What is the meaning of the Chinese character and culture education curriculum?

Curriculum is one of the most commonly used but poorly defined terms in education. the 1991 edition of the International Encyclopedia of Curriculum Systems lists nine definitions of curriculum. Professor Shi Liangfang, an expert on curriculum theory in China, categorized the various definitions into six types:

I. It refers to all the subjects that students study (curriculum in the broad sense), or to a particular subject that students study (curriculum in the narrow sense).

II. The curriculum has both planned instructional activities. The scope, sequence and process of teaching and even teaching methods and techniques, all the planned teaching activities together called "curriculum".

The curriculum is the intended learning outcomes. It is directly concerned with the desired learning outcomes or goals, and all teaching and learning activities serve these goals.

IV. Curriculum as learning experience. The American educator Dewey defined curriculum as experience based on the empiricism of pragmatism in an attempt to grasp the practical significance of curriculum for students, referring to what is internalized as student experience, what students actually learn and experience.

V. Curriculum as cultural reproduction. The curriculum in any social culture is in fact (and should be) a reflection of that social culture. There is a great deal of prejudice and injustice in the real world, and in order to effectively prevent the perpetuation of existing prejudice, the curriculum should be concerned with social and cultural change.

VI. Curriculum is the process of social transformation. The curriculum should not adapt or conform students to the culture of the society, but should free them from blind adherence to externally imposed worldviews, and students should play a major role in planning and implementing the curriculum.

While there are many different definitions of curriculum, we believe that it should first be understood as broadly as possible. For a long time, our understanding of the curriculum has been confined to the level of "academic subjects", equating the curriculum with academic subjects. In fact, the scope of students' learning goes far beyond those subjects officially listed in the curriculum, and some social and practical activities have a far-reaching impact on students' development and should also be included in the curriculum. Secondly, the curriculum should be grasped dynamically. On the one hand, the curriculum itself is constantly changing; on the other hand, the curriculum undergoes many transformations from planning, designing to implementing, and from curriculum decision-makers and weavers to teachers and students. For this reason, the concept of curriculum should be grasped dynamically in a broad sense.

Based on the above understanding and grasp of the concept of curriculum, we believe that the Chinese character and culture education curriculum can be defined in this way.

Chinese character and culture education curriculum is an educational behavior that aims to pass on and promote the excellent traditional Chinese culture, takes the learning of Chinese character and culture as its content, and makes the learners' mind change through certain ways.

This definition of Chinese character and culture education program reflects several meanings: first, Chinese character and culture education program is a kind of "behavior", that is to say, Chinese character and culture education program is not a kind of philosophical discernment of "metaphysics", but a kind of education program that influences or changes the learners' mind. It is a way and a means to influence or change the learners' minds. Second, it is an "education", which means that this kind of behavior can take place in a narrow sense, i.e., school education, or in a broad sense, i.e., social education. Third, Chinese character and culture education programs are implemented with a purpose, not just a random activity. The forms of Chinese character and culture education programs are diverse, including both discipline-based programs that focus on internal logic and comprehensive practice-based programs that focus on external experience.