Feng Zengjun South China Normal University
Because the basic education in our country is managed by the government, the education policy formulated by the government determines the development of basic education, and the education policy becomes the key to the success or failure of basic education.
First, the policy orientation of basic education in China
The so-called educational policy orientation is the starting point, purpose consideration or basic design of priorities for formulating basic education policies. Here, the education policy is broad, not specific laws. There are three basic elements in the analysis of the policy orientation of basic education in China: first, education, that is, the policy of education must be the first; Second, education is the foundation, that is, this policy must serve primary and secondary schools, which is essentially different from the policy of higher education; Thirdly, China's basic education, that is, this policy, must also pay attention to and consider the existing concrete reality in China. Therefore, when formulating policies, we cannot leave education, attach importance to education as a foundation, and leave the actual basic education in China. These three factors constitute a unique policy environment for the development of basic education in China. If this environment is not clear, it is difficult to make a wise and accurate judgment on policy orientation. At present, many problems in China's basic education are closely related to the unclear policy orientation.
The reason why the unclear policy orientation will cause great trouble to China's basic education is mainly determined by the policy authority of China's basic education. Basic education is all-inclusive by the government, and the government has completely mastered the power to develop and destroy basic education, but in a greater sense. Policy represents and embodies the government's management function of education. Since the reform and opening up, China's education has made great progress, first of all, the reform of education policy, which is the credit of education policy; At the same time, there are still very serious problems in education in China. This is also caused by educational policy mistakes. Therefore, the gains and losses of China's basic education can be described as the gains and losses of a policy. The fairness and equality of education in China are also determined by policies, which are also policy equality and policy inequality. Policy is the key factor of basic education in China.
Basic education in China is steadily moving towards universal compulsory education, but the policy orientation is still unclear. China is a post-developed country, and its education is still very backward. This backwardness is all-round. Basic education, vocational education and higher education should all be paid attention to, and they are in the trend of all-round attack. In this case, how should the policy of basic education development be positioned? Does the nine-year universal compulsory education in China only need to put students in the classroom? After popularization, the selection mode of basic education will inevitably change to the mass mode, so what should be the orientation of policy orientation? With China's imminent accession to the WTO, what impact will it have on basic education, how will its policies be adjusted, and what position should it make? The development of basic education in China in the new century is facing severe challenges. How will China's basic education look to 10 after 20 or 30 years? All these should be considered in policy orientation.
Second, the analysis of the current basic education policy orientation in China.
China's basic education policy insists on universal compulsory education as the top priority, which is of great significance. But there are also major mistakes, and the following is only an analysis of four points.
(A) the upside-down foundation-foundation or specialty?
Foundation refers to the most basic, initial and important part. The outstanding feature of basic education is foundation, but we have misunderstood this "foundation" for a long time, which is actually upside down in reality. First, the foundation no longer has its original toughness, but has been endowed with strong professional characteristics. Freshmen need to explain many strange solutions to solve a problem. Not only beginners, but also adults will realize it immediately. This is no longer a foundation, but an authentic major. Chinese is designed professionally, even the first stroke of a word is left or right, and it has a very professional name, which is close to professional philology. It's dry, hard to understand, and it's hard to imagine that it was designed for a 6-year-old child. I think of the anthropology course written by Bruner, a great educator who led the vigorous educational reform movement in the United States in the 1960s. It is so lively and interesting that even adults can't put it down. This is a different world. The second is the misunderstanding of importance. Importance refers to development and learning. However, the basic education in China attaches great importance to examination subjects, which increases the weight of Chinese and mathematics, deepens the difficulty, strengthens disciplines and specialties, and forms a "narrow and deep" curriculum design centered on books, which is just the opposite of the "shallow and wide" curriculum design in American primary and secondary schools. In fact, for example, in mathematics, except for a few math professionals, social workers in their fifties have almost only the math level of primary school graduation, and even some primary school math problems may not be answered, which shows that the average person does not need advanced mathematics. There is no need to give all primary and secondary school students such a profound and professional "basic" education in mathematics. I also have to say that some students will naturally understand this kind of problem solving when they grow up, but most of them are useless. The reason for making this up is not out of meditation on stereotyped writing, but to show that the editor's professionalism is excellent. Third, it deviates from the foundation of development. The educational design of primary and secondary schools deviates from the reality of students' development. For example, in the syllabus, primary school students are required to learn Marxism-Leninism thoroughly, but in college, they are given a polite lesson. This is a reversal of development! Primary school is a critical period for language development, but most of the time is spent on difficult and boring problem-solving and word games, which is called "problem-solving". As a result, when advanced thinking learning should be carried out in middle school, foreign language words are memorized backwards, making foreign languages the most difficult thing for people who miss the best learning stage. This development inversion has caused huge educational problems and educational waste. This basic educational policy orientation should be reflected.
(b) Unbalanced talent education model-elite or popular?
Recently, people have been clamoring for talent training and making unannounced visits to the so-called quality education, enrollment nearby and universal education. They believe that the selectivity of education should be highlighted and key primary and secondary schools should be developed. This profoundly reflects the vacillation of China's current basic education policy in how to carry out universal education and talent education, popularize compulsory education and select talents.
The world is unbalanced, critical and non-critical, and talented people and mediocre people exist objectively. The key is how to produce these key and non-key schools, talented people and mediocre people. Valma, an American scholar on modernization, believes that human development in modern society has five characteristics, the first of which is the rationality of human development. If a country's schools are good or bad, it is divided by the government. This is the policy focus, and policies are used to specify which schools are the focus. The policy has created talented people and stupid people, and it is compulsory to divide them, so the development of such talents is unreasonable, and it is difficult to really select the pillars of talents. Therefore, policy orientation is unreasonable for human development, and it is difficult to really select pillar talents by talent diversion. Therefore, policy orientation is very important for human development.
In terms of human development, the orientation of basic education policy involves the transformation of school model, that is, whether to adhere to selection or turn to popularization after popularizing compulsory education, whether to adhere to traditional selection or advocate free selection. The traditional selection emphasizes that the purpose of running a school is only to train a few talents, and the emphasis is on talents. As long as talents are the icing on the cake, it advocates concentrating financial resources to invest in several demonstration schools. Free selection, on the other hand, attaches importance to the education of all students and their all-round development, so that different talents can stand out through free development and free competition. The following formulas can be listed:
1. Traditional selection = mandatory selection-directional selection-single selection = single (or exam) elite
2. Free choice = active choice-market choice-opportunity (or development) choice = multiple elites
As can be seen from the above, the traditional mode of running a school pays attention to elimination and selection through examinations, and all the work of the school focuses on cultivating top students, ignoring the development needs of most people. The new choice is the choice under the free development of all students. The former is an examination elite who is trained through the college entrance examination, that is, a single elite, while the latter is a non-designated selection, which is freely selected according to the possibility of personal development and the needs of multiple intellectual development, resulting in masters of various disciplines. Therefore, China's basic education policy must choose between attaching importance to and standardizing, elite and all.
(C) Rigid unity-fairness or difference
China's basic education is carried out on a vast territory. Although we have been talking about diversity, in fact, China's basic education policy is unified. Once it is controlled, it will not only unify the academic system, the syllabus and the management, but also unify the fees. I'm afraid the main reason is that basic education is compulsory, children's development is the same, learning is the same, funds are also paid by the state, and policies must be unified. Only in this way can fairness be reflected. This is obviously the result of strengthening the norms all the time. This rigid unification has brought many policy problems. First of all, the development orientation of rural areas and cities is not clear, so that cities can not drive rural areas. It is also impossible to encircle cities from rural areas, that is, it is impossible to promote rural urbanization through education according to the logic of contemporary social development, from human modernization to economic modernization and then to national modernization, so that the surplus population burden in rural areas can be transformed into human resources to support urban modernization. At present, China lacks talents rather than manpower. Due to the poor quality of rural population, farmers entering the city will inevitably bring various urban problems. Second, the policy orientation of poverty alleviation and catching up with development. Urban basic education focuses on transcendence and rural basic education focuses on popularization. In the past, poverty alleviation was repeatedly emphasized, especially the "Hope Project", but most of the poverty alleviation through education only sent students out of rural areas and mountainous areas, failing to change the face of mountainous areas. The difference between rural and urban areas in basic education is that rural children in grade four begin to take care of farm work and production after graduation from primary school, while urban children cannot make a living after graduation from high school. Can we break the forbidden zone where rural primary school students are only allowed to recite in class and cannot learn agricultural knowledge? This urgently needs to change the policy orientation. Third, the policy is unfair. First, the college entrance examination is based on fairness. However, due to the concentration of colleges and universities in big cities, big cities need more than 400 points to be admitted, while rural areas need more than 500 or even 600 points, resulting in serious policy unfairness in basic education. The second is the national unified fee. It also makes the difference between rich areas and poor areas, especially between rich areas and poor areas, and the education problems in poor areas and poor areas will become more and more serious. The unification of this policy is also an important reason why the national basic education has no characteristics. In the past, poverty alleviation failed because education was not implemented, but now it is ineffective in many places. Why? Because education is not reformed, why not? The key is that there is no unified educational policy orientation.
Extreme test mode or multiple intelligences?
The center of China's basic education policy orientation is examination, and examination and score are the most familiar concepts in China. Of all the courses, all the exam subjects have the most class hours. According to the statistics of the first and second grade courses in primary school, Chinese mathematics accounts for half, followed by English, and three kinds of homework are more than 2 hours every day. All curriculum design is also carried out through exams, and key concepts are practiced repeatedly from all aspects, for fear of not being taken care of, and even some important contents are strengthened by every means. All the teaching contents are also selected according to the requirements of the examination, and all the teaching links are composed of tests and examinations, which repeatedly emphasize and deepen the understanding of important concepts from all levels. People without professional training can't solve these problems. This is how the "narrow and deep" curriculum system of basic education in China is formed. Learning has become a tedious and boring activity with no interest at all. This is actually a major reason why teenagers are tired of learning.
China's basic education policies are almost always carried out under the requirements of the college entrance examination. Unified syllabus, unified questions, unified exams and unified standard answers have formed a unified thinking system and unified learning steps and methods. Only one champion of the college entrance examination came out. The primary school affiliated to South China Normal University is the only provincial primary school and a famous old school in Guangdong Province. There are three solutions to a math problem for special-grade teachers, which are different from the two solutions of standard answers. As a result, more than a dozen students can't go to affiliated high school of south china normal university because of this problem, which brings great pressure to teachers and principals.
Under the extreme exam, the key to learning is stress, and Chinese and mathematics are not something that ordinary people can handle. In the seemingly relaxed but tightly controlled classroom, the ghost of the exam is weaving an invisible net, which makes teachers, parents and leaders fall into it. A well-known educator went to a township middle school for investigation, and the principal put forward a discussion. The entourage thought that educators could publicize their educational ideas, but all the teachers and team leaders invariably raised questions about the college entrance examination proposition. This is the educational reality under the current basic education policy in China.
Third, the positioning principles and strategies of China's current basic education policy.
From the above, we can see that China's basic education in the new century must examine policies, step out of the education mode with examination as the purpose, and completely cut off the umbilical cord connected with the imperial examination system. At present, the orientation of China's basic education policy has at least three principles.
(A) follow the principle of development
The principle of development means that the basic education policy should be conducive to the development of students, education and society, which are internally consistent, so as to meet the development requirements and produce development effects. In short, the basic education policy must aim at development. Fundamentally change the situation that education is contrary to development. First, changing education is carried out according to the knowledge system, and it is a way chosen from technical examinations. The second is to change the educational model of basic education and put every student in a unified model. The third is to change the phenomenon that the curriculum design and learning development are reversed in basic education, change the educational methods of Chinese and mathematics, and proceed from the reality of students' development. To develop students at that stage, we should first pay attention to the naturalness of students' development, secondly pay attention to the best period of students' development, and thirdly break the egalitarian curriculum system. According to the actual development of students, we should implement three-level teaching of A, B and C, and different subjects have different admission standards (instead of three-level examinations). Fourth, according to the reality of children's development at this stage, the 633 system should be changed to the 543 or 9-year system.
(B) follow the principle of the characteristics of basic education
The working rule of basic education is to formulate basic education policies according to the characteristics of basic education. The characteristics of basic education in China are as follows: first, foundation is the foundation of children, not adults. Children need to learn knowledge, but there is no hard training before development, let alone endless sea training for exams. Children should learn what they need for development. The second is activity. Being active is a child's nature, and entertaining is an important way for children to learn. Therefore, the correct way is to advocate informal knowledge teaching and complete teaching tasks through activities. The third is all-round, that is, in basic education, all kinds of education should be comprehensive. Therefore, basic education should emphasize the coordination of all aspects in school education, the joint role of all parts of education, the overall quality of teachers, the comprehensive integration of knowledge and the comprehensive application of educational means. Therefore, policy orientation should encourage this comprehensive development. In primary and secondary schools, we should not overemphasize the so-called sub-subjects or single subjects. Even middle schools should attach importance to comprehensive subjects and comprehensive education.
(3) Follow the practical principles of China.
According to the regional differences of basic education in China, the implementation of basic education should be mainly controlled by the provinces, giving up the centralized system and allowing diversification. First of all, reform the college entrance examination system, change the unified college entrance examination to local college entrance examination, and then change it to independent enrollment of schools. The second is to change the unified syllabus into general guidance, so that each province can have corresponding academic arrangements and guiding standards for basic education, and can make new adjustments to the learning content and curriculum design of primary and secondary schools. Third, provinces can decide on the school-running system and educational structure and allow public schools to be privatized. China, in particular, has a vast territory, and the situation in each province is complicated. The unified school-running system and charging policy have greatly restricted the development of education. Basic education should be borne by the state, but when the country is not rich, more flexible measures should be taken. An important aspect is that the country should face up to reality. Admit that the current financial resources are limited, and there is no reason for the government to package the funds when there is no money. China is a developing country, and it is still relatively backward at present. The world population 1.5, it is very good to reach this level of education. There is no reason and no need (because it is impossible) for us to achieve the goal that developed countries have achieved for hundreds of years in a few years. Therefore, the charging policy of China's basic education should be considered as follows: First, the principle of charging should be used to solve the payment problem of some children who can't afford to go to school at present, so that they can pay less or not; After that, all the basic expenses of compulsory education will be paid if financial resources permit. The second is to formulate the flexible standard of education fees, and implement the policy of full free of charge according to the students' family economic declaration in grade 1-6. The third is to allow special education services to charge, so that the hidden charges in the past are clear. This part of the cost is mainly used for school development and can also benefit all students. The charging policy is related to the development of education and the development of the country. It is very dangerous not to say that a policy can govern a country or even a province. Taking Guangdong Province as an example, 1996 has realized the "two basics", but it still leaves many problems. First of all, the popularity is low, but students are put into the classroom. At present, many primary schools have more than 60 or even 70 students in each class, and junior high schools are constantly full, and the demand for senior high schools is increasing rapidly. Secondly, the quality is worrying. Full classes make it impossible to improve the quality of education, and the masses have great opinions. Third, the government finance simply cannot meet the requirements of the normal development of basic education. Even in a medium-sized area like Huizhou, the government finance can only allocate 50% of the head fee. Therefore, it is of great significance for China's basic education to properly adjust the charging policy.
The basic education in our country is related to the happiness of every family and the long-term stability and prosperity of the country. Whether it is fairness or efficiency, equality or inequality, we should focus on the overall situation of the nation's future. China's basic education is in a difficult climbing stage. How to promote it to turn population pressure into population resources in turn and promote rapid economic development is a major principle issue that must be considered in the orientation of China's national education policy.