The Comment And Analysis Of Cultural Relativism Tendency In National Education Research

In the history of philosophy, relativism, as the opposite of absolutism, always presents a reciprocal relationship with absolutism. In a subsequent development, relativism derived from many different forms, such as value relativism, moral relativism and so on, cultural relativism is one of them. Cultural relativism, as a theory of cultural anthropology, is a powerful critique and digestion to cultural universalism, and its main core idea is to emphasize that every culture has its own value and significance of existence, different cultures have different values standard, there is no universal standard of value, and we must respect the uniqueness of each culture and differences of different cultural. Cultural relativism theory has been widely applied to the comparative education and had formed a Comparative Education Paradigm of cultural relativism. As a reference, the cultural relativism theory can also be introduced into the national education research studies and resolve the national education problems.Because cultural relativism has its own positive factors and limitations, its impact on national education research is also twofold. On the one hand cultural relativism has the positive impact on the research subjects, research object and methodology of national education. Specifically, it emphasizes the understand and respect of the national education research subjects on the value of the attitudes and the value involved on values tendency. It requests that researchers focus on the thematic stance and use the method of field participant observation, a comprehensive survey and cross-cultural comparison, stress the diversity and special type of national education objects, show understand and concern to the research objects of their living world, the historical and cultural background and the local knowledge as well as the presence of field they constructed. Second, on the ideas and methods of national education research, the researchers should achieve the change from the subjectivity to the inter-subjectivity, engaged in the cultural context and pay attention to the research integrity.Third,on the methodology of national education research, cultural relativism requires paying attention to the living world in the ontology, the personality and particularity in the epistemology of the research objects and emphasizing the value involved in the value theory and the empathy in Theoretical Methods. But on the other hand, due to the limitations of the theory of cultural relativism, it also has the negative impact on the study of national education. For example, this theory emphasizes the particularity and difference of national culture too much and ignore the universality and commonality which is not conducive to integration of national culture and easy to cause the cultural self-closing and ethnocentrism; it stresses the relativity of value neutrality and value judgments too much which results to no distinction of right or wrong, black or white and leads to unknown fog of value and mental dementia; it underlines emic stance too much which makes the researchers lose an objective judgment and leads to the research outcomes fulling upon the subjectivity and non-science and losing its credibility; it emphasizes field surveys and collection of materials too much to resulting in that a lot of study materials are blindly piled up and the theory is difficult to develop.Therefore, the study of national education must prevent the cultural relativism tends caused by its own limitations when learning from the theory of cultural relativism rationally.In the study of national education today, although there is no research that learn clearly and apply systematically of the cultural relativism, but some problems existing in the study of the national education process has been reflected in some of the cultural relativism characteristics, incarnating the tendency of cultural relativism, and this tendency has not yet attracted national education researchers’ enough attention and vigilance. This requires us to analyze the theory of cultural relativism dialectically, clarify its positive role and theoretical flaws, explore its impact on the study of national education, thus to avoid or resolve related issues appearing in national education research. Marxism and xiaotong Fei’s theory on diversity and unity of national culture break through the theoretical dilemma of cultural relativism, provide a better guide for national educational research on methodology.