Nation-building In Contemporary School Education Of China

Nation is a political-cultural community in the industrial society.Nation-building has been described as an activity in the sense that aims at political stability and social harmony.Nation-building is the process through which the homogeneity and integration of members in politics-culture are constructed.Schooling deems to be a new form of education created by industrial society,in essence,that can be defined as "national education".The fact is that,beginning with the whole process of national foundation and development,schooling is one of the most important fields and approaches for the implementation of nation-building.Nation-building in schooling is constructing as a process of using the power of the state.Firstly,it is connected to institutional arrangement,to teachers,as the faithful nation builders who take the initiative to share the standardization of the source of education.Secondly,the aim of schooling is described as the discourse power,and this reflects the nation will,which is subject to the purpose of discipline through the transformation of power and discourse.Thirdly,the textbook is a kind of educational materials,which is connected with the discourses by disciplines.It is the intermediary of the nation-state leads to discipline.Finally,it is to strengthen the people’s national consciousness and emotions by using various symbols in the education activities.There are kinds of factors which has laid a good foundation for nation-building,such as the complete system of official schooling,the political homogeneity of "unification",the cultural homogeneity as the core of Confucianism and the mature Mandarin system.Historically,nation-building in schooling was started from the early years of the Republic of China with the new policy of the late Qing Dynasty,as to cultivate citizens who were adaptable to industrial society and were loyal to the Chinese nation.Next,in the early Republic of China,nation-building in schooling was mainly concerned with the national consciousness and the national systems.Furthermore,during the period of the National Government,it offered to the activities of "ideology-based" dominated by the Party,and it carried out the education of "Three People’s Principles" locating the nation-building of "Three People’s Principles" of the Kuomintang.Ultimately,it was led to the failure of nation-building,which was due to the lack of theory,the small scale of schooling,the weak discourses and the improper implementation of the strategy.However,since the founding of the People’s Republic of China,it has focused on "communist education".The Party has promoted "consensus" relied on the experience of social mobilization by organizations,as to ensure the successful implementation of nation-building,including the social "units"----as the schools----and as to realize the Popularization of schooling.It has been a key role to be more efficiently in the implementation of nation-building.With the influence of globalization and the development of information,there are kinds of serious challenges,such as internal and external issues caused of nation-building in current schooling,the collision caused by the expansion of postmodernism,the uncertain and risk in rebuilding the Chinese cultural traditions.This thesis is guided that it should make great efforts to resolve the multiple contradictions,such as "tradition" and "modern","nation" and "ethnicity","unity" and "pluralism".For this end,this thesis suggests a reform that will continue to firmly push for implementation of nation-building,that will draw widespread attention and keep pace with the internal and external environment changes at any time,and that will participate actively in the reconstruction of the national cultural traditions.