Chapter 6 See education from a multicultural perspective

1. Chapter 6 See education from a multicultural perspective —the discussion on the issue of development 巴登尼玛

2. Section 1 Inspect on poverty—cultural value and educational explanation According to the economic theory, social economic structure is the basic issue of social development. Clarify local social economic structure in an area is equivalent to find the essence of economic issues and the key for solving poverty.

3. Poverty is defined as the certain deterioration degree accepted by social notion of living condition of some social members for their need cannot be satisfy or supply because their lack of living skills or their society cannot provide enough job opportunities for them. • Measurement of poverty composition: • the lowest living requirements for food and cloths; • medical service condition; • education condition; • income gap between city and country • relative social economic problems

4. Basic living requirements Absolute impoverishment: Daily intake 2500 calories from food, average living place 2.2㎡for each person, and daily fuel consumption reaches 3500 calories.

5. Medicine and education • Medicine: • The amount of local health officer, local country doctor and local assistant nurse; • The amount of hospital bed per thousand people; • The amount of country public health agency • Education • Educational resource shortage is a symbiosis phenomenon of poverty. It leads to economic motivation lacking and these two factors come about local poverty.

6. Income gap between city and country • Poverty in country • Main problem comes from basic requirements of poor people cannot be satisfied. • Occurs because of population growth and living standard declining • Preferential policy did not eliminate widespread poverty in country and even worsen it in some place; • The change of Gini index did not change the general poverty in country means that the poorest families were hardship during last ten years. • Poverty in Cities: • Large proportion of relative urban poor, they have a low income to sustain lowest living; • Major cause is lack of job opportunities or well-paying job; • Poverty in towns is lessening by preferential policies; • Gini index changes effects on town poverty;

7. Validity problems of labor force Tibetan area is vast but with vile living conditions and limited living pace where population distribution is concentrative for conveniently tackling the social capital scarcity by its abundant labor force. As a result, its economic growth generally relies on labor force growth which is brought by population growth. However, non-agricultural industry offers few job opportunities and town accommodation of population is quite limited. The added social labor force can only centralize in narrow farming and animal husbandry, so per capita occupancy of capital goods is keeping falling and per capita production of living goods is hard to increase. Productively , the economic growth brought by labor force growth is counteracted by population growth. This circle brings some people in a state of long-term poverty.

8. Traditional treasonous notion Traditional treasonous notion is the notion brought by cultural dross and it hinders social development. • Quality of population Low quality of population discourages the efforts of eliminating local poverty and family poverty. • Employment Creating more social employment is widely regarded as one of the most important measure for eliminating poverty in present world. The employment we mentioned generally refers to three levels: • the lowest level is finding a job to live on • the middle level is choosing a willing job from several choices • the highest level is governmental department keeping absorbing social labor force by developing social economy rather than loosing its economic benefit.

9. Section 2 the unique dualistic structure—a difficult task for education Present theory of Chinese society evolution considers that Tibetan society steps into socialist society directly from serfdom, and so the process of natural social evolution is interrupted. While Tibetan society shows a new image of socialism, it still conserves many feature of serfdom economy. There are two gaps in Tibetan society: one is the gap between modern society economic notion and traditional cultural notion, and the other one is the gap between political system and political notion. These two gaps form the unique dualistic structure in Tibetan society.

10. Therefore, a tremendous influential antinomy phenomenon presents itself in Tibetan society. More exactly, affected by remains of old social function mode and powerful regional typicality, two criterions of conduct coexist in society and affect social economic, political and cultural activities collectively.

11. Section 3 connotation of modern—the discussion of educational ultimate aim • The modernization we usually talk about refers to the pursuance of high level civilization which based on cultural basic spirit, and including harmonious development of human race, nature and society. • Modernization is dynamic and systematic. It is a conscious endless people-oriented social activity for optimizing human nature, social and spiritual environment. Each aspect and factor of this activity is interrelated and interdependence.

12. The accomplishment of modernization is depended on integrated developed human. Be well feed by civilization fruits, they are capable to undertake modern social work and create willing life by their own hands; they are cultural products with virtuous heart and create happiness by modern tools; they are kind to other people in society as well as nature. • The discussion of basic connotation of modernization should seek answer from the cultural core—the basic spirit of culture.

13. The correct opinion of nature and human should be inherited and enhanced. • Relationship of human and nature: • Nature is an objective world produced by universe while human is spiritual animal produced by nature; human should obey the natural law for better surviving and the consequence of blindly destroy nature or other nature creatures will bring disaster to human being in the end. Thus, for enduring and preferable surviving, human should form harmonious social relationship with nature. • Human society is the offspring of nature, including every section of human history. Therefore, adapting society also means to adapt nature. While the correct opinion of nature and human race faces challenge, education should show its required function.

14. The essence of education is the tool for transmitting knowledge generation by generation, and it is indispensable activity since the beginning of human history. Like people eating for living, people receive education for passing on knowledge related with methods, moral, principle and notion of surviving. In this sense, education is indispensable activity service for the goal of human race surviving in space. • School education is a conscious educational activity only occurs when human realize the necessity of education in condition of human civilization and human’s self-cognition reaches a certain degree. We call school education as “do-for-oneself education” for it is a purposive planned and controlled activity, a form of the education entirety.

15. The mission of education is not just passes on scientific knowledge but also the excellent natural opinion of human being. We need let the students themselves choosing the right way of surviving by their own judgments from their suitable opinion of nature and human race and their scientific knowledge.

16. 2. Modernization issue on values The modernization of values means developing the useful values and discarding the useless values of both traditional and recent. It is not equivalent to total abandonment but means promoting positive factors in traditional culture whilst discarding negative factors. 2.1 Keep balance in ideal and reality 2.2 Keep balance in inheritance and innovation • Modern people should conduct by behavior standard of autonomy, aggressiveness and creativity when they realizing their values.

17. Autonomy means people should have nature of independent thinking in their daily lives and social activities. It is the premise of aggressiveness. Without individual autonomy and independent thinking, people are easy dominated by exterior power or authority, not to mention aggressiveness and creativity. • Aggressiveness implies that people can hold their own destiny and change themselves, society and nature follow their own ideal. • Creativity purports development and progress. Continual creativity brings the world power for keeping advancement. A society has no creativity, has no progression and any values.

18. 2.3 Uniformity of individual and nationality • The individual value of modern people should depended on the extent of his products satisfy the need of his nation and country in both physical and spiritual. 2.4 Uniformity of science and moral • The highest ideal of modern people should keep their moral standard in step with historical standard both in his subjective value judgement and his real life. • We should have two standards for measure social development: • one is the historical standard which mainly focuses on the advancement of social productive force and scientific technology • the other one is moral standard which conducted by certain moral values, including the value to nature.

19. To truly realize the consistency of historical standard and moral standard, we need combine them organically and scan our behaviors by selfless loving to human and nature, we need correctly balance the relationship of material civilization and spiritual civilization through self-regulation and self-improvement in socialist system, and we need closely link social progress with fundamental interests of majority.

20. 3. Modernization of thinking mode The feature of modern thinking is the consistency of divers thinking. The rational thinking is dominating while intuition thinking and imaginal thinking is secondary. 3.1 Modern thinking is directed against the phenomenon of one-sided emphasis single in traditional culture. The trend of modern cultural development calls for consistency of diversifies because the development of modern culture shows two main megatrends: Firstly, all-in-one trend of world culture progress; secondly, diversity of world culture. These relative and mutually promotive trends contribute to consistency of diverse thinking of modern people. Therefore, school education and its curriculum system should be based on culture and use achievements of modern science to educate the next generation with consolidated multi-knowledge thinking for adapting modern society.

21. 3.2 Dominating rational thinking dominates intuition thinking and imaginal thinking • In the mode of modern thinking, rational spirit overwhelms emotional pleasure and the thinking motive is characterized by emphasizing rational reflection of thinking rather than self-satisfy or narcissistic. Modern thinking mode discard emotion satisfies for emphasizing scientific rational spirit. • American B. Holzner believes that one important distinction between modern society and traditional society is that people in traditional society seldom faces to choice of many methods to get his goal for the traditional mode emphasizes total needs while modern society requires people rationally choose the best methods to get his target. • Holzner also points that, rationality is the most significant in modern thinking. • Rationality is absolutely necessary for present social life and it is also an important representation of individual quality modernization.

22. 3.3 Intuition thinking and imaginal thinking are also important to modern thinking • Intuition thinking and imaginal thinking imply that the thinking mode of building significative relationship between people and target in particular way and based on collection of diverse relative information by multi-method. • It requires high quality thinking ability and its main feature is people’s thought have connection with concerned question and have delightful discovery of this question after their long-term accumulation of abundant information or long-term learning and asking.

23. 4. Modernization of ethos • Modernization of ethos means inherit the good and discard the bad of ethos. It also signifies reformation and promotion of traditional ethos, such as ethos of family, god and human, group, moral, self-renewal and national consciousness.

24. We should promote the consciousness of self-determination, coherence, patriotism and innovation. • Self-determination is consciousness of self-esteem, self-confidence, self-renewal, and national autonomy. • Coherence is the ideological guarantee of maintaining national united and boosting Chinese nation development as an entirety. • Two basic issues on coherence are inner cohesion of a nation and identify consciousness of each member to Chinese nation. Former one is the foundation wile the latter one is the target. • Innovation is the foundation of self-renewal spirit.