The Past As The Future: A Educational Study Of The Chinese Traditional Children's Primers

Chinese children's primers are such kinds of traditional enlightening textbooks for the children in ancient China. Many classical primers, for example , Three-Character Textbook for Beginners, Family Names, Thousand Character Reader etc., have double functions on both Chinese language education and ethic education. They also show typical charming of ancient Chinese language in aspects of genres and rhymes. Some of them still have been spreading in the public until now. Three-Character Textbook for Beginners has been used for over 700 years, Family Names for 1000 years and Thousand Character Reader for 1400 years. Yet, modern people are continuously debating about whether these classical works should be used in modern education, which also includes the problem of unknowing how to use them.Within the field of modern vision, this article tries to interpret the primers once more to prove that these are meaningful to modern education—specially to primary and secondary education. From the Chinese language education view, these primers deliver traditional culture, whose ancient language is easy to understand for modern children. From the moral education, these primers are helpful for the children to seek the solution from the traditional ethics and morals to deal with the crisis of moral personality. The article also points out that the use of the primers in the modern society needs transformation by kinds of modern ways to make it suitable for the Chinese educational modernization.This article comprises 6 parts. The introduction states the origin of the article. Economic globalization is causing multi-culture waves. Affected by these kinds of waves, modern Chinese people themselves, on one hand, are experiencing the feeling brought by these different cultures. On the other hand, they are anxious to need to determine their positions among the waves. Therefore, seeking their cultural identity is becoming a task of top priority. Also economic globalization is promoting great development in science and technology. Human spirit can not catch up with such development, which is bringing us the phenomena of moral degeneracy and then caused the crisis of modern moral personality. Just because of this, re-molding personality through seeking suitable spirit resource also becomes an important task. Adult world is facing such kinds of changes. As a result of children world affected by adult world, their childhood may disappear. Chapter 1: analyzing the development of the primers in the view of Chinese history, describing the relationship between the primers and the traditions of Chinese education, and pointing out that the primers are the excellent part of the traditions of Chinese education, among which the traditional culture and ethics can be merged into the educational modernization by some ways of transformation. Chapter 2: talking about the problem whether modern children in China should read the classical primers by analysis from ideal child image in the primers to the disappearance of the childhood in western countries. The author considers that it is also possible for the childhood to disappear in China. So one feasible suggestion is that we should encourage modern children to read some classical primers, according to which they can find their culture identity from traditional ideal child image and foster their character and morals in accordance with traditional ethics and morals. Chapter 3 and Chapter 4: actually answering how to use the primers in modern China. Chapter 3 is about the primers and the modern curriculum theories, stating educational aim and compilation features at first and then analyzing how to make modern transformation according to the modern curriculum theories. Chapter 4 is concerned with ethic and moral education from the primers and its meaning today; analyzing which ethic and morals from the primers has a positive meaning for moral education today, and how to transform these into the characters required by modern society. Chapter 5 is about discussing the situation of practical application of the primers in the modern world by respectively choosing 2 cases from Confucian Ethics Curriculum in Singapore and Children's Reading Classical Works in Taiwan, as well as pointing out that the primers are significant for the development of China in the future.