Truly meaningful education should take humanistic spirit as the priority, which values both individuation and diversification of schooling.

During China’s medieval period, the mission of education was defined as the comprehensive cultivation of virtue.

Virtue, core of educational tradition
Even during the social disorder of the Spring and Autumn period (770-221BC), Confucius stressed ambition, virtue, benevolence and art while worrying about threats to moral character and knowledge. He spent his entire life practicing the great idea that education should be equally accessible to all, leaving a rich legacy for later generations of educators.

Mencius once said to his students that benevolence, righteousness, etiquette and wisdom are four virtues innately possessed by everyone that get lost bit by bit as one ages. He argued that the mission of education is to help each person to cultivate and internalize these virtues.
 

Taking a different stance, the Confucian master Xunzi argued that people are born with all kinds of desires. Malignant desires, if left unchecked, will culminate in unscrupulous acts. To him, the role of education is to address the viciousness in mankind as early as possible to prevent it from becoming realized.

Regardless of whether a person’s fundamental nature is good or evil, education plays a huge role in the personalization and balanced development of character. Through education, any ordinary person can grow into a sage, Xunzi maintained. This humanistic ideal represents the first stage in the development of Chinese education.
 

Actually, these precious educational ideas are not unique to Chinese culture. In the long history of other civilizations, they can also be found in a variety of forms.
 

In The Republic, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, recalling the words of his teacher Socrates, used the famous Allegory of the Cave to clarify that the mission of education is to end ignorance and carry forward virtue. In Plato’s view, a person’s knowledge and virtue are restricted by one’s social environment. The prisoner living in the cave described in the parable is ignorant but also self-content. He contended that the enlightenment and training of education is the mechanism by which virtue is gradually cultivated, and the ultimate goal is the important task of liberating and enlightening society. It is also the philosophical basis of contemporary educator John Dewey’s idea that education is growth.
 

In the first stage of the historical development of Chinese education, humanistic education served as a warning about and reflection on the moral decadence and educational decline at the time. The tradition also offers an inspiring lesson for today’s education. The quality of education should be unrelated to employment rate or other indicators. The ultimate goal of education is the cultivation of virtue. The idea not only applies to students but also to teachers, principals, administrators, parents and the public as a whole. Moreover, education should be personalized and diversified rather than standard. Equal treatment of each student and the school itself is also another mission of education. However, these traditions of education seem to have been all swept away by social changes.

Western utilitarianism
A survey of history reveals that the downfall of education did not begin in modern times. In China, the first challenge to classical humanist education came from the imperial examination system, which was established during the Sui (581-618) and Tang (618-907) dynasties and lasted for more than a thousand years. Talent selection, formal schooling and national governance were systematically integrated for the first time. There is no doubt that the imperial examination system contributed a lot to the development of Chinese civilization, especially the selection of talent and the progress of society. But it also colored education with a utilitarian character, transforming schooling into an instrument by which to achieve personal, social and national advancement.

The idea of humanistic education gradually fell by the wayside and became distorted and lost amid the changes of history. After the Sui and Tang dynasties implemented the imperial examination system, educational elitism started to prevail and the school gradually became a “vanity fair.” The form and goals of education were stripped down to the fundamental utilitarian basics, and the school’s mission, once diverse and plural, started to become singular, leading many intellectuals to parochially believe that “all is inferior and only education is superior.” Yan Yuan, a thinker in the early Qing Dynasty (1616-1912), critically denounced the defects of education at that time, saying that schooling had become detrimental to the mind, the body and the nation. Unfortunately, it was difficult to remedy the situation, and the problem remains entrenched despite attempts at modern education reform.
 

However, this is not the only reason for the decline in humanistic education. In the West, since the British Industrial Revolution and the enclosure movement in the 18th century, global capitalism and colonialism have expanded rapidly. The classroom teaching system, standardized curriculum and assessment, and compulsory education have been widely adopted in developed capitalist countries to mass-produce a ready supply of modern workers and farmers.
 

Formal education has become increasingly utilitarian and functional. It is exploited by the agents of capitalist greed and imperialism and used as a tool for global colonial expansion. Today, this Western capitalist model of education, with its global monopoly, has supplanted the local educational traditions of many other countries, stifling their lively and vivid essence.
 

After it was introduced into China via Japan, the utilitarian school system of the modern West merged with the Chinese examination tradition, constituting a second wave of impact on China’s classical humanistic education that brought fundamentally negative effects. This undermined humanistic education even more than the imperial examination system. For more than a century, reformers of Chinese education struggled to find a middle ground between feudal traditions and capitalist innovation, failing to strike balance between virtue and function or between personality and equality, which are the basic characteristics of the second stage of Chinese education.

Looking ahead
In the future, China’s universities must balance the ideals of inclusiveness, uniqueness, independence and vibrancy, which should also be the vision of Chinese education in the years to come.

The future of Chinese education should be based on a domestic tradition of humanistic education. The cultivation of virtue should always be the core of education and goal of teaching reform. Only by making the training of “good men” the school’s primary mission, can it be possible to build truly “good schools.” In the years to come, Chinese education should also actively carry on the spirit of equality, one of the essential features of classical humanism. Everyone is entitled to be educated equally. The thread should run through all aspects and the whole process of education. A “good education” should not offer students disparate treatment based on their social and economic status, ethnic, regional or religious background.
 

To achieve the fundamental educational mission with virtue and equality as the core, individuation and diversification are the prerequisites of education. And, more importantly, China’s future education should transcend its earlier stages to cultivate global citizens who aspire to pursue the elevation of the mind. In this way, it can play a positive role promoting dialogue rather than conflict within human civilizations. Only when the humanistic spirit is truly reflected in education, can Chinese schools truly achieve the goal of being world-class institutions.
 

What needs to be specially pointed out is that the challenge of Chinese education is not limited to reforming the educational system. It is also a crucial component of building a harmonious society where virtue and law coexist. When it is no longer a social dilemma to decide to help an old man who falls down in the street, training “good men” and “good schools” may have practical significance.
 

With the deepening globalization and localization, Chinese education in the future should not only provide its version of development for world-class education but also shoulder the responsibility of promoting the construction of a virtuous global society to contribute to a future where there is no conflict and war—one in which eternal peace and liberation of all mankind is a reality.

Li Jun is president of the Hong Kong Educational Research Association and executive deputy director of the Institute of Education Policy at the University of Hong Kong.