Cultural Heritage as a Means of Identity Construction in Schooling in Central China

• In Event: Education and the impact of digital interventions on children: digital libraries, cultural identity, and future trends

Proposal

In this age of globalization, there has been an upsurge of civilization reflection worldwide since the 1980s.The tension between the process of technological and communicative globalization and the preservation of national identity was increasingly obvious in a global and polycentric context (Simionescu, 2018), thus enculturation and cultural inheritance with critical enculturation have been regarded as national development strategies for many countries over the years (Zhang, 2022). In April 2017, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the Middle-and Long-term Youth Development Plan (2016-2025), which served as the first national-level plan directed towards young people since the founding of new China in 1949, and the document had paid close attention to several issues of immediate concern of youngsters in nine areas such as theoretical literacy and moral standards, education, culture, social integration and engagement, etc. And accordingly, the eight key projects launched in this plan including Young Marxists Training Project, Youth Core Socialist Values Study Project and Youth Choicest Cultural Works Project, illustrated that cultural inheritance had been valued seriously as one of the key concerns of China’s educational policies of youth. As one of the basic functions of culture, identity of a person implies belonging to a particular space, area or region, and more importantly, serves as an important basis of national and social identity. Among various resources selected, heritage resources have been highly regarded in terms of its strong conceptual links with identity, and heritage education has as well been emphasized by many countries around the world due to its social, political and educational functions. As one of the most important cradles of Chinese civilization, the Central Plains region, and more specifically Henan Province, possesses significant historical and cultural heritages. Tangible and intangible heritages resources in this region that handed down from thousands of years has constituted a profound historical background in constructing youngsters’ recognition of cultural and inter-cultural identity, which provides a local identity with multicultural perspectives.

In many countries, heritage education has been deployed as a national strategy to teach youngsters to understand their own cultures from the past, to know how their past heritage developed and transformed alongside history, and through which the past is brought to the present to develop cultural identity. And at the current process of globalization, inter-cultural education is as well indispensable for youngsters to possess a significant perspective of how their own culture responds, reacts and connects to other cultures.

By reviewing the linkage between heritage education and cultural identity, this study will provide a case study of Central China. The Central Plains Region of China, in the course of Chinese history has been variously named as Zhong Yuan, Zhong Tu and Zhong Zhou, all referring to the centredness of this place in the Chinese map (Lee & Zhou, 2018). As a geographical concept in narrower sense, Zhong Yuan refers to the lower reaches of the Yellow River and the south of the North China Plain, which covers mainly the province of Henan, and part of Shanxi and Shandong province. But culturally, Zhong Yuan is arguably one of the core regions that constitute the development of Chinese civilization in history. The Central Plain and the Yellow River had helped the construction of Chinese ancestors’ social cognition, ethnic identity and state concept, thus forming the earliest Chinese civilizations. Since remote antiquity, prehistoric cultures such like Peiligang culture, Yangshao culture and Longshan culture were created and inherited by Chinese ancestors in the Central Plains, which provide clues that this region was where Chinese civilization originated and developed. Until now, Central China is deeply regarded as the representation of Chinese civilization due to its historical and cultural significance, and thus become one of the most important regions to preserve when referring Chinese nation’s cultural roots and cultural heritage.

Due to its historical and cultural significance, this study aims to explore how heritage resources in this region had helped construct youngster’s identity, cultural and inter-cultural. Over the years, heritage resources in the Central Plains had been deeply integrated into education of every stage in this region. In primary and secondary schools, heritage resources are generally utilized in courses like Morality and the Rule of Law, Ideology and Politics, History, Geography, etc. In higher education institutions, apart from related majors, heritage education is conducted through diverse approaches in liberal education curriculums, such as Theory and Practice of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era, Marxism and Methodology in Social Science, Introduction to Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, Outline of Modern Chinese History, etc. However, the approaches and contents of heritage education are not limited to classroom teaching, extra-curricular activities, lectures, cultural tourism and even handicraft art are also ways of delivery. In terms of its core concerns in the last few years, heritage education in this region has been closely related to patriotic education, ideology and moral education, ideology and political education, and diligence education.

Heritage resources in Central China not merely includes citizenship values, but more significantly the inter-cultural traits generated through mixed effects of cultural heritage, one’s locality construct and one’s inter-cultural and multicultural perspectives. Since one’s cultural identity is inevitably mixed with the elements of national identity, the role of culture and heritage education should be made more prominent in promoting economic growth and social development. For Central China, how heritage resources have been adopted, selected and inherited, need to be further studied by exploring new ideas and approaches based on its local conditions.

Author

• Nan Hao, Zhengzhou University