On Yi Minority Educational

The ancient educational ideology of the Yi Minorities compasses the education thinking from both its traditional culture and the Han Nationality culture. It spans from the ancient times to Chinese Opium War, the people of Yi began to have a rational learning and deep reflection of education on its activity, situation and rules.However, the academic scholars from both home and abroad have not yet formed a systematic research on its formation, development, main contents and characteristics of the Yi Minorities. Therefore, this thesis is to talk about the developmental process of Yi people’s education thought in order to perfect and enrich the Chinese minorities education ideology. What is more, it will provide a valuable resource for people to know about the Yi culture, promote the development of Yi’s education and strengthen our national unity.This paper can be divided into four parts. The first chapter of this paper mainly describes the birth of the education thought and the practice activity education thought in the original society of the Yi nationality. Because so many years have passed by, we can merely know about the Yi people’s living situation in primitive society only with access to its ancient classics, aiming to find out the historical factors and the requirements that lead to the birth of the Yi’s education ideology. While the second chapter mainly talks about the development of education thought of the Yi nationality in the slavery society period. Around the spring and Autumn period, class stratification began to occur in the Yi ethnic group and it still existed in some parts of China after the founding of new China in1949. The Yi’s ancestors created a brilliant and unique culture during the long-lasting slavery society as well as formed a traditional education thinking with its own characteristics. In the meantime, as more power was grasped into the hand of the authorities, the governor put more attention on the southwest area of China; years by years of enclosed and self-served economy pattern in the Yi society began to disappear, replaced by influences from its neighboring nationalities especially the Han nationality, which brought a tremendous influence on the education ideology of the Yi nationality. The third part, turns to discuss the education thinking of the Yi Minorities in its feudal society period. It started from the establishment of the Dali kingdom in Yunnan district in Yuan Dynasty, followed by the Ming and Qing Dynasties period when a famous policy called "Gai-Tu-Gui-Liu" was implemented by the officials, which means the authorities change the self-governed system to an imperially governed one in Yun Nan district at that time, thus becoming a critical and turning point in Chinese history. It brought a great change to the original habitant style, population structure and cultural environment and had a huge impact on the development of the Yi Nationality’s education ideology. On one hand, with the widespread of imperial examination system and deeper communication between the Yi’s and the Han’s civilization, the Han culture was spread rapidly in Yi society; many intellectuals can even write in Chinese character and left a large fortune for the later generations. On the other hand, the conflict between the two civilizations made the traditional culture of the Yi nationality hard to survive in the contemporary overwhelmed Han culture, some scholars of the Yi nationality realized the importance of the traditional culture and started to learn its own language called "the Cuan Character", which to some extend made the Yi’s traditional culture inherited to its offspring.Based on an overall review of the educational thought in ancient Yi society, the paper makes a summary on the characteristics and development of the educational thought. The unique culture system laid a large foundation for the birth and development of the Yi’s educational thought. In the ancient long historical process of the Yi nationality, this unique culture system kept Yi’s traditional culture, but also incorporated more cultures from other nationalities especially the Han culture, which had a large influence on Yi’s culture and education and had eventually formed a featured culture pattern in which the Yi Minority and other nationalities were mutually influenced and peacefully co-exist in this large Chinese culture circles.