Discourse on nationalism in China’s traditional cultural education: Teachers’ perspectives

Abstract

Education of Chinese cultural traditions has been endorsed by the central government in Mainland China in recent years. The article presents a study which examined how nationalism advocated in the policy text has been interpreted at the localized level by primary school teachers in Beijing. The study draws on discourse theories as the primary point of reference. The qualitative coding methods and textual analysis were employed to interpret the meanings of 52 interview transcripts of public primary school teachers. The findings reveal a discrepancy between the discourse on nationalism presented by the policy and the discourse used by the respondents. The former exhibited a strong nationalist aspiration. The latter made a discourse of cultural nationalism more explicit, which cherishes the intellectual and esthetic aspects of Chinese cultural heritage, and considers them important in cultivating students’ cultural taste and moral characters. Teachers’ lack of knowledge of the original policy text might be one reason for this discrepancy. Public media also played a significant role in constructing the complexities in their understandings. Its entertaining nature may diminish the importance of sovereignty nationalism in their eyes. The complexity of nationalism in contemporary China seems to go beyond the explanatory power of western theories.