Moral education is moral education. If legal education, political education, ideological education, environmental education and even sex education are all included in moral education, it will cause some unnecessary confusion and trouble: the generalization of the concept of moral education and the abnormal change of its status. Deviation of moral education mode, etc. Education "is an action that people try to constantly improve the psychological quality structure of others in any aspect, or keep valuable parts of their own psychological quality structure, or avoid the formation of bad psychological quality". Accordingly, "moral education" is to form or improve the moral quality of individuals through education, so that individuals can become "moral" people. In Dewey's view, "education is life", and education has an innate blood relationship with individual life. Morality is the "constituent element" of life, and life cannot be separated from life, and life cannot be separated from morality. It can be seen that the generation of moral people is one of the important purposes of education, and moral education is an organic part of education.
In the development of education in China, there has always been a phenomenon of equating education with moral education. For example, in ancient times, education was largely equivalent to moral education; In modern times, there is a tendency to empty moral education, which nominally gives it a certain position, but in fact it either replaces moral education with ideological things or completely banishes moral education to the edge. Although many scholars have reflected on this, it is still necessary to further clarify the relationship between moral education and education.
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From the perspective of educational purpose, it is the proper meaning of education to cultivate "moral" people. One of the most common mistakes here is that we can generally consider it comprehensively when formulating educational goals. Pay attention to cultivating a complete person; In the process of achieving this goal, it is often divided into some independent parts, and the relationship between these independent parts is not handled well. In ancient times, equating education with moral education, only paying attention to the development of personal morality and ignoring other aspects, education became the spokesperson of national ideology and was "arrogant"; Today's education seems to be on the opposite path: it only pays attention to the acquisition of knowledge and skills with science and technology as the core, and banishes the cultivation of moral quality to the edge. Morality is the "constitutive" factor of life, and it cannot exist without life. Life is inseparable from morality, without which life will wither. Therefore, if education only pays attention to intellectual education and the value of scientific knowledge while ignoring moral education, it will cause some people's mental organs to be uncoordinated, just like a person with particularly large limbs and a particularly small trunk.
In the process of gradually internalizing the social requirements for education, school education also decomposes the educational purpose again and again, and finally implements it in education and teaching activities, which is reflected in the individual development of the educated. In the process of decomposition, it is necessary to distinguish two different purposes. One is "fixed use" and the other is "mobile use". "Fixed purpose" refers to those aspects that can be accomplished with certain content in a specific time, such as various scientific literacy and sports skills. The purpose of this kind of education is more to grasp and plan personal material life. "The purpose of flow" refers to those purposes that constantly change and produce with the flow of life itself. It is not fixed in a certain period of life, and there is no definite final state. It is difficult to form it with specific content, and it can only be realized independently through everyone's experience. This category points more to people's spiritual life and meaningful world. These two categories are combined. Although they can be understood separately, they are inseparable in practical education. If the educational purpose is compared to a car, the "moving purpose" can be said to be the steering wheel of the car, guiding the direction to be driven, but it is impossible to work alone without leaving the car body; "Fixed purpose" is like a car body with a steering wheel, but you can't go somewhere without it. Moral education belongs more to the "flowing purpose" part of educational purpose, although it also includes relatively definite normative education with the nature of "fixed purpose", but its main content is to explain the meaning and value of life and promote its realization. In practical education, there is a simple and mechanical way to divide the purpose of education into moral, intellectual, physical and artistic aspects, which often leads to many "car bodies" without a "car body" and "steering wheel" without a "car body". Therefore, it is usually more appropriate to decompose only the "fixed purpose" when decomposing the educational purpose, and each "fixed purpose" should be attached with the "moving purpose". In this way, the "fixed purpose" can be targeted, and the "moving purpose" will not be blindly empty.
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Teachers are the key factor to realize the educational goal. Teachers' work can be said to take moral education as the key link to a great extent. First of all, moral education is the responsibility of all teachers. Some schools set up special moral education departments and are equipped with full-time moral education workers, which makes the moral education work exist in name only and ignores the role of other teachers in moral education. This practice has seriously affected the realization of the purpose of moral education in schools. Secondly, the role of moral education depends on every teacher treating students sincerely. Dewey once said: "There can't be two sets of ethical principles, one is applicable to life on campus and the other is applicable to life outside school. Because the behavior is consistent, the principle of behavior is also consistent. " If teachers engage in "two sets of teachers' ethics", on the one hand, they will easily get lost in the strange world, which will not only make them exhausted, but also lose their professional dignity and freedom; On the other hand, giving students a false edification, whether it is seen through or not, is harmful to their lives. Finally, teachers should be active, not passive. Although school education is often inconsistent with social influence, teachers must tactfully turn this contradiction into resources and motivation of moral education, turn negative influence into educational events, and develop "evil" educational value.
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The realization of educational purpose must depend on certain content. The content of education should include all the contents of the interaction between educators and educatees. Educators only complete the teaching of the subject, which can not guarantee the complete completion of the educational task. Because the purpose of education is not only to master knowledge, but to cultivate people. In addition, it is easy for teachers to form an illusion that the completion of classroom teaching means the end of education, which means that the educational purpose has been achieved. This narrow understanding of educational content will not only marginalize moral education in today's education with "exam-oriented education" as the baton, but even completely eliminate its position in schools. The purpose of moral education can not be achieved only by subject teaching, nor can it be achieved by offering special moral education courses. In other words, the implementation of moral education cannot rely on compiling virtue into a discipline similar to "recipes" and then "inserting" it into learners' minds. The realization of the purpose of moral education needs many aspects, including various disciplines, teachers' moral cultivation, the virtue of school life and so on.
Educational content is usually selected, which is helpful to the realization of educational goals. Moral education is like a sieve, filtering out things that are not suitable for its purpose as much as possible. In other words, the realization of the purpose of school moral education depends on certain content, but not all. In practice, it often happens that things produced or popular in society are stuffed into moral education. On the one hand, it leads to the deterioration of moral education, and the focus is ignored; On the other hand, it is also irresponsible to moral education, education and society.
To say that the implementation of moral education cannot be separated from educational content does not mean that all educational content itself necessarily contains factors to achieve the purpose of moral education. Some educational contents, such as social studies and Chinese classes, are related to moral education to varying degrees; However, some educational contents, such as mathematics and physics, are not necessarily related to moral education. It is absurd to force an unrelated or rarely related subject to cultivate a "moral individual". These subjects can also become the basis of moral education, mainly because there is real personality interaction between teachers and students in the teaching of these subjects. Morality originally carries the function of regulating the relationship between people and making life full of meaning. Therefore, moral education is carried out in the interaction between teachers and students, and the realization of the purpose of moral education cannot be separated from the realistic interpersonal relationship. This is the reason why moral education cannot be separated from and equated with educational content.