Cultural Heritage And Education Vision Mongolian Naadam

Nagadum, which is customarily called nair, is a jubilant folk gathering basing on traditional nomadic culture and original belief system. It consists of three basic athletic skills—Boke, horse-racing, and archery, including traditional sports, religion, costume, architechture, diet, dance and song, poetry, and economics, which has achieved comprehensive effects through such code activities as sports, ceremony, display, performance and code thinking. Nagadum has accompanied the Mongolian for more than 800 years, and has become an important part of Mongolian cultural system and a vital carrier for both national spirit and character. It is ranked as immortal cultural heritage, for its profound traditional details and rich cultural content. The holding place of Nagadum has attracted thousands of audience and participants from the surrounding area hundreds of miles away whenever Nagadum is held since ancient times. Because of its national athletic and cultural characters, Nagadum not only serves the functions of military training, cultural trasmission, and social cohesion during its historical development, but also plays an irreplacable role in building and educating the Mongolians into the "real Mongolians". In fact, Nagadum had already undertaken the mission of "school" or "class" long before education occurred, performing the social functions of transmitting national culture and portaying the Mogolians, and even up until now, traditional Nagadum is still playing the function of vivid education. However, with the wide spread of school education in national area, due to the inherent mainstream mode and supremacy of school education, such narrow-minded educational concept as "school is education" is deep-rooted and education in daily life is almost ignored, and schools and society are isolated because of the enclosd mode of the school. Therefore, Nagadum has still been in unconscious situation and neglected though it has an ireplacable educational function. Moreover, the overall cultural space in which Nagadum exists and transmits is constantly shocked and social education or daily education is becoming not essential, and Nagadum, in some areas, has already completely lost, which has a great influence on the transmission of natinal culture of the area and complete socialization of the Mogolian. It has been found through investigation that in some national areas, there is no obvious cultural identification in either adults or youngsters due to the "cultural impoverishment", let alone cultural consciousness and responsibility. Living in the mainstream cultural environment and breaking away from national social education, how can we build national characters? How can a nationality who has lost its widely-accepted signalized cultural carrier transmit its national culture and spirit completely? Facing the current situation of national students' lack of "cultural consciousness" as well as "national identification", and the crisis of cultural diversity, national educators and researchers are responsible to do the reflection and research! Nagadum has an irreplacable educational significance though it is only a part of social educational resource system, however, it is repentant that many of the researches have been done from the perspectives of sports, ethnology and folklore, and it is rarely done from the educational academic angle, therefore, the educational function of Nagadum has not been completely understood and effectively exploited. The current paper tries to examine Nagadum from the perspective of education despite of the double pressures of "cross-culture" and stereo-typed perspective, however, based on the field investigation into Nagadum on Xilingele grassland, under the enlightment of the theories of structural functionalism, symbolism, social constructivism and educational pragmatism, this paper tries to analyze and explain the culture-transmissional significance and the educational function of Nagadum with the methods of structural analysis and cultural explaination. In particular, Nagadum has demonstrated its effective and irreplacable educational value including functions of the cultural education of its national members, construction of harmonious community and building of Mongolian quality under the social background of the harmonious development of diverse cultures and the establishment of harmonious society. More importantly, Nagadum has provided new enlightments on how today's national school education is transferred to social life and how it shifts from mainstream cultural mode to subjective cultural mode, and chanlleged the traditional "classroom" concept, what's more, its social educational function has also thoroughly explained the supremacy concept of "education is school" to some extent. The current paper consists of 7 chapters trying to explain why Nagadum has educational funtion, what educational functions it has, and how to realize the educational function from the in the framework of cultural transmission and education.Chapters one , two and three are mainly explaining why Nagadum possesses the funtion of education, among which the first chapter recalls the long history of Nagadum and its characteristics in each stage, illustrating the significance it has on the birth and development of the Mogolian; In the second chapter, a field investigation has been done on Nagadum culture in Xilingele, describing the overall cultural space for the existence of Nagadam and the supportive attitude from all walks of life in society toward students' frequent participation in Nagadum, and proving that today's Nagadum is more likely to become a big class for students' socialization with some data. The third chapter tries to analyze the dominant configuration and grasp its ressessive structure and functions with the theory of structural constructivism, elicitating such an opinion as this: the main vitality of Nagadum lies in the everlasting persuit of the harmony and balance between man and god, man and man, man and nature, man and society, man and themselves, in addition, it also lies in the the wish and belief that Nagadum has cultural transmissional function, which is endowed by the Mogolians. At the same time, it explains the core elements of Nagadum with symbolism, that is, "Sudele", "Three skills of the hero "(Boke, horse-racing and archery), "Nagadum Haote" , the symbolic meaning of the overall schema of the meeing place and the symbol of the whole nation.The fourth chapter mainly explains what educational functions Nagadum has, that is, what significance Nagadum has on the development of Mogolian social group and individual quality. Nagadum has facilitated the harmonious development of the Mogolians and its integrity, providing a special constructive significance on the form of national cultural identification, national affection, moral quality and the nourishment of national spirits and characters.Chapters five, six and seven have explained how the educational function of Nagadum is put into practice, among which chapter five talks about the internal basis and conditions for the realization of the its educational function. Nagadum has an inseperable relationship and interactive basis with school education, family education and social education. Chapter six mainly analyzes the current inheritage of Nagadum and its existing problems from the position that the realization of its educational funtion relies on its effective inheritage, it also provides the concept to rebuild the transmission of Nagadum. Chapter seven tries to analyze and reflect the current courses in national school education and its disadvantages of isolating from its native culture and living practice from the position that the realization of its educational function relies on the widely identification of national school education. It proposes that the essence of national education is "the education of national culture", the aquisition of native knowledge is obtained on the basis of practical mode of acquisition, hence the author tries to provide some constructive suggestions that school education in minority areas should return to native knowledge and culture, and the construction of the interactive relationship between schools and communities should be established.Finally, if this research can make people who have ever participated in Nagadum realize the great influence of Nagadum on themselves and on the Mongolian nation, or if it can make those who have never participated enjoy experiencing and reunderstand Nagadum, all my efforts are worthwhile.