The Nation In Children's Eyes

National identity reflects the individual's perception and acceptance of the nation to which he belongs.It is a psychological form composed of cognition,emotion and evaluation.It is not only a part of individual self-identity,but also a judgment of citizens on the authority and legitimacy of the political community they are in,and forms the basis of the political legitimacy of the country.Under the background of globalization and modernization,the tension between “nationality” and “globalization”,“individual freedom” and “state power” has becoming increasingly prominent.Strengthening and reconstructing national identity has becoming a worldwide topic,and children have also being an unavoidable object of this topic.Since the 1950 s,foreign cognitive psychology and political science have begun to pay attention to children's national identity issues from different aspects,and have obtained some achievements such as the age stage and influencing factors of children's national identity.After the 1980 s,the rise of childhood sociology injected a new perspective into the study,which emphasizes children's intrinsic value to the nation's understanding and experience.In contrast,in China,the concern for children's national identity has long remained in the field of educational practice,and there is still a lack of child-based,academically rational research.Therefore,this study attempts to reveal Chinese children's national identity from the "children's voice" and the social environment in which children live.The questions that this study attempts to answer include:(1)What is the level of national identity of children in primary school? What characteristics are shown?(2)How does the socialized environment in which children(both formal and informal)affect the construction of children's national identity?(3)Based on the position of education,what reflections can we make on the cultivation of children's national identity?This study is an instrumental case study.The researchers selected two public elementary schools in Shanghai P District as cases to try to understand the status of primary school children's national identity and its causes,and used four methods including questionnaires,interviews,participatory observations,and texts analyze for data collection and analysis.The research process has gone through the stages of literature collection and reading,research planning,fieldwork,preliminary analysis of data,re-fielding,in-depth analysis of data,and writing of papers.In the field process,the researcher always maintains the educational consciousness of education research,pays attention to the children's emotions and states in the research process,and also carries on the ethical reflection of field work.There are five chapters in the paper.The first chapter is the introduction,which mainly expounds the research origin and core issues,the existing situation of "identity","national identity","children's national identity" research and the overall design of the research;The second chapter mainly introduces the research object,the process of selecting and collecting data in the two schools and the ethical reflection of the researcher in the field;The third chapter begins with the main part of the paper.This chapter analyzes the status quo of children's national identity from two aspects: children's "national concept" and "national identity".Adopting such a division method not only refers to the expression of the "national identity" in the existing research,but also takes into account the psychological process characteristics of the child;In the fourth chapter,the paper analyzes the social environment's recognition of children's national identity including the impact of the formal and the informal social environment and their interactions;On the basis of the first two chapters,the fifth chapter reflected the connotation of "national identity" from the perspective of pedagogy and further suggested the possible path of school education reform.The main conclusions of the study are as follows: Firstly,from the status quo of the national identity of primary school children,the national image,the national constituent elements and the Chinese people's image in the eyes of the children are positive overall,showing a strong national self-confidence and pride.However,in national identity,although most children regard national identity as their most important identity,attachment to national identity is mainly based on personal motivation,and the difference in personal motivation shows a high level of acceptance.The level of commitment to identity is not high.Therefore,this study believes that the national identity of children in primary school tends to be “evaluative identity”,that is,the recognition of China as an objective entity rather than the recognition of responsibility and commitment.Secondly,from the perspective of the socialized environment in which children live,the formal political socialization environment,that is,under the socialized management system led by the Communist Party of China,aims at disseminating national ideology,culture and values,relies on school education as core part for training children's national identity,plays an important role in cultivating children's positive national values,but also faces challenges.The challenge mainly comes from two aspects: First,there is still a phenomenon of instilling knowledge in a mechanical way,letting children passively acquire emotions in the form of emotional retelling,plus the discipline and honour are too prominent in school,making school education fails to cultivate the students a “common sense” belonging to the country,“school” to some extent obscures “nation”;Second,in the market environment,the entertainment and secularity of popular culture have dispelled the grand narrative and easily attracted children's attention.The economical and competitive nature of the market environment makes children become the human capital of the future market.This identity has gradually become an important identity for children's self-definition under the strengthening of parents and teachers.The "market" has partially obscured the "nation".Finally,based on the current internal and external challenges faced in cultivating children's national identity,this study believes that it is necessary to get rid of the national identity model in the macro-political perspective and pay attention to the awakening of the subject identity in the micro-political field.The national identity should be the individual's participation and construction in different levels of organizational practice,the corresponding political and cultural values are gradually acquired and the process of self-association with different levels of organization is established.The essential attribute of ‘identity' is practical,which means the subject gradually gains a sense of “self-engagement” and “community feeling” in the practice.Based on this,this study puts forward two suggestions for the reform of school education.One is to seriously establish the political mission and value position of the Young Pioneers education,so as to cultivate children's respect for the macro-national system.The second is to build a democratic school political ecology.The starting point is to nourish the democratic personality of children and foster the enthusiasm and ability of children to participate in public participation.Children's interest in public life in school will gradually extend outwards,eventually pointing to the country and the world.The above two points are closely related.The former indicates the basic direction for the latter,and the latter can prevent the former from becoming an educational arbitrariness.Both are indispensable.