Speed-Swept Times: Where Is Rest, and How Shall Education Stand?—Rethinking Leisure Education

The coupling of informatization with an ethos of efficiency has spawned “sped-up living”, spilling over into study and leisure alike. On the surface, it accelerates access to knowledge; in substance, it fragments time, infiltrates leisure with efficiency logic, and drives learning toward the shallow and the quick—thereby inducing time anxiety and psycho-physical strain. Taking the vogue of “speed-up” as an entry point, this paper exposes the alienation of time beneath it, arguing that speed is no shortcut to freedom but a symptom of alienation. The excellence of education lies not in winning by speed, but in disciplining speed by leisure. Accordingly, we propose to rebuild “leisure education” through three coordinated strategies—value clarification, capacity cultivation, and institutional safeguards—so as to reconstruct an educative order that seeks measure amid speed and lets measure beget wisdom, offering actionable guidance for talent development in the new era