This situation reflects the outstanding problem of contemporary composition teaching in China: influenced by utilitarianism, composition has become a means to get scores. Under the training of exam-oriented writing, students' individual lives are virtually strangled. British thinker Russell said: "It is very common to regard education as a form of training, and the concept of a means to produce consistency through servility is very common, and the main reason to defend it is that it leads to victory. ..... People engaged in educational work are usually instilled with certain psychological habits: obedience and discipline, ruthlessness in secular and successful struggles, contempt for the opposition and unquestionable credulity, and passive acceptance of teachers' wisdom-all these habits are anti-life. "Russell's words are shocking: does our teaching have an anti-life tendency? Have we unconsciously waved a butcher knife at a young life?
1. Ridiculous trek regardless of life
Writing education has long ignored life. The ancient composition education in China was dominated by Confucianism, which paid more attention to the real existence of people in society. They "tend to pay too much attention to the relationship between people in society, that is, the hierarchical positioning and adjustment cooperation between people, without paying too much attention to the freedom and truth of individual existence." To put it loosely, they are used to taking' * * *' as the self-evident premise, but they are not used to taking' personality' as the unacceptable premise. In Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi, the word "teaching" is defined as follows: "Teaching is applied from the top and effective from the bottom. "Education is an injection and indoctrination process from the outside to the inside. Teachers only regard it as a means of making a living, not an important course in their own lives. Students become passive recipients, blurring the brilliance of individual life. The imperial examination and stereotyped writing developed the indifference to life to the extreme.
For thousands of years, the imperial examination system has produced thousands of Kong Yiji and Jin Fan in batches. Liang Qichao once made a profound reflection on the disadvantages of stereotyped writing education: "Since the Song and Ming Dynasties, scholars have talked loudly, being empty and sparse, being stubborn and clamoring for perversity, which has led to various disadvantages of the country and society. Most of them are created by stereotyped writing, which has long been recognized by everyone and is still being changed. All those who have the ability to move are issued by the school, and they have been rewarded by the school for more than ten years ... It has been nearly a hundred years since the end of the Qing Dynasty when stereotyped writing was banned, the imperial examination was abolished and new learning was advocated. However, because it is still exam-oriented education, the greater the popularity of education, the higher the technicality of education, and the more tragic the harm to students' verbal life. It has become a common problem for students to "tell the truth (enter school) and lie (graduate)" in their writing. In order to pursue economies of scale, many teachers are satisfied with practicing uniform "urgent marching", but they turn a deaf ear to the faint groans of individuals under the collective wheel. With the vigorous development of writing technicalism today, the training sequence, ability level and knowledge induction are becoming more and more detailed.
In order to pursue the efficiency of "short, flat and fast" in daily composition teaching, the training points are becoming more and more dense. Many teachers even understand students' limited reading conditions, read on behalf of students, and restore classic characters and American prose into omnipotent "material treasures" and "reading fast food", thus achieving immediate training benefits. Teachers' intentions can be described as good, but if teachers only focus on "scores" and lose "life", the hard course may not win the real acceptance of students, and the absurdity that backfires will become an inevitable result. Mr. Pan Xinhe hit the nail on the head and pointed out: "If you tell a high school graduate that you have studied writing for about 10 years, all your articles are false, he will be surprised;" If you tell a Chinese teacher that you have taught students to write all their lives, they will be puzzled or fly into a rage. Writing teaching is like this. I don't know this true sorrow, which is the greatest sorrow. "
Second, the interpretation of "life" by philosophy of language.
Philosophers have long pointed out that man is a symbolic existence. In addition to creating mechanical tools to transform nature, human beings have also created symbolic tools to communicate with others and create culture. One of the most important symbols is language, as Heidegger said: "We are always talking, even if we don't make a sound, but just listen or read. We speak because it is our nature to speak. ..... Only words can make people exist as people, which is the difference between people and animals and plants. The person who speaks is a person. " Man is a talking creature, and talking makes him a creature. We are always surrounded by our language system. We grow up by learning to speak, know the world, know human beings, and finally know ourselves. Through the symbolic system of language, people not only establish their own consciousness of foreign objects, but also cultivate their ability of self-knowledge.
But the function of language is not limited to this. Language itself still exists. People own the world with the help of language, and at the same time complete their own life construction as existence. Cahill pointed out: "In a sense, people are constantly dealing with themselves, not with things themselves." Language is essentially a system of meaning and value, pointing to the generation and transcendence of life. The process of communication between people and language is the process of individual life integrating into the internal system of language. Linguistics closely links people with the world. As far as the relationship between language and human beings is concerned, the essence of human beings is their linguistic nature. People express and reveal their existence through language, and language is their own life itself.
The metaphysical thinking about "life" from the perspective of philosophy of language is to clear up the cognitive fog and thus accurately understand the purpose and path of life-oriented composition education.
3. Reflection on contemporary composition education from the perspective of life.
Professor Ye Lan pointed out: "Education has a bright vitality. In a sense, education is a social activity to directly face people's lives and improve their quality of life through people's lives. It is a cause that best reflects life care in a people-oriented society. " In a sense, education is life, "at the starting point, facing people's life; In this process, it runs through people's life and follows the nature of life; Therefore, it can promote the growth of life, pursue the meaning and value of life and improve the quality of life. Facing life is the premise, following life is the guarantee, and reaching life is the goal. "Human life should be the foothold and value pursuit of education. Composition education is no exception. We should always pay attention to the existence of human life and devote ourselves to its development.
The mainstream composition education thought in contemporary China basically follows Ye Shengtao's composition education thought. Ye Shengtao's writing values run through the pragmatic thoughts of "practicality" and "application", that is, writing is a "tool" to deal with life, work and study. This idea of "instrumentalism" is in line with the educational view that modern education in China turned to "practicality" in the early 20th century in order to reverse the abnormal educational view of separating learning from application. However, this view that writing education should cope with social life is biased today: if writing education is only regarded as meeting the actual needs of life, it not only devalues the true meaning of writing education, but also opens the door for exam-oriented education, because, fundamentally speaking, "taking an exam" is also a part of "coping with the world". Whether it is "adapting to the world" or "taking the exam", its fundamental defects are the absence of "people" and the incompleteness of the subject's life.
Although composition education should be closely combined with life, "for life" cannot be the only purpose of composition education. Simply catering to life will only lead to the distortion and disappearance of individual life, because the basic attribute of the motivation of "coping with the world" is sociality, which is fundamentally opposite to human personality and subjectivity. Because people are socialized, sociality is often stronger than people's subjectivity. People's own words and natural self-confidence are always shielded, suppressed and regulated by mainstream words intentionally or unintentionally. Therefore, strengthening the external dynamics of composition will stifle the free expression of individual life, which will lead to the sameness of composition.
Four. Life consciousness of composition education
Language is the existence of life, and its expression moves the breath of life. Composition should become an individual's life activity, and composition education should also return to life to protect students' speech. Even from the perspective of pure education, students should be given the ultimate concern for life. Only by raising education to the height of life and making it the life course, life experience and life sentiment of teachers and students can we realize the real "human" education. Similarly, contemporary composition education can only achieve self-salvation under the call of the banner of "life".
The vitality of composition education is reflected in the respect and care for students' individual lives, and encourages students to make unique discoveries in composition. Under the background of humanistic psychology and existentialism philosophy, Professor Pan Xinhe put forward the theory of language life dynamics, which advocates "discovering and paying attention to the potential, talent, essence and personality of each individual's speech life, adapting to the self-growth of speech wisdom, helping the growth of speech life, leading the self-realization of speech and promoting the maximum development of each speech life". Only by respecting each student's personality and subjectivity can we awaken their verbal life potential, and let them be in a state of constant "discovery" like babies, so as not to be uninspired and follow suit.
Returning to life, the free expression of true self needs the honest verbal personality of Tao Zhu students. The healthy development of speech life also depends on honest speech personality. To distinguish the integrity of speech personality, we can see whether the speech subject tells everything for the sake of score or expresses the speech life sincerely. In the formation of students' verbal personality, the verbal personality of Chinese teachers has a subtle influence on students. If the Chinese teacher earnestly warns students to try to figure out the psychology of the proposer, cater to the examiner's preferences, and encourage writing an exam-oriented composition without thought and personality, it is tantamount to hurting students' verbal life.
Teachers should also stimulate students' desire to speak and let life sing freely. American writer Natalie? Goldberg said: "It doesn't matter whether you write well or not, nor does the result of your writing matter. What matters is whether you let the action of' writing' show your mental journey and bring yourself back to life. " The most important thing is not content, but desire. Once life loses its desire to speak, it will wither and wither. Therefore, teachers should try their best to stimulate students' desire to speak. By building various publishing platforms, all students can gain the affirmation of self-realization, thus forming the habit of speaking freely and nurturing a strong verbal life.
If composition education always pays attention to every fresh and moist life, it can make the subject feel the inner light that he has never tasted at the moment when his soul trembles, and he will be liberated again and again because of his unprecedented publicity. Composition education should stand at the height of "life", guide students to pursue the life meaning of composition, experience the growth of verbal life, cultivate spirit and Zhi Tao's emotion, build personality and soul, and show individuality and creativity. Only in this way can composition education avoid criticism and win respect!
Chen Gaohua, a Chinese teacher, now lives in Suzhou, Jiangsu. This article was edited by Shu Tan.