when socrates meet confucius苏格拉底遇到孔子演讲稿

China has been talking about quality-oriented education for tens of year but never truly achieved the goal of quality education, only left a bunch of empty words. Is there anyone who can teach us what the core of quality education is? At first, I want to tell a story of my own.

At primary school, we students got a homework —washing feet for our parents. When we once heard this news, our faces flushed to red. We didn’t understand why we suddenly have to footbath for our parents, don’t know what meaning is h iding behind this behavior. Now, we knew this is so called quality education. But apparently this is a failure case.

So who can solve the problem?

If there is a time machine, our Chinese great educator Confucius will hurry to come, then hit nowadays educators’ heads one by one. He says: It seems that you haven’t got my point at all! If you want to see students learn to reward their parents by washing feet, why don’t you inspire them? Let them know that this is a virtue, a virtue that will earn more respects and compliments from others, a virtue that you have to obtain if you want to be a decent guy. This is Confucius, who thinks the best education is to inspire students what is good and what is wrong.

Why? Why do you think this is a virtue? This question is not raised by me, but by an old man named Socrates who also was one the greatest educators in the west. Faced this problem, Socrates squat down in front of the childhood-me, asking, so…you grew up all by yourself? What your

parents have done for you? What you can do for them? How about a footbath? This is totally Socrates, he never tells students to do what he thinks is right but lead them thinking whether it’s right or not.

If Socrates and Confucius really meet one day, though arguments will inevitably exist, they will at last shake hands. Because they all share one principle on the quality education: teaching students to be a decent man with virtue by leading them to understand reason rather than simply tell them.

Later, I tended to discover the answer of quality education through the Internet. And I found out more than 4 million articles relating to it, but none of them had really worked out. So, why don’t we think about the way that these two greatest educators suggested, maybe, one day, the goal of quality education will finally come true.