理性的视角:走出高等教育“适应论”的历史误区

Rational Perspective: Go out of the Historical Misunderstanding of Higher Education Adaptation Theory

高等教育“适应论”是一种突出强调高等教育发展必须与社会发展需求相一致的高等教育发展观。该观念先后把国家工业化、政治运动、经济体制改革和建设“世界一流大学”等目标当作高等教育的主要适应对象, 其代表性表述是关于高等教育“两个规律”的理论。然而, 从理性分工的角度来看, 高等教育本质上是一种知识再生产活动, 其首先应该符合的是认知活动合理化即认知理性发展的要求。高等教育“适应论”的失误在于:一方面, 它颠倒了认知理性与各种实践理性的关系, 试图用工具理性、政治理性和传统的“实践理性”等取代认知理性在教学和科研中的核心地位, 使国内高等教育难于走上正常发展的轨道;另一方面, 它在选择某种实践理性为主导的时候, 又不惜压制其它各种实践理性的发展, 以至于在高等教育的各种目标之间、不同的目标与手段之间, 造成了极大的矛盾和冲突。本文认为, 回归认知理性、建设完善的学术市场, 是我国高等教育摆脱“适应论”思想束缚、稳步建设“世界一流大学”和现代大学制度的客观要求和未来发展趋势。

Higher education adaptation theory held the idea that the development of higher education must be consistent to the needs of social development. This idea which had been typically described as two laws of higher education, had chosen the major target of higher education as industrialization, political movement, economical structure reform and building world-class universities one after another. However, from the point of view of the division of rational activity, higher education must be subordinated to the requirement of the rationalization of cognitive activity first of all. The main error of this idea was that it denied the cognitive rationality's core value in higher education, trying to replace it by instrumental rationality, political rationality, economical rationality, Chinese traditional practice rationality and so on, so as to force' higher education out of the track of its normal development. Furthermore, when it chose one kind of practical rationality as guideline, it tried to deny the importance of the other kinds of practical rationality, thus made great contradictions among different objectives, and between objectives and means. This paper argue that it is necessary to establish an academic market which should be composed of academic community, academic system, academic schools and cognitive rational values, in order to overstep the adaptation theory and build some world-class universities steadily.