On The Female Characters In Middle School Chinese Teaching Material And The Formation Of Students' Gender Consciousness

Gender equality of education is an important index of harmony of education. Gender equality of education contains many factors. Among them, teaching material as the main form of official education is irreplaceable authority in education. Teaching material is not only a textbook of knowledge, an important social cultural product, but also the carrier of social gender culture. It possesses abundant cultural connotation and has an essential effect on the development of students' gender consciousness. Chinese teaching materials have played an important role to enhance the students' cultural cultivation with considerable culture, and thousands of years of Chinese civilization and tradition. Certainly, they include how to develop the correct gender consciousness of students. Chinese teaching materials influence on the students' gender consciousness in numerous ways, and character is one of them.There are many well-rounded portrayals of characters in Chinese teaching materials, including male roles and female roles in different times, especially some female characters which root in a series of literary works. The gender consciousness from those female characters has a great effect on establishment of students' scientific gender views and formation of correct gender consciousness, it also acts on the students' emotional attitude and values. About Chinese teaching books at different levels of education, secondary textbook are facing this kind of education acceptors who are in a period of learning experience, forming social gender concepts, manners and conduct, and a period of socialization of gender roles and formation of scientific outlook of world and outlook on life. This period is a key period for forming a correct orientation, is also an important period to lose yourself. So it is meaningful to study the female characters in the textbooks' influence of the formation of the students' gender consciousness.By analyzing the present situation of women in new textbooks of PEP middle school Chinese and surveying some secondary school students, this paper concludes the problems about female characters in Chinese teaching materials, analyzes its influence of formation of students' gender consciousness, and rethinks the female figures in Chinese teaching material in secondary school. In my paper, I put forward some suggestions, hoping that through my efforts, I can do my own contribution to carry forward the reform of Chinese textbooks and to promote the implement of gender equality education and the harmonious development of education.By means of materials collection, questionnaire, mathematical-statistics and content analysis, this paper makes a research on the formation of female character and students' gender consciousness in the textbooks based on the theory of social gender and pedagogy.First of all, through the ways of materials collection, mathematical-statistics and content analysis, I did a textual study of Chinese textbooks in middle school.In this process, I analyzed the frequencies of occurrence of female roles, the identity of the female characters, key words to describe female characters and images of female characters in textbooks, and then concluded the problems of female characters in the PEP edition of Chinese textbooks for middle school. These problems are that the female characters are ignored, omitted, distorted and described starkly.In addition, based on this,I understood the user of textbooks-middle school students' real feelings and views about female characters in textbooks, and obtained the first-hand date of students'understanding through questionnaire. And the conclusion by surveying the students accords with the conclusion by analyzing the textbooks.What is more, I analyzed the influence of female characters in textbooks on the formation of students' gender consciousness on the basis of analysis of the first two chapters. This influence is due to variety causes. First, lacking female model in textbooks can influence the girl students' gender identification. Second, focusing on the femininity, especially the traditional femininity, limits the girl students' self-awareness. Third, ignoring and omitting female characters in textbooks makes girl students recognize men values and not face up to women experience. Fourth, distorted and stark description of female characters in textbooks leaves a gender stereotype to girls when they are in the process of forming gender consciousness. Moreover, the influence of female characters in textbooks on male students is the formation of male students' gender consciousness in female character, gender imagery and gender conduct.In the end, this paper makes self-examination and put forwards some advice, hoping that in the process of compiling Chinese textbooks for secondary school, the editors must foster gender equality consciousness, add more female characters to textbooks, respect the female characters in the textbooks, perfect femininity in textbooks and enrich image of female characters in textbooks.