A Comparative Study On General Education Curriculum Setting Of Chinese And U.S Universities

General education combines educational ideal with curriculum practice. It aimsat cultivating the whole man who has perfect personality and opposes the utilitarianand professional education. Due to the influence of the Soviet specialized educationsince1950, the people cultivated by Chinese universities gradually cannot satisfy thepractical need of society. In such an era of knowledge explosion and disciplineseparation, General education has played a more and more important role in highereducation and has became the key to ameliorate crises brought by specializededucation. With the development and reforms of higher education in China, manyuniversities are attaching more importance to general education. The root of thegeneral education lies in the curriculum setting, which is the key of general educationfrom the educational ideal into curriculum practice. General education curriculum isthe main way is to realize the goal of general education, and is an important part toraise the level of general education.However, some problems still exist in the general education courses in Chineseuniversities. For example, curriculum setting is not reasonable, curriculum proportionis imbalance, and curriculum content is excessive specialization and so on. Thegeneral education curriculum in US universities has more than l00years’ history untilnow. Owing to a long-term reform and development in the US, General educationcurriculum has reached a mature stage. As for China, due to a lack of experience andtime, the development of general education is still in the initial stage. Therefore, weneed to do a contrastive study of general education between American and Chineseuniversities, and summarize the successful experience of American general education,which aims to adjust and reconstruct the setting of general education courses inChinese universities.The thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter one explains the reasons for doing the study and introduces the presentdomestic and foreign study situation, as well as the main thoughts and methods ofstudy. Chapter two defines the main conceptions, and introduces four kinds of mainpatterns of general education curriculum.Chapter three analyzes the social basis of implementation of general education inChinese universities, from three aspects of background, policy system, and culturalenvironment.Chapter four mainly summarizes the historical development of general educationcurriculum between Chinese and U.S universities, and analyzes the present situationincluding some problems and successful experiences in the general educationcurriculum setting of Chinese and US universities.Chapter five uses the method of case analysis to study the general educationcurriculum setting of the different types in four representative universities. Byanalyzing and comparing the patterns of general education curriculum setting in thesefour universities in several aspects, such as theoretical basis and ideal, constructionand content, characteristic and administration of the pattern. The thesis respectivelycompare with the two comprehensive research universities: Fudan university andChicago university; two teaching oriented universities: Xi ’an international studiesuniversity and Amherst college.The last chapter puts forward some valuable suggestions which could improvegeneral education curriculum in our universities.