孟子의 人間敎育에 대한 硏究

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to develop the view of education based on close examination of human nature which also is a matter of grave concern of the modern education. Fundamental purpose of school education is to cultivate individual's ability for self-actualization, to raise productive practical skill and to socialize individual as a member of the society. Education is an activity that fundamentally deals with human being. education also decides way of understanding human beings, purpose, content, and method of education, relationship between teacher and child, and the process of mind development. Especially, Mencius's education focuses on treatise of human nature. The main idea of the ethical doctrine of innate goodness is that even though human being is free and natural since the birth the later environment can make one bad so that education should control the bad and lead him to goodness this indicates the positive perspective on education. That is, Mencius understands human being as generally free and naturally good. Therefore, the core of Mencius's concept of education is to realize morally ideal world, based on the ethical doctrine of innate goodness that in turn is based on benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom. Therefore, Mencius's education can be considered as cultivation. Theory of cultivation suggests methods that are used to achieve cultivation of inner character, wisdom, and moral. Theory of cultivation had been considered as the core subject in philosophy even after Song Dynasty as well as in Confucianism of Kungtzu and Mencius. Kungtzu's purpose of self-cultivation was to become a man of honor therefore it suggested 'respect' as the basic point of cultivation. That is, he said that one should cultivate oneself with 'respect' and govern the nation and the world to complete self-cultivation. This further developed more by Mengtzu. He focused on the ethical doctrine of innate goodness. He claimed that the goal of self-cultivation is to recover 'the four virtues' through 'the four principles' and the specific way to achieve the goal is to be truthful. In other words, he meant that human being can recognize his own natural character through self-examination of inner-self. Mencius's purpose and content of education was transmitted from Kungtzu's teachings. His goal of education was to raise ideal human being through expanding one's benevolence and righteousness as well as to actualize moral society. Especially, he expanded his goal of education toward 'the four virtues' and 'moral rules to govern the Five Human Relations'. However, there has been constant questioning about whether it is proactively being a motive of training individual's character and forming human being. It means that modern moral education forgets the meaning of the education for human being and is escaping from the education for human nature. Although the level of education has been improved according to the society's transformation into knowledge-focused society, human nature is being impoverished as time goes by and the modern education that only focuses on university entrance exam and knowledge cause much problem of the society. Moreover, modern moral philosophy, responsibility ethics that forms the main current in moral education, and self-controlled approach that now only focuses on reasonableness and rational decision, these result in the crisis of identity. One of the fundamental reasons of this is in lack of education for homo totus. Therefore, this study examines detailed contents and methods of education philosophy through Mencius's theory of human nature to find out and solve the problems of modern education.