Endowment Of Children's Political Identity

The ways of political education in different countries are various,but their ultimate goal is to build up their successors.Schools thus become the main implementer of political education of children.In China,each child will be given a political identity-young pioneer.They need to be guided and trained to become qualified members of society in school,therefore activities of young pioneer organization occupy their most school life.Young pioneer education through the "young pioneers organization-the Communist Youth League-the Communist Party of China" such an organization convergence,implants regular organizational activities to train budding political values and beliefs in the daily life of children,and try to to realize children's transformation from a natural person to a political role.Education of young pioneers as the main content of political cognition and emotional training deeply reflects that the country has extensively involved into the world of children's life.This paper puts young pioneers organization into a "flesh and blood" school space which we cannot turn a blind eye.The paper selects an elementary school to describe the changes of their political identity,the children's conflicts and compromises,being tangled and confused in political education in school,and tries to examine their "spiritual journey" from a moral view to show the real political life of children.This paper is divided into seven parts with children's political identity being given as main clue.The author makes a deep description of the course of children's political identity happening.The paper starts from the standards of the child's entry of the political identity,showing the impact of entry standards to children's attitudes and behaviors.The goal of education before joining young pioneer organization is to let all members accept and digest the entry standards,methods,values,and role,and it is a start of children's socialization,a start of ideology educating as well.In children's daily life,young pioneer organization carries out political enlightenment and moral education for children by symbolic systems and ritual system,which adds more political colors to children's life.Important events of young pioneer political activities become necessary in children's life,such as young pioneers' congress,memorial ceremonies,"hand in hand"activities and other large events which officially open a door to the political life.But in reality the process of children's participation in these events shows their passiveness and helplessness.The school's habitual censorship activities make children's life full of passiveness and reluctance.These activities in schools occupy children' most learning and playing time and space,which add more regularity and seriousness to children's school life.The goal of young pioneer activities directly points to cultivating political successors.And the course of cultivating inevitably produces some kinds of competition in the school field.These activities almost dominate most children's life.Students themselves are split into many small units which can be controlled by the school system as a whole and the grading system which encourages competition.Encouraging the advanced and pushing backward also become important pioneer educational contents and methods.School training system leads to an explicit hierarchy in children's political identity—students begin to enter a world of sharing symbols of identity.School gives the teamers reasonability of identity discrimination by the way of competition.Children have been categorized into "one-stripe","two-stripe","three-stripe" and "no-stripe"groups.School tries to achieve the management of students through pioneer cadre groups and model groups,and guide the "right" direction for children by role expectations.In this process,educators inform children in their behaviors about the rules that they should obey and the "responsibility" they should take.So children are committed themselves to educators' obedience or internalization to achieve the educators' role expectations targets.Throughout the process that children have been given political identity,the political identity education of school meets the political needs of the society,and has achieved certain results.Children participating in organized activities will gradually build up organizational capabilities and political activities abilities,and develop participating awareness,which also have some influences on the children's moral forming.On the whole,although children will participate in various activities to show themselves,they are "choiceless" of being given the political identity.Judging from the interviews and the results of the survey,children are in a state of confusion about their identity either as"single me" or as a "complex me".Further more inappropriate political identity education may cause some losses of children's morality,and the friability of children's political identities,bureaucratization and pursuing interesting only in children's life and other negative impacts.So school political education should not teach children political thoughts,ideas,consciousness,and behaviors only by training methods that social system include.And political education should not be limited to the simple ideological indoctrination or role arrangements.Children themselves have their own strong sense of initiative and constructing rights in their growing process.He will make his own interpretation and understanding to external events he experienced,and he will make the choice of agreement or rejection by his own value judgments.School should filter the children's experience selectively,that is,political education should take into account children's characteristics and should facilitate children's moral life space.