On rural education today
Mr. Tao issued such a cry in "The Reform of Rural Education in China": "The rural education in China has gone the wrong way! He taught people to leave the countryside and run for the city. He taught people not to grow rice for food, cotton for clothes and trees for houses. He taught people to envy luxury and despise farming; He taught people to share profits without generating profits; He taught farmers' children to be nerds; He taught the rich to become poor and the poor to become particularly poor; He taught the strong to be weak and the weak to be particularly weak. There is a cliff ahead, comrades must hold their horses and find another way to live! "This alarm has been ringing for 80 years, and it is still deafening! Please allow me to briefly analyze the problems behind Mr. Tao's words in today's education, as follows:
1. Rural education is "urbanized". With the rapid development of urbanization in China, coupled with the unified standard of education administration from top to bottom in urban and rural areas, the educational content and methods that should belong to rural education have disappeared, and the rich cultural resources in rural areas have been unrecognizable because of the negative utilitarianism brought by urbanization. Our rural schools are no longer serving rural construction, community development, changing customs, etc. In Mr. Tao's rural education experiment, it just became a "backward carriage" chasing exam-oriented education and quality education in "developed" cities.
With the advantages of geography, resources, contacts and students, our city schools have implicit or even explicit authority in the most basic education and teaching, regardless of other aspects. Schools that lack local flavor and develop souls have become humble vassals of urban schools. Statistics show that the content of textbooks and even college entrance examination is mostly based on urban life. When a city-specific economic model like bicycle sharing appears in the college entrance examination questions, how can our rural students answer the questions in the unknown?
2. Alienation of rural education goals. Mr. Tao proposed to create children's education, thinking that education should liberate children's hands, brains, time and space, while China was still enthusiastically shouting the slogan of quality education and circling around the baton of examination. Children are shouldering heavier and heavier schoolbags under the requirement of reducing burdens, and all kinds of exam-oriented or interest-oriented remedial classes at all levels are trying their best to grab students with various high technologies ... For example, in our side, rural remedial classes emerge one after another, and a large number of normal students are willing to be training teachers. As far as I don't fully understand, the quality of teaching is really worrying. Behind the high tuition fee of several thousand yuan is the huge investment of rural parents in the only way out, hoping to make their children stand out and change their family destiny by any means.
There is nothing wrong with aspiring to be a dragon, but our education is sick. Teacher Tao's life education practice in the six-year plan outline of Xin 'an Primary School in Huai 'an City is so rich. Children's growth has clear and diverse goals: "healthy body, scientific mind, artistic interest, production skills, spirit of freedom, equality and mutual assistance", which vividly teaches teachers and students in concrete and real rural life practice. Living rural teachers also need farmers' skills, scientific minds and the spirit of transforming society. Not afraid of difficulties, integrating theory with practice and daring to innovate, the countryside is not only a classroom for life, but also a teaching source for teachers rooted in the countryside.
Our educational cause is "saying one thing and doing another". For example, the compulsory education law clearly stipulates that it is not allowed to distinguish between key classes and non-key classes. Did you actually do it? Balanced allocation of educational resources in the region, are resources and policies relatively inclined to rural schools? Compulsory education requires foundation and fairness, but why is the "school choice fever" of urban schools getting worse and worse, while rural schools are "calm"? In the reality of unequal educational resources and opportunities, why should the administrative department pursue the excellent score ranking of children in the basic education stage for political achievements? In addition to the deviation of educational governance, "laziness" and "strangeness" are also problems. Instead of studying the front-line classroom, only the upper-level decision-making, centralized and unified educational administration makes schools and teachers have to turn around it; For the sake of stable political achievements, they are unwilling to give up their vested interests and carry out reforms. This problem is left over from previous meetings. I admire Mr Li Xigui very much. When he was the director of Weifang Education, he extracted the rank of principal from knowledge group, which was uniformly divided by the education administrative department according to various standards for running a school, breaking the "official standard" and letting the principal return to the school to run a school in a down-to-earth manner.
Although the new trend of quality education has finally blown from the city, its essence of top-down examination is still unshakable. For example, in the school where I teach, children finally have a variety of courses, such as music class, art class, comprehensive practical activity class, etc., but their interest is quickly extinguished because they are forced to recite theories at the end of the period to cope with the unified test of higher education departments. Zheng Yefu put it very well in "Pathology of Education in China", "The tendency to take exams leads to the neglect of minor subjects, and the initiative to add minor subjects has little effect. However, if you take a minor, it will naturally be different ... This situation can alienate all learning, so that alienated learning can subvert all exams. " The original intention is to try to use quality education to alleviate the tendency of taking exams and increase the possibility of students' multiple intelligence development. However, due to the performance requirements of the superior for the ranking of "minor subjects", the child's potential interest subjects have been alienated and returned to the prototype of the exam. Relatively reduced the study time of the "main subject" and replaced it with the "minor subject" that also needs to be tested. Is this burden reduction really a burden reduction?
In a word, it is even worse to see Mr. Tao's analysis of rural education in 80 years, which shows that Mr. Tao's vision of education is so unique and profound. At that time, China, who was pursuing elite education, was able to carry out a large number of rural education campaigns in the vast rural areas with Liang Shuming's generation, which showed his sense of mission and responsibility for his home country. Now, how many scholars can do it? I can't help but respect Mr. Tao, who is already on the verge of danger. Is it because of the improvement of the overall infrastructure that he turned a blind eye to its potential crisis?
In short, the long-term historical disadvantages of unfair resources, policies and opportunities, coupled with the centralization and centralization of educational administrative power, have pulled away and recovered the social and cultural functions of rural schools. Our rural schools have reluctantly separated the relationship between villages and people and started to catch up with the far-behind urban campus culture. We only stare at the insurmountable academic gap, and we are desperate to choose grades, blocking other ways out for children's future development. For rural children, there seems to be no other way except reading. However, the development of vocational education in China is seriously lagging behind, and it is difficult to meet the development requirements of modern industry. On the contrary, if children don't advance, they will retreat, and their weariness of learning will deepen. The imbalance of education has brought more and more serious class solidification, and the inspirational old saying "knowledge changes fate" seems to be only useful for a very small number of rural students with excellent academic performance. Most rural students become a huge group that cannot get high-quality higher general education or vocational education and are "wasted" by exam-oriented education.
I stand in front of reality.
Every time I teach, I always feel uncomfortable. Children should have the same opportunities for art education as urban children, but their origins do limit their potential. Children are like a duck to water in all kinds of interest courses we offer, but we can only do so. It seems that their "interests" will never become "specialties", and turning "specialties" into future "occupations" seems to be just childish words when they were young. How many children's childhood dreams have been buried in our exam-oriented education? It was not until we stood at the crossroads of life choices as adults, ridiculed and silenced by this society, and finally chose to live a stable dream of "making big money". Especially in our rural children, their psychological demands are not satisfied in schools that pursue their studies unilaterally and the broken families involved, and their social and emotional development is extremely backward. Its material demands are magnified, and its desire to be satisfied in adulthood is even stronger. The word "dream" is pure but heavy for them. I was confused by the strangeness when I entered the city. Everything seemed so insignificant that I fell into self-denial and confusion ... I didn't dare to think deeply. I long for a balanced and healthy education. I am eager for my children to express their dreams confidently in the future. I hope they have a clear understanding of themselves and a sound social and emotional development. I pray that education and society can tolerate and support the infinite possibilities of children. ...
Someone will ask me, is it meaningful for you, an "angry youth", to think that you are looking at the problem from God's point of view and read more books before criticizing China's education for thousands of years? I will also ask myself, are all these scholars right? I am such an "ideological danger" and even tried to write such an article. As a future rural teacher, what can I do to criticize the education system? I told myself that I believe what I have seen, felt and thought from teaching for many years, I believe in the excellent educational practice in society that I have experienced with a less keen sense of smell, I believe in the realistic educational books that I have subverted my beautiful educational ideal for half a year but still have hope, and I believe that all these educational experts have mentioned one person without exception: Tao Xingzhi.
China's education now owes Tao An an answer. Since then, he has systematically studied the most advanced progressive education thoughts in the world, and studied under western academic masters such as Dewey, Ke Qubo and Russell. Mr. Tao brought modern education back to China, in fact, combining the reality of China education to "turn a somersault" Dewey's theory. Bringing the overall situation of striving for freedom, democracy and independence into the field of education, our students really share the same breath and destiny with the country. Studying for the rise of China has guided the teaching practice in Mr. Tao's series of teaching theory, teacher education theory, educational purpose theory and civilian education theory. As a result, "teaching integration" has developed under the turbulent national conditions, igniting the spark of modern education in China. Even though he was persecuted from all sides, Mr. Tao still injected fresh vitality into China's education, until he worked hard for a long time ... After hundreds of years of unremitting efforts, the people were enlightened, nine-year compulsory education was popularized, and men and women enjoyed the right to education equally. Teacher Tao's long-cherished wish has not been fully realized. The quality and fairness of our rural education still have a far-reaching impact on our children, even affecting the social and economic development of China.
I may not be a great man like Mr. Tao, but I can have a far-sighted vision, a keen critical attitude and a warm and solid educational heart. I may work silently on the three-foot platform like other rural teachers, but under the profound observation of rural education, I have more faith and silence. I hope that in the future, I will be a firm, enthusiastic, neutral, objective, innovative and flexible educator. Just like those pioneers of contemporary educational reform, innovation is also an educational wisdom and also comes from love.
? Limited by space, I dare not dwell on the future thinking of rural education. Let's encourage ourselves with Mr. Tao's words in "Life Education for Comrades" and "Our Credo"! "How happy we are to meet in this great era and continue to struggle together!" "We firmly believe that education should turn environmental resistance into help. We firmly believe that the best education is for teachers and students to live together and share joys and sorrows. We firmly believe that teachers should use difficulties to develop their own thinking and spirit of struggle. We are convinced that if teachers all over the country have the determination to devote themselves to children's education, they will certainly create a great new life for our nation. "
I firmly believe that future practitioners, Mr. Tao and everyone in the present age will lead me to devote myself to rural education. ...