Cultural Orientation Of The Beijing Version Of Junior High School Language Textbook

It is well-known that Chinese teaching material that Chinese education offered is a kind of important barrier not only for passing and inheriting the native culture but also embodying the national humanism. Therefore, it is certainly an important basis for next generation to have a humanizing education. In view of curriculum, humanism is an orientation. However, humanism is a directional in view of cultural education. That is, it is a big problem that we choose which kind of humanism including different kinds of isms, trends and conceptions.After New Curriculum Standard is being brought into effect, Chinese teaching material instructed by the thought of humanism has been changed a lot. What are these changes? Whether it is reasonable in the person of the mainstream of educational and social culture development or not? Whether it presents the value orientation that is suitable for the students' mental and physiological development or not? They are both the questions for discussion.The paper observed the research on the Nine-Year Compulsory Education Chinese Language Teaching Material for Three-Year Junior High School (1995 Edition) and the Curriculum Reform Experimental Chinese Language Teaching Material of Beijing Municipal Compulsory Education (2004 Edition). Research on the contents and topics of the texts in the two mentioned textbooks, we found the 2004 Edition assume the cultural orientation more fit for curriculum development andstudents' needs——reflects more open and diversified cultural orientations thatweaken ideology, revive cultural tradition, and attention to individual students and brave humanity. These cultural orientations represent the progress in teaching material compilation, however, there are still many disadvantages in the texts of the 2004 edition, for instance, the new edition have more deficient of contents concerning the western outstanding culture and the cultural values of ethnic groups.