The Birth Of Citizenship Education In China——a Curriculum History Research

The modernization process of China and the rise of civil society proposed citizenship education curriculum research project. It's helpful for us to learn from the history of citizenship education curriculum development resources through analysis of the birth process of citizenship education in China from the perspective of curriculum history. As an independent research field, curriculum history started in the1960s and1970s. Now it has developed eight main research perspectives and three kinds of classical path. It has enlightening significance to our understanding of the development and predicament of our citizenship education curriculum objectives, contents and organization by exploring citizenship education's birth process in China with social history of school subjects' research path, which is one of the three classical paths of curriculum history research.As a school subject, Chinese citizenship education in the late Qing Dynasty and the period of the Republic of China has experienced three development stages, which implied the dual logic of modernization and education and the game of two main forces of the society and the state.The Jiawu war declared the bankrupt of the Westernization Movement and the necessity of pushing forward modernization of institution and behavior. In the political and educational field, factions advocated the constitutional monarchy, autocratic monarchy and democratic republican put forward their own educational view according to their political positions. The constitutional monarchy faction claimed citizenship education in order to achieve the constitutional institution; the autocratic monarchy faction advocated education of government and technology while maintained the bottom line of regime so they claimed Subjects education; the democratic republican faction advocated establishing new institution by revolution and then promoted citizenship education in the new institution. Meanwhile these debates, the industrialization and urbanization of the Chinese society were changing the social structure, and made the emergence of public spaces and the public sphere which laid the social foundations for citizenship education. After the Republic was established through the Revolution of1911, civic moral education to cultivate republic citizen was established as the purpose of the core content of education. The content of citizenship education was penetrated in subjects of moral education, history, geograph and literature, which representing the citizenship education curriculum was budding. During this period, nationalism citizenship education is the mainstream of citizenship education thoughts, which emphasizes the citizens' consciousness of the state and duty to the state.After Yuan Shikai failed in proclaiming himself emperor, tumultuous political situation created development space for the New Education Movement and the New Culture Movement. Democracy and science are two common pursuits of the two movements, which leaded great importance placed on citizenship education and practical education. Individualism and cosmopolitan citizenship education replaced the nationalist citizenship education thought influenced by Dewey's democracy and Russellss cosmopolitan speech in China during this period, which has two charactors that the subject of citizenship education changed from the state to children, and the content of citizenship education changed from patriotic to participating in social life. The folk strength of education mastered education reform initiative in the period of Northern Warlords government. The National Education Association, the Education Survey Association, the China Education Improvement Association and other educational organizations contributed to making citizenship education become a school subject. Civics was set up a school subject by the new curriculum standard. The curriculum content of Civics took community life as the center and paid attention to transferring universal values and democratic principles; the textbook of Civics took children as the center and took a concentric arrangement style. Student autonomy as an activity curriculum of citizenship education was practiced in schools by the principle of "the school is society" which encouraged students to practice civil autonomy in the school. However, Civics encountered a sustained institutional dilemma, which is mainly composed of four reasons. First, its subject characteristics made it difficult to teaching; second, there were practical difficulties in Civics teachers and textbooks; third, Civics teaching is separated from the actual social condition; fourth, there was lack of support and management expertises to Civics.The Nanjing national government implemented political training programme and party education policy to revive national citizenship education ideology. The subject and target of citizenship education returned to state, nation and party ideology from children and social life. The state power intervened citizenship education curriculum, which made Civics surrounded by new non-Civics such as subjects of Three Principles of the People and Party Justice. To maintain its status, Civics took a style of knowledge. Liberal intellectuals and populist educators fighted for public education and against party education in their own ways. At last, the national government abolished the party justice subject to win social force under the national crisis. It turned to Civics and citizenship training these two citizenship education curriculums for the discipline of students'minds and bodies. Civics contained not only moral, economic and political aspects of education but also instills of party ideology. Citizenship training made "the four anchors and eight virtues" traditional morality as the center and emphasized training on students'whole life and behavior whenever and wherever. From the beginning of1934, the national government made citizenship training extended to urban and rural and launched a "New Life Movement" to try to achieve the modernization of Chinese thought and behavior through regulating the national way of life. But it was not the road to modern citizen by regulating the national way of life, and it was impossible to get effective and sustainable development for this movement which was just advocated by the state while lack of the social strength's support.The social history process of citizenship education curriculum's birth involved two kinds of mechanisms which are structure and subject. In the aspect of structure, because of its traits of prompting political modernization, citizenship education got favor of school education and received consistently external recognition in the process of becoming school subjects. But in internal school education, citizenship curriculum encountered sustained institutional internal predicament because of its own subject characteristics. This embarrassing situation was not unique to Chinese citizenship curriculum. The differences of curriculums between ideal and in use are evident in the field of citizenship education. This is a difficult project for the world and we need to continue to explore it, too.In the aspect of subject, the birth process of the citizen education involved ideological debates and interests conflicts of many kinds of subjects. The elite intellectuals of political and educational circles, moderate social groups played a major active role in the beginning process of it. In the late period, the citizenship education got more and more attentions and supports from social groups, and this demonstrated universal awakening of social strength. In this struggle, state kept combating with society and tried to maintain a win-win situation. Citizen society and political country became the two biggest subjects in the debates of citizenship education. Society and state advocates different citizenship education. The shifts strength of society and state made citizen education vary in the curriculum goal, content and organizational form. When state's strength was strongest while social strength weakest, there is no space for citizenship education. When state's strength was weaker while social strength stronger, citizen education appeared in the form of permeating course and the content of course gave priority to state's advocates and with society's advocates as supplement. When state's strength was weakest while social strength strongest, citizen education appeared in the form of independent curriculum, integrated curriculum and activity curriculum and the content of course inclined to society's advocates and activity curriculum focused on students' autonomy. When state's strength was stronger while social strength weaker, citizen education appeared in the form of independent curriculum, party ideology infiltration curriculum, activity curriculum and the content of course inclined to state's advocates and activity curriculum focused on state's regulation.