From "Civilization"to"Cultivation"

The attention on education is an excellent tradition of Chinese. Due to the tradition, Chinese culture is able to join in the foster of world culture forever, and Chinese wise is able to spread the whole world. Many talents were grown with the history knowledge and wise which were succeeded by the tradition. Historically, by the policy "Abandon all other schools, Only Confucianism" issued, the Confucianism became the dominant ideology. Therefore, the prominent feature of the tradition of attention on education is "civilization", and "Civilization" type education was appeared. The essence of "civilization" is converting the external social ideology, rule system and custom to individual inner view and behavior. This feature is related closely to the dominant status of Confucianism in feudal society. "Being civilized" is, consequently, the prominent feature of the status of students in the traditional education system.From modern times on, with the influx of western culture, many modern ideas, such as democracy, science, liberty, were accepted by Chinese. So, traditional education had to develop the modern feature. The traditional education, which prominent feature is "civilization", transformed to modern education, which prominent feature is "cultivation", which means the attention on initiative, personality and rationality. This modern education is beyond to the traditional education, and symbolizes the new development of Chinese attention on education in recent times. "Cultivation" means in three aspects:firstly, highlighting initiative as the source of power; secondly, pursuing personality as the orientation of value; thirdly, holding fast and innovating the nationality as the cultural demands.The conversion, from "civilization" to "cultivation", means the transformation of China education from traditional "civilization" type education to modern "cultivation" type education in transitional times. Inevitably, the transformation would encounter many obstacles, such as the fetters from traditional ideas; educational problems in reality; moral lost of the times; identity crisis of culture. How to clean up these obstacles, in order to achieve educational transformation, would be an important mission for current educational development. We will deal with this issue in the future."Cultivation", as a direction of current development of education, inevitably has an important influence on the educational development in the future. This paper will reveal the trends from three aspects:from "instrumental person" to "rational person"; from part to diversity; from knowledge to life.The "civilization" can't be instead of "cultivation". The focus of them is different from each other. "Cultivation" pays attention to individual differences, initiative and personality, and dedicate to make everyone have special features. At the same time, "cultivation" also pays attention to "civilization", which means a universal, common and basic system of moral standards and behavior. This is baseline demand for every modern citizen who has normal rationality and ability of judgment. Therefore, current education, which prominent feature is "cultivation", need to respect individual personality and initiative, and to improve consciously students'rationality, enhance the idea of comprehension and ability to comply with Chinese spirit of traditional culture.