柳宗元的教育思想及其影响

Abstract

Liu Zongyuan was born in a family of officials. He became famous at a young age. He actively participated in the Yongzhen Reform in his youth. After the failure, he experienced a life of being demoted for fourteen years and finally died of illness in Liuzhou. During his demotion, he actively engaged in educational practice in Yongzhou, Hunan and Liuzhou, Guangxi, proposing a serial of unique educational perspectives. He proposed to cultivate gentlemen with both morality and talent through education “in order to clarify the way”, and the educational content of learning “Tao” from the opinions of hundreds of schools of thought based on the study of the Five Classics, and the “nature-oriented” educational method that follows the natural laws of students’ growth and the development laws of students’ learning, and the equal teacher-student relationship through “teacher-to-teacher” concept in which teachers and students are both teachers and friends, and serve as teachers for each other. These perspectives enriched and developed the educational thought of the Tang Dynasty.