The Approaches Used in China Civic-Moral Education: History
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Contributor:
Le Shi
,
Lingjun Chen
,
Rui Gong

Civic-moral education is a topic that has been widely discussed globally. In China, civic-moral education has a long history and presents different characteristics and methods from other countries due to political, economic, and cultural factors. 

  • civic-moral education
  • China

1. Introduction

According to Outline 2019, civic-moral education needs both the heritage of former practices and innovation [1]. Scholars have offered some solutions to improve civic-moral education in China, including several aspects: reflecting on and utilizing traditional Chinese culture, building a civic-moral curriculum system, creating a social environment suitable for the development of civic morality, and making full use of a campus (such as building a hidden curriculum in schools). Actually, these approaches have been used to varying degrees in educational practices. However, since the implementation of each approach entails many operation regulations, scholars have offered their views on what can be optimized.

2. Building a Civic-Moral Curriculum System

In China, there is a civic-moral curriculum system consisting of mandatory civic science subjects/courses in each school stage. For example, in high schools, the corresponding subject Ideology and Politics aims to improve the moral quality of students in four aspects: political identification, scientific spirit, awareness of the rule of law, and civic participation [2]. Starting from junior high school, students need to pass the civic science exams to graduate from each school stage.
Many specific ways to enable students to have better learning experiences and outcomes have been proposed in the literature. Weili Fu argues that civic-moral education can be carried out by educating about laws and law practices, where teachers not only clarify the relationship between rights and obligations but also extend it to the field of civic morality [3]. Wenliang Xiang focuses on age-specific teaching, insisting that the educational objectives of each age group should be created based on specific developmental needs in each age group and collect materials close to students’ lives for civic-moral education [4], including creating specialized textbooks and posters on bulletin boards. Setting role models [4][5], role-play [4][5], stories [6], and debates [7] are proposed to help students learn civic-moral values by putting themselves in the position of others through reflection and empathy and making moral judgments after better understanding the characters and the situation [8]. In addition, scholars propose that it is necessary for students to have hands-on practice, to achieve happiness through school or social service [1][9][10]. Particularly, through service and learning observations, students not only learn from experiences per se but also learn from their teachers. As school and class organizers, teachers are considered to be moral role models who are naturally followed and highly respected by students, and their behavioral and moral qualities have a profound impact on students [9][11].

3. Transforming the Social Climate

Civic morality is a highly public subject, and civic-moral education is closely tied to the social climate [12][13], as individual preferences, perceptions, and attitudes are influenced by the social climate [14]. Creating a positive social climate can form a nurturing atmosphere of morality; specific measures include making full use of policies and laws, public opinion, an honor system, and practical activities [15].
Scholars have presented many concrete ways to create a positive social climate for civic-moral education. Firstly, publicizing rules, policies, and laws is conducive to the spread of fairness and justice [1][6][16][17], and involving all people in supervision [18] can strengthen moral restraint. Secondly, a qualified moral model with a good story [4][6][7] helps to shape the public opinion on civic morality [12]. Those moral models are sometimes called heroes as they sacrifice themselves for the public interest, especially during big public crises or events [1][19], such as the COVID-19 pandemic [20] and the Olympic Games [21]. An honor system that rewards people with outstanding civic-moral behavior may be powerful enough to encourage other people to follow [18][22]. Thirdly, as the internet increasingly influences people’s thinking, building a healthy internet culture is becoming more and more important [22]. Specific measures include strengthening online public opinion guidance [18][22][23][24] and implementing public opinion supervision [1][18]. Fourthly, the government can create more opportunities for social practice and encourage people to participate, since through practice, people can internalize moral norms into their own moral feelings and conduct [1]. Finally, the level of people’s civic morality is closely linked to the level of their knowledge, so it may be useful to promote education in general, including education regarding literature, art, and news [1][16].

4. Making the Most of the Campus

School education occupies a large part of a person’s life [12], and it plays an important role in shaping students’ civic morality [16]. In school, the daily behaviors of students are supervised and corrected in time by teachers. In order to become qualified citizens, besides passive law-abiding aspects of civic morality, students are required to have a sense of virtue, the willingness to participate in social life, practical wisdom, and practical civic skills [17][25][26][27]. In terms of how to conduct civic-moral education in schools, many scholars have proposed concrete measures. Firstly, school media, such as campus radio and bulletin boards, are suggested to be important ways to disseminate relevant knowledge and values [9]. By reading the posters on the bulletin board or listening to the words on the radio, students learn more about civic morality. Secondly, an honor system may be valid to encourage students to participate in the practice of civic morality, in addition to transforming social climate [9]. Thirdly, schools can organize and guide students to participate in activities related to public welfare [1]. In many places in China, volunteering performance has already been taken into account when evaluating students [3]. Finally, allowing more students to participate in the management of class and school affairs may enable students to continuously develop the ability of civic participation and thus care more about public affairs and civic morality in the whole society [28].

5. Existing Challenges and Potential Solutions

There are two major challenges with civic-moral education in China: the emphasis on intelligence over morality and the emphasis on knowledge over action. Ling Yang and Xiuhui Zhou presented, that in China, parents pay much attention to students’ intellectual development, and some parents even take it as the only indicator to measure their children’s achievement [29][30]. Xing Zhang argued that Chinese universities pay less attention to students’ civic morality compared to test scores, thus failing to create an atmosphere that values civic morality [30]. In addition, Wenliang Xiang and Xing Zhang realized that in some schools, civic-moral education is dominated by the classroom teaching of bookish knowledge without incorporating practice; while it is undeniably important to teach related theories, practice is an important and essential way for students to learn how to engage in public affairs [4][30]. Licheng Qian and his colleagues found that contrary to expectations, the exam alone seems to not be able to facilitate students’ learning of social ethics [31]. For these challenges, scholars’ proposed solutions are in alignment with the approaches suggested above. For example, many scholars have proposed to make practice one of the key elements of civic-moral education [1][9][10]. If the aforementioned approaches can be better implemented, the situation of belittling morality and practices might also be improved.

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/bs13100819

References

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