Lu Limin, “Hidden Pain and Breakthroughs: Where Should Rural Boarding Schools Go? – Excerpts from research notes on rural education in a county in southern China” [隐痛与突围：农村寄宿制学校该走向何方？—对中国南方某县乡村教育的调研手记节选], Secondary and Primary School Management [中小学管理], 2016, No. 11, p. 4–7.
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【Written in front】
In 2015, the author, as a member of the 15th doctoral service group of the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China, went to a county in southern China to serve as the deputy county magistrate in charge of education. During the year there, I traveled all over the county, large and small schools and teaching sites, and felt the changes in rural education and rural society today. I also tried my best to promote the improvement of local education within my ability.
This year was a year when a scholar without much experience in administrative management began to feel his presence; this year was also a year when a subject education researcher who had no experience in education management research was reborn in a real educational situation. year. This year has enriched my professional experience, expanded my research horizon, and allowed me to touch the real pulse of China’s rural education.
Today, one year later, when I left that land of beautiful scenery and geomantic omen, I had a different way of thinking about the problems and countermeasures of China’s rural education development than in the past. Among them, the development of rural boarding schools development has become the most lingering concern in my heart.
What I saw: Forced to board – the pain of rural education
When I was a teenager, I used to live in my grandma’s house in the countryside as a left-behind child. In my memory, there is a school in the village, the school building is a few mud houses, and the yard is the playground. There are several teachers in the school and a hundred students from the nearby village two or three miles away. At that time, the rural school was the soul of the whole village. The sound of children reading and playing, one after another, made the whole village lively; in the evening, when the smoke rose from the kitchen, the villagers gathered to chat, and as long as the teacher spoke, everyone would listen carefully. Although I am a left-behind child, I have never felt lonely or inferior because of the selfless love of my grandma and the respect my villagers have for my parents who work outside. However, when I came to the countryside again after many years, I found that the Chinese countryside and rural education no longer had the peace and tranquility of the past. The professional dignity of rural teachers was repeatedly challenged, and the childhood of rural children was no longer what I used to experience So warm and peaceful.
At the end of the 1990s, my country began to implement the policy of withdrawing schools and merging schools, and a large number of rural boarding schools came into being. The original intention of the school merger policy is to concentrate resources to run high-quality schools and provide better services for parents and students. However, in the process of policy implementation, the feelings of students and parents who are the main body of education are ignored, the significance of rural education in the construction of rural culture is ignored, and the weak school foundation in poverty-stricken areas can meet the normal needs of students boarding.
Taking the county where the author is temporarily employed as an example, there are 11 townships in the local area. After the school was withdrawn and the school was merged, most of the students concentrated in the township central school and had to choose boarding. The reason, on the one hand, is that some natural villages are far away from township central schools, and most parents make a living from farming, so it is impossible to walk several miles a day to pick up and drop off their children; if a motorcycle is used to pick up and drop off children, the cost of gasoline is very high. It is not affordable for ordinary families, so parents can only choose to let their children board. On the other hand, after withdrawing schools and merging schools, high-quality educational resources are concentrated in schools in townships and county towns, and the few remaining teaching sites cannot be compared in terms of hardware equipment or teaching staff, they cannot be compared with schools in townships and county towns, so most of the qualified children in the village also choose boarding. The remaining students at the teaching sites are all children from poor and weak families. Therefore, being forced to board is a deep feeling of the author during the research process. The emergence of a large number of boarding students has also brought a huge test to schools with a weak school foundation.
First, there is a shortage of hardware facilities and management personnel in boarding schools, making it difficult to meet basic needs
Due to the lack of systematic planning, the construction of local boarding school buildings is very random, so it is always difficult to meet the accommodation needs of a large number of boarding students. Taking the survey data in December 2015 as an example, schools in the county lack a total of 7,410 square meters of student dormitories and more than 500 sets of student beds. The author once saw 200 children sleeping on bunks on the upper and lower floors of four large classrooms in a central school in a township, and there were even boys and girls around 10 years old crowded in one classroom to rest; What’s more, because there are no beds, the school can only let the elder sister and younger brother squeeze into one bed for accommodation. Even if there are school dormitories that have been built, some have only one bathroom in the entire corridor, and some don’t even have a bathroom. Students have to go to the yard when they wake up at night.
In addition to the lack of hardware facilities, boarding schools also have a shortage of administrators. For example, there are more than 5,700 boarding students in primary schools in the county, but only 58 life teachers. Due to the uneven distribution of life teachers, some schools have to let classroom teachers also serve as life teachers, which invisibly increases the intensity of teachers’ work.
Second, some students live in off-campus boarding places, and it is difficult to ensure the safety of boarding and lodging.
When the school cannot meet the boarding needs of students, students can only choose to live in off-campus boarding places, but there are many security risks here. For example: the fire-fighting facilities in off-campus boarding places are not complete, and merchants arrange too high a density of beds out of economic interests. According to the operation, food safety cannot be guaranteed; the merchant has no legal identity, and has not signed a contract or agreement with the parents of the students. Once a student has a safety accident in the boarding place, disputes will arise due to unclear responsibilities. In addition, due to the lack of parental supervision, children living in off-campus boarding places often go to Internet cafes after school or hang out in the society, which brings many problems to school management and social stability.
In 2014, in the county where the author was temporarily employed, a third-grade student accidentally touched the optical cables and wires of the mobile company and the power company when he was playing in an off-campus boarding house. The county government has called safety supervision, fire protection and industry and commerce departments several times to coordinate the banning of off-campus boarding places, but due to lack of clear legal provisions, all failed.
Third, boarding students are younger and have difficulty taking care of themselves
Young boarding students refer to boarding students below the third grade. According to statistics during the period when the author was employed, the number of young boarding students in this county accounted for 43% of all primary school boarding students. These students face many difficulties in their daily life due to their young age, poor self-care ability, and lack of sufficient life teachers for counseling. Since the school does not have a school doctor, some children fell ill at night, and the principal had to personally carry the feverish child to the township hospital for medical treatment. In addition to being sick, daily tasks such as washing clothes, eating, flushing toilets, and keeping money and belongings will become a daily psychological and spiritual burden for these young boarding students. The frequent incidents of campus violence make them feel lonely and fearful.
According to Huang Xiaoting and others from the China Institute of Educational Finance at Peking University, a survey of 16,835 boarding students was carried out, and the depression levels of the students in the fourth and fifth grades of primary schools were tested. It was found that the overall depression level of these students was more than ten percentage points higher than that of urban students and students in other international comparison projects. The results of the school violence test conducted at the same time found that although the rural boarding students are together every day, they may not be able to get along well. The detection rate of school violence such as speech, body, and Internet has reached 16.03%, which is higher than other non-boarding schools studied. 5.00% of. These problems have seriously affected the improvement of students’ subsequent academic level and happiness ability.
Fourth, the after-school life is very monotonous, and it is difficult for students to develop continuously. During the research, the author found that due to the lack of management experience of boarding students, the after-school life of boarding students in many schools is very monotonous, and they lack the influence of science, art and other courses. Although in many school surveys, the school said that the school has opened the second classroom, but it is difficult to see the implementation of the second classroom in the teaching field. A general boarding school ends at around 5:00 p.m., and students usually play games, have meals, go to self-study, and sleep after school. The author once saw first-grade students doing test papers and exercises in the classroom, and sitting there after finishing, some drawing pictures, and some just sitting there. The senior dormitory students, under the pressure of exam rankings, have severely eroded their spare time. Schools use classes and self-study instead of daily management, which leads to too long study time for students, which makes students tired of learning and even drop out of school.
What I Know: Weak Management—The Difficulties in the Development of Rural Boarding Schools
In the rural education reform, due to the marginalization of the main body of education—students and parents, coupled with the lack of various guarantees and poor management, this has led to many problems in rural boarding schools.
First, the stretched public funds are embarrassing for the care of childhood
Regarding the allocation of funds for rural boarding schools, the government is currently implementing the “Interim Measures for the Management of Rural Primary and Middle School Public Expenditures” promulgated by the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education in January 2006. The difference in the appropriation standards of public funds for boarding schools requires each province to approve the funding standards according to its own situation. For example, during the research period of the author, the funding standards of boarding and non-boarding schools in this county are the same.
But in fact, the cost of public funds for boarding schools is much higher than that of non-boarding schools. For example, the head teacher who also teaches two classes of Chinese in the fifth grade, the teacher of the boarding school has to lead the students to five morning exercises, three to five morning readings, supervise three to four evening self-study, and check the dormitory. Two to five nights (after evening self-study), teachers in non-boarding schools do not have the above-mentioned work content. Although the workload and pressure of teachers in boarding schools are significantly higher than those in non-boarding schools, there is no difference in performance appraisal. Over time, it will naturally dampen the enthusiasm of principals and teachers.
Second, the cold data assessment conceals the soft needs of children
Compared with other underdeveloped regions in the country, in view of the special geographical location and provincial conditions of the province where the author is employed, the investment in education, mainly based on transfer payments from the central government, has increased year by year, especially in 2009. One of the projects is to speed up the pace of educational support for underdeveloped cities and counties, and improving schools with weak foundations is a major project in the construction of local schools.
The measurement indicators of this project include the square meters of buildings and playgrounds, the construction of functional classrooms, sports equipment, laboratory equipment, books, etc. The achievement of the indicators is reflected through data. However, these cold statistics lack basic humanistic care and cover up the softest psychological needs of children. For example: The desks and chairs in the classroom are available, but can they be adjusted as the child’s height changes? Books are equipped, are they suitable for children to read, are they used by children every day, or are they shelved? There are dormitories, but do they have enough bright lights and toilets for students to use the bathroom? With the bed, is the quilt enough to keep out the cold… It is very common for students who live outside to sleep without a complete set of quilts, regardless of spring, summer, autumn and winter, to sleep on a straw curtain. In addition, in the job evaluation of schools and principals, the living conditions and mental health of boarding students, especially young boarding students, are not listed as special items, which inevitably will not be taken seriously in actual work.
Third, the intergenerational inheritance of poverty has brought about the weakness of family education
The intergenerational inheritance of poverty has become a very serious problem in rural areas, and this poverty includes both economic and ideological aspects. The author found in the research that an important reason for the difficult life of the young boarding students in rural areas is the backwardness of the villagers’ concept, such as early marriage, early childbearing, abandonment, multiple children, birth without raising children, and illegitimate children are very serious in the local area. Some children have no access to government relief because their parents did not raise them. Even survival is a problem, let alone family education. For some students with healthy families, it’s not that their parents don’t pay attention to their children’s schooling, but that they don’t know what to pay attention to and how to pay attention, and they lack communication and cooperation with the school. For example, some parents don’t know what grade their child is in, who the head teacher is, and want to save the head teacher’s phone number. Many parents think that everything will be fine if they leave their children to the school, and they rarely take the initiative to participate in their children’s entrance and graduation ceremonies.
The concept of intergenerational inheritance and the survival difficulties brought about by poverty make parents unable to take care of themselves, and take care of their children even more. Schools and teachers have to bear their professional responsibilities, and they also have to face the problem of how to improve the quality of parents. Some things that should be borne by family education, such as telling children not to spit anywhere, be polite to others, and wash their hands after using the toilet And so on must be completed by school education. These are doomed to the hardships of boarding students in school life.
Fourth, the lack of management experience in boarding schools leads to bleak boarding time for students
Due to the lack of relevant management experience, many boarding schools are currently only a place for students to learn, rather than a place for living. There are only class schedules in the school and no life plan. In fact, besides teaching students to learn, boarding schools have a more important task to teach students about life. It should provide a platform and soil for stories to be produced, so that the warmth of collective life can comfort children’s loneliness and homesickness when they are away from home. depressed.
If a child spends 16 years in boarding from the age of six to graduating from university at the age of 22, then the memories of these children’s boarding life, in addition to homework, have they ever felt like dancing bamboo poles with their classmates? The joy of reading a book together, the warm memory after hearing a story together? Did they plant a tree together back then, thinking that the tree has now sheltered the juniors from the rain, will they think of the teacher who took care of their lives, and they still have to visit after graduation?
What I look forward to: joint efforts to tackle key problems – the road to breakthrough in rural education
Improving the quality of rural education is an important measure to narrow the gap between urban and rural education and promote the balanced development of compulsory education. As an important part of rural education, rural boarding schools should receive attention and support. The local government must make a difference, and the principal, as a professional supporter, must also seek professional changes, work together to tackle key problems, and work hard for the breakthrough of rural education. To this end, the author puts forward the following suggestions.
First, increase funding and personnel input to alleviate the urgent need for management
In view of the differences in management and funding costs between boarding schools and non-boarding schools, the government should establish differentiated funding standards. For example, when the author wrote this article, the Department of Education of the province where I am employed has issued relevant documents, requiring that the public funds per student be increased on the basis of 2015. subsidy”.
In addition to increasing public funds, the government can also purchase social services to solve problems such as the shortage of management personnel in rural boarding schools. For example: in response to the shortage of school life teachers, the government can help central schools in townships to establish a “Life Teacher Resource Bank”. Life teachers need to graduate from high school, have patience and love, and must receive training on teacher ethics, child psychology, education laws and regulations, basic medical care, etc. before taking up the job. Enjoy the same economic treatment as formal teachers. This method can not only alleviate the problem that the current number of teachers cannot be broken through, but also reduce the cost of local fiscal expenditures to a certain extent.
Second, precise and continuous education for poverty alleviation, improving the quality of the rural population
In recent years, the national level has continuously proposed precise poverty alleviation strategies. In fact, the experience of both foreign countries and developed regions in my country, such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, tells us that the most effective, sustainable and thorough poverty alleviation is education poverty alleviation, that is, by improving the quality of the rural population and improving the rural education environment, through “Supporting wisdom” comes to “supporting aspirations”, thus driving material poverty alleviation.
Therefore, it is recommended to popularize high school education in economically backward areas, including ordinary high school and vocational technical high school education. For those students who are able to study, they can enter ordinary high schools for further study; for those students who have learning difficulties, they can enter vocational technical high schools to learn basic survival skills. In addition, the government needs to support relevant policies to give priority to solving the employment problem of rural youth in backward areas, so as to steadily improve the basic quality of the entire rural population and create a good rural education atmosphere.
Third, strengthen the curriculum construction of boarding schools to meet the development needs of students
At present, the problem of lack of curriculum content in boarding schools is very urgent. If this problem can be effectively solved, other things such as the enrichment of students’ after-school life and the adjustment of students’ mental health can be alleviated to varying degrees. Therefore, boarding schools should improve their curriculum construction as soon as possible on the basis of learning from other schools’ excellent management experience to meet the needs of students’ development. For example: the school can organize the children who have just entered the first grade to carry out life ability training and competition activities, such as combing hair, making beds, and organizing schoolbags. As the age of students grows, schools can also offer cycling courses to allow students to learn to ride bicycles and conduct riding safety education. In addition, the school can also combine the ecological advantages of the countryside to open up planting and breeding bases, which can not only help students understand nature, cultivate local feelings, but also solve the problem of lunch for students with economic difficulties. In this regard, many schools have mature curriculum systems, which can be directly learned by rural boarding schools.
【Postscript】
When writing this article, I looked through the work records of the past year again, and once again burst into tears, I couldn’t help feeling how difficult the people’s livelihood and education were. We have no shortage of ideals and ideas, but we lack dedication, effective actions, colorful courses, rich activities, professional teachers, and perhaps more rural educators and scientific management who understand rural education and can take root in rural cultural soil. system. There is no other way to write this article, I just hope it can provide you with a little touch and help for your study and thinking about the dilemma and way out of China’s rural education.
It’s for me!
(Editor Wang Shuqing)
