Non-scientific materialism

1In August, 987, Chen Zhongliang published Humanism or Scientism in Chinese Studies. ",causing strong shock and wide resonance. At that time, Mr. Gu thought that the proposition "Humanism or Scientism" was a "basic research proposition" in the field of education in China. However, why did Chen Zhongliang put forward this "basic research proposition" from the beginning? That's because-

(A) At that time, Chinese teaching reform had two distinct pursuits.

The 1980s was an unusually prosperous and active era of teaching reform in China. After collision, reorganization and integration, there are two distinct pursuits: one is the simplification of teaching objectives, the serialization of teaching procedures, the modularization of teaching methods and the standardization of teaching evaluation. Among them, the strongest performance is to imagine a set of teaching objectives for grading Chinese subjects in primary and secondary schools, to discharge the content of Chinese knowledge explanation from the horizontal axis of coordinates, and to list the items of Chinese ability training from the vertical axis, so that teaching, learning and examination can have a basis. At the same time, I hope to develop a project and method that can evaluate a Chinese class or even a stage of Chinese teaching from both qualitative and quantitative aspects. This is what Mr. Chen calls "scientism". The other is to pursue the socialization, personification and individualization of Chinese teaching, thinking that the classroom is not only a place for students to acquire knowledge, but also a place for students to experience life. Chinese class should be the unity of knowledge, emotion and meaning, and setting teaching objectives can only play a negative role. It is believed that the first pursuit, emphasizing the rationalization of Chinese knowledge, will lead to the rationalization of Chinese cognition, the proceduralization will lead to mechanization, and the serialization and systematization will lead to trivialization. All these will stifle students' personality development and deviate from the dimension of personality shaping in Chinese teaching. This is what Mr. Chen called "humanistic thought". However, the publication of this paper soon triggered a "big debate" on Chinese teaching reform in the new period; This "big debate" led to-

(2) China education authorities have damaged the nature of Chinese twice.

Theoretical discussion and practical reflection make people gradually realize that Chinese is the most important communication tool for people to exchange ideas and study, work and life. Moreover, this tool is culturally loaded, which is the essential feature that distinguishes Chinese from other tools. This view is summarized in "Chinese Teaching Syllabus for Senior High School" published by 1996: "Chinese is the most important communication tool and the most important cultural carrier." It should be said that this is a compromise of the authoritative department on the nature of Chinese subject. At this point, the view of Chinese nature has developed from "language tool+ideological infiltration" to "language tool+cultural carrier", and language tool is still fundamental. However, the more intense "big debate" and even "big criticism" after the promulgation of the outline changed this compromise again. At that time, instrumentalists intended to unify the two based on the instrumentality of Chinese, covering humanity. Humanism advocates that some people emphasize the unity of humanism and do not abandon instrumentality, while others completely deny and criticize the instrumentality of Chinese. In other words, at the turn of the century, "science" and "humanities" are moving towards integration; At the same time, there are still obvious differences on the fundamental issue of instrumentality or humanism. Therefore, the Chinese Curriculum Standard for Full-time Compulsory Education (Experimental Draft) promulgated in July 20001year once again compromised this temporarily intractable disagreement: "Chinese is the most important communication tool and an important part of human culture. The unity of instrumentality and humanism is the basic feature of Chinese curriculum. In this latest authoritative exposition, instrumentality and humanism have become completely equal twins.

However, the subjective expression of their unity cannot fundamentally eliminate the objective existence of their opposites, and which is more important, instrumentality or humanism, is still a difficult problem in China's educational theory and practice in the new century. Today, 22 years later, rereading the article Scientism or Humanism, and examining the current situation of Chinese teaching, we find that "Scientism Thought" and "Humanism Thought" are still not integrated, or even more separated than before, and some new problems have emerged-

(A) the widespread phenomenon of "pan-humanity"

The phenomenon of "pan-humanism" in Chinese teaching is mainly manifested as: leaving the subject characteristics, deviating from the true interest of Chinese, discarding the text, abandoning the language, ignoring the ability, despising the training, publicizing the personality, strengthening the emotional experience, and falling into an over-interpretation of humanities, which leads to the weakening of Chinese practicality, the decline of Chinese ability and the paralysis of Chinese function.

For example, the compilation of teaching materials, the total denial of knowledge system, and even words such as "ability training" are considered taboo. Many textbooks don't mention Chinese knowledge, which seems to be taboo when it comes to knowledge, ability and training. The new curriculum standard has been implemented for eight years. Looking back on teaching practice, Chinese teachers in senior high schools complain that Chinese teachers in junior high schools don't even teach the most basic phrases, sentence elements and metaphors. Students don't make up grammar and rhetoric until senior high school, which greatly increases the burden of senior high school teaching. Moreover, after the age of "laying the foundation", it is not easy for students to learn Chinese knowledge, so that they can't master the basic knowledge they should master. Due to the hype of concepts such as "Chinese has no system" and "system should not be emphasized", words, phrases and sentences that should be involved in Chinese teaching are replaced by "feeling by yourself", "learning while learning" and "pondering again", and front-line teachers should certainly follow suit. The new curriculum advocates that students should build a knowledge system, but the textbook writers and teaching implementers are full of brains and give up their leading role. Isn't it obvious that they fainted? Where does the student's self-construction begin?

When attending an open class, no matter what text or class type, the first thing teachers should consider is how to design an excellent and picturesque courseware with beautiful music, set a vivid and touching situation and design a lead-in with a sense of sound and picture. And all this is for "wonderful" scenes, and the wonderful sign is to make students feel, be moved, and even cry; Let a few clever students stand up and speak, draw the philosophy of white beard from their mouths and win the applause of the audience. The "classroom exercise" in the classroom was cut off, the time for meditation was gone, and the small exercise pen combining reading and writing was squeezed out, leaving only scenes of humanized lively scenes and aimless conversations between teachers and students. Chinese class has become a simple humanistic edification class, situational performance class, aesthetic appreciation class, literary interpretation class, philosophy research class, science popularization class ... At present, such "pan-humanism" classes abound; It has become a kind of nonverbal behavior to indulge students' "personality expression", "unique feeling" and "emotional experience" without words.

The goal of classroom teaching should be the concrete expression of learning achievements in unit time, which is observable, operable and detectable. However, the "teaching objectives" of almost all Chinese teachers in middle schools in China have not met such requirements. Although they also marked the word "teaching goal" in their lesson preparation notes, the verbs they used were vague and general psychological verbs such as "understanding", "understanding", "feeling" and "liking". This vague and general teaching goal simply does not have the function of guiding teaching, learning and examination. First, it is not conducive to clear teaching tasks. Teaching goals such as "understanding" and "experience" will bring great difficulties to teachers in analyzing teaching tasks (teaching thinking after the goals are determined) and guiding and monitoring their own teaching behavior-it is difficult to determine how far it takes from students' starting ability to reach these learning results, what stages to go through, what specific goals are and what supporting conditions are there. Second, it is not conducive to the choice of teaching methods and teaching media. Teaching objectives such as "understanding" and "experience" will greatly restrict both teachers and students to choose and use methods and means to achieve teaching objectives. If the goal is not clear, it is more difficult to determine how to achieve it. Third, it is not conducive to the measurement and evaluation of teaching results. Fuzzy teaching objectives mean that the scale of measurement and evaluation is also fuzzy, which brings difficulties to measurement and evaluation. What are the criteria for measuring "understanding" and "experience"? How to accurately judge whether students have achieved these goals? Teachers and students are very confused about these problems, and they can only estimate the learning effect by experience, far from accurate measurement. However, the estimated results are often far from the real learning results, not to mention the validity and reliability.

(B) "Scientism" in some aspects of the flood

Now exam-oriented education is getting more and more serious, which can be described as "scientism" flooding. Examinations have become a routine. In addition to mid-term exams, final exams and research exams, there are also monthly exams, weekly exams, and even exams every day and every class. Examination-oriented education advocates examination-oriented center, cognitive supremacy, analytical standard and technicalism, which provides a suitable soil for the breeding and spread of scientism Chinese education concept. This view of Chinese education shows the extreme utilitarian value tendency of scientism and the practical tendency of scientism methodology, which is actually unscientific and anti-scientific.

Many Chinese teachers, especially some young teachers, are superstitious about those poor teaching methods, which makes the original vivid Chinese classroom dull, boring and lifeless. In the teaching of literary works, they always stick to a fixed teaching procedure: starting with the author's background introduction, speaking the first and second paragraphs ... and then practicing 1, practicing 2 ... a famous poem, a beautiful article and a good play are often taught in a class without literature. They are used to breaking up beautiful literary works by means of scientism, and doing the business of burning harps and cooking cranes. The author has heard the analysis class decompose how many metaphors, how many personification, how many foil and how many synaesthesia are in Moonlight on the Lotus Pond many times. Here, the scalpel with natural science characteristics stabbed literature and aesthetics. We should know that Chinese teaching needs necessary humanities education. First of all, it must have people in mind-students, authors, editors and teachers, and it must be "four hearts in one". But these people believe in science, and there is only this method and that style in their hearts, but there is no "person", no emotion and no humanity.

The new curriculum advocates autonomous learning, but now it has disappeared; Because in Chinese class, students can't be masters, and the learning and teaching activities in class are controlled and decided by teachers. The teacher asked to see the projection, and the students could see nothing else; Ask to listen to the recording, you can't help but listen; Ask to see it once, not twice; It is required to discuss for 3 minutes, and it will not stop then. Teachers completely deprive students of their autonomy in learning, and students have no right to choose freely and explore independently. Students become slaves in classroom learning, and teachers become slave owners in classroom teaching. Teachers have developed from "cramming" in the past to "learning" now, and students have changed from "listening" in the past to "answering" now. In a new curriculum demonstration held in Suzhou, 16 Chinese teachers from all over the country taught 16 classes, and none of them crossed the threshold of "full house asking questions", but one class actually asked questions 64 times.

Problems such as too much exam practice, too detailed reading analysis, too complex composition standards, too unified preparation for exams, too narrow threshold for expansion, and too little teaching generation are all manifestations of the proliferation of scientism. Scientism requires people to know things without emotion and treat nature, society and life objectively, calmly and rationally. In this case, the basic attributes of Chinese teaching are alienated into rational analyzability, logicality and systematicness; Its content has been weakened to a simple pursuit of practical knowledge; Chinese has become a knowledge of reciting, reasoning and even "killing dragons"; The subject of learning has become a test-taking machine and an answering puppet without humanistic feelings.

The ubiquitous "pan-humanism" phenomenon and the local "scientism" tendency have brought great losses to our Chinese teaching. Under the influence of "pan-humanities" leading to "pan-Chinese" or even "no Chinese", the seriousness of some Chinese teachers' teaching has fallen to an unimaginable situation: most Chinese teaching and research groups exist in name only, the collective does not study theoretical articles, and teachers do not subscribe to Chinese publications. Teachers' classroom teaching plans are generally not written, and they only rely on the teaching arrangements made by the lesson preparation team leader. Lesson preparation notes plagiarize the electronic draft downloaded (slightly modified) by others from the Internet. "One person downloads and many people appreciate it; If you are not familiar with the text, go on with the class. "The day before yesterday, we supervised the Chinese teaching of senior three in a national demonstration high school. In fact, none of the teachers has lesson preparation notes, and all seven teachers use practice handouts instead of lesson preparation notes. There is no lesson plan of "preparing lessons at once" on the podium, and its teaching effect can be imagined. When preparing lessons collectively, "one by one" has become a thing of the past. It is common for homework to be assigned but not corrected. It is also rare to rewrite a composition full of comments. Exquisite stick figures on the blackboard are a thing of the past, and "step-by-step summary" and "class summary" have long since disappeared. The situation of students is even more indescribable. Compared with more than 20 years ago, the Chinese level of middle school students has not improved, but has dropped significantly. Say the composition first. Most middle school students can't write a person well, but they can remember one thing well. Argumentative writing is far worse than before. On June 5438+February, 2008, the eighth composition competition of senior high school students in Jiangsu Province asked to write an argumentative essay with the title "No problem". In fact, many "composition experts" are selected at different levels, and many people can't write argumentative papers. There are many distressing phenomena: I can't take notes, I don't know the writing format of common practical articles, I can't write Chinese Pinyin, I can't use punctuation marks, and I'm not used to using reference books. ...

The above-mentioned unhealthy phenomena seriously distort the disciplinary nature of Chinese curriculum, hinder the normal function of Chinese education, mislead the development direction of Chinese teaching, cause great confusion in Chinese education, and affect the quality and effect of Chinese teaching. What should we do when we realize that the problem raised by Chen Zhongliang has not been solved, but has become more serious? We believe that there is an urgent need to do the following two things-

(A) to clarify the relationship between "instrumental", "scientific" and "humanistic"

In the past, some people attacked the instrumentality of Chinese with human nature in an attempt to correct many disadvantages of Chinese education, but soon there was no market. What is the reason? Logic confusion, matching object error. "Humanism" and "scientificity" are a set of corresponding concepts, which come from humanism and scientism respectively. They coexist in something and are external. "Physics" and "human feelings" are integrated, and this thing is perfect. "Instrumentality" and "purpose" are a set of corresponding concepts. "Instrumentality" means that something is in the position of means, bridge and intermediary in the chain or system formed by it and many things, and its existence value is reflected by making other things exist better. This is a property that a thing is in a certain relationship chain or system and has strong relativity; By changing the length of the chain or adjusting the number and structure of the elements of the system, this "instrumental" thing may become the ultimate and purpose of the chain or system. A thing with perfect "instrumentality" must combine "humanity" and "science" in the body and form it outside, so as to fully display its "instrumentality" and have the value of existence in the chain or system of things.

Instrumentality, purpose, science and humanity are a two-dimensional structure; Instrumentality includes science and humanities, and purpose includes science and humanities. To talk about integration, we can only say that "instrumentality" and "purpose" are integrated, and "scientificity" and "humanity" are integrated. In other words, "scientificity" and "humanism" are integrated into the "instrumentality" of Chinese, and its instrumentality is truly perfect; On the contrary, its instrumentality is incomplete. The application of this understanding in Chinese teaching practice is the coexistence of scientific training full of humanities and humanistic nourishment full of science. In the past, people's criticism of "instrumentality" was too radical and biased. The lack of "humanity" contained in "instrumentality" is a fact in teaching practice, but it should not be abandoned or excluded. The correct approach should be to add the connotation of "humanity" to "instrumentality" so as to integrate it with the "scientificity" existing in instrumentality.

It seems necessary to change the sentence "the unity of instrumentality and humanism is the basic feature of Chinese curriculum" in Chinese curriculum standards. For example, "the unity of instrumentality and purpose, and the unity of science and humanity are the basic characteristics of Chinese curriculum". If this relationship is clarified, I'm afraid there will be no unnecessary debate about who is more important or less important than "humanity" and "instrumentality".

(B) the construction of "new humanism" and "new scientism"

As the superior concept of humanism, "humanism" emphasizes people, subject, life, subjectivity, individual existence, free will, value, intuition, experience and emotion. As the superordinate concept of science, "scientism" focuses on things, objects, nature, objectivity, universal laws, causal determination, knowledge, logic, positivism and rationality. Their differences in emphasis not only show their strengths and advantages, but also show their shortcomings and deficiencies. The basic ideas of scientism and humanism on education are both correct and reasonable in line with educational laws and development trends, and also have some shortcomings that deviate from educational theory and practice. The deficiency of one side is the advantage of the other side, especially with the development of society and the progress of education, their one-sidedness is increasingly exposed. The view of scientific education attaches importance to the direct social function of education, but ignores the more profound responsibility of promoting people's all-round and harmonious development. Humanistic education view pays attention to the cultivation and perfection of human nature, but tends to be divorced from the objective material world and ignore people's pursuit of realistic value. Therefore, it is one-sided and wrong to regard humanism and scientism as educational views and attach importance to one or ignore the other. Because these two educational views are complementary and inseparable aspects in the development of education, it is only because of the imbalance in the development of human knowledge system that they are unbalanced and separated from each other. Therefore, we must establish and adhere to a complete view of educational purposes, which includes both humanistic and scientific educational purposes. Only a complete education can deal with the relationship between man and nature and society, and make people develop healthily and comprehensively in the direction of humanization. Undoubtedly, as an all-round development person, he should have not only scientific and technological knowledge and literacy, but also knowledge and literacy of humanities and social sciences, which is the general goal of our country and even all mankind. As Hausberg, president of Notre Dame University, pointed out, a complete education includes two parts: learning to do things and learning to be a man. In his view, "learning to do things" must receive scientific education and cultivate scientific spirit. "Learn to be a man" must receive humanistic education and cultivate humanistic spirit.

Therefore, according to the law of educational development and the requirements of social development, education in China must change the situation of either/or and realize the organic integration of science and humanities. From the beginning, Chen Zhongliang raised the question of "scientism or humanism". Although it is an either-or judgment question in form, we should answer it with mutual compatible joint judgment: "It is both scientism and humanism". In other words, our Chinese teaching is neither pure scientism nor pure humanism, but a harmonious integration of the two related elements. After the integration of scientism and humanism, although "you have me and I have you", you and I are not completely confused, and we should focus on each other. Otherwise, their individuality will disappear, and they will fall into a vague situation, so it is difficult to implement the so-called integration concept in teaching practice. Therefore, after the integration of the two, we should focus on it. The emphasis on scientism is called "humanistic scientism" and the emphasis on humanism is called "scientific humanism". On the basis of maintaining and developing the fine tradition of humanism, scientific humanism absorbs the scientific elements and spirit it lacks, so it is also called new humanism. Humanistic scientism absorbs the lack of kindness and humanistic spirit on the premise of excavating and carrying forward the precious heritage of scientism; So it is also called neo-scientism. (Essays on China's Philosophy of Science by Li See Xingmin (Preface): Hunan Education Press, June 2000 1998 to September >)

In actual teaching, whether to follow "scientific humanism" or "humanistic humanism" depends on the specific situation, and there should be no fixed rules. "Humanism" will not lead to triviality and mechanization like pure scientism, and "scientific humanism" will not ignore the cultivation of basic abilities and the accumulation of basic knowledge like pure humanism. In view of the disadvantages mentioned above that students become "slaves" in classroom learning, we should increase some humanistic care and democratic consciousness, and try our best to guide students in the direction of classroom learning masters. For example, teachers begin to "walk by hand": organize students to prepare lessons independently, choose topics independently, guide students to read independently, ask questions independently, and make and summarize classes. This kind of autonomous learning belongs to "humanistic scientism"; When students master the method of autonomous learning skillfully and teachers appear among students as "masters of learning", they belong to "scientific humanism".