What is the solution to the pain points of rural education under the vision of "common prosperity"?
It is another year's school season and another Teacher's Day, but this time the school season and Teacher's Day are unusual because of a brand new background.
"Common prosperity" is a high-frequency word that has recently been hotly discussed by the whole people, and its popularity has also been transmitted to the vast rural areas.
So, in this era when rural revitalization plans are gradually advancing and common prosperity has become a common vision, how can education, as the basis for talent reserves, social development, and even modernization, play its due role in rural areas?
Under the vision of "common prosperity", how to solve the pain points and difficulties of rural education for many years?
To this end, a reporter from the Beijing News interviewed Zhu Qizhen, a professor at China Agricultural University, and Shao Xingjiang, deputy director of the Institute of Educational Leadership and Policy, Zhejiang University, to discuss how rural education can escape difficulties in the new era.
Zhu Qizhen: Rural education should return to the rural essence
“Without education, there will be no talents, without talents, it will be difficult to rejuvenate, and the decline of the countryside will hardly be reversed.” On the approach of Teacher’s Day, Zhu Qizhen, a professor at China Agricultural University, said in an interview with the Beijing News that in the past few decades, rural education In fact, the essence is to continuously cultivate talents far away from the countryside, which intensifies the loss of rural talents.
In the realization of common prosperity in the future, rural education should return to its essence and focus on cultivating more talents for rural development.
Beijing News: In the era of realizing the vision of common prosperity, what function does rural education play?
Zhu Qizhen: Without education, there would be no talents, and without talents, there would be no high-quality development.
Rural education is also the same. If education cannot keep up, it will be difficult to achieve development, and may even further decline.
The Beijing News: Why do many methods to improve the quality of education fail to work as expected?
Zhu Qizhen: In the past ten years of practice, we have found that many rural school bungalows have become buildings, day schools have become boarding houses, or sports grounds and various equipment have been added.
However, the number of teachers is still those, or even fewer, and the concepts and methods of education have not kept up.
In other words, the students did not get a higher quality education as a result.
On the contrary, due to boarding or being far away from home, problems such as accompany students in the countryside have been brought, and the hollowing phenomenon has been exacerbated.
In other words, rural education has not become a boost for rural development. Instead, it has intensified the flow of rural talents and funds to the cities. After more than ten years of withdrawal and school mergers, the rural areas have not really benefited.
Beijing News: The gap in the quality of education between urban and rural areas exists objectively. How can we cultivate enough talents?
Zhu Qizhen: To improve the level of rural education, we must first understand the purpose of the improvement?
In the past, it was often said that the education gap between urban and rural areas was large and education levels should be balanced. But how to balance it?
If rural schools are made the same as urban schools, and children are allowed to squeeze a single-plank bridge to train more students entering 985 and 211 universities, the education level in rural areas will of course be much worse.
If we change our concept and let rural education cultivate more talents who can help rural revitalization, will our rural education level be sufficient?
In fact, it is not enough.
It is even more inadequate, because in the past, rural education aimed to train students to become urban rather than rural talents. From this perspective, rural education is far from enough in helping students recognize the countryside and training skills. .
In the past and even the current rural education policy, children in the countryside are trained to become talents suitable for cities, and people are not encouraged to stay in the countryside. This is an urgent need to change.
Beijing News: After changing the concept, how can people really stay in the countryside instead of all wanting to enter the city?
Zhu Qizhen: Making the countryside attractive to young people is the most difficult thing, but it is also the most critical thing. This is not only a matter of education, but also a systematic reform, which is full of difficulties.
Among them, the most important thing is to truly turn agriculture into an attractive industry and turn farmers into a respected profession.
For young people, if they can have a decent job in the country, have a considerable income, and have good security, they will naturally choose to stay in the country, and even attract young people from the city to enter the country.
This is a condition for realization. The current farming is no longer facing the loess and back to the sky. Mechanized farming has freed farmers from heavy physical labor. This is also the basis for the next step of reform.
Shao Xingjiang: Urban and rural education should transition to high-quality and balanced
Urban and rural education is balanced. In the context of common prosperity, Shao Xingjiang, deputy director of the Institute of Educational Leadership and Policy, Zhejiang University, pointed out to a reporter from the Beijing News that it should be a process of continuous evolution from "basic equilibrium" to "quality equilibrium."
At the same time, the government is the main body of responsibility for compulsory education. In the development of rural education, government responsibilities should be more reflected.
At the moment when common prosperity is being hotly discussed, Shao Xingjiang suggested that my country should increase investment in rural education in three areas in the future, namely, the unified hardware standards, the unified allocation of teachers, and the unified investment of public funds.
The Beijing News: Over the years, the gap in education between urban and rural areas has attracted much attention. As a researcher, how big do you think the current gap is?
Shao Xingjiang: my country had a basic and balanced evaluation of compulsory education before. Currently, more than 90% of the more than 2,800 counties in the country have passed the evaluation. Balanced level of education.
However, on the basis of the basic balance of compulsory education, my country has also proposed a balance of quality education, but there are still very few counties that can truly pass the assessment of the balance of quality education.
Beijing News: What are the reasons for the unsatisfactory effect of education balance?
Shao Xingjiang: There are many reasons.
First of all, under the dual structure of urban and rural areas, the urban education government-run mode and the rural education farmer-run mode have lasted for many years, and there is a huge difference in the ability of the two to invest in resources.
Secondly, compared with cities, there are natural constraints on rural resources, and teachers and students are more concentrated in cities.
Third, in many small and medium-sized cities and county towns, land finance accounts for a high proportion. The government has implemented many policies to drive land sales and attract farmers to buy houses in cities, but the land is sold, houses are built, schools are not built, and rural residents Buying a house in the city will inevitably bring children into urban schools, which has caused the current situation of urban schools being crowded and rural schools shrinking. Small classes in rural schools have become a common phenomenon.
Fourth, in the past, key schools were basically built in cities, which would also lead to uneven education.
Beijing News: How can we achieve a true balance of quality education?
Shao Xingjiang: In the past few decades, the concept of development has been that of giving priority to efficiency and giving consideration to fairness.
It is obviously more efficient to allocate resources to urban schools with more students and better quality of students.
However, compulsory education is a kind of social security and requires a fair allocation of social resources.
Fortunately, the development concept of our country has also been changing recently. It has shifted from giving priority to efficiency and giving consideration to fairness to giving priority to equality and giving consideration to efficiency. This is also an opportunity for the development of rural education.
Beijing News: In the era of promoting common prosperity, do you have any specific suggestions for the development of rural education?
Shao Xingjiang: There is no obvious difference in living standards between urban and rural areas. It is the foundation of common prosperity.
The government is the main body of responsibility for compulsory education. In the development of rural education, the government's responsibilities should be more manifested and more resources should be invested in the villages.
Specifically, I think there are three areas that need to increase investment in the future.
The first is the unification of hardware standards. At present, our country no longer advocates the implementation of key school strategies, but the gap in hardware investment between urban and rural areas is still large. In the future, at least in terms of various hardware, urban and rural schools must be unified.
This hardware is not only a teaching building, but also a variety of teaching facilities.
Second, the allocation of teachers should be unified. The current teacher-student ratio in my country still has a gap between urban and rural areas. It needs to be unified in the future. At the same time, the phenomenon of small classes in rural areas must be taken into account so that rural schools are truly equipped with sufficient teachers. It's not just a digital standard.
Third, the input of public funds must be unified. At present, there is still a big gap between the public funds obtained by urban and rural schools. In the future of education fair and balanced education, the fairness and unity of public funds will inevitably be required. This is also the realization of commonality in the future. The needs and foundation of affluent.
If the public funds of rural schools are still less than that of cities, and the treatment of teachers is still lower than that of cities, students and teachers want to go to the cities, how can we talk about common prosperity?
Beijing News reporter Zhou Huaizong
Picture of this edition / Picture courtesy of interviewee