The Research Of Cultural Content In American Primary Social Studies Textbooks

The diversity of culture is an objective phenomenon in the process of human civilization. Cultural education is very important to country's development. In such a diversified society today, cultural literacy, which means a citizen should not only understand and cherish his/her own nature's culture but also respect the diversity of culture, is becoming a very important aspect of citizen literacy. Social studies is aimed at promoting citizen literacy, so the development of cultural literacy should be one of the goals for social studies. As the supporter of education, textbooks may lead to the success or failure of cultural education. Although current Chinese social studies textbooks have already been aware of multicultural requirements, and many efforts have also been made for better demonstration of cultural content in textbooks, there are still many problems. For example, when referred to national culture, it still focuses on the Han Nationality. Obviously, there is more description of traditional culture than that of different regional culture of domestic and overseas in social studies textbooks. Furthermore, there is little description which refers to the causes of cultural differences in textbooks.Considering such situations mentioned above, we need to make more improvement of textbooks in arranging and presenting the cultural content. This essay will look into the cultural content in American social studies'textbooks. It can provide references for the design of cultural content in Chinese social studies'textbooks. It also can make textbooks play more important role in passing on good culture, improving citizen culture literacy and enhancing national cohesion. The whole essay is made up of 5 chapters:Chapter 1:through classified and analyzed both domestic and overseas researches from different theoretical views, make it clear about the characteristics of cultural researches theories for different textbooks.Chapter 2:analyze the "culture" objectives in Curriculum Standards for Social Studies by American National Council, summarized its content feature and cultural educational concept. It will provide references to the following analysis of textbooks. Chapter 3:use Houghton Mifflin Social Studies as the analysis model, make classified statistics to the cultural contents of textbooks with quantitative index and explain the statistics results.Chapter 4:make qualitative analysis for units of cultural subject and non-cultural subjects in textbooks, compared with National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies, analyze the cultural concept and summarize the presenting features of its cultural content in textbooks.Chapter 5:according to previous analysis and compared with Chinese social studies textbooks, concluded the features of cultural content in American textbooks, summarize the similarities and differences in the textbooks of two countries, rethink cultural content in Chinese textbooks and put forward the suggestions for future improvement.