Creative Education
2013. Vol.4, No.12B, 93-99
Published Online December 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ce) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ce.2013.412A2014
Open Access 93
Research on High School Students’ Everyday Life in the New
Curriculum Reforms Implementation Progress in China
Xiao Yang
Teacher Education School, Shanxi Normal University, Linfen, China
Received November 11th, 2013; revised December 12th, 2013; accepted December 19th, 2013
Copyright © 2013 Xiao Yang. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribu-
tion License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
work is properly cited. In accordance of the Creative Commons Attribution License all Copyrights © 2013 are
reserved for SCIRP and the owner of the intellectual property Xiao Yang. All Copyright © 2013 are guarded by
law and by SCIRP as a gu ardian.
In this paper, we employ qualitative research to examine the current situation of the implementation proc-
ess of high school new curriculum reform, and study how to deal with high school students’ everyday life
in China. The research revealed the contradictions and problems involving the students’ living environ-
ment, life structure, communication environment and spiritual life. Comparing “eternal ordinary or the
moment of fresh” with the goal of curriculum reform and the students’ expected life, I found the deep
problems about educational ideas, curriculum design, teaching patterns, evaluation criteria and etc. Dur-
ing the process of the reform, I further propose that the students understand everyday life rationally and
critically, change the free state of life gradually, improve the structure and pace of life. Only by this can
we realize the transformation of the students’ life, achieve all-round development following the nature of
human-beings, and further deepen and develop the implementation of curriculum.
Keywords: New Curriculum Reform; Curriculum Implementation; Everyday Life; High School Students
Introduction
In order to develop a democratic, prosperous, strong and
harmonious socialist modern China, it is necessary to raise the
quality of the citizens, and each person must receive holistic
and individualized development. The high school new curricu-
lum reform was implemented in mainland China in 2004. The
most recent outline for the development of education in China
pointing to the need to raise the quality of the citizens and pro-
mote all-round development is the means to societal progress.
The new curriculum reforms emphasized that creative talent
could be cultivated through curriculum reform. In the new cur-
riculum reforms implementation process, the spirit of new cur-
riculum reform should be put into work in high school students’
everyday life, which is the most thorough and true. Everyday
life serves as the soil in which all students’ activities and rela-
tionships sprout and grow up. The nature of high school stu-
dents’ holistic and individual development depends on every-
day life. Therefore, the study examined the current situation of
the implementation process of high school new curriculum, and
studied how to deal with high school students’ everyday life.
How do students live in the implementation process of new
curriculum? What are the students’ desires and motivations in
their everyday life? What is the root cause that determines the
generation, development and change of their intentions and
motives? Has the spirit of new curriculum been implemented
completely to the students’ everyday life?
Walking into undifferentiated and habitual everyday life of
high school students, the study analyzes contradictions and
problems existing in the aspects such as pace of life, life struc-
tures, life space, communication environment and spiritual life,
which are influenced by the new curriculum reform, then, ex-
amines and criticizes them to reveal the deep contradictions of
students’ life in the reform process of new curriculum. After
that, it discovers and denies the barriers that constraint their
free and all-round development, then promotes the students’
rational and critical understanding of their daily life. Finally, it
gradually changes their life comfort and life structure, realizes
the transformation of their everyday life, enhances the students’
nature of being human, further deepens the effectiveness of new
curriculum implementation, and promotes curriculum reform
smoothly.
Curriculum Implementation and the Everyday Life
The curriculum implementation study began with American
researchers’ systematic reflections on curriculum reform move-
ment of failed “disciplinary structure”. The researchers realized
that if the curriculum implementation process was not taken
seriously, even the most perfect curriculum plan could not
make the curriculum reform achieve its desired results. Ac-
cording to the relationship between curriculum plan and cur-
riculum implementation, American curriculum scholars Snyder,
Bolin and Zumwalt boiled the orientations of curriculum im-
plementation into fidelity orientation, mutual adaptation orien-
tation and curriculum enactment orientation, and analyzed the
characteristics of curriculum implementation process from
these five aspects as curriculum, curriculum knowledge, cur-
riculum reform, role of teachers and research methods, etc.
At the beginning of studying curriculum implementation,

X. YANG
Chinese researchers mostly referred to the ideas of American
curriculum scholars to analyze the current situation of Chinese
curriculum implementation (Yin & Li, 2007). With the devel-
opment and deepening of Chinese curriculum reform, curricu-
lum implementation increasingly highlighted the complexity of
itself. Chinese curriculum researchers found that the phenom-
ena of Chinese curriculum could not be explained effectively
when referring to curriculum theory from abroad and gradually
got out of western discourse authority in curriculum implemen-
tation studies. On the macro level, the requirements of ideal
curriculum implementation were planned; the tension and con-
flict between new university entrance examination and high
school new curriculum were analyzed; the current situation,
difficulties, problems of curriculum implementation were de-
scribed and explained and the corresponding measures or sug-
gestions to deal with those problems were sought (Zhang & Xu,
2006; Jin, 2001; Ma, 2002; Zhang, 2007; Liu, 2007; Yu, 2007).
On the middle level, the due corresponding strategies of schools
were discovered in the curriculum reform process: schools im-
plemented curriculum planning, credit system and elective
courses, improved school environment, changed teaching meth-
ods and students learning ways, strengthened curriculum lead-
ership, organized teacher training effectively to promote the
implementation of national curriculum, local curriculum and
school-based curriculum, and then achieved the transformation
from the national ideal curriculum to the real curriculum (Cui,
2007; Zhong, 2008; Pan, 2007). On the micro level, the subjec-
tivity of students was respected, and students’ psychology was
cared for, and most students were found to hold a positive atti-
tude towards new curriculum but felt stressed about it while
some, lacking of knowledge of new curriculum, could not adapt
to the new curriculum evaluation methods (Dai & Zhang, 2007).
Some researchers, taking reconstructing the world of classroom
life as a breakthrough, emphasized that classroom teaching
should be connected with life experiences of both teachers and
students so as to provide the foundation for the professional
world of classroom teaching (Wang, 2006). Chinese education
researchers’ studies of classroom teaching life only stayed on
theoretical criticism, and did not really walk into students’ eve-
ryday life.
In the 20th century, many philosophers focused on the world
of everyday life from different perspectives and put forward the
theory of everyday life. In his Crisis of European Science and
Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl pointed that human
being’s entire worldview was dominated by empirical science,
and deviated from the rationalist tradition of concerning about
the questions of life, which excluded the questions of human
life from scientific world, thus human being lost their meaning
and value world (Husserl, 1976). Through the dissection of
human being’s daily “co-existence”, Heidegger reveals a deep
and overall dissimilation in the modern world of everyday life.
From the perspective of internal contradictions of daily life,
Lefebvre said that simple, free, spontaneous and repetitive as it
was, daily life was holographic, which showed the deep inner
mechanism of society. To criticize the daily life was to tear the
political and economic veil covered on it, liberated the individ-
ual subjectivity, and changed the entire social relations (Le-
febvre, 2002). Heller noticed that associations existed in the
individual, society and daily life: daily life as an individual
field of reproduction was irreplaceable and it was the basis of
social reproduction, and daily life characterized by repetitive
thinking and repetitive practice possessed the property of con-
servatism and inertia which often played a negative role in hin-
dering personality development and corrupting the development
of creative practice and creative thinking (Lefebvre, 1991).
Examined by the philosophy of the theory of everyday life,
daily life——the basic existing world of high school students,
was found to possess characteristics of the following aspects.
First, it is already established. Everyday life always makes
identification and acceptance of the established existence as the
premise, for example, students can not choose family, birth or
gender and they can not select circumstances of life arbitrarily,
either. Acknowledgment and acceptance of the established
existence not only influence and form individual’s lifestyles
and everyday interests, but also restrict their behavior ways,
thus the individual will set the established circumstances of life
as their background (Schutz, 2001); although daily life is not
completely unchanged, it more often appears with circulation
and repetition of the same or similar model (Heller, 1990). To
accept and acknowledge the established world means to agree
that it is real and true. The “free” feature of everyday life first
requires high school students to adapt to their established life
rather than reflect on or criticize it. Having lost the conscious-
ness of reflecting and criticizing for a long time, students are
easily inclined to follow the beaten track easily when thinking
which also imposes restrictions on the individual to ask the
meaning of existence. This established life pattern, always
happening and formed in the past but existing at present, first
associates with the past from the perspective of time dimension,
and correspondingly, the process of daily life generally works
with the established pattern, which was the case in the past, and
usually such in the present.
Second, it is free. Everyday life is a free, unconscious, ha-
bitual activity. Every day high school students get up at six,
then, running, reading, having breakfast, attending classes, etc,
the activities of which have rooted in the tradition and common
sense of school teaching. Daily life guarantees the continuation
of school culture in its form of “free” feature, provides students
with interpretation of the daily facts, and forms into behavior
norms which guide students how to behave correctly. Such
norms and tradition have made students accept various routines
and existence in school daily life, and they believe that the ex-
isting is common, natural and also reasonable and all seems to
be self-evident and naturally reasonable (Schutz, 1983).
Third, it is repetitive. In high school students’ daily life, to-
day and tomorrow are circular and similar. That is to say, every
day in their daily life can be exchanged for another day accord-
ingly. They get up early in the morning, do morning exercises,
have breakfast, read in the morning, attend classes, then they
have lunch, have a rest, attend classes, do activities, and then
have dinner, study by themselves and sleep. In the repetition
day after day, the behavior of students or their pace of life are
displayed in the same pattern of circulation or repetition. That
is to say, students’ life habits, daily interests and communica-
tion styles are shaped in repetition and circulation, and their
ways of dressing and behaving themselves and learning styles
are restricted by the background of the established circum-
stances of life. The mental set, influenced by the long-lasting
life pattern and learning style, can hardly stimulate high school
students’ creative thinking.
Examined by the philosophy of the theory of everyday life,
the high school students’ daily life includes not only activities
that meet the basic conditions of the existence of the individual
life and guaranteeing the reproduction of the individual, and
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X. YANG
social relationship activities that are multi-formed inter-indi-
vidual interactions in the form of language and practice, but
also contains daily concept and consciousness that are rooted in
those activities. In fact, when we understand the reproduction
of the individual not only from the level of the existence of life,
but also from the level of the existence of culture, social activi-
ties, such as daily life, work, cultural creation function as the
ways of achieving the reproduction, get their proper meaning.
In short, daily life firstly means an activity that can sustain its
life and this also refers to an activity that can survive the indi-
vidual. Secondly, it involves a variety of activities done by the
individual aiming at developing the individual on the basis of
living. Thirdly, it means the daily concept and consciousness
that are rooted in survival and developmental activities. Among
these three activities, the first one is the basic activity of high
school students’ individual existence, which mainly includes
their life structure and pace of life; developmental activity re-
fers to the one that can improve life quality of the individual
and can contribute to growth and development of the individual,
and it consists of learning activities, interpersonal relationship
activities and entertainment activities; daily consciousness and
daily concept are things that hidden in the activities of guaran-
teeing existence of the individual life and promoting the indi-
vidual development, which refer to the self-recognition and
self-evaluation of high school students, cognition of state of
their present life, visions of their own future and so on.
Data and Methods
The survey was conducted on three high schools of different
levels in Yuncheng city, Shanxi province central,PRC. The
schools are Kangjie Middle School, a provincial key high
school, Yuncheng Middle School, a provincial model high
school and AnYi Middle School, a township high school. Five
classes were randomly selected from grade 1 and grade 2 in the
three schools. Six students were randomly selected from each
class to be interviewed with their daily lives. 180 students were
interviewed on their daily life.
Observation and interview were adopted to learn about their
daily life and find out the influencing factors of their daily life.
Students’ daily life was observed and relevant interviews were
conducted on it. Researchers compile a structural interview
outline. The following are the main contents: students’ daily
life, the respondents’ memory about when they get up, have the
breakfast, go to school, attend class, finish the class and go to
bed, helping them establish a comprehensive impression on
yesterday; to understand students’ views on going to college
and objectives of attending high school; to understand students’
study activities, such as teaching methods, learning methods,
learning content; to understand their relationship with teachers
and classmates and their favorite activities and teachers, etc.
Qualitative analysis software QSR Nvivo7 was used to en-
code and analysis the data. The items of the coding are time
table, the purpose of going to high school, opinions on going to
college, learning methods, optional courses, hobby, favorite
teachers, social practice, relationship with teachers and class-
mates and self assessment. Differences and common character-
istic of students from three schools in these aspects were ana-
lyzed according to the related data coding. The results were
reached with daily activities as a guide through analyzing ideas
and concepts behind the data, reading these data repeatedly,
examining the data with law of everyday life at the same time,
shuttling back and forth between theory and data. The expected
result was achieved through reviewing the data concerning high
school students’ daily life.
Results and Discussion
Activities Responsible for Students’ Existence: Pace
and Structure of Everyday Life
The results from analyzed from three aspects: activities re-
sponsible for students’ existence, activities exciting high school
students in daily life and ideas and consciousness hiding in
daily life. Three schools have roughly same daily schedule.
“Students get up at five Fifty in the morning to, run at six ten
and finish the morning exercises at six ten. Then, they have
breakfast and do morning reading from six fifty to seven forty.
At 7 o ‘clock the first class ends, at nine forty the second class
ends and at ten o ‘clock the class breaking setting up exercise
begins. At eleven o ‘clock the third classes is over. Lunch be-
gins at 12 o ‘clock, then from twelve to fourteen ten lunch
break. The first class in the afternoon is at 2:30, the fifth class is
at three twenty and the sixth class is at four and twenty. From
four and twenty to five is the activity time, the next class begin
at five and ten. The dinner began at six, followed by four
self-study classes, night training and sleeping (interview with
students from Kangjie High School). Main elements in stu-
dents’ daily activities are studied, including eating, sleeping and
exercise. As a student said，”every day at school is regular and
nothing new. We get up, have breakfast, do morning reading,
have classes, have lunch and noon break and attend classes
again.” In this structure, study is of primary importance served
by eating; sleeping and exercise. We should drink milk, have
meat and eggs every day to ensure nutrition for study in high
school is very exhaustive (interview with students from Kangjie
High School). “In Yuncheng High School we are mandated to
attend activities by turning off all the lights in classrooms.”
“Some of the students have a poor sleep in dormitory, so in
order to ensure their learning efficiency they rent a house to
live outside the school” (interview with students in Kangjie
High School). The pace of life of high school students remains
changeless. There are as long as twelve to fourteen hours for
study, however less than eight hours for sleeping, one to two
hours for exercise and one to two hours for dining. The
changeless, repeated and established pace of life in which stu-
dents sit still for a long time for study, goes against the law of
inset activity of cerebral cortex and protective inhibition and
deprives their time for sleeping, exercising and relaxing. In the
pace of life students feel ordinary and stale.
Activities Exciting High School Students in Everyday
Life: Study
Learning is the bounded duty of a student. The quality of
learning activity represents of the quality of students’ everyday
life. We do a research on high school students’ learning activi-
ties by studying the learning content, learning method, commu-
nicative activities, leisure activities, etc.
Contents of Learning
Students’ study contents f three schools are the same. Study
contents are made up of subjects, mainly including the com-
pulsory courses for grade one and grade two, like Chinese,
math, English, music, sports, art, general technology, the in-
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X. YANG
quiry learning. In addition, the students majoring in science of
grade two will learn physics, chemistry, biology, and students
of arts should learn politics, history and geography. In the new
round of curriculum reform, optional courses are included in
high school courses and content of courses is designed by mod-
ule. Students can take courses by modules. In three schools,
teaching is conducted according to content of college entrance
exam which all the students are required to learn and no op-
tional courses is offered.
Learning Method
Students in three schools pay much attention to memoriza-
tion in the learning process, holding that reciting is the basis of
the study and the primary goal in cognitive activities, based on
which they can improve their ability of understanding, analysis,
synthesis, application and evaluation. It seems to students that
learning is “reading, studying and reciting” (interview with
students of Anyi High School).
In addition to recitation, students in Yuncheng High School
and Kangjie High School also pay special attention to under-
standing. They are aware of the importance of thinking ability,
believing that only by learning can they improve the ability of
solving problems and improving academic performance. To
achieve good performance we need to think, find and under-
stand the relationship between phenomenon and rules. Thinking
reflects students’ subjectivity and self-consciousness in learning
process. Thinking ability helps students solve problems in a
strange environment. “Listening to and understanding the lec-
ture is of great importance, for the teacher can explain one
question at class but he cannot cover all the questions, so if we
can draw inference about other cases from one instance, we can
generally understand it. More reviews are necessary to avoid
mistakes of the same questions.” (Interview with students of
Kangjie High School). “In learning Chinese we should think
more and do more exercise to expand our thought, for articles
on the textbook will not covered in exam. “ (Interview with
students of Yuncheng High School)
Communication Activities
There are mainly two types of communication activities
concerning students: the first one is communication with teach-
ers, the other is contact among students. The relationship with
teachers is a key element in students’ study activities. Teachers
are important to students, whose knowledge, self-cultivation
and personality have great impact on students. Their favorite
teachers have the greatest influence on them. The popular
teacher is the one who is knowledgeable and humorous, both
serious and lovely in class; who has excellent professional
knowledge and gets along with students like friends, who can
explain knowledge thoroughly by linking theory with practice;
who has witty thought and cares for students. As what is popu-
lar among students: the first-class teacher reveals us truth, the
second- class teacher teaches us methods and the third-grade
teacher analyzes the specific examples. In the process of com-
munication what can touch students mostly is teachers’ care
and understanding of students. “My math teacher has never
given me up, which impresses me, for I do not expect such a
veteran as him should be so patient. It is impossible even for
my mom. Sometimes I cannot finish my homework for lack of
time or ability. The teacher will criticize me, but never gives
me up. His persistence may not determine my success or failure,
but it determines my attitude. It at least changes my negative
attitude towards mathematics “(interviews with students of
Yuncheng High School). The math teacher’s care and help
make the student understand the teacher will never give him up,
which changes his attitude to math. The highest state of educa-
tion is: “education is the education of man’s soul, rather than
the accumulation of reasonable knowledge and cognitions.
Education of talents allows them to decide what kind of people
they would like to grow and how they earn a living”.
High school students tend to choose congenial classmates as
their friends. “I like reading and writing some reaction to arti-
cles which I like sharing with my friends. She is very knowl-
edgeable with independent thoughts and we are good friends”.
(interview with students of Kangjie High School). I get well
with my classmates. I stay with them all day. We go back to the
dormitory together and study together. I feel happy all day. My
classmates often help me with difficulties in study, making it
easier for me to study. “(interview with students of Yuncheng
High School,) Good relationship with classmates brings high
school students warm and comfortable feelings.
Leisure Activities
Activities that students of the three schools participate are
sports meeting organized by students’ union, recital contest,
singing competition, composition contest, basketball match, tug
of war and New Year’s day evening party, etc. As a platform
for students to improve themselves, these activities are very
popular, through which students can understand the society,
nature and themselves. “I have participated in the speech con-
test for many times, I won the second prize in” Wen Yiduo’s
prayer”. I feel happy for it proves my ability.” (interview with
students of Kangjie High School). At three schools these activi-
ties are linked with national college entrance exam. Take Kang-
jie High School as an example, “because the school gives each
class an enrollment index for national college entrance exam.
Students with specialties are included in the evaluation system
this year. In each class there must be at least one student with
specialties enrolled in college, no matter what kind of specialty,
such as director, music, sports, for the philosophy of Kangjie
High School is “every student can be successful, every student
has a stage”. (interview with students of Kangjie High School).
Social practice is formulaic; as a result, students cannot
really enter and understand the society, which attributes that the
national college entrance examination does not cover the social
practice. “About Social practice, well, the school sends us a
form on which we are required to write a summary and get a
signature. In social practice, I choose to go to the Forest Su-
permarket and help push the shopping cart and ask for a signa-
ture in the end. I participated only one time, and in the second
time it is mostly ignored by the teacher, so I only write a sum-
mary and sign for it without doing anything.” (interview with
students of Yuncheng High School)
The Concept and Consciousness of High School
Students in Everyday Life-Internal Motivation
Who Am I?
Self-cognition is a starting point for one to self-understand-
ing. For the high school students, there are two aspects to refer
to. First, they would choose to use academic records to make
self-assessments. But the feedbacks from the interview suggest
that the academic records do not promote the students’ devel-
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X. YANG
opment but produce psychological pressure. “Because a bad
academic record means that we can not do what we like to and
think about something irrelevant with NCEE (National College
Entrance Examination).” (Interview with the students in
Yuncheng Middle School). Second, although students can rec-
ognize and understand what they are during the learning proc-
ess, most of them do not have a real hobby. For those average
students, “the NCEE (National College Entrance Examination)
gives me much pressure so that I am in fear of getting poor
grades which mean the refusal of college. Therefore, I couldn’t
afford to waste my time”, says a student in Anyi Middle School.
For students in qualified schools, they have their own hobbies
which can boost their academic records instead of impacting
them. “A girl in our class studies very well and she believes she
can attend the best university when graduating. However, she
just says she wants to sing and like singing very much. Hearing
that, the other students think she is so mad because in their
opinions, only those who can not bury their heads into study
any more would choose to learn singing.” (Interview with stu-
dents in Kangjie Middle School). For the high school students,
every one should have a hobby of his own on which he can
spend plenty of time consciously doing study and research
work every day. And during the research process, he can ac-
quire good learning literacy for instance, the breadth of thinking,
the depth of thinking, mental agility, the transfer of which is
beneficial for learning other courses. At the same time, only by
developing good hobbies can the students develop their person-
ality very well.
Why Am I Being This?—The Objective of Attending High
School
Students attend high school with an aim for university. Hu-
man beings are purposeful and the purpose and subjective ini-
tiative distinguish us from other species. It is the purpose that
stimulates people to seek their ideal life day after day. The ma-
jority of students work hard to attend famous university in their
daily life, which is the popular living state of high school stu-
dents. This living state forces every one to exist for attending
universities and regulates how one should spend a day and then
he has to spare no effort to work hard for his plan, for his future.
The study finds that the high school students live in the past
and future instead of the present. Even though some agree that
they also should live a fruitful and happy life at present, the life
in high school is still regarded as a transition period to arrange
their future. “No matter the parents or the teachers, both of
them place much emphasis on the NCEE. But on my part, I just
take it as a springboard, a means to success. Getting a good
exam results and attending famous university doesn’t mean that
you are a success and have bright prospect ahead. It is just a
piece of springboard, a stepping-stone to success.” (Interview
with students in Yuncheng Middle School). The present time is
not the end of high school students. For them, both the past and
the present are means, while the future is the end, which sug-
gests they place more expectations for the brighter and happier
future instead of caring about the present. If so, it is inevitable
that they have to bear the dullness and boredom of present real-
ity.
Students in good high schools have deeper understanding of
the goal of attending school. One student considers it as a piece
of pathway among the journey of whole life. “A lot of my
classmates think they attend high school aiming for famous
universities and take it granted that if they make it, they can
even change their life and enjoy wonderful life. I don’t agree
with it totally, because I think our high school life should be not
only fruitful but also happy. No matter acquiring knowledge or
learning how to be a good man in this period, each of them is
very crucial, or we can say a turning point.” (Interview with
students in Kangjie Middle School). From what they said, we
can find that on one hand, they want to attend university and on
the other hand they also emphasis on spending every day feel-
ing satisfied and happy. It indicates they have the learning
autonomy, subjectivity, and a better understanding of their own
life. In other words, they can hold a right perspective on life,
study, activity and NCEE. Moreover, they realize that the goal
of attending high school is to pursuit happiness of the whole
life which consists of that of ev ery day in reality.
Where Do I Want to Go? -----What’s Your Opinion on
Attending University?
All the high school students wish to attend university. Every-
one’s objective of life should be different. Giving it an accurate
definition is the motive of each student in the daily activities.
Both the objective and the worry are the basics of important
motives of human’s thinking and behavior, playing an impor-
tant guiding role on the individual’s development. The objec-
tive determines, to a certain degree, the field that the individual
will choose to take up in the future, while the worry is benefi-
cial for the individual to make an objective assessment of the
possible problems occurred in the self-developing process and
as a consequence, it leads him to construct and realize his goals.
Only when students recognize what they like can they better set
their goals. So it makes sense that those who don’t have any
interest or hobby don’t have appropriate and viable objective
for life.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Conclusions
The Constant Routine and Momentary
Freshness—Analysis of High School Students’ Daily Life
For the majority of the Chinese students, they expect to
change their fate by receiving education. And the school, stu-
dents and teachers are all very concerned about whether the
students can become winners in this NCEE fighting. As a result,
the students’ daily life are not paid much attention to, and be-
come a means to make variety of extrinsic purposes come true.
After further analysis, we can find there are several reasons for
the institutionalization of our education. First, there is misun-
derstanding of our teaching philosophy, that is, we can’t make a
good differentiation between becoming a grown-up and be-
coming a useful person. Becoming a grown-up refers to a per-
son who can gain the ability to develop and become a social
man after later acquisition. But becoming a useful person
means after school cultivation and conscious knowledge trans-
fer, one can acquire a certain skill to live on so that he can be
independent and take part in social activities. On the society’s
part, it needs a useful person who can be regarded as a human
resource to promote social development. The aim of school
cultivation is not for students’ attending university but teaching
them to acquire ability of independence so that they can take
part in social activities during the socialization process. What’s
more, this ability refers to not only good academic records but
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X. YANG
also sound development in the physical, psychological and
mental aspects. Second, education proceeds to prepare for the
grown-up’s happy life but neglects students’ present needs for
progress. Third, the NCEE admittance standard is a bit rigid.
Since the NCEE is the guideline of school teaching and the
student’s academic records are the only reference for univer-
sity’s admission, the students have to pay more attention to
their scores. If there is another aspect to consider about, for
instance, students’ overall development, it will have a great
impact on their everyday life. Fourth, the training objectives of
school don’t serve for country’s education objectives which
refer to cultivate all-around students. However, in the teaching
practices, schools compete with each other openly and secretly
in order to enlarge the number of students admitted by the uni-
versities, while the students too, strive for attending good uni-
versities. It is believed that the education objective of school
should lay the foundation stone to realize that of our country.
Thus, if the school seeks for the number of students’ attending
university without further consideration, the education objec-
tive of school will deviate from that of our country.
Taking Exams and the NCEE Constantly Reminds Students
of the Routine and Dullness
Taking the NCEE is a necessary phase for students to en-
hance their literacy so as to find a good job and live a better life.
And attending a famous university and finding a decent job is
the dream of many students, and can be regarded as a short-
term goal among their whole life. Its existence is inevitably
reasonable. But in terms of school, if the school regards stu-
dents’ short-term goals as its own teaching philosophy, the
public will suspect its educational objectives. Because making
the high school education test-oriented, material-oriented and
tool-oriented would distort the will of encouraging students’
overall development. It would prompt students to constrict their
interest in those contributive to exams, thus weakening their
natural curiosity and love for acquisition. As a result, the stu-
dents’ daily life is institutionalized and the high school’s educa-
tional objectives are mismatched. Education deviates from its
essence, while people distort the education and are also ma-
nipulated by the distorted education. All of these constantly
remind the high school students of routine and dullness in the
whole daily life.
Recommendations
The purpose of criticizing high school students’ daily life is
not to create a totally new one to take place of it, but to rear-
range it. Therefore, I’d like to make the following recommen-
dations on the reform of high school new curriculum.
Reforming High School Students’ Living Struc tur e and
Pace in Everyday Life by Reducing Their Study Time,
Increasing Their Rest and Leisure Time
In the primary education phase, the study time of Chinese
students is twice of that of American students, but we don’t
cultivate as many Nobel Prize winners as America because long
time study doesn’t contribute to students’ physical, psycho-
logical and personality development. Conversely, if we reduce
students’ study time and increa se their rest and leisure time, the
serious learning activities are paused temporarily, the routines
and disgusting activities are removed, and the feeling of bore-
dom and dullness is relieved, all of which will liberate the stu-
dents physically and mentally so that they can truly feel them-
selves and develop personality on their own will.
Reforming High School Students’ Learning Cour se s in
Everyday Life by Increasing Optional Courses and Putting
Optional Courses, Comprehensive Practice Cour se s into
Practice
The students’ personality development is closely related with
the holistic development, and that neither can exist effectively
without the other. Since the high school is a crucial period for
students to develop their independence and personality, the
school should increase the optional courses and activities to
serve for their personality development.
Changing Students’ Learning Methods
Now the students still acquire knowledge in the means of
memorizing and reciting. They can not understand the essence
of research study, or effectively recognize and solve the prob-
lems existed in the reality unless we change the teaching meth-
ods and make the classroom become an experimental area for
students to explore and construct the ways to solve problems in
their own wisdom and ideas. Only in this way can we cultivate
the real qualified students who are thoughtful and intelligent.
Changing the School’s Education Objectives and Training
Objectives
In terms of education, the school should train students as a
person. Because students are, finally, human beings, ordinary
ones in the daily life, ones in the developing process, ones with
individual consciousness, instead of test-takers, technicians,
rational man, laborers, statesman , economists a nd s o on.
Reforming the Current Admission Rules of the University
When selecting students, apart from the academic records,
the university should also take students’ development in other
aspects into consideration, which will make a big difference on
their everyday life.
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