摘 要

杜威和陶行知都是著名的教育家，两者对于世界教育的发展都做出了极大的贡献。陶行知是杜威的学生，他的教育理论和杜威的理论一脉相承又有所区别。两位教育家都非常注重生活教育，对比研究他们的理论和实践对发展当今的素质教育有极大的借鉴意义。

本文分为五个部分：第一部分是介绍；第二部分从社会背景、理论来源和主要内容三个方面详细介绍了杜威和陶行知的理论并做了对比分析；第三部分介绍了两人著名的教育实践——芝加哥实验学校和晓庄师范并加以对比分析；第四部分根据对二者的理论和实践的对比研究对当代素质教育提出了一些可行性建议；第五部分对论文内容进行了小结。通过这五部分的内容，不仅对杜威和陶行知的教育理论和实践都进行了全面而完整的分析探讨，更对当代的素质教育有了更多思考。

关键词：杜威；陶行知；生活教育理论；教育实践；对比

Abstract

John Dewey and Tao Xingzhi are excellent educators; they both contributed a lot to the development of the pedagogy. Tao was a student of Dewey. He was deeply influenced by Dewey. However, they lived in different situations. Thus, though their theories are closely related, there are lots of differences. The two educators attach much importance on life education, studying their theories is meaningful for promoting quality-oriented education.

There are five parts of this paper. The first part is an introduction. The second part introduces and contrasts the educational theories of John Dewey and Tao Xingzhi from social backgrounds, theoretical origins and main contents. The third part presents and contrasts the famous educational practices——Chicago Experimental School and Xiaozhuang Normal College. The fourth part is the suggestions for contemporary quality-oriented education according to the contrast of their theories and practice. The last part is a conclusion. Through the five parts, not only theories and practice of Tao and Dewey are analyzed in detail, but the contemporary quality-oriented education is reflected.

Key Words: John Dewey, Tao Xingzhi, Life Education Theories, educational practice; comparison

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Education theories 3

2.1 Similarities 3

2.1.1 Empathizing social value of education 3

2.1.2 Empathizing the unity of education and life 3

2.1.3 Empathizing the concept of lifelong education 4

2.2 Differences 4

2.2.1 Different backgrounds of education theories 4

2.2.2 Different contents of education theories 7

3 The practice of education 12

3.1 Similarities 12

3.2 Differences 12

3.2.1 The education practice of John Dewey 13

3.2.2 The education practice of Tao Xingzhi 14

4 Suggestions for quality-oriented education 16

4.1 Learning from doing 16

4.2 Combining learning and thinking 16

4.3 Implementing lifelong education concept 17

4.4 Improving teachers' ability 17

4.5 Transforming from teacher-centered to student-centered 17

5 Conclusion 19

References 20

Acknowledgements 21

A Comparison between John Dewey and Tao Xingzhi on Education Theory and Practice

1 Introduction

As the influential educators in the 20th century, John Dewey and Tao Xingzhi, proposed the "Education is life" and "Life is education" ideological and theoretical system respectively. Dewey, as the founder of the educational philosophy of pragmatism and synthesizer, his ideas of education have had significant intellectual impact on the Chinese education sector in half of the 20th century. Dewey advocated education to adapt to the nature of children, child-centered, against the mechanical training, emphasizing learning by doing and then put forward the "Education is life". However, Tao Xingzhi criticized the modern "traditional education" of china and the shortcomings of "westernized education", and he developed his own distinctive ideas of education system life based on Dewey's rational core theory. Its core is "Life is education. These two theories were both "quality-oriented, which against the traditional cram methodology. Although the concept of quality-oriented education has existed in China for more than a decade, the essence of it never seems to be understood. Thus it is of great significance to learn from the theories and practice of the great educationists John Dewey and Tao Xingzhi.

As the pioneer of empiricism, Dewey's educational theories played an important role in America, especially during the education reform in the 20c. Due to the interaction with foreign students, his theories were spread around the world. Invited by his students Tao Xingzhi, Hu Shia and so on, he came to China to give speeches in 1919. Attracted by the May 4th Movement, Dewey decided to prolong his traveling in China. Thus, he stayed in China for more than three years. When Dewey left Beijing, Hushi wrote Mr. Dewey in China, which was published in Eastern Magazine and Republic Daily. Hu Shi remarked, since contacted with western cultural, there was no foreign scholar had such great influence as Mr. Dewey did. Tao Xingzhi learnt and modified his theories according to actual situation of China. Tao's theories were universally accepted do to his successful practice. However, due to the Cultural Revolution, Tao Xingzhi was criticized. Until 1980s, he was recognized by the academy. There were some important books such as The Education theories of John Dewey (1981) and The Education theories of Tao Xingzhi. In the early 20th century, some scholars began the contrastive study between them, such as A Comparison between John Dewey and Tao Xingzhi on Education Theory, written by Hu Jiyuan (2007). With the promotion of quality-oriented education, much attention was paid on the life education, such as The Comparison between Life is education and education is life, written by Liu Jianying (2010). Generally speaking, studies and researches on their theories are rather brief; mainly focus on the theoretical level. In my opinion, it is far from enough if we really want to learn from it to improve the current educational situation in China. What we should do is to look into the education practices and find out their original inspiration. By studying those vivid teaching practice, more findings can be perceived.

This paper made a comparison between John Dewey and Tao Xingzhi in both theories and practices. Based on what has been studied, a comprehensible research was made ranging from the background information to the supporting theories, from the actual practice to the detailed theories. At the end of this paper, some suggestions were put forward to the current quality-oriented education and points out the limitation of essay writing and bring up some suggestions in future research.

2 Education theories

2.1 Similarities

2.1.1 Empathizing social value of education

Both Tao Xingzhi and John Dewey stressed the role of education in the transformation of society. They regarded education as a tool for social transformation, they are convinced that the significant role of education in society and they put this belief through education in their respective thoughts. Dewey mentioned how education changed life when he explained the relationship between educations. He believed that education was life, the education should enrich people's lives so that children can adapt to life. Dewey pointed out that the reconstruction of society need rely on schools to a certain degree. School education was the new social building tool; the existing unreasonable social characteristics could be changed by schooling. Thus, Dewey attached great importance on the role of education for social transformation. As an essential role in national education salvation movement and strong communicators of Dewey in China, he was convinced that education could affect social change in China; education could save the entire country and change the destiny of the nation. Tao made it clear at the time of the founder of Xiaozhuang Normal that one of life education goals is to foster "the spirit of social transformation." In Tao's education theory, he wanted a new kind of education which could inspire the ideology of the people to improve the situation of the nation. In short, the Tao and Dewey both emphasized the role of education in social transformation in their theories, emphasis on education through the life of an individual transformation to achieve the purpose of transforming society.

2.1.2 Empathizing the unity of education and life

Tao and Dewey both emphasized the unity of education and life. They adhered to the philosophy of pragmatism and emphasized on the relationship between education and life to against the traditional stiff education. We can say that their theories were raised to solve problems that schools detached from society and knowledge could not solve practical problems. "Life is Education" and "Education is Life" stressed that school education must linked to real life in order to achieve the role of education. To be specific, "Life is education" means that there is life in education, life contains education, and life needs education. "Education is Life" means the education process is the in lives rather than exist without education. By emphasizing the unity of education and life, Tao and Dewey were opposed to purely book-learning, advocated to obtain practical knowledge from living life in the world. Therefore, the Tao "Combination of teaching, learning and doing" and Dewey's "learning by doing" are to emphasize the importance of "doing" in education.

2.1.3 Empathizing the concept of lifelong education

Dewey's "Education is Life" and Tao's "Life is Education" both contain the concept of "lifelong learning". Dewey believed that "life is the development of continuous development and growth", the so-called development" is the ability to lead ability to a special channel, such as to develop a variety of habit". It was obvious that only through education, could "unfinished children" get the growth and the development of the necessary knowledge and ability. Dewey's educational thought life apparently contained the meaning of lifelong education, but he did not formally proposed the idea of lifelong education. As a student of John Dewey, Tao not only undertook Lifelong Education of Dewey, but also clearly put forward the concept of lifelong education. Tao believed education should be closely linked to the lives of the masses, so that the majority of people could learn when they were living. He proposed the development of "lifelong education and training curiosity". He insists that learning is life, life learning, we must learn to live as long as people. He called on people to "live and learn". In summary, emphasizing the unity of life and education will be bound to emphasize the continuity of education, so the Life Education Thought of Tao and Dewey's educational life have emphasized the concept of lifelong education.

2.2 Differences

2.2.1 Different backgrounds of education theories

There are two aspects of social backgrounds of their theories: social backgrounds and theoretical origins.

For one thing, their theories have different social background.

In late 19th and early 20th century, American social and political system was rather stable, which provided a vital condition for the development of social culture, especially for the development of education. However, the system caused lots of social problems, such as the huge gap between the rich and the poor and the old-fashioned education systems. With the development of society, there was an urgent need to reform the education.This is the economic boom period in the history of the United States. The United States began a scientific and technological revolution marked by power and the engine revolution. It also finished the completion of the highest level of modern industrialization in the world and caught up with Germany and Britain to become the world's top industrial powers. At the same time, freedom of capitalist developed as the typical modern business organization such as the National Trust, Poole appeared. Then it entered into a stage of development of modern capitalism that is monopoly capitalism. Due to an urgent need for talents and technologies, there was a high expectation for education.The late 19th and early 20th century of United State was in a transitional period of industrial development. In the meanwhile, economic development and cultural development were incompatible. What's worse, the education system was still inherited the old British and French colonial rule. In such a system, teaching forms were so stiff that the public required to reform education systems. It was in this background; Dewey put forward Life Education theory based on the pragmatism. He also set forth many new theories about education, schools and textbooks, which received strong response and resonance of society.

Tao was born in the era when Chinese was facing both the external aggression and internal turmoil. On the one hand, China became a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society since the Opium War. Although the success of Xinhai Revolution ended the feudal autocracy which had lasted over two thousand years, ordinary people's lives were still miserable. On the other hand, the New Culture Movement in 1915 and "May Fourth" patriotic student movement in 1919 had great impact on the traditional feudal culture consciousness; ideological emancipation became the trend of that age.The Xinhai Revolution overthrew the feudal autocratic rule, which lifted the shackles of development of productive forces to a certain extent. The Nanjing Provisional Government attached great importance to business and industry. It enacted a number of policies that were beneficial to the industrial and commercial development. Besides, because the Western powers engaged in war, they reduced the Chinese aggression temporarily. Thus, national capitalism entered into the development of the "golden period". However, China's national industry and commerce has always oppressed the Western powers and the feudal forces. Tao believed that there was an urgent need to educate people in order to develop national industry and commerce. Therefore, educational content and teaching methods must meet the requirements of social and economic development of the situation.Tao coincided with the transformations of Chinese social concept and modern education system. "China's traditional culture was deeply rotted in all levels of the society. However, with the outbreak of the New Culture Movement and the May Fourth Movement, the consciousness of the public was awakened" (Sun Peiqing, p.23). The moral core of feudal ideology such as Confucian and Mencius were attacked unprecedentedly, science and democracy became the subject of cultural development. The Life Education Theory of Tao was formed in his full absorption of Western philosophy and the traditional Confucian critique.

For the other thing, their theories have different theoretical origins.