Mind Education: To Cultivate The Intrinsic Dimension Of "the Whole Person"

Plato has said: education is the shifting of mind. Marx has said: people pursuit them self in acomprehensive way, that is to say, as a whole person, to possess their full nature. So, what is thewhole person? How to cultivate the whole person?This paper take cultivating the whole person as the topic, and study theeducation of mind from the perspective of theory and practice. It includes five chaptersand the core content as follows:The part of Introduction introduces background, meaning and basic way of thewhole person proposed by Marx. Marx proposed the alienation of laborin "Economics Philosophy Manuscript in1844" and discussed the causes and details, hepointed out "the alienation of man" is the result of the alienation of labor. And heproposed the concept of the whole person to solve the problem of the the alienationof labor. Marx propounded a man’s all-round development theory and proposed themethod to actualize the whole development of people is to establish the Communist,because communist is abandoning of the alienation of man, so it is to possess theirfull nature from people and for people. And Marx pointed out the actualization ofpeople is a process generated from practice. Marx has sovled the problem of the wholeperson from the perspective of political economy and social relations of people. Thisarticle attempts to study the problem of the mind education and the whole person fromperspective of philosophy of education.Chapter I (The evolution of mind) is literature review and analysis. Part oneanalyzes the representative concepts of mind, summarize the concept from theperspective of Marxism, and differentiate the related concepts. Part two reviewrepresentative ideas of mind from perspective of educational philosophy. We found thatmost schools of educational philosophy in history emphasis on certain aspects of psychological structure such as cognition, emotion, will and personality. Essentialism,constructivism emphasis on cognition, naturalism, empiricism emphasis emotions andexperiences, humanism, liberalism emphasis the will of students, and charactereducation, theory of comprehensive development emphasizes the formation ofpersonality. To based on this framework, the article take how to cartivate the wholeperson as the core problem and summarize the related educational theories.Chapter II (The crisis of mind) describes the practical problems faced by mind.Part one discusses the social causes and manifestation of the crisis of mind. Part twodiscusses the partial person, including one dimensional person, and also discussesthe partial mind from perspectives of "the partial cognitive, alienational emotion,weak will and deformed personality".Chapter III (The revolution of mind by education) discusses the natural inner stateof mind. Part one explores the logical starting point for spiritual education. It exploresthe nature of the logical starting point, established the criteria, and finally put the mindeducation on the basis of children’s nature, that is, cognition based on origin of curiosity,emotion based on origin of dependent, will based on origin of independent. Part twoexplores the ultimate goal of mind education, discusses how cognition orientate to"truth" and "honesty", how emotion orientate to "harmony" and "beauty", how willorientate to "good "and" constant."Chapter IV (The shape of mind by education) describes the basic mechanism ofmind education, namely the contradiction, dynamic, principles, scope and other issues.Part one discuss the contradiction and dynamic, such as cognitive contradictions asheritage and innovation, acceptance and discovering, reasoning and intuition, explicitand implicit, etc., the emotional contradictions as feelings and expression, be loved andlove, pessimism and optimism, pain and happiness, etc., the will contradictions as activeand passive, appreciation and frustration, control and freedom, etc., the personalitycontradictions as individuation and common, instinct and culture, variablity andstability, etc., and discuss how dynamics generated from problems, interaction, love,acceptance, target, responsibility, culture, population and other conditions. Part twoexplores the basic principles educational activities should follow and scope of mind education. Based on the synthesis discussed earlier, this paper presents some principlesthat mind education practice should follow, such as principles of practice, balance,subjective, continuity, development. And we construct a five dimensional system aswisdom category, emotion category, will category, personality category, and beyondcategory as the basic framework of the mind education system.Chapter V (The practice of mind education) takes the new educational experimentstarted by Professor Zhu Yongxin as a case to explore how to implement mind educationin levels of practice and theory. Part one discuss the spiritual pursuit of "idealeducation" thoughts proposed by Zhu Yongxin from the perspective of psychology. Parttwo explores how the practices promot mind character generation by steps of themereading, theme practices, theme exhibitions and theme reflection. And intruduce "amonthly activities" from the perspective of habit formation, discuss the theoretical andpractical value to mind education. Part three elaborate the integrated education livingconstructed by The new experiment of education in china from three dimensions oftime, space and process, to develop education actions and course system based on threehuman natural attributes of intellect, spirit and morality, in order to integrate knowledge,living and life, and finally to cultivate the whole person integrated with body, mind andspirit.Conclusion (The integrated min education) proposed that mind education shouldconstructed by generatinig wisdom, filling emtion, firming will and integratingpersonality.