Hearing of Jaspers' fame, it comes from a widely circulated

famous saying: " Education is about a tree shaking a tree, a cloud

pushing a cloud, and one soul awakening another soul."This sentence

does not appear in" What is Education ", but it is conveyed by

Jaspers in" What is Education ". The book "What is Education" was

published in 1977. The book gathers Jaspers's views on education in

several books, and is widely circulated. According to statistics,

the book has been cited 3,787 times in the literature included in

the CNKI, and it is one of the most influential foreign educational

classics in China.

Today, my share is mainly divided into four parts: author

introduction, content summary, experience and summary reflection.

The first is a brief introduction to Jasbes, a German

existentialist philosopher, psychologist and educator, and a

representative of existentialist educational thought. Dozens of his

published works have exerted great influence, such as The Origin and

Goals of History, The Philosophy of Survival, The Spiritual State of The

Times, What is Education, the Idea of the University and so on. Among

them, The Concept of the University (1946) and What is Education

centrally reflect his existentialist education thought.

What is Education mainly discusses the necessary cultural

environment of human beings; the basic types of education; the

significance and tasks; the boundary of possibility and education;

the necessity of education; cultivation; education and language,

culture, inheritance and university ideas and tasks.

The full text of What is Education is based on existentialist

philosophy as epistemology, starting from the philosophical concept

of existence of "existence, freedom, communication, history, and

transcendence", pointing out that education is the education of

human soul, and the essence of educational activities is the

inheritance of culture and the free communication of spirit. The

purpose of education is to achieve human self-generation. In order

to achieve this purpose, Jasbes advocated cultural education, put

forward his own traditional but combined with modern curriculum

thought, and expressed the main views on teachers, thus giving the

existentialist education thought with specific content.

"What is Education" consists of 19 chapters, chapters can be

specifically divided into three parts, of which 1-3 chapters

mainly discuss the problem of what is education, 4-13 chapters the

author explains the essence of education to us, 14-19 chapters

mainly tells the modern school education, especially the

university education how to be carried out.

 Through reading this book, I would like to talk about some of
my experiences about the main content of the book.

In the author's view, education is human communication between

subjects (especially the older generation of the younger

generation), including knowledge content, the connotation of life,

will behavior norms, and through the cultural transfer function,

teach cultural heritage to the younger generation, make them freely,

and inspire its free nature. Therefore, the principle of education

is to guide the origin and foundation of the man's soul awakening

through the whole culture of the existing world, rather than to

guide the original things and mediocre knowledge (except the

ability, language and memory content as the basis of education).

True education never allows rote learning, and never expects

everyone to be a insightful and thoughtful thinker. The process of

education is to allow the educated to practice, learn and grow by

themselves in practice, and the characteristic of practice is free

play and constant attempt.

In other words, education is the education of the human soul, but

not the accumulation of rational knowledge and knowledge. Through

education to make people with talent, What you choose to be and to

hold the root of your life.

The author so define education, because he has a positive

understanding of human nature, in his view, education of young

people " can feel life is serious, they have the full possibility of

plasticity and development, and has clearly realized to become

complete is their own unremitting efforts and to their own

transcendence, and depends on the daily life, every moment of life

and every impulse from the soul."It is precisely because of the full

recognition of the infinite potential of people that Jaspers so

firmly believes that education should not be a system and knowledge

constraint for the educated, but should open the door for them to

explore knowledge, prompting them to seek truth under the guidance

of the original thirst for knowledge.

In response, Jaspers makes a distinction between educational and

other non-educational activities. Education should not be training,

also is not control, but between teachers and students and love and

flow, teachers can choose the perfect education content for students,

but more important to mobilize students inner motivation, rather

than use of external power to force students to accept knowledge,

such " external force does not have any education effect, on the

contrary, great harm to students, will eventually lead students to

the pursuit of usefulness secular."Because external coercion is

always unable to mobilize students' inner motivation, the content of

education can not be accepted by the soul of students, let alone

understand.
 (2) the ideal form of education —— insight and generation

Throughout the book, the education should be Socratic education.

Socrates advocates freedom and equality. In Soviet-style education,

" teachers and students are in an equal position, both sides can

explore freely, there is no fixed way of education, only through

endless questioning and feel that they know nothing about the

absolute truth."Teachers have a sense of responsibility to stimulate

students to explore knowledge, and strengthen it. In other words,

the essence of Soviet education is to arouse the potential of

students to generate an automatic force from within, rather than

applying pressure from the outside. The teacher should shift the

students' attention from the teacher to the students themselves, and

the teacher himself takes the position of suggestion. There is only

a friendly debate between teachers and students, but no submission

to dependence.

Education is not to drive the ignorant, but to make teachers

and students seek truth together, help and promote each other.
Teachers look for difficult problems in the specious self-
understanding, and are forced to think about themselves in the
complicated confusion. Teachers point out the method of seeking
answers, and ask a series of questions, rather than avoiding
answering questions. Socrates never gives students ready-made
answers, but let students make conclusions through exploration, and
through irony this powerful way to make those self-righteous people
realize their ignorance, and let them find true knowledge. The deep
meaning of irony is the concern for the original truth, and the
philosophical irony expresses the yearning for the origin of truth.
Meaningful irony hopes to elicit the unspeakable truth in many
complex phenomena. In Socratic dialogue and irony, everyone can
freely express his views on the truth, and mutual discussion enables
him to reflect from the perspective of others, and form insights.
Therefore, the search for the truth is not accomplished overnight,
but a long stream of insight. It is the eyes of the soul that come
back into itself, internally passing through its spirit, and
knowledge must rotate with the whole soul around the realm of
existence. The ideal education is the technology that leads "back"
that is, insight. Epiphany requires the accumulation of countless
thoughts, so education should pay attention to students' self-
education, so that they can keep the enthusiasm of exploration and
make unremitting struggle for it.
Education is the generation, which comes from the accumulation
of history and its own repeated efforts. The generation of human
beings seems to be achieved suddenly and imperceptibly, just like
enlightenment, but this unconscious was once the result of doing
something clearly in difficulties. Without accumulation, there will
be no generation, and the ideal result of education cannot be
achieved. And generation is not pure external change can create,
need internal thorough subversion. As many forms of lively
discussion always cannot really generate wisdom, because always is
only form close to superficial change, the authenticity of education
should be let the students actively participate in the atmosphere,
freedom lies in the dialogue discussion communication, constantly
improve their understanding results, so as to really generate who
also take the wisdom and scientific and rational way of thinking.
With a scientific way of thinking, students will be able to educate
themselves, so as to continuously acquire knowledge, not just the
focus of rote learning exams, which is the result of education.
 According to IELTS Bels, authority comes from the roots of all

the styles. The essence of authority is the historical unity of

truth. Authority is to carry people's rich life, and it is a thing

that makes people hide and secure, and its existence is always

linked with people's existence. According to IELTS bass, " People

live in rich and diverse authorities, authority is like the air

people breathe, indispensable ". Education is a part of life, and the

existence of authority is also essential to it. Authority —— is the

source of education. As the source of education, authority not only

regards authority as the basic guarantee for the realization of all

educational activities, but also regards authority as the internal

nature of educational activities. From the perspective of the

overall form of education, education is a community composed of

educators, educatees and educational intermediaries. In the

community, teachers and students all carry out relevant

communication activities in the pursuit of truth. In order to

achieve common communication, individuals in the community must

follow certain principles, content and purposes, rather than speak

themselves in isolation. In other words, there must be a whole and

unified authority in education to ensure the progress of educational

activities. The existence of authority is the premise and foundation

to ensure the development of educational activities."The joint

action of a united group, a group designed to achieve a common good

that can only be achieved through common action, must be united by

some constant principle. This principle is exactly what we call the

authority."In terms of the nature of education, education, as an

activity of cultural inheritance, undertakes the function of

inheriting the whole culture of human beings. Its purpose is to

awaken the human soul and promote the free generation of human

beings. In other words, the foundation of good education lies in

guiding all cultures to the origin and foundation of human soul

awakening, so as to promote the free generation of people. This kind

of free generation starts from the promotion of the human soul to

the acquisition and inheritance of the whole culture of human beings.

This kind of inheritance is the authority, and "every authority is a

way of inheritance". In fact, no one can really get rid of authority,

which gives people a sense of certainty of initial survival.

Authority, as the source of education, is the premise of the

development of authentic education to maintain the true

manifestation of authority. Therefore, educators must attach

importance to the status and role of authority in education, and

strive to maintain the true authority to promote the orderly

development of education.

In What is Education, Jaspers explores the function of education

from two dimensions: young man and adult man. He believes that the

role of young people is the most distinctive, if education has the

overall spirit, then young people are immature, because they are

young and have no status, to prepare for the future career, so they

must respect, obey and trust adults. Adults can use their own

experience to educate young people, so that a generation of young

people will learn throughout their own life, so as to grow into

learned adults. From the spiritual world, education

 Relying on the original spiritual life, education cannot be

independent, it should serve the inheritance of spiritual life.

Through training to constantly bring the new generation into the

excellent human culture, let them in a complete spiritual life,

Work and make contacts. Jaspers believed that John Dewey's model

of educational pragmatism could not cultivate "whole people", even if

they have rich professional knowledge, they could not have the soul

and ability to develop freely, and could not build and realize

themselves according to the original knowledge.

In fact, China's liberal arts and science division system is an

obvious example. Education is to cultivate people with all-round

development, while the advanced professional classification is not

conducive to the improvement of the overall quality of people, which

hinders the development of this principle.

On this issue, Jaspers did not emphasize their priorities, but

its integrity: where the professional knowledge, where the precise

expertise. However, at present, the professional disciplines have

been divided, and individuals can only master unilateral knowledge

and limited skills, which can not unify the essence of people and

the whole of cultivating consciousness.

In order to cultivate students' overall consciousness and make them

"whole people", he proposed that " the learning process must have

certain subject content. The exploration of knowledge is all-inclusive,

and all the knowledge in the world should be included in the scope of

universities."And emphasize the three things to do in college ——

Vocational training, complete people, scientific research, the most

important task is to cultivate the complete people beyond self-

existence through spiritual shaping.

And the "whole person" education is also the education that

awakens the life consciousness through the cultivation of history.

Jaspers despised some ignorant people of the overall view of history:

some people despised the role of history, as if education only

consists of ancient and modern skills, practical knowledge and the

origin of the contemporary world. Of course, not only that, we

should correctly understand the history, but also to understand the

comprehensive history. To first clear the content of their learning,

called the right thing, and then understand the comprehensive

history, do the right thing well.

College education is a special stage in the process of

education, and the university is also a special school. The author

respectively expounds the particularity of the university from the

following aspects:

University students —— have the freedom of learning; is

independent, can grasp their own fate; can take the initiative for

their own learning goals, good at thinking, choose to listen to the

class, listen to different views, facts and suggestions; have the

concept of self-responsibility, and with a critical spirit of

learning; dare to take their own adventure, with personality of the

"spiritual aristocracy".

University teachers —— have the freedom of teaching; to

spread the scientific truth as their own duty, to teach students

novel, according to their own situation to arouse their self-

consciousness; to lead by example, guide students, let them learn

 The spirit of hard study; there should be a basic principle, and

help.

Characteristics of university education —— scientific

education; emphasis on cultivating students 'basic scientific

attitude: in order to objectively understand and analyze things, can

temporarily ignore the self value evaluation, beyond a school of

thought, and the limitations of their current will to work;

scientific nature has the characteristics of realistic, repeated

deliberation, the opposite, continuous consideration and self-

criticism; scientific attitude not only help people to obtain

limited knowledge, it is more to cultivate people's rationality.

—— The first is research, teaching and professional knowledge

courses; the second is education and training; the third is the

spiritual communication of life; the fourth is academic. The four

tasks of a university are a whole, which constitutes the ideal of a

university: a university is the palace of research and teaching

science, the world in which new people grow up, the rich

communication between individuals, and the world of academic

prosperity.

The author puts the university in a relatively ideal state and

takes the university education as an important part of shaping

individual scientific thinking and future life preparation. However,

the university and explores its social role. However, the author

realizes that the university is facing the crisis of academic

freedom, and two tasks in its reform are very important: one is the

external transformation of the university organization and

construction; the other is the internal transformation of the

thinking mode to win the new form of the university concept. In my

opinion, in today's university reform, it is still very important to

deal with these two issues, and the external transformation of

university organization and construction is also the expression and

attempt of the internal change of the way of thinking, and is the

external condition to better practice the ideal of university

education.
 After reading this book, I quite agree with the author about

university education, the consciousness of independent education is

very important in the university period, and its positioning of

university students and university teachers —— as independent

individuals, spiritual noble to respect is very valuable, and

because the teacher, living is independent individuals, bright

dialogue between each other, rich life spirit is possible, it is the

most valuable, most can shape the part of human nature.

In addition, there is also a lot to think about in the process
of reading:

For example, the author puts forward two tasks of university

reform: one is the external transformation of university

organization and construction, and the other is the internal

transformation of the way of thinking to win the new form of

university concept. In addition, the author points out in the

section "The Concept of a University" that "the ideal of a

university depends on every student and teacher to practice, and the

various forms of university organization are secondary". The author

presents a certain degree of criticism of the student federation,

believing that it wastes time and energy on meaningless things. The

internal transformation of the mode of thinking has always been the

direction of universities, but the external form of university

organizations, as the author said, student associations and various

student organizations still exist and play a very important role in

the school. While serving their teachers and classmates, they also

improved their ability, but they also sacrificed a lot of free time.

Is this against the ethos of college freedom? In fact. In today's

university reform, it is still very important to deal with these two

problems, and to realize the external transformation of university

organization and construction is the expression and attempt of the

internal change of thinking mode, and also the external conditions

to better practice the ideal of university education, so as to

realize the benign development of the university as a social

institution.

As a student in the field of education, very honored to use the

book to review their own education process, realize the complexity

of the process and multifaceted, but also because of their lack of

experience and the lack of professional knowledge, also recognize to

many lack in the process of reading, even some one-sided and limited

understanding. But open conversation is important, understanding and

asking questions is important, as the individual independence and

autonomy of it is also important, as the author said, the ideal of

—— University depends on every student and teacher to practice.