How to "get out of trouble" in reading for rural children?
April 23 is "World Book Day".
There is a lack of extracurricular reading resources, the actual amount of extracurricular reading, time and city are quite different, and there is a general lack of parental participation and companionship... In May 2018, China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, Beijing Normal University and China Philanthropy Research Institute jointly announced A "Rural Children's Reading Report" for poor areas in the central and western regions revealed the problems faced by children in poor areas in extracurricular reading.
As children’s books are becoming more abundant and digital reading resources are constantly emerging, has the reading situation of rural children changed?
Recently, a reporter from the Beijing News interviewed a number of rural primary schools in Hebei, Henan, Guizhou, Yunnan and other places, as well as a number of public welfare organizations dedicated to promoting children’s reading, to understand the current situation of children’s reading in rural areas, and some rural primary schools may break through. It can be a reference sample for "getting out of trouble".
From "read with books" to "read good books"
Wei Yushan, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and president of the China Press and Publication Research Institute, said that at present, there are four main ways for children to read books: one is to read through the school library; the other is to buy books at home; the third is to public libraries; and the fourth is to read. Various institutions for promotion.
Located in remote mountainous areas with inconvenient transportation, there are generally no libraries and bookstores; in areas with bookstores, most of the books sold are course guidance materials, etc., and there are few extracurricular readings; at the same time, due to economic conditions and knowledge level, parents give children Most of the books bought are exercise collections and writing essays... The reporter found in interviews that for rural children, families rarely buy books, and school library or classroom book corners have become the main source for rural children to obtain extracurricular reading materials. .
Fanjia Primary School in Lizhou District, Guangyuan City, Sichuan Province has only 8 classes and 90 students, but has 120 books per capita.
Compared with a small school with a small number of students, the students in this school appear to be "abundant" in reading.
However, for many rural primary schools, there are books to read but no good books or suitable books to read.
There are more than 500 books in Niulan Primary School in Hongshan Township, Zhaotong Qiaotong, Yunnan, covering fables, science and education, and elementary school writings. Although the number can meet the reading needs of children, the versions are a bit outdated.
The reporter learned during the interview that this situation is mainly due to the fact that most of the books provided by schools come from social donations, and the books are not equipped according to age and grade characteristics.
From teacher exploration to professional reading instruction
In the reading process of children, both parents and schools play a very important role.
However, with regard to "reading", limited by the family's financial status and cognition, many parents generally believe that more "practical books" should be purchased with limited funds, that is, teaching supplementary books.
At the same time, rural children generally lack the participation and company of their parents in the reading process.
From the actual situation, the parents of rural children usually do not read or read only occasionally. They have not developed a reading habit and cannot accompany and guide the children to read.
One or both of the parents of the left-behind children go out to work, the children are taken care of by the elderly, and it is difficult for the parents to participate in and accompany the children in reading.
According to Lu Zhongliang, a teacher at Heba Primary School in Dashan Town, Xingren City, Guizhou Province, “There are 181 children in the school, and the reading habit brought to them by the family is basically zero.”
This also means that teachers have to take on more responsibilities to accompany children to read and help children develop reading habits.
According to Xu Ying, the project director of the Social Welfare Research Center of Beijing Normal University, for many rural teachers, this responsibility is a bit heavy. "The administrative tasks and teaching tasks of rural teachers are very heavy, and many teachers are responsible for multiple subjects. ."
Kong Xiaoyan, a core member of the General Research Group of the Close Mother Tongue, who has been engaged in rural reading public welfare projects for a long time, said that the difficulty in implementing rural reading has a lot to do with teachers’ concepts. “Reading is mostly the work that Chinese teachers need to undertake. But many languages The teacher believes that it is enough to teach the content of the Chinese textbook well and complete the teaching task."
Rural children still need help in reading
Fortunately, changes are happening all the time.
In 2014, Zhang Pingyuan, who took over as the principal of Fanjia Elementary School in Lizhou District, Guangyuan City, Sichuan Province, set the second class of evening self-study for the students' free reading time, totaling 50 minutes.
At the same time, the school places different books in the book corner of the class according to the age characteristics of the students.
Among them, the school provides books such as picture books, science popularization, fairy tales, comics, etc. for students in grades one to three, and literature, biographies and other related reading materials for students in grades four to six.
"Extra-curricular reading is internalized, and in-class reading is systematized." Zhang Min, the principal of Sanlitun Primary School in Mengzhuang Town, Xinxiang, Henan, and the teachers, each semester conducts teaching and research for different reading sections and content, and then gradually joins the reading guidance teaching and research of the entire book .
Then, set aside two classes a week as reading classes.
With the guarantee of time, how to stimulate students' interest in reading?
Chai Hong, the vice principal of the Seventh Experimental Primary School in Neihuang County, Henan Province, tried various incentives.
From the teacher’s daily praise to school-level awards and awards, they are all linked to reading.
Every week, the school class will select the title of Reading Star and Reading Pacemaker. After reading the book every day, the school no longer assigns written homework. The only task for the child after returning home is to read.
More and more public welfare organizations have also joined the reading team of rural children, using methods such as cultivating reading teachers and donating children's books to help rural children read well.
The reporter learned that the “Lamp-Lighting Partner” program was launched in the native language to train 80 to 100 high-level children’s reading seed teachers with good professionalism, teaching ability, preaching ability and charity spirit in rural areas, and continue to serve rural schools for three consecutive years. Provided charity services and carried out children's reading experiments in his own class.
In Kong Xiaoyan's view, rural reading education is ultimately a joint effort of the government, schools, teachers, and students.
Social forces such as policies and public welfare institutions and frontline teachers need to be combined with each other.
Public welfare organizations need to provide professional support and lead more social resources to pay attention to rural reading; while the government needs to assume the functions of management and incentives to ensure that the power of public welfare organizations is not in vain.
"Children's Reading Observation from the Perspective of National Reading" research report (in 2020, the National Reading and Fusion Media Think Tank, together with China Press, Publication and Media Group, and China National Reading Media Alliance released)
Reading preferences
The top three favorite books of urban and rural children are animation, fairy tales and science fiction
Teaching tutoring is the category of books they least like to read
The favorite of children in the country is the fairy tale book
The favorite of city kids is anime books
reading habit
68.9% of urban children insist on extracurricular reading every day, and 48.1% of rural children
Online reading
39.7% of urban children like to read online
The proportion of rural children who like to read online is 34.7%
Reading space
Nearly 80% of urban children and nearly 90% of rural children said there are few libraries nearby
Nearly 30% of rural children have never read a book in the library
Dyslexia
Rural children and children: The main difficulties in obtaining book resources are the expensive prices of books and the inability to borrow books from the library.
Urban children: Heavy schoolwork is one of the main difficulties in reading.
"Rural Children's Reading Report" (In 2018, China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, Beijing Normal University and China Philanthropy Research Institute jointly released an after-school reading report for children in poverty-stricken areas in central and western China)
Reading level
The report found that children's extracurricular reading in poverty-stricken areas in the central and western regions, including Guizhou, Sichuan, Shanxi, Henan, Yunnan and other provinces, is still at a low level.
Number of readings
74% of rural children surveyed read less than 10 extracurricular books a year
More than 36% of children read less than 3 books a year
Reading resources
More than 71% of rural households have less than 10 books
Nearly 20% of rural children who do not have a book of extracurricular readings
Reading frequency
72.8% of rural children in poverty-stricken areas read less than 4 times a week
Parent-child reading
89.9% of the children’s parents surveyed rarely read or read only occasionally, did not develop a reading habit, and were unable to accompany and guide the children to read.
Written by/Reporter Yang Feifei of Beijing News