Research On Mosuo People 's Traditional Family Education

In everyone’s life, family is the first place to receive education, which is also the important foundation in the whole process of education. For minor ethnic groups, their distinctive traditional family education contents contain ancestors’ valuable intelligence and life experience, which is a significant link to hold together their identity and culture, and also the only way to realize cultural inheritance. Therefore, traditional family education as the important carrier of cultural inheritance of all minor ethnic groups plays a decisive role in every aspect. Matrilineal family is not only the important content in Mosuo culture, but also the most direct form of its culture’s accumulation. Respecting woman and regard woman as superior is their traditional rule. Their mountain is named Goddess Mountain, and lake is called the Mother Lake. Their respect for woman can be seen from every aspect in daily life, and also run through the whole system of Mosuo society. The life practice of Mosuo people reflects the simplest, most natural and harmonious way to live in the history of human civilization. Because their special matriarchal culture, forms of marriage and family structure, their traditional family education has a unique style. For them, it is more important to keep advantage in the wave of globalization, to keep their traditional family education play significant role in both the cultural heritage and self development. The wisdom and essence in Mosuo people’s traditional family education is worthy of thinking.This paper can be divided into six parts. The first part narrates the reason and significance of this research. The second part briefly introduces Mosuo people’s traditional living style and their history through historical data. The third part talks about their special form of family education from their family origin, marriage forms and family types. The fourth part shows their education contents from tradition, home education, adult education, religion and moral education through interview. The fifth part introduces ideas and methods of Mosuo people’s traditional family education. The last part is to analyze the causes of the change of Mosuo traditional family education, trying to seek solutions to face those crisis, improving their cultural self-consciousness, regaining the status of women in the matrilineal family and understanding the importance of the combination of traditional culture and education system. This paper use Mosuo people, living in the Lu Gu lake, Yun Nan province, as the research object, trying to explain their traditional family education from traditional education of minor ethnic groups.