Textbook "urbanization" debate
Hou Changliang teaches at school
Hou Changliang's wife is also his teaching colleague
Hou Changliang, a volunteer teacher at Xiangyang Primary School in Haizi Town, Yiliang County, Zhaotong, Yunnan, encountered a problem.
In a second-grade math class, a student took the textbook and asked him, "What is Riverside Park?" What the student couldn't understand was an after-school exercise, asking the children to count the spring outing places that their classmates liked to go to. Several options are given, namely zoo, botanical garden, amusement park, forest park, riverside park.
For these children who grew up in the mountains of Yunnan, zoos, botanical gardens and amusement parks can still rely on short online videos to understand and imagine, but the common riverside parks in cities are beyond their life experience.
Hou Changliang believes that today's textbooks "are completely urban children's textbooks, and textbooks written from the perspective of urban children rarely have elements that are close to the life of rural children."
He felt that the local content should be compiled into the main courses such as Chinese and mathematics, and integrated into the corresponding test paper exercises of the main courses.
Zhou Jinhang, who has been teaching in the borderlands of Yunnan for a long time, pointed out that the unified teaching material itself is the basis of education fairness. As for the content in the teaching process that is different from the life of rural children, it is the part that teachers should try to explain and explain. If we don’t understand it, we will escape it and replace it with something we understand, and those who don’t understand still don’t understand, which is even worse.”
Chengdu Business Daily-Red Star News reporter Pan Junwen
Intern reporter Zhou Weihao
What is a good rural education
In fact, what Hou Changliang is really worried about is not the trouble that a few pictures and knowledge points in the textbook will bring to the children. Teachers can always explain these problems with more effort. What he is worried about is the trend hidden behind these appearances. : "The kind of things that subtly guide children, making them feel that the city is good, and their hometown and countryside are not good, making rural children more and more reluctant to stay in their hometown."
Rural education cannot be an education that allows children to escape from the countryside.
Hou Changliang believes that a good rural education should make rural children feel the beauty of their hometown and love their hometown. "Hometown is the root of a person."
Xie Jingyu agrees with this concept.
She believes that it is difficult for the vast majority of rural children to "get out of the mountains" on their own. Rather than creating a "way out" for them, it is more important for them to discover their own strengths and discover the landscape, fields and humanities of their hometown.
For example, in Xie Jingyu's school, the surrounding area is rich in tea, so you can take the children to understand how the tea here is produced, "new tea, old tea, what is the return of it. Let him really understand the hometown. Specialty products, you will have a higher sense of identity with your hometown, instead of knowing what specialty teas in Lincang are.”
Zhou Jinhang believes that rural education should allow children in primary and secondary schools to understand the outside world and different industries.
Rather than simply telling children to go to school well, it is more important to provide the knowledge and vision they need, so that children can find their own goals, such as staying here to grow fruits like their parents did, or becoming a doctor or a teacher. "
Just a few days ago, when Zhou Jinhang visited nearby towns, he met several college students. After graduating from college, these children returned to their hometowns and inherited the work of growing tropical fruits such as mangoes at home. Although it was hard work, they could have more than a dozen or two in a year. With an income of 100,000 yuan, "it's a lot better than living in the city."
In his view, this is an important achievement of rural education, allowing young people who have received high-quality education to go out and then come back to build their hometown.
troubled
"Teacher, we don't have such a happy garden here"
The urban elements in the textbooks have indeed had an impact on rural education.
Hou Changliang encountered this problem more than once.
Still in the second grade math class, when he was explaining the exercises in the textbook, a student pointed to a picture and said, "Teacher, we don't have such a happy garden here."
Hou Changliang admitted that certain urban elements are essential to the learning process of children in mountain villages, and are also helpful to their growth.
However, he believes that in the exercises and exam papers for subjects such as Chinese and mathematics, the proportion of urban elements is too high - any exercise question is based on "high-rise buildings, computers, cars, supermarkets, shopping malls, entertainment venues, museums..." To describe the object, there is almost no title for the description object, such as "fields, farm work, cattle herding, wood cutting...".
The post-80s generation who was born in the countryside still remembers that when he was a child, there were a lot of content in the textbooks that were close to rural life, especially the illustrations. Every time he saw these illustrations, Hou Changliang felt very kind when he was a child, "I would like to do it myself. same in it."
However, nowadays, the "urbanization" of teaching materials is becoming more and more obvious, which makes him worry: if children form the idea that cities are superior to rural areas through teaching materials, how can children love their hometown, "how can they be expected to Make your hometown more beautiful and unite the people of your hometown to live a happy life?"
More than 800 kilometers away from Zhaotong, where Hou Changliang coaches, Zhou Jinhang, located in the westernmost part of Yunnan, is also facing the same problem.
When he first came to teach there, he heard a colleague tell a story. There was an error correction on the Chinese paper: Autumn is here, and people are especially happy to go to Xiangshan to see the red leaves.
The children basically changed joy to love, but many children also changed another place - Xiangshan was changed to a high mountain. "They have not heard of Xiangshan, so they don't know what it is."
debate
Should teaching materials be adapted for children in rural areas?
After he started teaching, Zhou Jinhang paid special attention to such topics.
In a math class last year, there was an exercise question asking to calculate the area of the altar of earth.
He played a video about Tiananmen Square in Beijing. While introducing Tiananmen Square and the Temple of Earth to the students, the Temple of Earth was the size of a few of their schools. He explained the knowledge points of area calculation and successfully completed the teaching objectives of this class.
The information and knowledge beyond the reach of rural children are called "exceeding questions" by Zhou Jinhang.
He believes that if teachers prepare properly, these topics can be a good opportunity to stimulate children's interest in learning and enrich their horizons.
Rural teachers have widely differing views on whether teaching materials should be tailored to children in rural areas.
In 2019, when Zhou Jinhang began to teach, the ministry-edited primary school textbooks were released, and the national primary education textbooks were unified. The textbooks used by children were the same regardless of whether they were in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen or remote villages.
Regarding the unified teaching materials, he has a clear supportive attitude, and believes that the same teaching materials are the basis of education fairness. "You said that you should replace the teaching materials with those that they can easily understand, and those who don't understand they still don't understand."
In the primary and secondary schools around him, there are special local courses, which will explain the local customs, history and culture and model characters.
As far as Zhou Jinhang knows, some schools also use local characteristic dances as inter-class exercises. These are all effective ways of inheriting local culture in his opinion.
Hou Changliang does not agree with such a model. In his view, the local textbooks in many areas are only used as side courses or extracurricular reading materials. In order to let students truly perceive the local culture, they cannot only rely on these reading materials. In line with the local local content, it is compiled into the main courses such as Chinese and mathematics, and integrated into the corresponding test paper exercises of the main course.”
Observed
"Many times, the ability and cognition of rural teachers can't keep up."
In fact, whether to set up local courses or combine the characteristics of local life in teaching is an attempt to explore a higher-quality rural education model.
Xiong Bingqi, dean of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, pointed out that it is impossible for unified textbooks to meet the needs of so many students across the country, especially the needs of school-run schools and individualized teaching.
He believes that on the basis of the unified textbooks, local textbooks and school textbooks that meet the specific teaching needs of localities and schools should be launched. It is necessary to form a teaching system such as national textbooks, local textbooks and school-based textbooks."
However, Peng Ran, who has 7 years of teaching experience, pointed out that although the unified textbook and local textbook model advocated by Xiong Bingqi can meet the needs of characteristic teaching and personalized teaching, there is a problem at the implementation level-cost, "not every time Every school and region has the ability to compile their own teaching materials. This kind of localized education is more realized by parents and teachers in informal education.” In his eyes, the lack of excellent teacher resources limits the further development of rural education. develop.
In recent years, due to the fact that many rural primary schools are unable to recruit students, many primary schools in natural and administrative villages have been abolished, and village primary schools have become central primary schools. Objectively, the advantageous educational resources in rural areas have been concentrated, but the basic quality of rural teachers The generally low status quo still exists.
According to Peng Ran's observation, "In many cases, it is not that the teaching materials cannot keep up with the students' understanding of modern society, but the ability and cognition of the rural teachers cannot keep up."
Peng Ran has seen many schools where teachers still use the traditional chalk and blackboard mode for class.
As for projection equipment, it is often used as a tool for playing movies and entertainment, and rarely appears in teaching scenes.
Zhou Jinhang's school is also facing the same problem.
The saw that the school was equipped with six years ago for the handicraft class has never been used.
As for the standard science classrooms in local rural primary schools, as far as he knows, the general usage rate is very low, "no one uses them, they are all idle."
behind
"Going out" is mainstream in the context of rural education
Teaching aids are idle because of insufficient teacher resources.
Xie Jingyu, who volunteered in a rural primary school in Lincang, Yunnan, provided a set of data to the reporter. Her school has more than 570 students and about 40 teachers. The average age of the teachers is 40.9 years old, and young teachers are lacking in strength. "The teachers are older. , some very old teachers are not very comfortable with the use of electronic screens."
The lack of high-quality educational resources has given Hou Changliang a sense of urgency. He believes that this lack is still aggravating, and even has a tendency to form a "two-way vicious circle".
For a long time in the past, "going out" has occupied the mainstream position in the context of rural education.
In Hou Changliang's view, this concept not only affects children, but also affects rural educators. "It seems that only going out can be recognized and promising." In this atmosphere, teachers are also looking forward to it. From rural schools "up" to town schools, county schools and even city schools.
Some young teachers who come to the countryside regard rural schools as a platform and try their best to teach students to get good grades as "capital" for their career development.
This influence has spread beyond teaching.
Due to the flow of excellent teachers to cities, parents who attach importance to education will also try to get their children to study in cities and towns, and the source of excellent students who are easy to get grades has increased the driving force for teachers to leave the countryside, and rural education has fallen into a constant loss. in cycle.
Zhang Chunliang, director-general of the Action Education Foundation, who is in charge of the non-profit organization, has contacted thousands of rural primary and secondary schools successively, and he also understands the difficulties faced by these schools.
According to his observation, the resources of teachers in rural schools in China show a characteristic of "continuous flow": on the one hand, there is a steady stream of "comers" from the country's western plan, various non-profit organizations' teaching support programs, and admitted to the local teacher establishment; On the other hand, rural teachers, especially young rural teachers, continue to leave the countryside.