Transcript The Basic Strategy of Moral Education for Adolescence in the

The Basic Strategy of Moral Education for
Adolescence in the Information Age--Borrowing Wisdom from Confucius and
Socrates
Yih-hisen Yu
Professor, Department of Philosophy
Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan
Introduction
---The challenge of information technology to
education as part of the challenge of science and
technology to humanity for moderns
---The limitations of science and technology:
science and technology in doubt since 17th century
in the West: from Pascal, Vico, Rousseau,
Romanticists, Existentialists, to Postmodernists.
---Negative
response:
anti-instrumental
rationality, anti-science, and anti-rationalism
---Seeking for a positive answer to the
question “How to provide moral education
to the youth in a high-tech, capitalist society?
---“What is man?” reconsidered.
---What is virtue?
---Can virtue be taught?
Part One Two great educators in the East
and West: Confucius and Socrates
---Confucius (551-479 B.C.), the greatest
teacher in the Chinese mind
---Socrates (469-399 B.C.), the moral
martyr in the Westerner’s mind
Part Two
Education
Confucius and Socrates on Moral
---Their commonness:
---Taking virtue as the essence of man
---Taking the cultivation of the moral character
of students as the basic function of education
---Confucius’ view of morality: the concept of
benevolence and humanity
---Socrates’ view of virtue:
---Virtue is knowledge, self-knowledge, all
evils resulting from ignorance.
---Virtue cannot be taught.
---The Sophists’ view of virtue:
---Morality as nomos, norm, law, and
convention, and virtue as law-abiding
behavior
---Virtue can be taught.
---Three definitions of the concept of virtue
for the ancient Greeks
---Agathos, arête, and the nobles
---Virtue as law-abiding behavior and dike
---Virtue as human function: spiritual
qualities, the excellency of reason, wisdom
and insight.
Part Three Moral Education for Adolescence in
the Information Age
---Four major problems for the youth in the
information age
---Harm to their health
---Obstruction to their intellectual and mental
development
---Crises embedded in virtual friendship
---Sense of value dismissed, subjectivism,
relativism, and individualism prevailed
---The strategy of moral education proposed
according to Confucius’ and Socrates’ ideas
---negative strategy: helping the youth to build
up their real selves, learning the skill of selfmastery, and above all, to prevent them from
development the habit of internet addict.
---positive strategy:
---emphasizing
on
liberal
education,
strengthening the human identity of the youth
---moral and intellectual education balanced