Courses In Cultural Choices

On the background of globalization in the world today, each country is trying to find the thought, strategy and pathway of educational reform, which are suitable to the development trend of the world and its own cultural characteristics. Judging from educational history of China and foreign countries, the problem of what should be taught for students has all along been attached to great importance in schooling education. For this reason, curriculum reform, especially the cultural choice in curriculum, has become one of the focal and difficult points in basic education reform. Cultural content that is chosen and inherited in curriculum, particularly the cultural world presented in the textbook, is certain to produce a great impact on students' cultural ideas, understanding and attitude toward various nationalities and perfection of individual sprit, and then, on the social development in future.This study, mainly from the view of culture, under the framework of sociology of education and curriculum, and with such trans-disciplinary theories as knowledge sociology, educational sociology and cultural reproduction, focuses on analyzing cultural choice in curriculum theoretically and practically. In the process of research, the dissertation has always centered on the cultural choice and its outcomes, namely cultural composition of curriculum from various angles such stake-holders as policy-makers, textbook-compilers specialists, teachers and students and so on. And what's more, by inquiring into the history and reality of cultural choice in curriculum in our country, regarding cultural choice, inheritance, cultural reproduction and social reproduction, what is concluded from the analysis must have certain reference to making policy and choosing culture in curriculum.As far as methodology, the study questions some preconceived ideas existed in our educational theory and practice in view of social structure and institutions. With sticking to the principle of analyzing on fact, all problems are involved, not only normal and positive, but also abnormal and negative, not only macro-level national educational policy and syllabus, but also micro-level textbook and students' writing. As to specific methods, so many have been used, such as literature review ortext-analysis, investigation, historical or cultural comparison, and so on. On the whole, the efforts have been made to combine with qualitative and quantitative analysis. Further more, the frequency, such as list of articles, plate, theme, protagonists in textbook, and so on, is counted.By analyzing cultural composition of Chinese textbooks in our compulsory education, the study finds that its cultural choice mainly attaches importance to ours culture, ancient civilization and great men, however, it looks down on foreign, contemporary culture and ordinary people. Meanwhile, it regards mainstream culture as dominant, and ignores minority culture that is on edge. In view of discourse way of culture chosen and presented in textbooks, it is expressed as "macro-narrative" mainstream culture, such as nationalization, political and ideological nature, positive and simple, urbanization, instrumental and intellectualization. Therefore, the culture chosen and inherited is mainstream, which is reflected on national ideology, but curriculum or textbook knowledge rationalized and legalized, screening and dominating teachers' personal knowledge, are used to reform and re-mould students' life world. Moreover, culture reproduction can be realized by inheriting legal culture, and social reproduction fulfilled by disciplining and modeling "persons of legal culture".In China, tremendous change has taken place about people's value viewpoints and life style because of the over-twenty years' reform and opening policy and the development of market economy. In the transition from traditional model to modern, traditional, stable and conformable cultural model has been broken into, and it is imperative to form and construct new cultural style. Therefore, how to guide students to form the ideas that the society requires, is becoming an urgent need, and it is also a social driver for curriculum reform in basic education at present. On theory, the significance of this study is to promote the development of native theory of sociology of education and sociology of curriculum, providing new view, theory and method for studying curriculum in China. At the same time, the conclusion and suggestion from the study also have some significance as the theoretical and practical basis for further curriculum reform.