etc. through these education, we hope that we can do some research on the exploration of the students’ latent capacity and nurture their personality.

F. Psychological Education Should Be Carried out from the Beginning to the End of Education

The book Psychological Education by Shen Heyong and Gao Lan argues that for today’s many disciplines of social and human sciences, psychology is the “core discipline” of all. Indeed, psychology has displayed its unique and indispensable importance in various fields, given that the purpose and final goal of education are related to moulding human soul, and psychology is a discipline to probe human soul, and it is a must to take psychology into consideration for education and to carry out psychological education through the whole process of education. Man’s psychological quality falls into two major categories: intelligent and non-intelligent personal psychological qualities. Intelligent quality includes personal psychological intention, such as need, motive, interest, value judgment, feeling and emotion, morale and personal psychological characteristics such as disposition and character. Fine personal psychological quality and intelligent development promotes each other. To carry out psychological education through out the entire process of education will doubtlessly upgrade the psychological quality, intelligence and capacity of the educated. Now people are more and more aware of the important role played by EQ in man’s life and his success. A psychologist of Harvard University argued that human’s EQ index is more important than IQ and summarized psychological capacity in five factors: capacity of self-awareness; capacity of self-control; capacity to strive for one’s own target, capacity to understand others and capacity dealing with interpersonal relations. Research of problems concerning personality education and psychological education and morality education centered by EQ education, has drawn increasing attention from people of educational circle. Education takes man as its key factor and psychological education deepens into the core of the key factor. In our daily life, work and study, people can encounter various psychological problems which entangle us, making us vexed, depressed and angry. In such an circumstance, diseases, even abnormal behaviors may pop up. If we carry psychological education through the whole process of our education, and give psychological guidance to the educated all the time, then many problems can be solved and vanish. It is very important for man to be healthy not only physically but also psychologically. As studies show, many diseases such as heart disease, gastric ulcer occur from psychological pressure and burden. The book Sympathy, Treatment and Miracle by Boney Sigal depicts this with many examples. We are to foster healthy and happy persons who are beneficial to society and for this end, we must lay much importance on psychological education and carry out this education through the whole process. Someone once asked me: “What religion do you believe in?“  I answered: “ My belief is art.” I once told others of my life experience which is summarized as :“ To treat something serious as a game; To be humorous in face of something very tricky; To simplify a complicated matter and to deal with daily life in an artistic way.” This is obtained from psychological education I have practiced. From the success and failure, happiness and suffering of my own, I feel deeply the importance of psychological education. So, as an educator, I appeal to put stress on the important role of it in the entire process of education.

​What  is said above is my shallow probe to the development of education in China in the 21st century. It is my hope that my commonplace remarks may be an introduction so that others come up with valuable opinions.

Liu Mingqiong

注：1997年8月15至18日，我作为中国教育学者出席了经国家教委批准的在南京东南大学召开的“面向21世纪全球教育合作”国际会议。大会中心发言共有12人，我是其中之一，此为我的英文论文（也是发言）稿。我的发言在中、美、日、新加坡、台湾等国家和地区的学者中受到好评。

这篇论文分六个部分：

一.教育应该对人的心灵进行指引

二.教育应进一步关注人类的幸福，通过教育造就有益于人类社会的幸福的人

三.应进一步关注情感教育

四.应进一步加强东西方的文化与教育交流

五.21世纪的教育应是充分发展人的个性与潜能的教育

六.应把心理教育贯穿于整个教育的始终

刘明琼

2020年11月17日