The Study On The Educational Values Of Tujia Minority People's Custom Of Worshiping Ancestors From The Perspective Of Symbolic Philosophy

Knowing the ego is the top aim of philosophy. The research on pedagogy which is a way to help individual students being educated to develop harmoniously and freely should as well follow the aim. It is also the logical starting point of pedagogic theories and practices. Therefore, this dissertation focused on the research of the educational values on cultural symbols from Tujia minority people's custom of worshiping ancestors. This research was mainly based on the following background:Firstly, students need suitable education to get developed. It is very rich in educational resources, expect from classrooms, students can also get from the positive social surroundings, for instance, the cultural symbols in their social customs, which always accompany the students, are one of the most important resources. Secondly, the social and educational symbols resources of ethnic groups are valuable. The reason why those nationalities with unique features exist and are distinct from others is the existence of their unique ethnic social and educational resources. At the same time, the ethnic and cultural symbols are essentially related to their culture heritages. Therefore, to know its origin is to know its essence, understanding these minorities' features and digging the essence for their connotative values of educating people make ethnic and cultural symbols play a bigger role in the development of ethnic and culture heritages. Meanwhile, the cultural symbols of ethnic groups in southwest China have a significant function with the backgrounds of balanced development between urban and rural areas, education balance, reforms of new curriculum and establishment of national education laws and regulations. Finally, the problem in educational values is the core issue in education thoughts. It should be a basic subject in pedagogy principles to research the values of educating people.According to the five aspects stated above, the social customary symbols' connotative values of educating people in ethnic regions are no doubt a key issue, which appealed to the author for further research. Based on modern Germany philosopher Ernst Cassirer's symbolic philosophy, Claude Levi-Strauss'structuralism theories and related pedagogy theories, the minority people of Tujia nationality in the west of China were taken as the target group for this research. Enlightened by the rationality and methodology of related philosophies theories, this dissertation defined Tujia' typical customary culture symbol -worshiping ancestors as an entrance to the research, explored its connotative values of educating people, investigated it to inspire education in schools, made some relevant conclusions and proposed some thoughts.In order to realize the aim, literature review, field study, Hermeneutics and other methods were applied, from September of 2006 to February of 2011, it lasted 5 years and 5 months for the investigation, research and writing the dissertation.This dissertation consists of six chapters. After careful investigation and comparison, Pianyan Tujia village was taken as the case study. It was explained about Tujia cultural ecology symbolic system and Tujia minority people's custom of worshiping ancestors in the beginning part of the dissertation. This dissertation focused on "how social customs and cultural symbols reflected the values of educating the members and was internalized into the members.", and it concentrated on the discussions over the values of "Tujia minority people's custom of worshiping ancestors" educating people in chapter four; at first, it theoretically explored the individual primitive occurrence and modern value occurrence of educating value of Tujia minority people's custom of worshiping ancestors, within which the connotative values of educating people were expressed. A case study, from a Tujia person's birth to oldness, was analyzed. The author therefore concluded four types of education connotations in Tujia people growing up with the custom of worshiping ancestors, namely, happiness education connotation in the childhood, moral education connotation in the youth, responsibility education connotation in the middle age and thoughts education connotation in the elderly. For each period, all the education connotations were sorted with interpretations, and also the author came up with his own opinions; from the viewpoint of Occurrence Theory, Tujia minority people created themselves.The connotations were demonstrated as follows:in the childhood, it has a rich performance connotation and rituals education connotation; in the youth, it has a strong communication and cohesion connotations, system constraints connotation, and partially value constraints connotation of worshiping ancestors with unwritten laws; in the middle age, it was constructed into individual culture connotation and ample cultural education value connotation; in the elderly, it embodies a dynamical education value connotation and a unique Totem symbol connotation.In Chapter five, combined with the inspirations by the educating value of customary cultural symbols in Tujia people's worshiping ancestors, some strategies for education in the schools at present time were discussed, especially for the schools in the regions of minority people. "Compared with present school education, transformation of the research result would be applied." Seven feasible strategies were proposed to inherit traditional intangible cultural heritage, like customary culture symbols of Tujia people's worshiping ancestors, into school education. That is to say, ideology-national education should be regarded important; system-it should be improved in all kinds of schools to inherit traditional intangible cultural heritage; approach-relevant governments and schools need to provide various approaches to inherit national cultures; measurement-different measurements should be applied in different national regions; breakthrough point-featured schools could be established according to national cultural symbols; outer resources-it can be shared with others, get support from developed areas and attract private investment in schools; and research-studies of traditional intangible cultural heritages should be promoted to enhance education.Meanwhile in Chapter six, the conclusion was that present educational research should serve school education. Education is harmoniously developing in itself and for itself. The ideal education is to realize free education, and relevant educational practice, making or revision of educational regulations or laws for national regions, and educational research should follow the concept. There are several points for education to pursue:firstly, the students should happily study in the schools; secondly, the ways to improve the educational levels in national regions is not only for school education, but also the overall perspective views should be taken to improve the bigger educational backgrounds, like economical base, educational ideology, and educational systems in the national regions. At the same time, selective excellent education contents can be applied in the schools in order to make students grow up with overall personality developing positively and harmoniously.Finally, school education should start from students' culture existence to construct a benign educational environment; and the educational concepts can begin with symbolic philosophy, ending up with the field of culture symbolic philosophy. It must focus on the culture symbols' systematic, hierarchy and human integrity.Suggestions were made for scientifically developing the minority regions in the southwest area according to the relation between people and the custom of Tujia worshiping ancestors. It was emphasized that the individuals being educated or the members' endogenous development should be developed harmoniously with outside surroundings. The value of educating people by the intangible culture heritage-the customary culture symbols of Tujia worshiping ancestors, should be paid close attention in the minority regions. The making or revision of educational regulations or laws for minority national regions should take self-realization as the core value.