Cultural Perspective On Curriculum Reform

Curriculum reform is both of and in culture. Its cultural perspective is helpful to deepen the comprehension of the new curriculum and avoid its deviation in practice. Also, it is beneficial to reviewing and adjusting the new curriculum, and keeping it on the right way.The first part of the paper defines culture, and analyzes its elements and relationship with curriculum reform. According to the paper, culture is the attitude and the way of act and thinking, which is inner and held by the majority of a certain group. Culture consists of the views on ethic, nature, self, knowledge, and the way of act and thinking. The educational function of culture is realized through curriculum, while curriculum reform aims at bettering the function. Meanwhile, culture is inert and permeated, which makes culture influence curriculum reform greatly.In the second part, the paper firstly demonstrates the characteristics of new curriculum in choosing different kinds of cultures. Its result shows that the new curriculum is better than the traditional one in dealing with the relationships between native and foreign cultures, between ancient and contemporary cultures, and between country and city cultures. At the same time, the paper points out that the curriculum should do better in keeping a balance between different cultures. Secondly, this part studies different aspects of the new curriculum respectively in cultural perspective. According to the research, the reform trend is identical to the trend of the times on the whole. But some relationships should be considered, such as the love of nation and family, the protection and the change of the nature, different individual qualities, new and old views on knowledge, Chinese and foreign ways of thinking, etc.In the third part, the paper probes the cultural barriers of the curriculum reform in practice from the three aspects, namely curriculum practice, curriculum evaluation and curriculum management. The paper points out that the barriers include the culture of authority fear, the culture of loving "silence", the culture of despising practice, value of diplomaism, united individuality, power centralization of educational authority, the complex of teachers' submission to the supervisors, teaching outline, and textbook. In the forth part, the paper probes the cultural conditions for the development ofcurriculum reform in the perspective of school, department of educational administration, and society. It suggests making the school culture open, cooperative, and of learning. And it also advocates a service-oriented culture in the department of educational administration, and plural standards for talents in social culture.