A Tentative Study On Humanistic Development And General Education

Education involves human development and education itself is in fact a matter of human development. It is preciously because human are "incomplete", "realistic" and "cultural", that human can never be themselves without education. The fact that education forges human indicates that education protect and liberate human subjectivity, promote an all-round development and make human "educated". However, the tendency of emphasizing knowledge and downplaying culture makes modern education a world of "merely knowledge and technology education", which to some extent neglect human's world of subjectivity, emotion and spirit. In this regard, modern education cannot cultivate human with completeness, subjectivity and independent characteristics, nor can it cultivate human with lofty ideas, wisdom, moral integrity and culture, since it runs against the overall development of human.The preliminary conclusion of the thesis, as a result of the analysis of the general problems concerning general education, is as follows: making the idea of "human" as its logic beginning, general education represents an educational idea and practice which attach its importance to the cultivation, forging, transformation, development and perfection of human. General education reflects strong humanistic spirit and contains rich humanistic care. One of the most important goals for the implementation of general education is to widen humanistic vision, increase humanistic care and promote humanistic development of students. Humanistic care of general education includes the following five aspects: emphasizing on humanistic consciousness, promoting spiritual taste, awakening subjectivity personality, triggering moral emotion and constructing ultimate concern.As an educational idea and pattern, general education is developed against a specific time and social background and with profound theoretical basis. Although the overall implementation of general education depends on lots of resources and conditions, the reform and innovation of educational concepts are a forerunning factor and determining precondition. In this light, the reference meaning of classical educational ideas for general education in the history is reviewed and analyzed from the following four aspects: Marx's ideas of human overall development, pre-modern time educational ideas in the Western world, modern Western educational ideas and the traditional Chinese educational ideas. The study aims at providing a solid theoretical support for general education. The essence of the thesis is how to implement the ideas of general education in college. To avoid being too abstract, the experiments carried out by Fudan University is used as an example to deal with the problems facing the colleges and universities when they develop general education against the background of educational popularization. Fudan University advocates the concepts of general education, and emphasizes the rise of knowledge economy and the background of globalization. The effort is of great significance in that it tries to turn back the utilitarian tendency in college education, cultivate innovative talents and increase humanistic accomplishments. In light of the practical conditions, Fudan University performed courageous innovations in general courses design, teaching and management patterns and so on. They have made substantial achievements, and have been faced with difficulties and conflicts as well. On every account, as the forerunner of general education in the country, the experiments of Fudan University provide lots of useful enlightenment and chance of further reflection for us to discuss the problem of general education in China.