In Ningxia, there are two “special” high schools: they are built in Yinchuan, the capital, but specialize in enrolling students from poor mountainous areas; they not only exempt tuition and fees, accommodation fees, but also provide living allowances to rural students with registered permanent residence; when they first enrolled students, Few people care about it, and it is even regarded as a "liar school", but after that its enrollment rate and school quality have jumped to the forefront of the district...
In the past 18 years, the two high schools have trained more than 50,000 college students in the poorest Xihaigu area in Ningxia
The experience of studying before university is like a difficult "adventure" for Ma Shilong, and high school is undoubtedly a "survival from desperation".
“My family was too poor when I was a child, and I had to exchange pencils with eggs when I was in elementary school, and I almost dropped out because of the 6 yuan tuition. So I can go to college and get out of the mountains is a luxury.” Now it has become the main development and reform department of a certain city in Xinjiang. The person in charge, Ma Shilong, still has a deep memory of poverty, and it is even harder to conceal his nostalgia and gratitude for his high school alma mater.
"It's not an exaggeration to say that high school was a turning point in my destiny. Without these help, I might not even be able to get into university, let alone go to Peking University."
Ningxia Liupanshan Senior High School is the school that changed Ma Shilong's destiny.
In Ningxia, there are two “special” high schools: they are built in Yinchuan, the capital, but specialize in enrolling students from poor mountainous areas; they not only exempt tuition and fees, accommodation fees, but also provide living allowances to rural students with registered permanent residence; when they first enrolled students, Few people care about it, and it is even regarded as a "liar school", but after that its enrollment rate and school quality have jumped to the forefront of the district...
In the past 18 years, Ningxia Liupanshan Senior High School (hereinafter referred to as "Liupanshan High School") and Ningxia Yucai Middle School (hereinafter referred to as "Yucai Middle School"), as important positions for educational poverty alleviation, have cultivated the poorest Xihaigu area in Ningxia. More than 50,000 college students.
Let more children, especially children from poor families, go to college
Xihaigu is a general term for nine impoverished counties and districts in central and southern Ningxia. It is also part of the contiguous and extremely poor areas of Liupan Mountain. It was once designated by the United Nations as "one of the most unsuitable areas for human survival."
There are deep mountains and deep valleys, drought and water shortage, and poverty has lasted for generations.
Since the reform and opening up, the country has continuously increased its poverty alleviation efforts in Xihaigu, but until the beginning of the new century, many local people still live in cave dwellings, drink cellar water, walk on mud roads, and barely make ends meet in the mountains.
In poor and backward areas, high-quality educational resources are "luxuries."
It is hard for students to go to school, and it is even harder to go to a good school.
This kind of experience is especially profound for Ma Shilong, who was born in the rural area of Xihaigu in the 1990s, "My two sisters dropped out early because they couldn't pay the tuition fees. I just barely graduated from junior high school because of twists and turns."
Ma Shilong's five-year elementary school was spent in two teaching sites.
He remembered the teaching site where the first, second and third grades were located. There were three classes, but there were only two classrooms, and the three teachers were relatively old.
"In the third grade, there were 27 students in the class. Later, I was the only one who went to high school."
After entering junior high school, Ma Shilong began to live on campus.
A dormitory converted from a classroom is packed with more than 60 students. The beds are made of bricks and wooden bars. There is no fan in summer and no stove in winter. The students have to wear cotton-padded clothes and pants together.
"The school has a cafeteria in the first year of the junior high school. Although the meal is potato soup, it is good enough to eat hot meals. When the second-year cafeteria is converted into a classroom, the students can only go home on the weekend and carry a pack of dried buns and cold water. Eat. It’s no exaggeration to say that I hadn’t drunk boiled water much before I went to high school.” Ma Shilong said.
In his opinion, the suffering in life is nothing, the most terrifying thing is the poverty of the spiritual world.
From the beginning of literacy, Ma Shilong loved reading, but there were no libraries in elementary and junior high schools, and he could not afford books at home, so he had to borrow books from teachers and relatives.
"Many children's dreams were buried at that time."
Jin Cunyu, the principal of Liupanshan High School, has taught in a middle school in a deeply impoverished county in Xihaigu for a long time, and he still remembers the "poor" in education.
He said that in Xihaigu around 2000, it can only guarantee that children can have school during the compulsory education stage, and the class can be taught by teachers. The school's software and hardware can not keep up. What is more important is the serious lack of high school education resources.
"At that time, there were only 13 high schools in this area with a population of about 1.8 million. Moreover, the tuition, accommodation, and living expenses for a child's high school for a year add up to an average of two to three thousand yuan, which is a sum for many families. Huge expenditure. After only completing compulsory education, children cannot find a good way to continue their studies and employment. The lack of high school education resources has not only become a bottleneck restricting the development of mountainous areas, but also some students and parents have no hope of studying. "He said.
"For the development of mountainous areas, education should be given priority, to build a high-quality high school so that more children, especially children from poor families, can go to college", which became the consensus of the party committee and government of the autonomous region at that time.
Where is the school built?
In accordance with the general rules of running a school, considering many aspects such as capital investment and source of students, many cadres and experts who participated in decision-making at that time suggested that this high school could be built in an area where students are relatively concentrated, such as Guyuan City.
This time, Ningxia broke the routine and determined to build a high school for Xihaigu students in Yinchuan, the capital of several hundred kilometers away.
"Using Yinchuan's location, teachers and other advantageous resources to run a school can create a good learning and growth environment for mountain students, so that they can stand on the same starting line and enjoy the same high-quality education as urban children." In Deng Shudong's view, this creative school-running model also contains the determination of the party committee and the government to solve the problem of poverty in Xihai with a heart-hearted and true spirit.
In addition to the school’s location in the capital city, Liupanshan High School also exempts all students from tuition and accommodation fees, and subsidizes 1,000 yuan of living expenses for each rural student.
In 2002, Liupanshan High School entered the planning and construction stage and began to recruit teachers from all over the country simultaneously.
The first batch of 48 outstanding young teachers from all over the country, many of whom have become "entrepreneurs" in poverty alleviation education at Liupanshan High School despite the real difficulties and pressures of income decline, difficult environment, and family opposition.
Zhao Baoli and his wife from Liyang, Jiangsu are two of them.
"When I first came, I lived in a temporary dormitory. A few people were crowded into a small room. The living environment and wages were much worse than before, but everyone was rushing to'run a good school for children in poor mountainous areas.' Yes, I want to play more value here." Zhao Baoli said.
It's not the snakeskin bag clothes that are embarrassed, but the countdown score
Although it has a high positioning and first-class teacher allocation, Liupanshan High School's first year enrollment is not smooth.
"This is a new school located a few hundred kilometers away. It does not charge tuition and pays out money. Some parents in Xihaigu fear that their children will become the school's'experimental products', and some are worried about being a'liar school'." Jin Cunyu Say.
In the end, the teachers "want to persuade" 604 new students from their parents.
According to the general law of running a school, the quality of the source of students determines to a large extent the entrance rate of a school.
However, this rule was broken in Liupanshan High School.
Although more than 80% of the enrolled students come from rural junior high schools, and most of them are "lower middle and lower students", Liupanshan High School has achieved a rate of 69% for two books and 69% for one in the first college entrance examination after the school was founded. 41% score.
"Students study hard, teachers teach hard", the teachers told the secret behind the admission rate.
Yue Weipeng, the director of the Political and Education Department of Liupanshan High School at the time, told reporters that in the early years, children in mountainous areas had really poor foundations, especially courses like English, which lacked too much. "But the children work very hard and the teachers are also anxious. With new knowledge, taking time out of class to supplement junior high school courses is equivalent to three years of classes for six years."
Now when I think of the scene when he entered school, what embarrassed Ma Shilong was not the clothes in snakeskin bags, nor the gray cloth shoes with holes in his feet, but the countdown score.
"I failed in the high school entrance examination. If it were not for the special bonus policy, I would not be able to get in. This result made me very unconfident and stressed."
"But when I saw the beautiful campus, advanced equipment, excellent teachers, and motivated classmates, I knew that I had come to a learning paradise." Ma Shilong said, because he likes to read, he did not hesitate to choose liberal arts.
On weekends, he spends almost all day in the library and reading room, letting himself wander in the ocean of books.
Because they desire "knowledge to change destiny" and cherish the hard-won learning opportunities, Liupanshan and Yucai students work harder than ordinary school students.
“In the early days of the school’s establishment, teachers seldom went to bed before midnight. They had to'turn on a small stove' and prepare lessons for the students, and were also responsible for'driving out' students who had borrowed to study in the toilet. It was distressed and helpless." Zhao Baoli said. .
In addition to being willing to work hard, the young "entrepreneurs" of Liupanshan High School are also making "new" efforts in teaching concepts and methods.
They took advantage of the opportunity of the national new curriculum reform experiment to build a newly established school into a sample school for the development of basic education and the curriculum reform of ordinary high schools in Ningxia.
The expectations of parents, the efforts of students, and the pressure of teachers have turned into sheets of delightful admission notices.
"The results of the first college entrance examination were unexpected. On the day the results were announced, many parents dubiously called to confirm their children's results." Jin Cunyu said.
Admitted to Peking University with the first place in liberal arts in the district that year was like a dream for Ma Shilong.
"I never thought that my destiny would change drastically in high school. When I first entered school, I just wanted to get admitted to university and find a stable job. That's not bad." He said, "I am the first one from the village. University students, people in the village didn't know what Peking University was, only that it was a university in Beijing."
The results of educational poverty alleviation began to appear in Liupanshan High School, which gave policymakers confidence in this school-running model.
In 2006, another high school of the same nature-Ningxia Yucai Middle School was established in Yinchuan City to recruit students.
At present, the number of students in the two schools has exceeded 13,000, making them the two largest high schools in Ningxia "single-sized".
Wang Yongming, the vice principal of Wangmin Middle School in Wangmin Township, Xiji County, said that even if children in Xihaigu were admitted to local high schools, they had limited opportunities to enter universities. After all, the quality of education and resources could not keep up.
Although Yinchuan also has several high-quality high schools, few students can enter due to high admission scores.
"The most direct effect brought by these two schools is to enable students who could not afford to go to high school to study, and students who originally went to ordinary universities can get better."
He said that now Liupanshan High School and Yucai Middle School enroll about 500 students in Xiji County every year. Last year, about one-ninth of the students at Wangmin Middle School entered these two schools.
"Because they do not occupy the local enrollment quotas and indicators, the enrollment rate of Xihaigu primary middle school has also been greatly improved, which means that more children have the opportunity to go to high school."
In order to allow more weak junior high school and rural junior high school children to enter Liupanshan High School and Yucai Middle School, the two schools will be inclined in actual enrollment.
In addition, since the implementation of the targeted poverty alleviation policy, under the normal subsidy policy, the two schools have also increased support for students from filed card households, ensuring their full funding from school to graduation, and realizing family financial difficulties Students "should help and do everything."
Use knowledge to change destiny, not just focus on the rate of enrollment
When students first enter school, many habits need to be cultivated. Especially in the early years, it often happens that they don’t use water to flush toilets, the tap is broken, and they don’t take buses.
“It’s all too common for teachers to come from home at night to send students to the hospital, to pay for the medical bills for the students, and even to charge the students’ meal cards to improve their meals. The students’ mood swings can be noticed by the teacher. We often joking about the teacher We are'mother's square'." Ma Shilong recalled.
Ma Yeqiu, a psychological counseling teacher at Yucai Middle School, said that these children are relatively introverted and not good at speech. When they are hundreds of kilometers away from home, failure in exams, conflicts with classmates, and missing family members may bring them great emotions. Volatility, psychological counseling is very important at this time.
For large boarding high schools such as Liupanshan High School and Yucai Middle School, closed management is a mandatory requirement.
How to enable children who are far from their parents to study and live with peace of mind and happily, but also to broaden their horizons and tap their potential has become an important issue facing these two schools.
"The goal of poverty alleviation schools is to help more students from poor families enter universities and use knowledge to change their destiny. However, in this process, we should not only focus on the rate of enrollment, so that children can only'dead study'. Examination machine. The ultimate goal of education is to educate people, become talents, and promote people's all-round development." Jin Cunyu said.
Singing at the "small class meeting" before class and discussing with the basketball teammates after class are the happiest things for Yucai High School sophomore student Ke Yuan after studying.
Ke Yuan's hometown is in the depths of Xihaigu Mountain.
In 2012, the 9-year-old moved with her parents to an ecological immigration village in the Sichuan District hundreds of miles away.
After the relocation, because of the improvement of the learning conditions, Ke Yuan's learning motivation was more sufficient, and she secretly determined to be admitted to Liupanshan or Yucai.
"I want to go to a good high school, but I don't want to increase the burden on my family." She said.
A dream come true.
Through his own efforts, Ke Yuan was admitted to Yucai Middle School as he wished.
"My parents were very happy. They took me to the county town to take a meal on the day I got the notice." She said that when she entered the school, she felt that the campus was so beautiful and she was always worried about getting lost.
Perhaps because of the tradition of singing "Hua'er" in his hometown, Ke Yuan loved to sing since he was a child, and he was also very talented in music. At that time, he often sang to the mountains and cattle and sheep.
"There are many clubs and interest groups in the school. You can join if you are interested. The school will also provide us with opportunities to show ourselves. This makes me more confident and motivates me to learn." Ke Yuan said she did not expect to join There will be a chance to sing in high school.
After entering the school for more than two years, this girl who was once introverted and dared not raise her head when she spoke, has been able to stand on the stage and sing to her classmates.
Ma Shilong also told reporters that although high school studies were intense, many of his hobbies and expertise were "excavated" at that time.
At that time, he took guitar and calligraphy as an elective, and he also discovered that he had a talent for running. After going to university, he became a national second-level athlete.
"University roommates praised me for my versatility. I said that these were all in high school. They found it incredible, because for a rural child, even if they go to university, they may not be able to learn these talents."
Organize interest groups such as choirs, literature clubs, basketball teams, hold campus cultural festivals, organize students to watch news broadcasts every day, and invite experts and scholars to come to school to give lectures... The colorful activities not only show the students’ individuality, but also keep the door closed. The closed campus "lived".
As early as 2007, the school and the High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China realized "interactive distance teaching". Students in Liupanshan High School can share the high-quality teaching resources of the High School Affiliated to the National People's University, and teachers and students of both sides can also communicate in real time remotely.
With the continuous upgrading of the informatization level of Liupanshan High School and Yucai Middle School, "Internet + education" has penetrated into all aspects of teaching.
Teaching and educating people is a "farming mode" and must be cultivated every day
In November 2020, Xihaigu's last impoverished county was lifted out of poverty and completely bid farewell to absolute poverty.
As an important position for educational poverty alleviation, Liupanshan High School and Yucai Middle School also handed in a brilliant "poverty alleviation answer sheet": more than 50,000 students entered the university for the 17th college entrance examination, the undergraduate progress rate exceeded 95%, and the key university progress rate More than 70%...
"Among them, the proportion of rural students and girls entering school has increased significantly." Deng Shudong said.
“Poverty alleviation through education can fundamentally change the destiny of children and families in rural areas and poverty-stricken areas, and save human resources for the sustainable development of Xihaigu area.” Jin Cunyu said.
Ma Shilong told reporters that since he was admitted to university, the villagers began to really attach importance to the education of their children. Every year after that, students were admitted to Liupanshan High School and Yucai Middle School, and some were admitted to undergraduate colleges.
"In addition, I also hope that my changes can bring more social value." He said that when he graduated from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, there were actually many job opportunities, but he decided to choose a remote area because he had experienced poverty and backwardness. , And majoring in economics, I hope to help the backward areas do some practical things and help more people get rid of poverty.
"Because I have benefited, I will work hard to promote the Liupanshan High School model to be implemented locally." He said.
Among the more than 50,000 graduates of the two high schools, two-thirds chose to return to Ningxia, and a considerable part of them "returned home" as teachers.
Zhang Rong, from the rural area of Tongxin County, Wuzhong City, Ningxia, said that she and her elder brother were admitted to Liupanshan High School, and they also chose free teacher students in college. After graduation, her elder brother returned to her alma mater to teach, and she chose to return to her hometown county high school as a teacher .
When he returned to teach in his hometown, Zhang Rong's biggest feeling is that the school facilities have improved, the number of girls in the class has increased, and there are more young teachers like him.
"We hope to influence and help more children like our own teachers and change the face of education in our hometown." Zhang Rong said.
An Miaomiao, a senior at Liupanshan High School who is preparing for the college entrance examination, has targeted the "People's Congress" and "Fudan."
"Going to Liupanshan High School is the most correct choice I made. The teachers here are more attentive, the students are more diligent, and they are warm and loving like a big family."
An Miaomiao's hometown is in the rural area of Longde County, Guyuan City. The family's source of income mainly depends on his parents farming and raising cattle. Although there is no need to worry about food and clothing, it is still not enough for four children to go to school.
She said that her parents did not choose to go out to work, just wanting their children to study at ease. Now younger brothers and sisters also follow her as an example.
With the improvement of material conditions, the students' dreams have become more "big".
"I feel very lucky that I was able to move out of Dashan with my family a few years ago, and then I was able to come to Yinchuan to study for free. I really like music and my family also supports it, so I am going to take an art exam and fight for my dreams. Click." Ke Yuan said.
Precisely because it carried too many expectations and dreams, the mission of Liupanshan High School and Yucai Middle School did not end with the completion of poverty alleviation.
Instead, the principals felt that the burden on them was heavier.
Deng Shudong said that with the improvement of the people's living standards, the attractiveness of the school's "two exemptions and one subsidy" policy will naturally decrease, and parents and students also value the quality of education more.
“At present, there is still a big gap in education between mountainous areas and rural areas, urban and rural areas, and the masses’ demand for high-quality education has not yet been met. Xihaigu, who has gotten rid of poverty, has ushered in new examination questions for rural revitalization and has a greater desire for talents. All of these require the school to continue to adhere to the goal of high-quality education, and there must be no slack."
In Jin Cunyu's view, to achieve the goal of high-quality schooling in the "post-poverty era", the school's informatization and modernization level needs to be improved, the school-based curriculum needs to be further expanded, and the "spiritual assistance" for students needs to be strengthened...
In the Liupanshan High School playground, there are two special "six thirty": the morning run at six thirty in the morning and the reading at six thirty in the evening.
For more than ten years, as long as there is no special situation, Jin Cunyu will be a member of the morning running team every day.
"This is not only the habit of Liupanshan High School students, but also a kind of campus culture and spirit that encourages everyone to move forward. Teaching and educating people is a work of'farming mode', which must be cultivated every day. Although the results are slow, the changes are amazing. "He said.
(Wang Lei, Zhao Qian, Ma Sijia)