A working group that promotes traditional culture designed a set of textbooks to be published soon about traditional Chinese culture to help high school students learn about ancient traditions.
Labelled as the first national-level work of their kind, the book comprises four classics from ancient times, which are the Confucian Analects and Mencius for the 10th-grade students and Great Learning and Dao De Jing for the 11th graders.
Dao De Jing is a Taoist classic written during the Spring and Autumn period of 770-476 BC by Laozi, a philosopher. The students will study the full text of this book and explore themes in other pieces.
Series of guidelines obliging the inclusion of more information about traditional culture in primary and middle school textbooks were issued by the Ministry of Education April of last year. Subjects like Chinese language, history, art and physical education were given emphasis.
One of the guidelines stated that “student’s knowledge of traditional culture will be tested in the senior high school entrance examination and the gaokao, the college entrance exam.”
According to Beijing Times, Zhang Jian, the working group's secretary-general, said that their team is also finding means to find successful ways to evaluate students’ know-how of traditional culture.
“Asking students to compose couplets and poetry may be one of the types of question included in future exams,” Zhang said.
Chu Zhaohui, a senior researcher at the National Institute for Education Sciences, said that the basic education system has not involved enough importance to the learning of traditional culture for quite a long time. Textbooks are useful to converse the situation.
Chu added that teachers using the books should regard students’ distinctive differences as they do not all have great knowledge of traditional texts. Learning traditional culture is not all about reciting texts but acquiring ancient wisdom to solve current problems.
The students will start using the books autumn this year.