On Local Curriculum--An Exploration Of The Prospective Pattern Of Local Curriculum From The Perspective Of The Science Of Culture

With the development of China's curriculum reform in primary & secondary education, local curriculum emerged and presented different patterns, which accordingly raised two kinds of theoretical questions. One is how to develop each pattern, the other is what the prospective pattern of local curriculum is. After a brief review of theorists' answers to the latter question, we conclude that the special context of China's curriculum reform and the state of curriculum theory make it essential and urgent to deepen the study of the latter one. Meanwhile, the three shortcomings of their answers, such as no perfect solution to the problems of China's education, their single study method and their limited way of thinking, also prompt us to go through the complicated practice of local curriculum development and use a new perspective, the science of culture, to search for the prospective pattern of local curriculum with further ask about its value.In doing so, first we portray a cultural blueprint, local cultural organism's self-organization under the leadership of common cultural organism, by revealing the relationship between culture and human in view of cultural space. Second, after a detailed description of the relationship between culture and education in view of cultural time, we conclude that such a cultural ideal requires an ideal pattern of local curriculum correspondingly, which is local curriculum self-development under the leadership of national authority. Finally, after listing the conditions needed to fulfill the cultural ideal and considering the reality of China's cultural and educational development, we indicate the rationality of the co-exiting of different patterns of local curriculum and point out their possibility toward the ideal pattern as well.