View Of Anthropology School Education And Local Knowledge

With the functionalism of social anthropology as its main theoretic paradigm and cultural materialism as its fundamental spirit, combining emic and etic approaches and incorporating historical and field researches, this study is mainly concerned with educational ethnography, focusing on the description and analysis of the generation and evolution of the relations between local knowledge and schooling during the process of modern development of a rural community in the Northwest of China.This study is of hometown anthropology, during which the author utilizes the materials acquired from several short term field researches since 1996 and two longer term field researches (more than 5 months altogether) in 2004 and 2007, conducted in Minghua District, Sunan Yugur Autonomous County, Gansu Province.The development of Minghua community is in a certain degree representative of the rural communities of the Northwestern regions of minority ethnic groups. This study describes the multi-facet systematic evolution of the said rural community from 1907 to 2007: from the perspective of ethnic culture, it has changed from a single ethnic cultural community of Yoghur(Ethnic Yugur's self-name) ethnic group into a multi-ethnic cultural community with Yoghur ethnic group as the dominating majority and embracing the ethnic groups of Han, Tibetan, Tu, Mongolian and Kazak; from the perspective of language, it has changed from a community where Yoghur and Tibetan languages dominated with the local Chinese dialect and the written Chinese language as the subordinate into one where the local Chinese dialect and the written Chinese language dominate with the Yoghur language as the subordinate; in the perspective of marriage and heirship system, from a parallel operation of two systems (patrilineal heirship for official marriages and matrilineal heirship system for matrimonial forms through the head-wearing ceremony) to monogamy and patrilineal heirship; in the perspective of means of living, from animal husbandry complemented with hand knitting and camel caravan transporting to agricultural farming complemented with animal husbandry and many others; in the perspective of social organization, from a traditional tribe to a modern country society; in the perspective of political system and social management, from the customs-authority management which combined the dominating headman hereditary system under the tribal union of an imperial dynasty and the subordinating elite influence, to the resource-interest management of party-government departmental system under the ethnic minority autonomy of a nation state; in the perspective of religious faith, from a coexistence of the Gelug Tibetan Buddhism and Shamanism and the devout ancestor worship to the currently prevalent ancestor worship with religions declining and faith weakening; in the perspective of education, from the local-knowledge-oriented education to an official-knowledge-oriented education, in which modern schooling has become the major educational organization instead of the former traditional temple education; the school has replaced the temple as the "knowledge-culture" communication center; at least in the minds of the local people the central role of family education during the children's cultural development has also been replaced by schooling.The description and analysis in this study of the generation and development of the relationship between the rural schooling and local knowledge is in essence to explore the classic proposition of educational anthropology -the relationship between school and community. Based upon a solid ethnographic description, the author reflects on the two academic views and research approaches of different stances and perspectives in the academia of rural education concerning the relationship between school and community, pointing out that the two views and approaches are in effect the different degrees of emphasis upon the pros and cons schooling has upon the country development and that they only reveal "partial truth". As far as the historical facts of the Minghua community are concerned, the founding of modern schooling in 1939 was the dividing line of the transition of community education, before which the major function of the whole education was to reproduce qualified community members through cultural influence to sustain the daily operation of the community cultural system; after which the rising schooling has become the agent of modernity whose mission has been to emancipate the younger generation from the bondage of "tradition" and bring them into the age of "modernity". In terms of the aim of education, the members cultivated by the former traditional education were to function in the small tribal community, and those produced by the modern education are to function in the greater national society.The author also pointed out that the modern schooling has played a positive role in helping the Yoghur ethnic group adapt to the social changes in the beginning of the schooling development. However, after its education of several generations, the schooling with cultural assimilation and social integration as its major function has gradually revealed its negatives; the modern schooling representative of the mainstream social culture has constantly rejecting the traditional ethnic culture, leading to the steep reduction of the population using ethnic language and the decline of traditional knowledge. Since the New Period (1978) , with the rise of ethnic identity and the surging demand for the protection and renaissance of ethnic culture (in fact, with the gradual withering of the traditional ethnic culture, phenomena of cultural fracture and social disorder began to appear, and the ethnic identity of the Yoghur has been plunged into an ever increasing anxiety), the school system, as an important component of the state machinery, has failed to respond in a timely manner to the demand of the Yoghur for incorporating the ethnic culture and ethnic language into the school curriculum, causing a declining evaluation of the schooling from the Yoghur people; and the lack of measures and effects in the school's improving its teaching quality has caused a straining relationship between the school and the community.As for the future development of the Minghua community, the author suggested that the establishment of a social relationship supporting both the school and the community should be an imminent and inevitable task, for which a foremost and necessary point is that the school should cultivate a positive attitude among its students towards local knowledge, recognizing the important value of local knowledge in the lives of the local people and the development of the community; against the backdrop of the New Rural Construction, the cultural self-awareness is the basis and precondition for community development; the mode of community development should shift from the "government dominated" to the "autonomy of the local people.The significance of this study lies in the providing of native experiences for the research of the relationship between school and community in the field of China's educational anthropology, promoting the research of the Chinese Yugur ethnic group with a solid ethnographic study, and sustaining and developing the academic tradition of the hometown research in the realm of the Chinese anthropology.