Dai Zhen Psychological Thought

Dai Zhen is an outstanding thinker and well-known scholar in 18th century in our country, and in the meanwhile, he is an excellent educationist of that time. He advocated the traditional academic spirit of seeking for"practical",so that he was recognized as the representative of the school"Wan"—one of the two most distinguished schools that dealt with textual researches during Qianlong and Jiaqing Periods in Qing Dynasty. The other school was"Wu", whose major representative was Hui Dong and whose basic academic spirit was"All that is ancient is true". Since a child, Dai Zhen was extremely bright and could memorize whatever he read; furthermore, he never got tired of studying. As a result, he became a person of wide knowledge, who mastered ancient classic texts and did much research on not only Chinese characters , rhyme , exegetics , name objects and system, but also mathematics,astronomy and geography, and most importantly, he gained great achievements in every field and left us many important works. Dai Zhen performed academic and educational activities for lifelong, so that he concluded and accumulated abundant experience and some unique opinions which were mostly reflected in his works. After he died, there have been constant study about his works, but almost all of them mainly referred to his philosophical and only some academic thoughts ,so nearly no systematical and complete study about his educational psychological thoughts has been done. Trying to dig into his works and scoop out his rich education psychological thoughts can provide practical material and theoretical support for the research of Chinese educational psychology.This paper first introduces Dai Zhen's life history, study and teaching history, research history and his important works .Then, it analyzes Dai Zhen's education psychological thought in four sections .Firstly, this paper expatiates two basic viewpoints of education psychological thought: one is"Human nature of choosing what is kind"and the other is"Acquiring knowledge from study". Secondly, it summarizes Dai Zhen's study psychological thought. This part includes the significance of study, the course of study, the psychological states in study, non-intellectual factors in study, the principles and methods of study. Thirdly, it probes into Dai Zhen's moral education psychological thought including the meaning of moral and the possibility and necessity of moral education, the course of moral education, principles and methods of moral education. Finally, it digs out Dai Zhen's difference and teacher psychological thought. The former includes the differences between human nature and object nature, individual differences of human nature, according to which people have to receive education and teachers should teach students in accordance with their different aptitude. The latter deals with the relationship between teachers and students first, and then with teacher's character.