——Speech by Principal Zheng Jie of Shanghai Beijiao Middle School at the "21st Century Principal Forum"

2. School culture is current and realistic

School culture does not arise out of thin

——Speech by Principal Zheng Jie of Shanghai Beijiao Middle School at the "21st Century Principal Forum"

2. School culture is current and realistic

School culture does not arise out of thin air. It is inextricably linked to the history and tradition of the school. It is accumulated and created by people in long-term educational practice. Therefore, school culture construction should not cut off history, deny tradition, and reinvent everything. Instead, it should respect history and tradition, correctly handle the relationship between school culture inheritance and school culture change and development, and integrate the excellent elements of school culture tradition into reality. school culture and its future development.

We admit that school culture has history and tradition, but it is not history and tradition itself. Historical and traditional things are not culture if they are not recognized, conscious, and practiced by the current people. Because people have culture, there is no culture without people. Living people have culture, and when people die, culture also changes. Culture is combined with people and attached to the human body. Culture is some concepts and rules that exist when a specific group of people are generally conscious. It is the system of concepts and methods that people currently believe in and practice. So the school culture is current.

School culture, like culture, can be passed on. But what is passed down is not necessarily culture. Some things are preserved but have been materialized and are no longer conscious of the current people. That is not culture, but may just be cultural relics and documents.

It is precisely because school culture is current and realistic that it can, while undertaking the task of cultural inheritance, adjust, change, and create new school culture according to the needs of the development of the times. Behind its reality, What it implies is the transcendence and creativity of school culture.

3. School culture is generally conscious. Consciousness

School culture is generally conscious of the people in the specific organization of the school. The universality mentioned here is difficult to define with a precise number or ratio. We can use the vague word "most" to refer to it. On this issue, perhaps being vaguer is more accurate.

This characteristic of school culture has two meanings. First of all, school culture is the culture of most people. It is recognized and enjoyed by the vast majority of school people, that is, it is generally conscious. What is universally conscious is culture. In other words, only what the vast majority of people believe in and agree with is school culture. If it is only recognized and recognized by a few people or individuals, it is not a school culture. There is a common phenomenon in current school life. It is believed that by proposing some concepts and slogans, formulating some systems and plans, the task of school culture construction has been completed. The most typical ones are school mottos and school ethos. Many schools’ school mottos and school ethos are related to It was posted on the wall and written in documents, but all the teachers and students did not care about it and did not understand it. It was just a routine phrase used by school leaders when making reports at meetings, and it became an embellishment to prop up the appearance when leaders introduced the situation to guests. This is not a school. culture. Therefore, what is nailed to the wall, written into documents, and only talked about by the principal and a few school leaders is not necessarily school culture. Only when these things become the common concepts of all school people and integrate into their thoughts and behaviors, That's the school culture. Secondly, consciousness means active action. The core of school culture is the school's values. Only when these values ??become the code of conduct for all personnel can it be a school culture. Therefore, the school's values ??cannot just remain at the advocacy level, but should be consciously put into practice, internalized into the thoughts and behaviors of all personnel, and refined into every aspect of school work.

Mr. Yu Shiwei, a scholar who studies corporate culture, proposed that whether a company has its own culture can be measured and judged from the following three things:

First, company employees feel Is this matter important?

Second, do all employees in the company think about this every day?

Third, everyone in the company uses this method to do things every day ? Or does it show up every day?

This view can also be transferred to school culture.

Do school personnel think this matter is important? Do school personnel think of this matter every day? Do school personnel use this method to do things every day? Or do they show it every day? If the answer to the first thing is yes, mean that It’s the school’s values. If the answer to the second thing is yes, it means that it has been integrated into the thinking of school personnel. If the answer to the third thing is yes, it means it has been integrated into the behavior of school personnel. If these three things are done, it can be said that it is a school culture. On the other hand, if the answer is no, it means it is not school culture yet.

Don’t mistake slogans for school culture

Phenomena 1: When visiting a certain school, the principal introduced us to various famous sayings written on the school walls with great interest: Whose words are these? , how the principal understood it, and why he wrote it on the wall. After the principal introduced it, he asked several students passing by if they had noticed this famous saying? The students scratched their heads...

——Editor-in-Chief Ji Ping: "School Culture Self-Diagnosis", Education Science Press 2004 edition , pp. 10-11.

Phenomena 2: Many people regard school culture as a pile of material products and spiritual products. In order to reflect their own cultural taste, some schools use more than one floor of classrooms as "various culture" exhibition rooms despite insufficient classrooms. There are calligraphy and painting rooms, academician inscription rooms, and huge multi-room The taxidermy room is composed of classrooms. If you didn't pay attention, you would think it was in a museum and forget that it was in a school.

Phenomena 3: In a very modern school, a professor invited some key teachers of the school to hold a symposium and asked the teachers to describe the school's vision and goals. After a long period of silence, the principal broke the embarrassment: "Our school mission is written in the most conspicuous place in the school's teaching building! It is the overall guiding ideology and educational philosophy of our school."

——Xie Yi and Ma Yunpeng: "Reflection and Reconstruction of School Culture - and Commentary on the Cultural Construction of Ghana Primary School in the United States"

Source: China Education Pioneer Network

4. School culture is an ecological system and is ecological

School culture is first of all a system of concepts and methods. It includes some structures, images, symbols, and even habits and customs. Concepts include values, school philosophy, teachers’ views, students’ views, educational activity views, etc. It is complete and three-dimensional. The entire system is a system of cultural rules, concepts and methods. How school personnel think, evaluate, act, live, understand things, and what expectations they have for the future all reflect the way the system operates and even the results.

The school culture system is hierarchical. The outer layer is the surrounding culture, also called general culture, such as unity, truth-seeking, pioneering, enterprising, integrity, people-oriented, etc. that the school often talks about. General culture reflects the general requirements of education and does not express the unique personality of the school. Many schools only pay attention to the outer layer of school culture and ignore its core. Therefore, the school culture appears to be uniform and lacks individuality. The inner layer is the core culture, which best reflects the school's core values ??and school personality. There are many successful cases of refining core culture in the corporate world. For example, the core culture of "Southern Weekend" is two sentences: the first sentence, I have the courage to tell the truth; the second sentence, I must have the morality not to tell lies. talk. The core culture of Tongrentang, a century-old restaurant, is: "No matter how complicated the preparation is, we must not save labor, no matter how expensive the taste is, we must not waste material resources", "No one can see the harmony, but God knows the intention." On the contrary, in the field of school culture, due to the short research period and the fact that people have only focused on the outer layers of school culture for a long time, there are few cases that can successfully reveal the core culture of schools.

School culture is an ecosystem. School ecology is a kind of cultural ecology, which can be called school cultural ecology. It refers to the form of the interrelationship between various cultural elements in the school and the resulting characteristic school cultural structure. It is essentially It stipulates and characterizes the way of existence of teachers and students and their interrelationships.

In the final analysis, culture is human culture, and people always live in a certain environment. The interaction between people and the environment in the school constitutes the ecological landscape of school culture. The environment here includes the physical environment, institutional environment and spiritual environment of the school. It should be noted that material does not equal culture. Only the attitude and way people treat material are culture. Material is only the symbol or carrier of school culture. For example, if a school is relocated, the original campus including the buildings therein is replaced by companies or other social organizations. Although it still exists, it has no connection with the school culture. System is not equal to culture. Only when the concepts and rules contained in the system are generally understood by people, will the system culture be formed. The institutions in the text may be the same, but people's attitudes and ways of treating them can be very different. Spirit is not equal to culture. For example, the famous sayings and school mottos and school spirit hanging on the wall may be just a decoration, or imposed willingly by the principal, and are not consciously and practiced by all members. In that case, it is not school culture.