Cultural Changes And The Evolution Of Bilingual Education,

Nowadays, most countries in the world are multi-ethnic and multi-lingual, which has attributed to the multiplicity of the world culture. Interactions between people groups have become more and more frequent, and there are more and more characteristics they have in common. Between globalization and localization, as well as between unification of the country and multiplicity of ethnic cultures, are both contradictions and harmony, which pose as two challenges that the human kind and multi-national countries are inevitably facing. It is a common endeavor for all the nations to develop their economies together, promote their culture together, and carry out a satisfactory multi-cultural education. Languages are not only tools for communication but also for thinking. It has a deep cultural connotation of its own. Therefore, in school educations, there is this heated concern: which language(s) to use for teaching the students of the minority groups, which are relatively small in number and unfamiliar with the language of the mainstream nationalities.The 21st century is a century of strategic opportunities for the reform and development of our country, and a critical period for all the nationalities to prosper and moving forward. Since the 16th National People's Congress, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has established a "full-scale, harmonious and continuous" view fordevelopment, especially the important strategic position of "make the country prosper through science and education" and "strengthen the country's power through the elites" for the building of a well-to-do society. The Dawoer region is experiencing a social and cultural transformation as never seen before. The Dawoer Nationality is an important representative of the small ethnic groups that has no written language of their own, which makes it an important case for studying bilingual education of this kind.This research is aimed at explaining the process and traits of the bilingual education of the Dawoer Nationality. The chief method for the analysis is to understand it through historical and anthropological approach-explaining patterns. The specific methodologies would be document analysis, field survey, and multi-disciplinary studies, etc. My attempt is to seek for the rules of the development of its own bilingual education through systematic analysis in depth of the process of the transformation of the bilingual education of the Dawoer Nationality. From aspects of ethnic policy, ethnic relationships, economic types, educational levels, etc., I shall analyze all the factors that contribute to the shaping and developing of the bilingual education of the Dawoer Nationality, both diachronically and synchronically, in order to reveal the relationship between bilingual education and cultural transformation. As for the concrete historical and present situations of the bilingual educationof the Dawoer Nationality, I shall come up with suggestions for promoting its development and protecting the dying languages.This dissertation is divided into seven chapters.The first chapter is an introduction, which is a brief account of the aim and significance of the topic, the views and methodologies of the research, the present achievements for researches on bilingual education, the thinking pattern of this research, and the basic contents of the dissertation, etc.The second chapter gives an overview of the origin of the culture of the Dawoer Nationality: The early association of the Dawoer Nationality and the Han Nationality in history has nurtured a highly developed farming culture. During the time of the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, Dawoer culture saw collisions and interactions with Manchu culture and Mongolian culture. During the "Manchurian" times, the Dawoers suffered cultural invasions and enslaving educations. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the language and culture of the Dawoer Nationality have been genuinely respected. Here we can see the wide-ranging background of the characteristics of Dawoer biling...