(a) change our attitude, the attitude of ordinary people always think that children's education is not important; It doesn't matter much whether you study early or late for a year or two.
We are indifferent to children's needs, abilities, interests and emotions. Therefore, we unconsciously neglected their education and entrusted them to the old lady and the partners in the street. Under this kind of psychology, kindergartens will not develop. If we want to promote kindergartens, we must fundamentally eliminate this attitude of neglecting children. We should awaken Chinese people to understand that childhood is the most important life and childhood education is the most important education.
Parents who care about their children understand the importance of naive education and are willing to send their children to kindergarten. But they have an unbreakable prejudice, which is also unacceptable. This prejudice is that they don't want their children to associate with children from poor families. They think their children are good and poor children are bad. They think it will be a bad influence for children from poor families to enter kindergarten.
Therefore, kindergartens have become the exclusive products of the rich and the pseudo-intellectual class. You know, there were only people in the Republic of China, and no one was there, so no one was there. People are made up of children. The mission of educators is to turn good children into bad children, and should not separate good children from bad children, let alone think that children from rich families are good children and children from poor families are bad children; In particular, we should not accommodate the opinions of the rich and exclude the children of the poor. Parents of wealthy families and pseudo-intellectuals should put their children and those of unfortunate families in a kindergarten for edification if they don't want their newborn children to be candidates for the collapse of New China. Kindergarten managers should dedicate the whole kindergarten to the children of the whole society if they don't want to regard the kindergarten as a temporary nursery where rich ladies play mahjong. However, in this way, kindergarten teachers must understand that their mission is not to indulge casually, but to use good children to turn bad children into good children and use their advantages to turn bad children into good children.
Recognizing the importance of early life education is the starting point for popularizing kindergartens; The whole society recognizes that kindergartens are educational places for children and the starting point for popularizing appropriate kindergartens. These two attitudes must be obtained, and kindergartens will have the hope of popularization.
(2) It is expensive to change the method of kindergarten. If we don't try to save money, it will not be easy to popularize. The places that need kindergartens most are rural areas and women's areas. Kindergartens in women's areas can also be funded by factories, and the vertical use fee is too high, so Shangyi has to raise funds. The countryside is poor and poor, and primary schools that cost less are not popular, let alone kindergartens that cost twice as much. Therefore, promoting kindergartens in rural areas is like threading a needle. We must make a fundamental change towards the principle of saving money, so that kindergartens can have the hope of going to the countryside and popularizing.
(3) The biggest difficulty in changing the system of training teachers and popularizing education is the training of teachers. If we want to popularize childish education, we need at least1500 thousand teachers. This is the most difficult question; Because not only the funds are huge, but also the training is not appropriate. After training, you don't have to run a kindergarten, or run a kindergarten that is not suitable for the national conditions. That's too bad. It is necessary to run a naive normal college, but it must be fundamentally reformed to train new kindergarten teachers. Even so, we can't train all teachers to be formal and naive teachers. We have found a new way now, which can make us optimistic. Naive Normal College of Experimental Rural Normal School runs a rural kindergarten in Yanziji, called the second central kindergarten. At the beginning, I accepted three apprentices, followed the naive teacher Mr. Xu to run the kindergarten, and Mr. Wang served as the director. The day before yesterday, he told me that the apprenticeship system in kindergartens seems to be implemented in primary schools, which can alleviate the loneliness of rural primary school teachers. I said, "It's true. Apprenticeship can not only alleviate the loneliness of life, but also promote universal education. " It is necessary to popularize primary education and naive education through apprenticeship. If we focus on excellent kindergartens and train two or three apprentices every year, it would be great to run one more kindergarten, that is, one more place to train teachers. I think there are 360 lines, each line has disciples, and all lines are popular. Carpenters are everywhere. How did he get here? Apprenticeship. Tailors, masons, masons, blacksmiths, 34 million gardeners, isn't this very popular? To tell the truth, the integration of teaching and learning is a clear apprenticeship. The disadvantages of apprenticeship system are: getting something for nothing, the master refusing to teach with all his strength and the apprentice being abused. If we can take the essence of apprenticeship and get rid of its disadvantages, the effect will be very good. If this method is applied to kindergartens, I am sure it will help popularize childish education. Mr. Chen Heqin and I had a very pleasant talk recently. He advocated taking Gulou kindergarten to try. Gulou kindergarten is the most research-oriented, and now it's great to recruit apprentices to do experiments to promote naive teachers.
The above three steps of popularizing childish education are only my personal experience, and there must be many omissions. Comrades who care about children's happiness will be grateful if they can see teachers in other good ways.
(Originally published in February 29th 1928 "Rural Education Newsletter", Volume 2, No.4)