Releasing Effect of Individual Potential: Formation of Productive Collective and Children’s Self-Transcendence in a Chinese School

Abstract

We describe the intricate relations between social demand structures and their role in facilitation of individual development of children and teachers in a Chinese classroom. The relationship of an individual to the immediate social group is further qualified by the inclusion in a collective which enables the participants to transform their individual self-structures through taking on social roles in everyday collective activities, which release further potential for their individual development. We describe that releasing effect in the case of an intervention program in a Chinese school for the children of rural migrants re-settled in a city, demonstrating gradually how the inter-individual competitive orientation promoted by autocratic teaching style becomes transformed into collective good oriented joint actions towards excellence in educational endeavors (Jiti). The productive nature of the Jiti makes an ecology with multiple nested and open systems, in which every group and student is producer and consumer of each other, and personal self-transcendence is actualized in the process. The releasing effect is demonstrated through observing the co-emergence of new forms of progressive conduct and new problems, presented in pupils' positive participation in activities. The description of the intervention in a Chinese school provides us with insight on how concrete social inclusion frameworks with the underpinning Chinese philosophy of "acting up to trends" can prevent the emergence of direct animosities and lead to new integration of self and society.

Overcoming the Binary Logic in Biculturalism

“…Students take active part in the construction of the cultural ecosystem to possibly actualize their personal self-transcendence through various forms of social interactions embedded in colorful cultural activities. Everyone is participating in a certain subsystem set in a bigger one and serves as a producer as well as a consumer of the ecosystem's resources (Wu, Li & Zhang, 2017). As we have discussed above, the school context nowadays has been more and more reduced to a flat and mechanic space for knowledge acquisition, and students are regarded merely as knowledge receivers and score earners rather than active subjects constantly searching for meaning to understand themselves and their relationship with their social situation.…”