Education Rise And Fall Of Theory

The dissertation makes a detailed study of the cycles of the educational development in ancient China by employing the theory of Long Time Interval and the approaches of "True Understanding" and statistics & examples.The cycle of educational development refers to the period of time at which education, as a whole, experiences rises and falls. The educational structure indicates the educational thoughts and systems and the existence forms that sustain and maintain education in a certain cycle of educational development. The collapse of the educational structure suggests its disability to sustain and dominate education, thus making the educational results farther away from the educational goals. The reconstruction of the educational structure implies that the already existing educational thoughts should be discarded while being positively criticized and reexamined, and the educational thoughts will be comprehensively innovated and widely accepted. By means of the innovations in the educational system, the newly innovated educational thoughts will play a leading role in education.Education in China from the 6th century BC to the end of 18th century falls into three cycles of development. The first cycle lasted from the end of The Spring and Autumn Period to the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, with the second cycle lasting from the Wei Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty to the Five Dynasties, and the third from the Northern Song to the end of the 18th century.The first cycle started from the reexamination of the Ethics and Rites in the Western Zhou Dynasty. The educational thoughts were unified into Confucianism due to the controversies and compromises from the end of The Spring and Autumn Period to the beginning of the Han Dynasty. Education reached its climax in the Yongping Years of the Eastern Han Dynasty after a temporary unsettlement. Since then, education was gradually on the wane and finally fell into a valley in the end of the Han Dynasty. The second cycle began with criticism and reconsideration of the Confucian Ethics. The systematization of the pluralistically integrated educational thoughts came into being in the Northern and Southern Dynasty and was brought to success at the beginning of the Tang Dynasty. Education of this cycle reached its climax in the years between Zhenguan and Kaiyuan, and was falling into decay following the An and Shi Riot and waned to the extremity in The Five Dynasties. The educational structure of the third cycle was reconstructed when the popular morale and the national power were in crisis, accompanied by continuous ideological controversies and hardships of system reforms, resulting inthe total failure in constructing a similar educational structure in this cycle to those that stabilized and maintained education in the first two cycles.The two cycles in succession were related to each other by means of criticism and inheritance, which was always characterized by hypercorrectness. The Confucian scholars in the Han Dynasty inherited more from the Xun School and viewed passion as evil, thus making the Confucian Ethics synonymous with the Feudal Ethics and Rites, which again revealed the disadvantages of the Feudal Ethics and Rites, e.g. reason excelling nature. Scholars of Metaphysics highlighted affection and personality and made aesthetic education be in the limelight. From Zetian Wu, poetry was solely emphasized in the imperial examination, and education witnessed a shift in its focus on cultivating a taste for poetry and therefore the Five Classics were put on the shelf, thus making nature excel reason. The Confucian scholars in the Song Dynasty held a negative attitude towards education of literature and arts, and they denied affection and advocated rational spirits, thus making reason excel nature.The decline of dynasties resulted in slight falls of educational development, but the educational structure could be reconstructed shortly after the establishment of the new dynasties. When the collapse of educational structure began, the decline of dynasties obviously sped up...