ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the relationship between social thoughts, historical situations, and curriculum field. The Shanghai Curriculum Reform, initiated in May 1988, was a whole-system K—12 curriculum reform. The main aim for this curriculum reform was that primary and secondary schools should provide well-rounded education of morality, intelligence, body, aesthetics, and labor. The founding of the People's Republic of China meant the double victories of national salvation and radicalism. The Chinese curriculum field was born with the May Fourth Movement in the background of 1922 Curriculum Reform. It disappeared in ultra-leftism under the influence of Kairov's Pedagogy and educational centralization. The general idea of the New Curriculum Reform was "for the Chinese nation's rejuvenation, for every student's development". From a general curriculum perspective and based on its aims, the New Curriculum Reform was an organic part of the new enlightenment.
