The Good Life In Textbooks: A Content Analysis Of The Unified Edition Middle School Language Textbooks

The pursuit of a better life has been a constant theme in people’s lives throughout the ages.Since the report of the 19 th Party Congress put forward that "the main contradiction in our society has been transformed into the contradiction between the people’s growing need for a better life and unbalanced and insufficient development",the good life has not only been an ideal of life,but has gradually risen to become an important goal of China’s economic and social development.However,in reality,people’s understanding of the good life is often one-sided and requires some spiritual guidance and enlightenment.Education is closely related to the good life,and guiding students to correctly understand and pursue the good life is an important mission of school education in the new era.Textbooks are the main carrier of school curriculum content.Through text presentation,meaning evaluation,cultural identity and even linguistic logic,textbooks can have a profound and lasting impact on students’ ideology and values.Specifically,language textbooks have an implicit influence on the shaping of students’ values,and by presenting them with a specific model of the good life,they can have a profound impact on the development of students’ views on the good life.This study adopts the content analysis method,using the Unified Edition junior high school language textbooks as the text for analysis,to analyse the good life presented in textbooks.The study finds that,on the whole,the good life in textbooks focuses on the spiritual good life in terms of the "type of life" dimension and the "objective realisation" of the good life in terms of the "inner structure" dimension.In the "inner structure" dimension,the focus is on the "objective realisation" of the good life.Further,in terms of subjective experience,the good life in the textbooks is predominantly ’social’;in terms of aspiration attainment,the good life in the textbooks is mainly spiritual;in terms of objective realisation,the good life in the textbooks focuses on the spiritual dimension.In terms of the overall ranking of the categories,the’objective realisation’ of the social and spiritual dimensions of the good life is the main focus of textbooks.They focus on the satisfaction of diverse and high-level needs,the realisation of ecological values,and the importance of morality and ethics,and in general present positive and positive contents of the good life,which is in line with the good life of the new era.However,at the same time,there are still some limitations of the good life in textbooks,mainly in the lack of completeness of the good life in textbooks and the relative absence of the good life from a subjective perspective in textbooks.To this end,the following recommendations are made: in the development of textbooks,the material dimension of the good life should be appropriately supplemented;and the ’wish-fulfilment’ aspect of the good life should be highlighted.At the teacher level,teachers should be sensitised to the good life in textbooks;their ability to interpret textbooks should be enhanced;and their practical ability to guide students in the construction of a good life should be improved.