The Study On The Middle School History Curriculum Reforms Since The Late 19th Century In China And The United States

The research is focused on the middle school history curriculum reforms conducted in China and the United States during the last two hundred years.The main features and relevant questions of three different periods are identified and discussed respectively. This paper mainly studies the important thread behind the curriculum reforms. During the study,commons and differences between the reforms in these two countries are analyzed.The influence of U.S. to Chinese curriculum reform is also reviewed.The study brings the reforms on history courses into the historical background as well as into the macroscopic frame of education reforms. It probes into the political, economic, and cultural factors that may have a great influence on the reforms of history courses. This paper studies the impact that education and history may have on history curriculum reforms and the similarities and differences between the reforms of two countries in order to seek the essence of history education.This paper provides insights to the following two topics. As the first topic, the paper introduces and analyses the middle school history education reforms in the U.S. and China during the past two hundreds years. This topic includes the following three aspects:1. The methods of middle school curriculum reforms on history education in the U.S. and China.2. Interpretation of the details and the reasons behind the reforms in different intervals.3. Inquiries into the intersection of the two development paths in both Chinese and American history education to give constructive analysis.As the second topic, the paper provides a rational thinking for history teaching in middle schools. It covers the next four aspects:1. The paper probes into the factors that may influence the history education in middle schools.2. The paper talks about the value and nature of history education.3. The paper discusses the issues on the localization about exotic patterns of history education.4. The paper explores the issues on the optimization about Chinese history education.This paper includes the following six sections:Section Ⅰ:IntroductionIt mainly introduces the purpose and the value of this study together with the research idea, the framework, the research methods, the literature review of this research, etc.Section Ⅲ:From the late 19th century to early 20th century:historic curriculum reforms in the social transitional period The United States underwent the transitions from traditional society to modern society. China was also at the end of Qing Dynasty during this period, history education made its way to the core curriculum of middle schools in the U.S. "to study both the old and the new" also became the new history education guidance under the political reforms in the late Qing Dynasty. Education reforms in history curriculum reflected the social transition that was happening in both countries. In this section, a series of issues about history curriculum reforms are studied based on their motivations, the specific contents, the transitional features due to the social transformation, and their limitations.Section Ⅲ:In the first half of the 20th century:the history education in the U.S. and China underwent changes during the world progressive trends. During this period, the U.S. was undergoing a series of progressive reforms. At the same time, China learned firstly from Japan and then from the U.S. directly and she drew quite a lot of American elements and then put them into her reforms in history courses. This chapter is based on the fact that American history courses were brought into social sciences in the year of 1916 and that China treated the democracy and science as the guide in the year of 1923. The topic of the research is to treat the reforms on history courses in the American primary and high schools as the pattern for the transformation. The paper analyses and reviews the connotation of the times and the limitation in history courses. It pays much attention to the intersection, the differences and the similarities in Chinese and American history education.Section Ⅳ:Since the mid-20th century:The tortuous development and the renaissance of the history courses in the U.S. and China.This chapter briefly introduces the recession of American history education as well as the twists and turns in the Chinese reforms on history education. It also introduces the renaissance of the history education in the U.S. and China around the turning of the new century. It mainly relates and analyses the reform on history courses in America since 1980s, especially since the national standard establishment of the course. This chapter introduces the reforms on Chinese history courses at the turning of the century. Finally, the paper probes into the achievements and its shortcomings of the reform.Section Ⅴ:The analysis and comparison between the history curriculum reforms i n China and US are developed via:the influence of the US reform to the reform in China; the comparison of reforms between two countries; the three main stages of the reforms; the values brought by the similarities and differences of the reforms; and the guidance of the reform of US to the reform in China.Section Ⅵ:ConclusionThis part summarizes the factors that may influence history teaching from the philosophic, cultural, historic, and practical aspects. It provides a speculative analysis of localization in the process of taking examples of the world advanced education.