A Study Of Fei Xiaotong's Cogitation In Educational Anthropology

Fei Xiaotong is a famous sociologist, anthropologist and mathematician. He is also one of the founders of sociology and anthropology in China. He hold on to the truth that knowledge starts with practice for life, who did many field research throughout the country for a very long time. On these basis, he constructs theory and proposes influential point of view. Although there is no works or articles named to educational anthropology, he concerned about educational problems. He regarded education as a part of culture and interpreted the education problems with theories and methods of anthropology. So his expression on education has the feature of educational anthropology.The essence of this research is a study of history of education, which is also a excavation of Fei Xiaotong's concept of educational anthropology. Based on the idea that issues decides the point of view, the main method of this research is documentary study which is very fundamental and common. This method can be divided into two kinds. One is documentary study in the broad sense and the other is the narrow sense. But in this research, the researcher adopting the method of documentary study in the narrow sense and considers it as an independent research mehtod.Education in this thesis will be divided into family education, school education and social education. These three aspects will be used to organize Fei Xiaotong's concept of educational anthropology. They are interrelate to each other, for the educational system is an open and complex one. In terms of family education, the traditional family education undertake most of the education task. Fei Xiaotong thought that the traditional social family education should be a total education. Double-system tending is the basic structure for family education. The acquisition of skills of production, living and the acquisition of customs is the main content of family education. As for school education, he mainly discussed the issue of implementing the new school education in rural communities in 1930's. Fei Xiaotong explained it with cultural functionalism and thought that the reason why school education cannot implement in rural areas was because that school education didn't work in rural communities. As to social education, faced with more and more frequent communication, Fei Xiaotong concerned how to get along with people. He proposed to establish the concept of cultural consciousness, to educate peacefully and strengthen the establishment of moral order. Fei Xiaotong's ideas of educational anthropology provide some examples and inspiration for our educational research and the domestication of educational anthropology. Our educational research should have the view of interdisciplinary studies, concerning educational issues under the circumstance of social transformation and creating new research methods. In the process of the domestication of educational anthropology, we should establish the awareness "Chinese problem". Based on the reality and the traditional culture, we should also innovate new research techniques and theories.