“千古奇丐”武训与西方“教圣”裴斯泰洛齐

武训“兴学于未废科举之时”,实属近代教育之先驱。他兴义学的实质是让学校的大门向城乡社会低层子弟开放,其对兴义学事业的执着的原动力来自于中国传统人道主义思想的文化精神;裴斯泰洛齐是略早于武训的“近代教育理论和近代义务初等教育的奠基之父”,其终生献身于平民教育的无私精神源于自幼受新教文化熏陶而形成的对人类的虔诚的爱。裴斯泰洛齐是新兴的近代资产阶级知识分子的先进代表,他的事业有着较好的社会条件和政治环境;武训毕竟不能超越时代而不受其文盲农民的主观条件和清末客观社会历史条件的限制。然而,恰恰因为这一点,更衬托出武训的高大,展现出他所代表的中国农民和中华民族勇敢、耐劳、刻苦的精神。

Wu Xun, "the Unprecedented Beggar" and Pestalozz ,"the Teaching Saint"

Wu Xun, promoting and initiating free private school education when the feudal imperial examination systems were not abolished, is truly the pioneer of China’s modern education. The nature of his contribution is to open the school gates to the grassroots, and his unabated motive power of supporting free private school education takes roots in the cultural spirits of traditional Chinese hu manitarian ideology; Pestalozz, who proposed free private education a little bit earlier than Wu Xun, is a foundation-laying father of modern educational theory and modern compulsory elementary education, and the unselfish spirit of his lifelong devotion to grassroots education originates from his pious love for the mankind whose occurrence owes to the edification of Protestantism. Pestalozz, whose ca reer is bestowed with favorable social conditions and political environment, is an advanced representative of the burgeoning modern bourgeois intellectuals, while Wu Xun could not go beyond the times to free himself from the restrictions of the subjective conditions that he has as an illiterate peasant and the objective social conditions of late Qing Dynasty that he find himself in; but just because of their different backgrounds, Wu Xun, silhouetted against Pestalozz, is greater, and more fully displays the braver, hardiness and assi duity of the Chinese peasants and the Chinese people, of whom he is a representative.