Lu Jun: On the Function and Realization of Moral View Shaping in Embodied Ideological and Political Education
Embodied ideological and political education refers to an educational approach that guides learners to participate bodily in the political and cultural activities of the state and society, thereby enhancing their ideological concepts, political quality, moral character, and legal consciousness. "Embodiment" (the embodied nature of ideological and political education) emphasizes that the cognitive processes and capacity for judgment in such education are not only based on mental activity but must also attend to the whole existence and factors related to embodied development, including the body and its perceptions, emotions, and even the surrounding environment. Currently, society holds high expectations for enhancing the effectiveness of ideological and political education. To avoid the "disembodied" anxieties caused by the neglect of bodily experience, embodied ideological and political education seeks to subtly improve the ideological and moral literacy of learners through immersive bodily teaching and learning. This provides a path to address potential issues such as the privileging of the mind over the body and dualistic fragmentation.
I. The Research Origin of Shaping Moral Outlooks in Embodied Ideological and Political Education
The attention paid by the discipline of ideological and political education to the issue of "embodiment" is driven by a synthesis of factors: raising the level of scientific rigor in the discipline, solving problems in teaching practice, and responding to the social demand for talent. It is of great significance for scholars to understand the origins of research into embodied ideological and political education from the perspective of the era-defining development, reform, and innovation of the discipline, and subsequently explore its functions and practical paths in shaping moral outlooks.
(1) Bodily Reflections in the Philosophy of Ideological and Political Education
The focus of ideological and political education on the body originates from body theory in the field of philosophy—that is, the philosophy of the body. The development of the philosophy of the body can be roughly divided into three stages. In the first stage, with the origin of Plato’s "Theory of Forms," Western philosophy formed a tradition of mind-body dualism. Medieval Christian "Original Sin" and "asceticism" further despised and suppressed the body. Later, through developments by Descartes, Hegel, and others, the human being was reduced to a spiritual "I," while the bodily "I" was completely suppressed. In the second stage, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Nietzsche broke the tradition of mind-body dualism, leading to a "renaissance" of body philosophy. Following Nietzsche, the French philosopher Foucault provided a historical-philosophical interpretation of the body, elucidating the relationship between power, discourse, history, and the body. During this period, the body re-entered the public consciousness, and interest in it grew day by day. In the third stage, within the postmodern context, the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty—drawing on the thoughts of Bergson, Sartre, Heidegger, and Husserl regarding "the body" (embodiment)—formed a phenomenology of the body focused on perception and behavior. This allowed the body to re-enter the philosophical field as the primordial source of an individual's cognition and perception of the world. His philosophy confirmed the positive existence of the body, and bodily discourse gradually became a dominant discourse.
Reflections on and reconstructions of the defects in the traditional view of mind and body have triggered the issue of the body to become a frontier and hotspot in contemporary educational theory research. First, regarding the theoretical foundation of the body, Zhang Zailin argues that based on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body, modern educational concepts should achieve a shift in educational purpose from "shaping the mind" to "valuing the body"; in educational means from "indoctrination" to "dialogue"; in educational discourse from "language of consciousness" to "body language"; and in educational operation from an "external approach" to an "internal approach" [1]. Addressing the phenomenon of divergence between the body and education in both Chinese and Western contexts, education must fully recognize that its practical characteristics have a natural intimacy with the body; both educators and learners achieve the goals of teaching and learning through the "presence" of the body. The theoretical foundations also include the bodily turn in educational concepts such as Dewey’s "education returning to the life-world," Roland Barthes’ "reading as pleasure," and Foucault’s "practicing what one preaches." Second, the recession of the body from the practice of moral education has led to the utilitarianism, functionalization, and hollowing out of moral education, presenting a "knowledge-oriented" characteristic of moral education. Starting from Merleau-Ponty’s perspective of body phenomenology—where "bodily perception replaces rational thinking"—Xiong Jian and others advocate for replacing conscious moral education with bodily perception, encouraging the educational audience to transform moral knowledge into moral practice [2]. Third, the philosophical and educational theory communities have proposed new concepts based on the connotation and ontological status of the body, "arguing that the body is the starting point and destination of education; bodily education is the process of producing and cultivating the body, involving bodily consciousness, bodily techniques, life habits, and moral practice" [3]. The theoretical support for this comes from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, Bryan Turner’s sociology of the body, Marcel Mauss’s anthropology, Bourdieu’s field theory, Elias’s process of civilization, and Foucault’s theory of discipline and punish. Finally, Marx’s exploration of the "essence of man" completed an important horizon shift in subjectivity. The return to the subjectivity of life is the logical starting point of Marx’s biopolitical philosophy and a re-examination of the value of human life. Proceeding from the relationship between Marx’s biopolitical philosophy and ideological and political education, we should notice that the purpose of ideological and political education is to construct a free life from three main dimensions: intelligence, emotion, and the body. From this perspective, this process needs to be completed under the dual horizon of Marx’s biopolitical philosophy.
(2) New Developments of the Era in Shaping Moral Outlooks through Embodied Ideological and Political Education
In the 1990s, the academic community began analyzing the causes of moral indifference, and the "knowledge-orientation" of moral education was consensually identified as a significant root cause. As some scholars have pointed out: "Actively responding to new problems in the field of practice and meeting the demand for theoretical guidance in the field of practice has also prompted ideological and political education to form new research hotspots and achievements" [4]. Regarding the application of embodied cognition theory in ideological and political education, embodied moral education—relying on embodiment theory—is a consensus in the educational world. Currently, the academic community mostly conducts research from two aspects: the path of new concepts and the path of new practices for embodied moral education.
First, the elucidation of a path of new concepts for shaping moral outlooks in embodied ideological and political education. Many scholars, starting from educational problems caused by being "disembodied," have argued for the necessary turn toward embodied moral education or bodily moral education in modern moral education. One view is that modern moral education must return to the body—that is, shifting from "disembodied" moral education to "embodied" moral education. Li Kepeng explored the bodily dimension and educational significance of life-moral education in the United States, pointing out that the root of adolescent social problems in recent years lies in the lack of life-moral education in our country, especially the absence of the body; he advocates for actively exploring the basic principles and practical methods of bodily education [5]. Shen Guangying notes that "based on the monistic view of cognition in embodiment philosophy, the issues of conceptualized content, formalized activities, and de-contextualized processes in disembodied moral education have found a solution in the turn toward the 'body-subject'" [6]. He believes that the turn toward the "body-subject" is an inevitable development for contemporary moral education reform. He clearly points out that the body is the subject of embodied moral education, and "realizing each other's moral behavior and moral intentions through the interaction and coupling of two 'body-subjects'" [6] is the construction mechanism of embodied moral education. Embodied moral education must be built on a curriculum that achieves unity between the subject and the environment, and between subjects. Another view, from the perspective of comparing Chinese and Western educational cultures and reflecting on the Western moral education paradigm’s shift from "disembodied" to "embodied," emphasizes that embodied education has become a call of modern education. This line of research primarily summarizes the characteristics of embodied cognition as: embodiment, contextuality, and generativity. Bi Yu emphasizes that moral education must adhere to an "individual-oriented" view of embodiment, a view of context that values mind-body experience, and a view of generativity that promotes dynamic emergence [7]. It can be seen that embodied moral education emphasizes the dynamic experience and emotional exchange of moral formation, possessing a certain processual and complex nature. Since the body play an important participatory and foundational role in the moral shaping of adolescents, a return to the body in modern moral education and ideological and political education is imperative.
Other scholars, proceeding from the inner essence and inevitable requirements of ideological and political education, have argued for the value of body philosophy for ideological and political education and the shaping of moral outlooks. Li Zhengtao believes that pedagogy must construct a system centered on life practice, enabling people to become human in terms of spirit, flesh, body, and mind. Based on the "educational production of the body," the body "gains its own position in pedagogy, letting the pedagogical meaning of the body move from concealment to illumination" [8]. Xu Suming, from the perspective of current research hotspots in cultural capital and Foucault’s discourse on knowledge and power, discussed the relationship between cultural capital, bodily discipline, and ideological and political education. He further clarified the significance of bodily discipline for moral education, ideological and political education, and ideological education, promoting the development of the content and forms of ideological and political education practice [9]. With the high-quality development of ideological and political education in the New Era, research on embodied cognition has increasingly become one of the main contents of cognitive research in the field of ideological and political education. Scholars like Qu Lu advocate for combining system theory and dialectical perspectives with the Marxist view of practice to "explore the embodied cognitive mechanisms of ideological and political education cognition formation, practical influencing factors, and their effective application in the design of practical education programs" [10]. From the above viewpoints, it is clear that the body is the starting point of human self-understanding and the existential and value pivot of social life. The essence of educational life concerns the bodies of teachers and students; it requires a re-examination of spiritual assumptions and the absence of the body in pedagogy, establishing the "whole body" as the core for thinking about the purpose and practice of education.
Second, the exploration of a path of new practices for shaping moral outlooks in embodied ideological and political education. Embodiment theory, influenced by modern educational technology, inspires the idea that shaping moral outlooks in ideological and political education must achieve a bodily turn. Gao Juan, starting from the current status and problems of "embodiment" research in Chinese educational technology, proposed that "embodied cognition theory achieves the grounding of theory in teaching practice through educational technology, and educational technology achieves a bodily turn supported by embodied cognition theory" [11]. Under the impact of postmodern theory, political virtue education relies on its own "evolution-operation" logic to face challenges, enabling "body-desire" and "education-discipline" to collaborate. By establishing a new virtue ethics of the body that aligns with postmodern liberal education, narrow political virtue education can shift toward broad ideological and political education. Luo Yuting and others believe that in the information age where "no one is not online, no time is not online, no place is not online, and no matter is not online," network-based ideological and political education "uses the network to consciously, purposefully, and step-by-step influence and guide people's thoughts and behaviors" [12]. This educational activity "is characterized by openness, interactivity, virtuality, and fluidity" [12]. Clearly, in the context of the digital and information age, ideological and political education must attach great importance to practical innovation in educational methods. Feng Gang and others emphasize the need to deeply recognize the layers of challenges the Metaverse brings to ideological and political work, stating that "the most significant influence is that the site of action will become an embodied space integrating multiple sensory experiences" [13]. They propose that through a benign two-way interaction between contextual teaching and embodied learning in the Metaverse, the network morality and sense of gain of educational subjects in network ideological and political work can be improved, enhancing the effectiveness of the educational process. It can be seen that this type of research emphasizes strengthening the educational audience's bodily participation, teacher-student interaction, interdisciplinary approaches, and methodological innovation through the "embodiment + ideological-political" educational model. It advocates for the body's return to curriculum teaching and the construction of a holistic curriculum implementation model in which body and spirit participate together—namely, embodied ideological and political education—so that body language, oral language, and silent language play the role of "moistening things silently" in the shaping of moral outlooks in ideological and political education.
In summary, embodied ideological and political education is an important trend of the era's development and a significant breakthrough for grasping the effectiveness of ideological and political education in the New Era. Embodied ideological and political education values the body's role and status in educational activities. By "re-presenting" the body and reshaping the practical path for cultivating moral outlooks in ideological and political education, it reflects a new trend of the times in ideological and political education.
II. How the Shaping of Moral Outlooks in Embodied Ideological and Political Education is Possible
Embodied ideological and political education emphasizes treating the educational audience as the subject, guiding them to realize the interaction between body, mind, and environment based on the practical experience of embodied participation. Introducing the ideas of body philosophy into ideological and political education can reshape the understanding of ideological and political education and enhance its effectiveness. Specifically, embodied ideological and political education values the shaping and expression of bodily experience, bodily concepts, and body language. Especially in a multicultural era, understanding and respecting bodily differences and bodily practicality is crucial. At the same time, the emphasis on intellectual training and the socialization process in ideological and political education also requires elements of body philosophy as a balance.
(1) Enhancing Emotional Cognition and Moral Understanding Capability
How to enable ideologically and political education to fulfill its role in nurturing virtue and to cultivate "new people of the era" who possess a sense of nation-pervading sentiment [7] and social responsibility is a major difficulty that the development of this discipline must resolve.
First, embodied ideological and political education emphasizes the emotional experience and moral education of the target audience. Through physical activity, the audience can more deeply understand moral principles and norms, thereby cultivating emotions of respect and care for others. To use abstract educational theory to cultivate an individual’s ideal character and free personality, one "must enrich it with vivid sensory images and comprehensively imagine the ideal process so that it possesses the power to stimulate emotion" [20]. That is to say, emotional experience in the process of ideological and political education cannot exist in isolation from the body. Embodied ideological and political education is the sensory and contextualized reproduction of value principles and norms; it is the process of concretizing and individualizing abstract common values. It is in this sense that the embodiment of ideological and political education represents the specific implementation and development of using theory to nurture virtue.
Second, embodied cognition opens up the practical logic of "theory—body—virtue." What requires further exploration is how embodied ideological and political education develops an individual’s moral emotions and capacity for moral understanding. Education on the Socialist Core Values, centered on nurturing virtue, is a vital goal of contemporary ideological and political education; this lofty ideal, belief, and pursuit of value depend on the active practice and emotional investment of every member of society. As a spiritual phenomenon unique to humans, emotion has a major influence on stimulating and awakening a person's strong internal driving force. In the process of transforming moral experience into individual moral cultivation, the status and value of emotion cannot be underestimated. The American sociologist Jonathan H. Turner argues that emotions are "the power that forms social structures" [21]. He explored how emotions are not the externalization of an individual's subjective consciousness, but rather are formed and function alongside interactions between groups. Emotions originate from the gathering of social groups in the same field and exert reciprocal influence on society through physical presence. Following this line of reasoning, embodied ideological and political education should emphasize the function and role of "setting the scene" in the educational process. On one hand, it should "move people with emotion" (以情感人), stimulating the audience's emotions through teaching to form a strong embodied cognition. On the other hand, it should "embed emotion in the scene" (寓情于景), nurturing specific moral emotions within particular contexts, and helping the audience form emotional orientations and moral understanding capacities that align with the Socialist Core Values through scientific situational design. The construction of scenarios for embodied ideological and political education requires educators to possess the ability to "act according to the occasion" (相机而动) and "transform the environment through emotion" (因情化境). The fundamental strategy to follow is the formation of group interaction mechanisms by developing the emotional capabilities of the audience.
(2) Enhancing Moral Judgment and Practical Decision-Making Capabilities
The shaping of moral outlooks in embodied ideological and political education is not pure theoretical education or disciplinary training. Rather, through embodied schemes such as creating educational environments and innovating forms of instructional organization, it helps the subject "embody" moral behavior during the educational process. Its foothold lies in triggering the interaction between various internal and external moral elements of the individual’s body and mind, helping the individual shape a correct moral outlook through the accumulation of moral experience and the formation of moral memory.
Through "embodied involvement," embodied ideological and political education allows the audience to personally participate in moral contexts, which helps improve their moral judgment and cultivates their ability to make correct decisions. To this end, embodied ideological and political education must confront and properly handle two major dilemmas. On the one hand, to ensure the dominant status of a certain core value symbol, embodied ideological and political education may encounter the phenomenon of value symbols "parachuting" in practice—that is, the audience is "thrown" into an unfamiliar field of value symbols when they lack a foundation of knowledge and experience. Currently, one of the dilemmas facing ideological and political education is how to handle the tension between the discourse of daily life and the discourse of ideological and political education. The alienation of discourse systems leads the audience to feel that the value symbols presented in the field of ideological and political education are strange and difficult to understand. As a result, emotional mechanisms are hard to activate, and it becomes impossible to form a shared horizon of experience or engage in emotional communication. On the other hand, there is the potential phenomenon of "ambiguity" in the emotional experience and moral judgment of the subjects. Because subjects all understand values from their own horizon of experience, embodiment brings about a diffusion of the understanding of meaning. Differences in knowledge and experience objectively cause the audience to produce "half-knowledge" or "misunderstandings." These dilemmas of understanding form realistic barriers to emotional interaction. To resolve the dilemmas objectively faced by embodied ideological and political education, one must start with the interpretation of situational experiences, pay close attention to the doubts naturally formed by the audience during the experience, and create a "dialogue" through communication, opening up ideological exchange within "dialogue and response." Embodied ideological and political education inherits the main educational method of traditional linguistic dialogue, but in practice, it places more emphasis on the audience's opportunity for expression, surpassing the "mild violence" formed by the one-dimensional indoctrination of traditional educational methods.
Therefore, embodied ideological and political education calls for the "presence of the body." Educators must fully respect the subject status of the audience and create the necessary groundwork for them to obtain shared experience by pre-judging their horizons of experience. First, before creating a situation for embodied ideological and political education, educators should provide a social and historical contextual groundwork for the situational content, combined with the audience's own knowledge and empirical foundation. Second, the narrative thread of embodied ideological and political education should be appropriately extended to provide a symbolic basis for the formation of moral judgment and decision-making capabilities. Third, educators should develop the shared experiences and cognitions of the audience group, returning to the customs and traditions inherent in understanding to achieve a connection with the situational experience of ideological and political education.
(3) Promoting the Cultivation of Virtue and Social Responsibility
Through physical activity and cooperation, embodied ideological and political education promotes the cultivation of virtue and a sense of social responsibility. The audience can experience their own importance and responsibility toward society as a whole by participating in moral practice and mutual cooperation.
First, there must be a profound recognition that embodied ideological and political education is an effective path for moving from moral experience to character cultivation. According to Aristotle's view, "it is the nature of a man's activities that determines his character" [22]. The realization of virtue is formed in social practical activities, which is inherently consistent with the goal of embodied ideological and political education to nurture virtue through moral experience. Marx and Engels pointed out in The German Ideology: "As a definite, real human being, you have a destination, a mission, a task" [23]. Here, the mission and task arise from human needs and their connection with the existing world. The core of morality is the question of whom one serves. Starting from labor, Marx demonstrated that social labor is the basis for the origin of morality; the social relations formed in labor are the objective conditions for the generation of morality, and the self-consciousness formed in the practice of production and life is the subjective condition. Therefore, morality serves the people and society in real life. Focusing the emphasis of embodied ideological and political education on the physical practice of shaping moral outlooks is both an adherence to the concept of the unity of body and mind and a valuation of lived experience. In embodied cognition, two types of moral experiences are strengthened: psychological experience and practical experience. The former refers to the audience placing themselves within a social dimension, viewing and analyzing problems from the responsible standpoint of a social object, thereby promoting the formation of social responsibility. The latter points more directly than the former to the practical level of moral outlook shaping; it is not only a "thought process" at the level of ideological consciousness but also emphasizes facing conflicts of interest in personal experience. Through embodied cognition in moral practice situations, the educational goal of cultivating an individual’s public consciousness can be more effectively achieved.
Second, embodied ideological and political education requires educators to deeply "personally realize" (体认) that ideological consciousness and moral values belong to tacit knowledge, thereby cultivating the audience's sense of responsibility and public consciousness. Morality is an incomplete, yet-to-be-formed, and yet-to-be-perfected existence within actual life; it requires individuals to participate in the real life-world to comprehend it. The completion of this educational activity is inseparable from the audience's embodied participation. Only by practicing personally in specific situations and completing continuous activities of interaction between the body and the public, professional, cyber, and ecological environments can a sense of responsibility and public consciousness for the collective and society naturally emerge—that is, "learning by doing." Embodied ideological and political education typically helps the educated place themselves in specific contexts by setting up scenarios that simulate moral practice, such as the "Trolley Problem" or "Suppose you were a doctor for a day." Leaving ideological and political education at the level of repetitive drills in consciousness while disregarding specific scenes and an individual's immediate experience will inevitably make a "disembodied" education like "water without a source or a tree without roots." As an existence that precedes consciousness, "personal realization" (体认) deserves more attention in the process of ideological and political education.
On the whole, in traditional ideological and political education, a state of "disembodiment" has long remained mainstream. "Embodiment" signifies a regard for the human body. Rediscovering the modern educational significance of moving from the "subject of consciousness" to the "subject of the body" based on the perspective of body philosophy, as well as the important role of the body in human cognition and experience, can align with the trend of shifting toward student-centeredness. This improves the body's perceptual and cognitive abilities, cultivates social responsibility and public consciousness, and enables students to use their bodies to convey their thoughts and emotions, thereby better expressing their views and opinions, which contributes to their well-rounded development.
III. Implementation Paths for Shaping moral Outlooks in Embodied Ideological and Political Education
To promote the realization of the above theoretical goals, improvements can be made from three aspects in the practice of shaping moral outlooks through embodied ideological and political education.
(1) Rational Discipline of the Audience's Body
Ideological and political education primarily emphasizes "ideology" and is a form of "spiritual production" under certain socio-historical conditions. However, as a social activity, ideological and political education cannot exist independently of human beings and the human body.
First, disciplining the bodies of education recipients by combining the traditional "attaining virtue through accumulated habit" with modern methods of admonition. The manifestation of effectiveness in embodied ideological and political education cannot be separated from the strict discipline of the body. Ideological and political education cognition is an information-processing process in which the educational subject transforms information from material form into concepts; it is an embodied cognition through which the educational subject grasps the world in a "practice-spirit" manner based on the needs of political socialization. Based on this, embodied ideological and political education must involve the question of disciplining the body. In Elementary Education Essentials (Tongmeng Xuzhi), Zhu Xi proposed the "three-tightness" standard for wearing caps and robes, requiring children to "restrain the body and mind" [29]66 by tightening their belts. This not only reflects the beauty of Chinese etiquette, but also demonstrates how traditional Chinese moral norms exert direct influence on the bodies of education recipients through instructions, exhortations, and commands. By evoking a transformation in their physical and mental state to achieve the effect of "attaining virtue through accumulated habit," this practice has been followed for over a thousand years. Wang Yangming also pointed out in Instructions on the General Principles of Education for Children: "Leading them to practice etiquette is not merely to solemnize their dignity, but also to circulate blood and energy through bowing and yielding, and to strengthen the muscles and bones through kneeling and stretching" [30]237. He emphasized following the laws of physical and mental development of those practicing etiquette and adopting appropriate strategies. Through training that standardizes behavioral habits, one activates the meridians and restrains the body, naturally eliminating coarse and recalcitrant habits, and facilitating the practitioner’s gradual transition into etiquette without feeling it difficult—entering the "middle-harmony" (zhonghe) realm of physical and mental cultivation without even being conscious of it.
Chinese ethics and morality hold that "transmission and practice" (chuanxi [12]) play a role in linking the past and the future to continue tradition. From the moral example and professional integrity of teachers to the accumulation of goodness and achievement of talent by students, this has shaped the moral concepts and ways of thinking of the Chinese people, influencing social customs and civilized trends. Entering modern society, strict disciplinary methods include three types: first, compulsory mechanisms that operate through layered, continuous, and tangible supervision, with common forms being legal, moral, administrative, public opinion, economic, technological, and self-supervision. Second, standardized warnings to realize the explicit regulation of supervisory details and punish behaviors that do not conform to or deviate from norms—such as intensive, doubled, or repetitive training, special educational campaigns, the issuance of reminder letters, and cautionary interviews. Third, combining supervisory mechanisms with standardized warnings to achieve qualitative assessment, classification, and inspection. In the rational world constructed by modernity, where a true, common moral consensus has not been established for all of humanity, it is even more necessary to combine the most basic cultural genes of the Chinese nation with the institutional regulations of modern admonition. This must be adapted to contemporary core socialist values and coordinated with modern society, beginning with physical education to clarify "what to do" and "how to do it," putting ideological and moral education into practice through scientific, standardized, and highly operable physical discipline. The physical discipline within embodied ideological and political education must ensure that traditional "attaining virtue through habit" and modern methods of admonition achieve integrated development amidst the collision of the old and the new.
Second, using rational physical discipline as an important link to bridge the "thought-practice" gap. Admittedly, harsh physical discipline has faced criticism and deconstruction in contemporary modern society; yet, from the perspective of embodied ideological and political education, physical discipline still possesses its own rationality. Rational physical discipline is not a mechanical, repetitive, or punitive means of indoctrination, but a bridge to cross the "thought-practice" gap within specific moral contexts. Embodied ideological and political education serves as the externalization and bodily expression of moral rules: "they are formalized arts, tending toward proceduralization, stereotyping, and repetition; thus, they are not performed out of momentary inner impulse, but are seriously observed to express sentiment" [31]179. As a dominated situational practice, education recipients can immerse themselves more focusedly in the ideological and political education context, actively demonstrating an artistic realm of unity between body and mind. One must clearly recognize that "rational physical discipline" is not an end in itself, but a necessary link to achieve the goals of ideological and political education. In this sense, "discipline" becomes "habit," and "habit" becomes "character." Through the discipline and exercise of body and mind, core socialist values are imperceptibly internalized into an individual’s moral character.
(2) Actively Creating Contexts for Embodied Education
Embodied ideological and political education simulates social role practices by creating contexts, providing education recipients with authentic and concrete opportunities for moral practice. Although creating contexts provides opportunities for moral experience to a certain extent, simulated social role practice is, after all, not objective social reality. Therefore, the educational effect often struggles to reach an ideal state, and optimization should be pursued from the following three aspects:
First, selecting authentic social life contexts as blueprints. In real life, through the educator’s sensitive capture and systematic construction of ideological and political elements within a context, the educational process transcends traditional, one-dimensional, unidirectional information transmission and shifts toward multi-dimensional value guidance, conducting a "baptism" of the minds and souls of the recipients. In 2013, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee issued the Opinions on Cultivating and Practicing Core Socialist Values, emphasizing the need to be "adept at using methods favored by the masses, building platforms convenient for the masses to participate in, and opening channels the masses are happy to join" [32]6. For over a decade, the cultivation and practice of core socialist values has achieved a "paradigmatic shift toward rooting in daily life" [33]. In family life, the whole of society has created contexts where "the Dao resides in daily use and common practice" [13]. By personally modeling family precepts, emphasizing family style, and prioritizing family education, the realm has been reached where core values are "used daily by the people without their being aware of it" [14]. Consequently, the identity experience and ideological and political practice constructed through the embodied educational environment achieve a transition and integration with the individual's real-life experience, producing favorable educational results. In this process, the values, behavioral patterns, and moral memories formed through embodied perception can be transformed into "empirical structures" and play a stable role throughout one’s life.
Second, capturing the optimal field for embodied ideological and political education. The environment of embodied ideological and political education is rooted in real social life; it is a living "habitat" (shengjing [15]). Only by carefully capturing the optimal field for ideological and political educational practice and establishing a "habitat consciousness" can we achieve design based on sentiment, transformation based on context, and guidance based on timing. Educators should strive to grasp the "first scene" of the recipient’s personal experience. This requires starting from the recipient’s life experiences, finding materials and resources revolving around moral events they are familiar with or have personally undergone. By evoking and stimulating important empirical memories, a more authentic, precise, and appropriate emotional foundation is provided for embodied ideological and political education. Furthermore, by leveraging the power of emotion, recipients are "embodiedly thrown" into the created ideological and political education context, utilizing physical guidance and interaction to reach the expected educational effect. For instance, conducting learning experiences that "emulate" moral models such as the "Spirit of the Model Worker" or the "Spirit of the Craftsman" involves capturing the optimal field through the paradigm of "focusing on typical demonstrations," "participating in benevolent acts," and "evaluating the good deeds of ordinary people." This allows for the "principles of how things ought to be" (suodangran zhi ze [16]) to be implemented in detail, in small ways, and with concrete results. Through learning from and imitating model workers and master craftsmen, recipients experience the value of principles like "patriotism, dedication, integrity, and friendship," the respectability of spiritual qualities like "indifference to fame and wealth and willingness to sacrifice," and the reliability of professional ethics like "persistence, focus, and striving for excellence." To improve the effectiveness of embodied ideological and political education, a positive educational environment must be created so that recipients can participate with their whole being. Schools and other educational institutions can provide various theme-related activities and projects to stimulate recipient participation and interest. For example, encouraging students who have personally experienced internships in teaching, medicine, agriculture, or poverty alleviation to reproduce and recall their authentic experiences helps provide simulated classroom contexts suitable for generating professional ethical experiences. This deepens moral cognition of "love for one’s post and dedication, honesty, and trustworthiness," stimulates moral emotions of "rooting education in kindness and remembering the source of one's water" (yinshui siyuan [17]), and enhances respect for professional achievements that "serve the people and contribute to society." Hearing is not as good as seeing, and seeing is not as good as experiencing firsthand. From life experience to the presentation of problems, and from personal practice to the cultivation of virtue, this helps recipients form moral beliefs and social value consensus in embodied education, clarifying and consolidating vague or weak understandings, and correcting or improving the "gestalt" of what they previously took for granted.
Third, "embodiedly involving" recipients in digital contexts of ideological and political education. In the digital era of the Internet of Everything, the fusion of virtual and real, and three-dimensional interaction, digital living scenarios are deeply permeating into the subjects of educational action, summoning the "body" to return. Through the empowerment of technologies such as 3D scene reconstruction, AI virtual experiences, and VR panoramic displays, the development of embodied ideological and political education has begun to present a holographic and immersive experience model. Furthermore, rapid breakthroughs in digital technology have intensified the erosion of the boundary between virtuality and reality, extending toward a coexistence of the two. By leveraging digital and information-based modern technology, recipients are helped to achieve a synchronized experience of the moral meaning and value choices contained in ideological and political education across multi-dimensional scenes and multi-layered space-times that are visible, sensible, tangible, and interactive. Constructing the optimal environment for "digital ideological and political education" via embodied cognition will facilitate the successful realization of educational goals.
(3) Valuing the "Habitus" Value of Traditional Rituals
Traditional rituals are ceremonies held in a field by individuals with relational and emotional ties, regulated by local customs. Chinese traditional ritual is an important feature of Chinese civilization; it is both a traditional custom and the cultural foundation and historical background for the development of ideological and political education. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu placed great importance on the influence of "habitus" on individual behavior. He believed that habitus consists of lifestyles and dispositions existing within the agent's body and practice, possessing constructive, regenerative, and creative qualities; it is a product of practice in a specific field and, in turn, influences the operational structure of that field [34]. Bourdieu’s emphasis on habitus essentially highlights that traditional ritual is the primary color of human cultural life and a socio-cultural background that ideological and political education cannot ignore. Embodied ideological and political education must attach great importance to the influence of traditional rituals and form a positive interaction with them in practice to promote the realization of educational goals.
First, making traditional ritual a compulsory component of embodied ideological and political education. From the perspective of embodied ideological and political education practice, the mechanism by which the "embodied realization" (tiren [18]) of traditional rituals influences the thoughts and moral beliefs of recipients is highly consistent. Traditional ritual is the best field for observing how recipients are immersed in historical "habitus." It repeatedly influences people’s thoughts and behaviors in an imperceptible, stable, and lasting manner, laying the foundation for an individual’s conceptual framework and behavioral patterns. Marx also believed: "The empirical world must be so arranged that in it man experiences and gets used to what is really human and that he becomes aware of himself as man" [35]334-335. The "embodied realization" model of traditional ritual starts from the two interconnected dimensions of the real person and the historical person. By creating a rational core for the spirit of traditional ritual, it is endowed with new, scientific ideological connotations. In addition to ritual norms, it is permeated with a large amount of education on the rites and meanings of moral concepts. Some scholars have pointed out: "Socialist etiquette is an intuitive interpretation and performance of core socialist values and an effective vehicle for conducting education on the core socialist values of Chinese-path socialism in the New Era" [36]. Therefore, traditional etiquette should become one of the compulsory components of embodied ideological and political education.
Second, emphasis must be placed on the integration of value infusion through embodied ideological and political education with traditional rituals. Chinese traditional rituals [19] possess significant value for improving the human existential condition and enhancing the existential experience. This is manifested in the regulation of social order through the ethics of human sentiment (renqing) [20], the constraint of individual action through public image, the strengthening of relational bonds through mutual assistance and cooperation, and the pursuit of a better life by suppressing evil while promoting good. These have already become important national cultural elements for conducting moral normative education and enhancing national cohesion. However, as society undergoes modern transformation, we must exert effort to correct the irrational dimensions of traditional rituals, simplifying their tedious procedures while fully extracting the moral significance of self-cultivation (xiushen) [21] and the utility of social norms within them. Proceeding from the perspective of maintaining the satisfaction of the individual’s spiritual identity and the affirmation of their lifestyle, embodied ideological and political education continuously constructs practical models that bridge ideology with traditional ritual. While maintaining the subject status of the educational recipients, it reinforces the schematization function of ritual in constructing the individual’s spiritual world. Consequently, even when the ideological and political educator is “disembodied” or “absent” from the scene, the values infused through education remain present. Through the mutual integration and commonality of embodied ideological and political educational value infusion and traditional rituals, one can inspire the participants' moral consciousness regarding the cultivation of the person, the regulation of the family, and the governing of the state [22]. By fostering moral qualities of respect, loyalty, and friendliness, we can carry out an embodied reconstruction of traditional rituals, achieving a convergence between the paths of embodied ideological and political education and historical tradition. To enable embodied ideological and political education to function more effectively, we need to practice embodied learning within traditional rituals—drawing upon ideal pursuits and aesthetic tastes, strengthening family traditions and instructions (jiafeng jiaxun) [23] and the tradition of mutual aid, and tracing historical civilization and national culture. By drawing on beneficial educational content and methods, we can improve the ideological nature, targetedness, and appeal of ideological and political education. This allows for better satisfaction of the needs of different educational recipients, promoting the cultivation and shaping of moral outlooks.
Embodied ideological and political education emphasizes the subjectivity and personal participation of the educational recipients. Through personal experience, it integrates abstract ideological and political educational theory with practical life, enabling recipients to feel and recognize the value and significance of ideological and political education through "bodily recognition" (tiren). This achieves the goal of cultivating their correct ideological and political attitudes and values. Embodied ideological and political education is a practical method consistent with the laws of the development of educational philosophy. Its significance lies in allowing educational recipients to transform abstract concepts into concrete experiences through physical practice, and to transform value-consciousness into virtuous habits through physical sensation. This plays a vital role in shaping the moral outlook of educational recipients. By developing the recipients' embodied cognition and moral understanding, improving their capacity for moral judgment and decision-making, and enhancing their sense of social responsibility and public awareness, embodied ideological and political education can promote the development of recipients into citizens with moral cultivation and political literacy. To achieve this noble goal of educating people, we must rationally employ means of bodily discipline, create embodied educational environments, and absorb the rational core of traditional rituals, thereby facilitating the realization of the moral-shaping function of embodied ideological and political education.
(Author’s Affiliation: School of Marxism, Xi’an University of Technology) Web Editor: Tongxin Source: Ideological Education Research, Issue 1, 2024