Keywords

1 Introduction

On writing this thesis, the author has done about 12 years teaching practice on taking the traditional handicraft into the college quality teaching class. During the whole process, the author has found that the quality education plays an important role in expanding the students’ horizon and extending the students’ knowledge structure. However, for the students who are not in this major, the appreciation and actual practice of the traditional handicraft is a brand new area, which needs art education and practice ability. It needs to discuss about starting a traditional handicraft course of moderate difficulty. At the same time, there are a large number of students in this class, covering all undergraduate majors in the universities. It’s another remaining issue of choosing a multi-operator traditional handicraft and how to practice it. Based on such preconditions, the author wants to analyze and summarize the relations, objectives, contents and teaching methods of the traditional handicraft practice and the quality education, with the expectation of promoting college quality education.

2 The Background of Traditional Handicraft Entering College Quality Education Class

With the reformation of university education mechanism and the adjustment of cultivation direction, it is a good time when the traditional handicraft enters into the university quality education. At present, the higher education in our country emphasizes the professional education should be based on quality education. The talent cultivation objective of the college has gradually transformed from the merely professional talent cultivation to comprehensive ability quality education and featured on cultivating professional ability. The study objective of the students has transformed from getting all credits to benefiting their all-aspect development. These changes set a new demand and new opportunity for college quality education.

Traditional handicraft carries on the past ethnic culture, and also embraces the appreciation contents of the folk, what’s more, it has the character of the operation of the handicraft course. This course just satisfies the need of the college students, who want to be exposed to the culture, enjoy physical and mental pleasure and develop in all-round way. Jean Jacques Rousseau, who is a famous enlightenment thinker in France, in the book Emile, once said, “Handicraft has the best utility, which can do self-activity from the whole effect of visual sense, tactile sense, auditory sense and language. In this way, people can grow in a natural way, get the perceptual intuition of things and make sure the basis of knowledge and cultivate moral sentiment”. In the eye of Rousseau, the handicraft makes the perfect combination of human behavior and the inner heart experience. This practice way is the oldest and the most upright teaching and learning way. Handicraft makes the harmony of body and mind, and can also help the students grow healthily. After many years teaching, the handicraft has accumulated a lot of experience and entered into the class of college quality education. Now this course is very popular among the students.

On the background of the cultivation orientation change of quality education, it is the appropriate time for traditional handicraft entering college quality education practice class, which offers complete realization way for quality education and teaching practice.

3 The Practice Objectives of Traditional Handicraft in College Education

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    Promoting Students All-Round Development

    Quality education is regarded as the “holistic education”, which aims at cultivating human personal autonomy, people oriented spirits, and the understanding of the culture of different ethnic groups. It also develops people’s full character and the ability of cooperation. Therefore, the students can gain humanity and culture, the basic social literacy, and the final goal is to cultivate the students into the kind of people who have a great view and with comprehensive ability. We call this kind of people “holistic person”. The traditional handicraft method is a practical way to realize the “holistic education”.

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    Cultivating Intelligent Students

    In China, one the problems of today’s education is exam-oriented education, which causes the students do not have many chances to practice by themselves. The traditional handicraft can not only cultivate students’ intelligent, but also cultivate students to do things with their imagination. In recent years, in most famous international universities, there is a general requirement on the credit of the courses that the students must take a proportion of the credit courses taken with labs. This requirement has fully stand for the practical teaching playing an important goal for us to cultivate the students.

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    Improving the Recognition of Multi-ethnic Cultural Identity

    Most of the folk traditional handicrafts are from minority area, so they are based on the culture and social formation of the minority areas. The process to learn and master the folk traditional handicrafts is also the process to understand and identify with the ethnic minority culture, which not only be good for the ethnic fusion, but also good for the contemporary university students to absorb and learn the cultures in different culture types. Therefore, the contemporary university students can form more opening and forgiving personality and a sense of national pride.

4 The Practice Contents of Traditional Handicraft in College Quality Education [1]

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    Learning the Traditional Culture Widely and Bearing the Culture

    The traditional handicraft entering into the university courses is a new teaching mode that people have found in the process of practice. The teaching contents of the traditional handicraft can be use one word to describe, the word is “wide”. First of all, the wide range of the content. The content of the course mainly covers the process of the traditional handicraft, the cultural background, the features of the areas, the people and customs and also other related content. What’s more, the wide range of teaching tools. The students can learn not only with the help of the pictures and the videos, as the way to know the media. The most important thing is that the students have many material object, in these material subjects, of which include the works of the graduated students and the excellent folk traditional handicrafts. With those things, the students can learn knowledge visually, actually, aurally. And last but not the least, the wide range of discussion. Small class teaching mode is a good way in handicraft learning, because in this way the students can fully communicate and discuss with other students and share their opinions so that they can learn the different ideas from different people and in different aspects. Therefore, this small class teaching mode can help the students to share their ideas and discuss the good plans. During the process of teaching, the plans of the students can be improved as the students learn more and know more about the traditional handicraft. And finally, after many discussions, the students will render the best design plan. This kind of teaching idea and teaching mode is very flexible, which can activate the students thinking. As a result, the students can not only master the way of making traditional handicraft, but also carrying on the good traditional culture. This is a good way in that it helps the students to make progress and even yield twice the result with half the effort (Fig. 1).

    Fig. 1.
    figure 1

    The logic diagram of the practice contents of traditional handicraft in college quality education

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Taking the filaments silver for example, at the beginning of this curse, the students can get filaments handicraft ornaments of different nationalities, including: the Miao nationality, the Dai nationality, the Bai nationality. And then during the class, the students will describe the ornaments in their hands. They will introduce the features of the ornaments in different areas and different nationalities, their pattern design, their aesthetic design and their regional culture. For example, in the Miao nationality, the butterfly is regarded as the mother, therefore in the Miao nationality, the ornaments with the butterfly pattern design is very common to see no matter on the clothes or on the silver sheet. In the Miao nationality, people always hold the opinion that the more, the more beautiful; the bigger, the better. That’s why we often see that the girls in the Miao nationality always wear the silver ornaments from the head to the foot, and the skill of the ornaments is very excellent. Sisters Festival, the biggest festival in the Miao nationality, on that day, people wear beautiful traditional cloth and silver ornaments, the site is very grand, and many people will be attracted. After understanding the cultural background and the handicraft process, the students will closely see the ornaments in their hand and they will more easily understand what happened behind the ornaments. This is a way to recognize the handicraft in a new view of complete to part, and finally come back to complete, as a result, the students can accumulate the experience to do things in their future practical practice [2] (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.
figure 2

Photo by Qianhe Man.

The clothes and ornaments of Miao nationality, on the most famous Sisters Festival of the Miao nationality.

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    Designing Plan with Creativity

    On the basis of learning the tradition widely and carrying on the culture, the students can design the first draft plan according to their interests and beauty appreciation. In the design process, students can develop creative thinking, and what’s more, it can also help students’ “eye” and “brain” develop balanced. The students of quality education come from different colleges, they are in different majors, compared with the students who are major in design, and most of the students do not have the design experience. If the students want to make a design, they must think hard. In most cases, those students would like to draw simple sketch to show their ideas, or they would like to download the picture from the internet and then make some improvements, or they would like to take the previous students’ works to talk about their ideas. In this teaching stage, the students and the teachers should discuss thoroughly and exchange the ideas of each other, they should make some improvements of the design plan, and they should also decide the making process.

Taking tie-dyeing crafts as an example, traditional tie-dyeing patterns emphasizes rendering effects and requires complex craft procedure, including three to five times of dip-dyeing. After being introduced to quality education class of college students, tie-dyeing has been given a brand new conception by college students and appears a new look. By designing skillfully, trying modern geometry pattern element, even handling very succinct color lumps, students have given modern sense to the traditional handicrafts. At the same time, combining kinds of using functions, students have developed new products, including practical products such as book-packing cloth, mobile phone bag and pot-holder etc. Because of the brevity of modern design pattern, the traditional handicraft procedure, relating to students’ work, is greatly simplified and more suitable to the features of college quality education course [3] (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.
figure 3

Photo by Qianhe Man.

According to the traditional handicraft, the student Xiaoqing Song created the works about the old topic of butterfly loves flowers.

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    Practice with Creativity

    Practice with creativity is an important part of hands-on practice of traditional handicraft, which includes the process whether the students take part in practical practice, whether the students have finished the task with the hand, eye, brain balanced, and whether the students have finished the task with the tactile sense, visual sense, auditory sense, and sense of smell balanced, the result directly influences the quality of their works. During the process, the students actually take part in the process, they work hard to try many times, and finally they will find it is very interesting that they can overcome the difficulties, improve themselves, and feel happy in the hands-on practice.

Student’s design plan varies from each other, because of this reason, the individual traditional handicraft in the process of practice may also be different. Therefore, every student should work hard with creativity to finish his own creative design. This practice process should manage the most adequate stages, and also use the most adequate tools and equipment, in the most adequate time to gain the most successful result. Not afraid of hardship and not afraid of tired is not the ideal way for practicing traditional handicraft, on the contrary, it is the creative thinking and skillful work that can be called the best way. At the end of the class, the practical practice work design and the condition of complete can be the standard of judgement instead of the general thesis and report, and this special method shows the teaching feature of the practical curse.

Enamel craft is a complicated traditional handicraft, of whom the predecessor is the well-known cloisonné. It is dated from Jintao period of Ming Dynasty, being a fine royal craft in the beginning, with a history of 500 years. In the nation’s early period, cloisonné was an important export product. Eight years ago, cloisonné was introduced as a course into the campus of Beijing Institute of Technology. This course emphasizes craft practice and requires students to operate skillfully instead of acting rashly. All cloisonné craft procedure, including making copper mold, soldering, glazing, welding copper wire, filling colors, burning, grinding, polishing and burning again, have to be finished in order. When there are many same figures in the pattern, students can design their own special tools to finish. When they succeed using their own way to solve a craft issue, they will achieve both craft works and confidence. Therefore, in the process of operating and practicing crafts, students can train their patience, strengthen their problem-solving ability and develop their logical thinking [4] (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4.
figure 4

Photo by Qianhe Man.

Modern handicrafts works created by the Non art majors Shan Lu according to Chinese traditional pattern.

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    Appreciating the Skill to Improve Physical and Mental Harmony

    This part is the most difficult point in the whole process of the traditional practical practice curse. In this part teachers will guide the student to recall the whole process of handicraft skill. The students appreciate the works that they have already made with their individual feature, and students appreciate the cultural essence and the charm of the art of the traditional handicraft. Through the coordination and cooperation with the hand, eye, brain and heart, students would try to feel physical and mental in harmony. At the same time, they can also try to feel skill and technique in harmony. In the process of practice, many of the students choose nature shape as their design topic, which just shows the principle of china’s ancient art. This principle is that looking for inspiration in nature, and you will get the essence in the heart. In the course practice process, students see the nature closely and thoroughly, and finally they will reach the harmony of “from human to object, and finally to nature”.

In the beginning of learning handicraft, the works of the first time practice tends to be not as their imagination, while with the deepening of practice, the works of students will become better and better. This is not only a skill perfecting process, but also a way to understand the essence of craft. In metal knitting experience course, some students learned to know knitting skills, found a self-owned knitting method and developed their own work. I think such a learning method can also be applied to other subjects [5] (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5.
figure 5

Photo by Qianhe Man.

Non art majors Shan Lu developed their own knitting skill and made a bracelet.

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The core of the traditional handicraft practice is “designing with creativity” and “practice with creativity”. “Designing with creativity” is to cultivate students ability of absorbing traditional handicraft, the students combine their own interests of appreciation to do a second creation, and this progress is cultivating the ingenious heart. “Practice with creativity” is on the basis of the feature of traditional handicraft, and combine their own design ideas to make the idea come to the reality. This is the practice of manual dexterity. Only the students combine the creativity with skill can they realize knowledge and action should go hand in hand, and realize the exploration of traditional handicraft.

The difficult point of the teaching is how to understand the skill and make the body and mental in harmony. This point relates to the summary and understanding of the folk traditional handicraft. Through studying the traditional handicraft itself, we can know its spirits and the philosophy contents. Most of the practical practice courses are stay in the degree of mastering the skill. However, the traditional handicraft practical practice courses need students to rethink their own works and explore the spirits behind the works [6] (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6.
figure 6

Analysis of the students understanding and mastering approach things, so as to reveal the rule of knowing things, and then use the rules to education.

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5 The Meaning of Traditional Handicraft Practice Teaching in College Quality Education

With the experience of teaching in frontline for years, the writer knows that traditional handicraft course, as a humanistic quality education course, like public foreign language, as well as idea and politics education, belongs to non-academic education towards all college students. The content and teaching method of this kind of course is greatly different with academic course. If this course extracts or copies parts of academic course, students will think the course is too deep to be interesting; while this course is excessive extensive, students will also think the course is generic only, without golden content. Aiming at such specialty of this course, the writer concludes the teaching characters of traditional handicraft practice course, which mainly shows in four aspects: teaching through lively activities, learning to appreciation in lively activities, learning the virtue in the lively activities, and learning to be wise in the lively activities.

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    Teaching Through Lively Activities

    As Einstein said, “interest is the best teacher”. Interest is the inner impetus to acquire the knowledge, and interesting is the precondition of learning a course. However, whether at home or outside of china, there are many students who choose the elective courses just for getting the full credits. This boring learning mode makes the students feel very tired of the university class. The traditional handicraft course has been set for 12 years and students always have strong interest in this course. Most of the students not only finish the course contents that required by the teacher, but also do some practice after class. We can often see that many students do the practice and apply to take the course not for the credit but for interest. The traditional handicraft course is the rarely motivate course that attract the strong interest of the students. Practice has proven that the traditional handicraft courses are taught through lively activities, exercising an invisible and formative influence on students. The students can learn knowledge in a relaxation and act on his own master. This has the significant practical role in the quality cultivation and personality improvement of college students.

Many people think that college students are adults and their education can be finished without interest guiding, which I disagree. Knowledge learning process should be pleasant and relaxing instead of being just boring and repetitive. The learning experience of students is totally different while the course and the passing rate are the same. Interesting course can help students to remember knowledge points easily, master key points and even learn related knowledge by themselves. Especially in science and engineering universities, students need to deal with lots of data and logic every day, while the interest teaching of humanities, a good opportunity to relax students in body and mind, becomes especially precious.

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    Learning to Appreciation in Lively Activities

    Schiller, the father of western aesthetic education, holds that the holistic education depends on a kind of harmony ability. The conception of beauty is the way and method that people pursue spirits harmony. Aesthetic education opens a door for contemporary university students to pursue spirits harmony. Aesthetic education is beauty education, as well as sentiment education and spiritual education. It can not only improve the aesthetic quality of human, but also effect human emotion, taste, temperament and mind, stimulate human spirit and warm human hearts silently.

Traditional handicraft course contains aesthetic education. It not only teaches the students to carry on the traditional ancient handicraft form, but also through multimedia demonstration and material object, the students can learn traditional aesthetic taste and different ethnic aesthetic culture. Therefore, the traditional handicraft practical practice course has special meaning in the aspects of molding character, improving art taste and appreciation ability, and knowing different culture. Traditional handicraft course is closely related to real life and infiltrates practical aesthetic into campus life on multiple levels. Traditional handicraft course is rooted in the deep soil of Chinese excellent traditional culture and has absorbed outstanding achievement of Chinese cultivation. It can help students guiding to establish right aesthetic concept, develop deep national sentiments, motivate imagination and innovative consciousness and widen students’ field of vision and mind. Traditional handicraft course combines art experience with logic thinking. In the process of feeling beauty and enjoy beauty, students will develop noble emotion, then deepen their understanding of life by analyzing work in logic thinking.

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    Learning the Virtue in the Lively Activities

    The traditional handicraft can not only convey the belief and the values of a society, but also can unite the social spirits and the core value, forming a consistent moral idea. The traditional handicraft as a kind of cultural antecedents, through its patterns and production skill, and the way of wearing and using, it can naturally express and communicate the moral standard of the true, the good, and the beautiful. The students can be moved and then set up the correct outlook of life. From the past to the present, the traditional handicraft with its simple way teaches generation after generation in a simple and unadorned way, and it also has the same positive significance to the contemporary college students’ moral education.

Learning the virtue in the lively activities of traditional handicraft course reflects in following aspects:

  1. â‘ .

    Traditional handicraft course contains the national spirit education. It helps to train students with dignity, confidence and pride, who will defend national dignity, honor, independence, unity and the great unity of all ethnic groups consciously.

  2. ②.

    Traditional handicraft course contains moral character and civilized behavior education. It helps to train students with sound personality and good psychological quality, who can know themselves rightly, have high confidence, be optimistic and have strong self-employment ability, then become prepared to adapt to society and integrate into our society.

  3. ③.

    Traditional handicraft course helps students to establish right professional idea, employment attitude and entrepreneurship attitude, form practical employment view, improve self-employment ability and become prepared to adapt to society and integrate into society.

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    Learning to be Wise in the Lively Activities

    The traditional teaching method emphasizes the reading and writing, computing, logic thinking, which make the left brain work heavily and make the right brain leave unused, and therefore will cause the imbalance of the intellectual development. Aesthetic intelligence of the traditional handicraft practical practice teaching lies in controlling the art of right brain, while the practice activities depend on the cooperation of the left and the right brain. During this process, we use the left and right brain at the same time, and mobilize image thinking while do the logic thinking. The teaching effect of this way is great that merely theory teaching cannot reach the effect. The traditional handicraft teaching method can have the essential meaning in helping students’ intelligence in developing healthily and steadily.

Therefore, the course of the traditional handicraft emphasizes teaching through lively activities, learning to appreciation in lively activities, learning the virtue in the lively activities, and learning to be wise in the lively activities, which provides a fresher experience way for college quality education, and has valuable practical meaning for college quality education in colleges and universities.

Besides, here is the explanation of the lively activities. It is not a kind of entertainment. It has widely meaning, including pleasant study method, healthy spiritual enjoyment, positive life attitude and peaceful state of mind. In college quality education, the lively activities are very important in students’ studying and growing up. In the previous traditional handicraft course, many students enjoyed themselves a lot and were greatly delighted, they forgot the time to go back home, and they cooperated harmoniously. The lively activities in traditional handicraft course turns passive learning into active exploration, turns examination oriented education into evaluation oriented education, and turns competitive relationship into cooperative relationship. As a result, students can finish traditional handicraft course with pleasure and relaxation.

6 Conclusion

In the long run, the traditional handicraft practice course meets the trend of the modern education, conforms to the aim of modern university education, and puts new impetus to college quality education with traditional culture conception. In this age, when the eastern culture meets the western culture, the traditional conception meets the modern conception, and inheritance meets development, it is a problem that needs us think deeply and explore in a long term, which is how to analyze and summary traditional practice experience, understand the teaching idea and spirits of thousands of years, how to teach the essence of the Chinese traditional culture to the younger generation and cultivate the comprehensive talent that suits the trend of the today’s society, and how to determine the scientific, rational, adequate teaching method.