Contemporary China's Educational Function Of Rites Of Passage And Its Implementation

A rite of passage is one of the most important ceremonies in human etiquette and custom, a particular cultural phenomenon in the history of human beings, and also an ancient way of educating the youth. As a symbolic ceremony in human life stages of development, rites of passage in human populations exist in different degrees. Their social and cultural significances change accordingly with the variations of historical and social situations. However, it is noted that little attention was put on rites of passage in modern society. Up until the nineties of the 20th century, more and more swearing-in activities for rites of passage in China began to emerge from metropolises, and quickly spread to medium-sized cities.By studying a specific case, this paper makes an investigation and introspection of the present rites of passage, analyzes its educational function from an interdisciplinary point of view, discusses the key elements of its educational function in the aspects of formation and release, and gives an overview of its current situations of many other countries. The goal of the above analysis is to provide some theoretical and practical foundations for the education from rites of passage. Furthermore, this paper proposes two concepts for solving the problems of existing rites of passage. One is life consciousness-based ceremony education concept, and the other is emotional experience-based ceremony education concept.First, the studies of educational phenomena must be carried out in the broad context of society. Therefore, the education from rites of passage should be analyzed at the macro and micro levels. At the macro level, its rise history and theoretical background should be learned; at the micro level, starting with the specific cases, we put focus on the practical operations of rites of passage. More specifically, a field survey on the operating process in a certain high school is made. According to its operating process and subsequent student interviews, we think over the existing problems with the present education from rites of passage, and make preparations for starting a discussion on its formation and release.Second, the working mechanism of its educational function is explored from the multidimensional perspectives of cultural anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Subsequently, we start a discussion on rites of passage in the following three aspects: (1) what educational function should rites of passage have? (2) how is the educational function formed or released? (3) what are the components affecting the educational function?Third, in order to provide a reference to our country, we give an overview of the current situations of carrying out rites of passage abroad, select some representative cases about rites of passage from the west and east of the world, acknowledge its educational theory, operating mode, and educational function.Finally, based on the field survey and theoretical analysis, we make a deep analysis of the educational function generated from rites of passage, and also propose two concepts for solving the problems of existing rites of passage. One is life consciousness-based ceremony education concept, and the other is emotional experience-based ceremony education concept.Compared with existing research on rites of passage in Chinese education sector, the main contributions of this thesis are two-fold. (1) Through several intensive school investigations on individual cases, this thesis discloses the existing problems of the recent rites of passage in China. (2) Based on a cross-cultural comparison from ancient to modern times and from China to foreign countries, especially multi-disciplinary theoretical analysis this thesis, this thesis gives a multi-dimensional analysis of the realization issues of rites of passage as well as its educational function.