"Doctor Village" actually has no myth
A sample of "backwater" in rural education in China
From the perspective of population base alone, Anhui Qianshan, a county-level city named after the mountain, is located in the southeastern foothills of Dabie Mountain. The city has only more than 500,000 people. In recent years, three academicians have emerged.
In the 2020 college entrance examination, 7 people in the city have been admitted to Tsinghua University and Peking University, which is not easy.
In contrast, the city has a village named after water, Nishui Village, which can be called "magic": there are only more than 3,500 people. After the college entrance examination was resumed in 1977, 29 doctors and 54 masters were successively released. 300 undergraduate students (no double counting).
Outsiders call Nishui Village "Doctor Village".
In fact, this "title" has been around for a long time, and related reports have been circulating on the Internet many years ago.
During this period of time, because a short video of the doctor's village "rich" highly educated talents spread rapidly, it was pushed into the trend of "hot search", and the old-fashioned topic of rural education once again sparked heated discussion.
In recent years, the state's investment in education has continued to increase, and the standardization of rural primary and secondary schools has achieved remarkable results. However, it cannot be ignored that the impact of urbanization on rural education is also appearing. Some former glorious rural schools are now due to the loss of students. Hovering on the brink of being withdrawn.
Against this background, the "myth" of education that has lasted for more than 40 years in Nishui Village has given people another possibility of reality, and the revival of rural schools may be hidden here.
In Nishui Village, is it possible to find the key to the success of rural education?
We went on the road with deep doubts. We drove from the provincial capital of Hefei to the city of Buried Hill and then changed to local vehicles. It took 4 hours to traverse the embrace of the mountains, winding and turning all the way, and finally came to bathe in Quiet village under the warm winter sun.
"Myth" origin
Dashan is fair, with a loving side and a harsh side.
Nishui Village is 60 kilometers away from the county seat on a mountain road and is located at the junction of the two counties. Despite the inconvenience of transportation, the forest coverage rate reaches 80%. It is located in the core area of the "Three Rich Land", with beautiful mountains and clear waters, rich in selenium and zinc, and rich in negative air. Oxygen ion.
In the general understanding of the local villagers, natural conditions gave birth to the clever endowment and the precious quality of bearing hardships and hard work in Nishui Village.
No matter how far those doctors and masters go, no matter how high they fly, the roots of life are still here.
Nishui Village is born with a layer of mystery, and the laws of nature seem to be rewritten here. Because of the forcible obstacles of the mountains, the special landform of the river flowing from east to west is created, and the village is also named "Nishui Village".
The obstacles of the mountains did not make the ancestors of the villagers bow their heads, but instead aroused their stubbornness to "ride the boat against the current and strive for the upper reaches".
To this day, many people still hang a banner in the middle hall of "Struggle against the current, and retreat with a slacks", always encouraging future generations to change their destiny through hard work.
Chu Haochuan, who was over eighty years old, was the first person to lead the villagers to change the collective destiny after the reform and opening up, and was also the "benefactor" of rural education.
As early as the 1980s, as the village party secretary, he proposed that facing the "seven mountains, half water and two fields" barren land, the only way out is to plant more trees and good trees. With a good ecology, there will be villagers. Iron rice bowl.
Chu Haochuan boldly took out 4,000 yuan to contract barren hills to plant trees, and soon caught up with the good times of large-scale township enterprises across the country, and established a village-run forestry enterprise, positioning forest product deep processing, and opening paper products factories. The products are sold throughout the country.
Many villagers still remember the prosperity of Nishui Village. Large trucks from the south and the north of the sea lined up in the village, waiting for the paper products to be loaded and transported out of the mountain.
Economic development has injected the "first impetus" into rural education.
Because of trade, the people of Nishui Village walked out of the mountains for the first time and tasted the sweetness of reform and opening up.
In the social interactions of receiving visitors from all over the world and going north and south, Chu Haochuan, who had only a junior high school education, saw the huge gap between here and the developed areas, and keenly realized that the revitalization of rural education was imminent. As a result, his career focus began to "plant trees." Gradually change to "tree people".
The original site of the Nishui Central Primary School was converted from an ancestral hall.
In the 1950s, the school was located on the opposite bank of the river, making it difficult for teachers and students to travel.
The school building is dilapidated and there is no decent playground.
In the late 1990s, the government decided to relocate the primary school to the center of the village. Chu Haochuan took the lead in responding and donated 300,000 yuan to solve the cost of land acquisition.
As the head of a village-run enterprise, he decisively decided that the tuition, miscellaneous fees, and educational surcharges of the village primary school students are all paid by the enterprise; in addition, all the salaries of the private teachers are borne by the enterprise, and the standard is the highest in the county.
On the road of donating to school, Chu Haochuan set a benchmark for the younger generation in the village.
Chu Zhaoyi, the former principal of Nishui Central Elementary School, said, “The college students who went out of Nishui not only gained fame but also wanted to feed Sangzi back. Some successful people donated money and materials to help the school build the gate and build a kindergarten.”
His student Chu Baiqing is an entrepreneur out of town. Since 1996, he has made fixed-point donations to 5 to 10 children in the village every year.
Chu Zhaoyi said that one person has difficulties, and everyone helps. Even in the past years, there were very few cases of dropouts due to poverty in Nishui Village, thus ensuring the education base.
"Walking out of a college student, speaking to the big, is to make a contribution to the country. For a small family, it is equivalent to embarking on the road to poverty and reducing the pressure on the government." He said.
"Since I was young, I have never had a child who was admitted to high school, and my family is not allowed to go to school. If you want to take a master's degree or doctorate, parents must work together and sell iron." A doctor who came out of Nishui Village analyzed that this is also the case. One of the reasons for the emergence of talents with high education in the village.
Folk style
In 1998, Nishui Village Central Primary School moved to a new location, and Chu Zhaoyi served as the first principal.
In the next few years, the village elementary school continued to expand enrollment, and each grade reached 6 classes.
In order to encourage students to study hard, Chu Haochuan set up a personal education fund. The children in the village will get a university prize of 300 yuan, a technical secondary school prize of 200 yuan, and a high school prize of 100 yuan, which was not a small amount in those days.
"Even though education funds are limited, no matter how hard it is, the reward for teachers is still willing." Chu Zhaoyi recalled that the school rewarded teachers based on the county's unified examination results, and the bonus was shared by the school and Chu Haochuan's enterprise.
"In 1995, my salary was only a little over 100 yuan a month, and a math teacher received a bonus of up to 1,000 yuan."
"All of this is to set an example for teachers and students, so that everyone can see that as long as they work hard, they can get the recognition of society, schools, and parents." To this day, Chu Zhaoyi mentioned those colleagues who regard students as children and regard education as life.
"As far as I know, there are at least three teachers who love teaching and students too much and eventually fell on the stage."
Teacher Wang Linggui comes from Shafan Village School. He teaches Chinese and mathematics. He works hard and suffers from hepatitis for a long time. He has been working with illness.
Chu Zhaoyi led the school leaders to persuade him to go to the hospital for treatment many times, but the teacher was reluctant to leave the class and couldn't worry about his students.
In 2002, his condition deteriorated and he couldn't hold on. He was admitted to the hospital, but unfortunately he never returned to the podium and left his beloved student.
According to Chu Zhaoyi, in the 1990s, for two consecutive years, Qianshan County's unified examination and Nishui Elementary School's average score ranked first in the county.
For a long time, the quality of teaching at this school was better than that of many elementary schools in the city.
Dr. Wang Jingshu, born in 1988, is from Nishui Village and is teaching at Chongqing University of Technology.
She recalled that in elementary school, there was a classmate who hadn't come to class for a few days and the seat was always empty.
The teacher walked a 20-kilometer mountain road to visit home.
It turned out that there was an injury in the birth’s family and he needed to look after him at home.
The teacher did not blame, and walked to the student's home at night to help him keep up with the progress.
"There is a big mountain in between, and it takes a long way to go back and forth. The teacher has no complaints and treats the students as his own children." She said with emotion.
It is these "rural red candles" that have sacrificed their lives to burn their lives, raising the flames of hope, and passing them on from generation to generation.
Wang Jie, the vice-principal of Nishui Junior High School, has been qualified to teach for more than 30 years and has received many "heavy awards" from the village.
However, what makes him enjoy the sense of accomplishment even more is that whether he meets every villager in the fields or on the streets, he can feel the kindness in the words of the other person.
Many ordinary farmers with mud on their feet correspond to a college student. Some have already worked in the central ministries and commissions, and some have worked in international organizations. They were all students they had brought.
Wang Jiesheng said that when villagers encounter major events such as rice planting, beaming, weddings, etc., they will invite their teachers to the scene and treat them as guests to witness and share the joy and glory of the family.
In the eyes of villagers, teachers have the highest status, and they often have the highest "right to speak" in family discussions. As a village leader, they play an important role in rural governance.
Wang Jiesheng said that sometimes it is very useful for teachers to mediate conflicts between neighbors.
"They simply believe that the teacher's words must be listened to, because the success of the child is the best example."
"There is a villager group, and every household is college students. In some families, there are several doctors in each household." Wang Jiesheng said, in Nishui Village, villagers are better than their children in learning, which affects the children to a certain extent. Formed a style of study of "you chase me and don't give way to each other".
Wang Jingshu remembered that the first "benchmark" in life was her cousin Cao Yunfu. He was also one of the earliest doctors in the village and is now a software expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
My father always educates her by taking the example of her uncle.
Now when Wang Jingshu returns to her hometown, she will show up and encourage her younger siblings to enter the ideal university and continue to improve themselves.
She still thanked her "old rival" Chu Genbo for his hard work. The first time she remembered her name was in the math competition held by the Nishui Central Elementary School.
"He was the first, and my grades were poor, so I remembered this name."
In junior high school, Wang Jingshu and Chu Genbai were in different classes at the same school, but the two had always maintained "contact."
In the first monthly exam in the third grade, Chu Genbo was first in grade and Wang Jingshu was second; in the second monthly exam, the positions of the two were "switched".
The two have alternated occupying the top two for a long time, and have been secretly competing.
In high school, they were in another school, and each time they announced the top 20 in the school, both of them were among them.
In 2004, both of them were admitted to the University of Science and Technology of China, and they completed their masters, masters, and doctoral studies simultaneously. They were classmates for more than ten years, and finally both chose to devote themselves to science and education.
"In terms of study, classmates and relatives not only compete with each other, but also encourage and support each other." Through online communication, Wang Jingshu guided her cousin and cousin to be admitted to master's degree.
Under her leadership, a relative from a non-prestigious school was admitted to the Chinese Academy of Sciences for a master's degree and is currently studying for a doctorate.
Such cases of "passing and banding" are everywhere in the village.
Let teachers feel at ease
Almost all the doctors and masters from Nishui Village receive their first enlightenment at the village primary school.
In 2017, when he was transferred to Nishui Central Primary School as the principal during the Spring Festival of the Spring Festival, the campus in front of him was not what it used to be. The teaching building was not only the best building in the village, it was also not inferior to the urban school.
The hardware facilities here are perfect, the teaching team is gradually growing, and the people's hearts are stable.
There are currently 155 students and 23 teachers in the school's headquarters, most of which are graduates of normal schools assigned in recent years, and half are from other counties.
In the high mountain village of Nishui Village, how can young teachers be able to retain and work steadily?
Since 2016, Qianshan City has developed a "point transfer" management method based on the actual situation of the intertwined mountainous and fan areas in the territory, and has given teachers in remote villages including Nishui Village a "reassurance".
For young teachers, it’s natural to yearn for urban life. Instead of "blocking them and staying" in the countryside, it is better to build a fair and just system platform to achieve orderly mobility, which can not only increase work enthusiasm, but also through mobility. Let outstanding talents stand out, and promote a more reasonable allocation of school teachers in the city.
"In the past, I wanted to transfer to the outskirts of the city. Everyone used to think of'finding relationships.' Now it's based on points. Don't worry. If the points are reached, you will naturally have a chance." Lingjie Spring analysis, points management method requirements, mountain schools must do It takes five years to apply for transfer. Mountain schools like Nishui Central Primary School get 1.2 points for a year, while ordinary schools only have 1 point. This is also an encouragement for teachers in remote schools in mountainous areas.
“In addition, teachers’ evaluations and awards occupies a large proportion of the points system, which aims to encourage them to make more achievements based on their posts and promote the progress of young teachers.” Ling Jiechun said, “Of course, the education department also has The mobilization indicators for the overall planning are carried out to avoid the transfer of multiple people from the same school and affect the quality of teaching."
"Compared to retaining people with emotion and treatment, it is more realistic to retain people with environment." Shi Jingzhong, director of the Education Bureau of Qianshan City, is also a rural teacher and he knows it is not easy to stick to the mountains.
He once heard that a graduate had just arrived at school and called the principal early the next morning to resign.
"It may be that life is not used to adapting to life. Only by living in peace can we work well. For young teachers, we must improve their living conditions and give them home warmth."
This incident made Shi Jingzhong feel sour. For this reason, he asked the education department to pay close attention to the teacher turnover housing project, and must give priority to solving the accommodation conditions of rural teachers, so as to truly "tilt all resources to the countryside."
Currently in Qianshan, 35 square meters of turnover room, toilet, wash basin... are becoming the standard equipment of the rural teachers' dormitory.
Chu Yongsong, a teacher at the Nishui Central Primary School, has been teaching for more than 30 years. He never thought of leaving the Nishui Village where he was born and grew up.
According to the current relevant policies of Anhui Province, he has been teaching in rural areas for 30 consecutive years, and the declared professional title can no longer be restricted by school indicators. He was successfully awarded the deputy senior professional title in 2020.
In addition, the rural work subsidies enjoyed by teachers like him can add up to 1,000 yuan a month.
It is worth mentioning that all policy orientations that favor rural teachers have prompted the phenomenon of teachers "returning" to rural schools in the Qianshan education system.
"As far as I know, several teachers have taken the initiative to transfer from urban schools to rural schools." said Chu Chengjie, a staff member of the Education Bureau of Qianshan City.
In the past three years, of the 450 newly recruited and newly tuned teachers in Qianshan City, more than 90% have been allocated to rural schools.
Wherever they are, the mechanism of mobility stimulates their vitality, and rural education has more vigorous vitality.
How to teach in the new era
In the sixth grade classroom of Nishui Central Primary School, teachers and students each have an iPad, and Yin Wencan, a post-90s Chinese teacher, will habitually use the smart teaching system when teaching new knowledge in every class.
Through smart classrooms, the high-quality courses of the Central Primary School can also be "live broadcast" to the village primary schools.
The big screen on the wall, the small screen in the hand, the teachers and students look back and forth.
The traditional teaching method of a piece of chalk and a blackboard has become history in Nishui Village.
During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, Qianshan City included the construction of smart schools in the people's livelihood project. Since 2020, priority will be given to covering small schools (teaching sites) in poor and remote areas and mountainous rural areas, and 54 smart schools will be built, which will allow mountain children to take the lead Enjoy the dividends of educational technology.
"On the basis of traditional teaching based on books, paper and pen, smart teaching is more intuitive, dynamic, and interactive, and can mobilize students' emotions, attention and interest, and improve teaching efficiency." Yin Wencan and students, together, Gradually passed the adaptation period of wisdom teaching.
She found that “all the 27 children in the class are full of energy, and now even the handwriting has become neat.”
"Teachers can no longer instill knowledge points blindly, and can no longer be limited to textbooks. They should bring students to experience the deep meaning behind the texts, combine the actual living environment of the children in the mountain villages, and introduce more local cultural knowledge." Yin Wencan said frankly, wisdom teaching proposed more With high technical requirements, the sense of urgency for "capacity panic" is increasing day by day. "Now even the teachers in village primary schools are actively participating in teaching and research activities, and an atmosphere of mutual learning has been formed."
In the new era, teaching and research activities must go out, not behind closed doors in the mountains.
Li Xiangdong, the principal of Nishui Junior High School, introduced that going out to carry out teaching and research activities would cost a lot of travel and accommodation. The school tried its best to provide guarantees. All activity funds were tilted toward teaching and research and continued to increase funding.
"Every year, the Municipal Education Bureau also allocates special funds for small-scale and rural schools. In 2020, it will give our school 170,000 yuan."
However, for "small schools" such as Nishui Junior High School with only 16 teachers, some subjects have only one or two teachers, and the teaching and research lacks atmosphere and scale.
To this end, the school makes full use of the "National Training Program" online training platform and the resource library of smart teaching to organize online learning for teachers. At the same time, it adopts the form of "regional teaching and research" to link with surrounding schools, and each school takes turns presiding over the group. "Activities.
"First send the teachers out in batches to listen to the lectures. After you have a certain foundation, then invite the famous teachers of the urban schools to the school one by one to guide and communicate face to face." Li Xiangdong said.
“The English teacher who just came for a year won the second prize in the city’s English Quality Class Contest; a teacher was recommended to Anqing City to participate in the class teacher’s basic skills contest; in the city’s assessment in 2019, nearly 40 junior high schools, Nishui Junior High School ranked No. 11..." Behind these achievements, Li Xiangdong knew in his heart that the rural teachers had worked hard.
It doesn't matter if you are a little bitter or tired, but every time the school starts and learns that the source of students is lost, all the educators who stick to the Nishui Village will feel a bit of loss.
This loss is not only reflected in the teaching and research of teachers, but the constraints of "scale" have always been the "hidden pain" of rural education.
The development of education requires an appropriate scale. With the acceleration of urbanization and the increase in the number of farmers who go out to work, the "shrinkage" of rural middle schools has become a common phenomenon, especially in mountainous areas.
With only more than 80 students left, the junior high school faces the same dilemma.
According to Li Xiangdong's rough statistics, there are about three to four hundred households in the three administrative villages radiated by the school. Parents work outside, and most of the children study outside with their parents.
"Among the students who stayed behind, there are more left-behind children and families with difficulties. Our school has more than 30 students who used to be poor households."
According to the unified policy of Anhui Province, the provincial model high schools "indices to school", and the upstream junior high schools are assigned a fixed index each year, so that students who rank high in rural schools have a greater chance of entering key high schools.
What makes Li Xiangdong feel gratified is that now I often hear feedback from teachers in key high schools, "Although there is a gap in the scores coming in, the children in the mountains have enough stamina!"
In fact, for rural educators, they don’t care about where the students end up taking the exam.
Education is a relay race, and all teachers are participants and contributors.
"No matter where the students are studying, even the junior high school in the city, as long as we can get out of this land, we are proud." What Li Xiangdong eagerly hopes is, "Can relevant departments build a normalized exchange The platform allows more doctors and masters to come back and share their successful experiences and life insights with the children in their hometown."
Character education, the same starting point
If you have to ask, what is the teaching achievement of Nishui Junior High School that is among the best in the city?
That may belong to the campus women's football team, and its record can be regarded as another "myth" of Nishui Village.
From the perspective of the population base, in schools with only 80 people, girls account for about half, and half of them are selected for football teams with more than 20 people. The selection space is very small.
However, such a rural campus women's football trained on the basketball court won the third place in the Anqing City Junior and Middle School Women's Football League in 2018; represented Anqing City in the Anhui Province Campus Football League and won seventh place; in 2019, it won Anqing again. Champion of the City Junior and Junior Women's Football League.
"You know, our opponents are big schools with two or three thousand people, and they have been playing football for many years." Fang Jinrun, the school’s only physical education teacher and football coach, repeated: "We can only say that our children can We endure hardship and refuse to admit defeat. Other girls are reluctant to play football. Our parents are particularly supportive."
"Football is not only a sport, but also a character education." This is also a profound experience of Fang Jinrun, who has witnessed the transformation and growth of these girls.
In 2016, he led the team for the first time to participate in the game in Anqing City. Faced with the tense atmosphere of the game, the women's football players were somewhat "stage fright".
They were short of breath, stiff and deformed. As a result, they lost and tied in three battles, ranking bottom.
The children cried into "people of tears" and surrounded Fang Jinrun to express their stance: Go back and practice hard!
Fang Jinrun consulted the old coach of the foreign school for advice. While making training plans, he found videos online, watched games, and learned skills.
At the beginning of the school, there was no training equipment, so he took local materials and came up with a lot of native methods: he found wooden sticks for making fires from the canteen, tied them into rope ladders, trained the players’ agility and responsiveness, and laid gymnastic mats on the concrete floor to practice the body. Confrontation, practice shooting accuracy against the trash can.
The sonorous rose returning to the field is "dreading".
An opponent sighed, "They are like iron, they can't even hit them." Fang Jinrun clearly remembered that in a match, a main player was injured with blood in his nose. He was lying on a stretcher and didn't forget to pull. He said, "Don't change people, I can still go!"
"Football allows children to understand the rules and be more united. They are obviously more sensible and grow up." Fang Jinrun said that every summer vacation, half of the time is concentrated on school training, and they get up at 5:30 in the morning for a run. Students never complain and complain. .
The school also specially arranges teachers to make up lessons for them to ensure that their academic performance does not fall behind.
In the past five years, women's football players have either been admitted to the provincial demonstration high school or admitted to the county's orientation teacher student.
Despite the passing of time and the changes of the years, the unchanging spiritual inheritance of the people of Nishui Village can still be seen in the female football players on campus. No matter what era or stage of life, a person's success cannot bypass the support of character.
Xu Fugui, deputy secretary of the Party branch of Yezhai Middle School in Anhui Province, said with emotion: “In character education, urban and rural schools are at the same starting point. Character education is an effective means to narrow the gap between urban and rural education. It is especially important for rural schools!"
His school is the best provincial demonstration high school in Qianshan City. It is also located at the foot of the mountain. Most of the students in Nishui Village completed their last studies here, thus setting foot on the springboard of life and flying out of the mountain. .
In his view, current high-quality educational resources are concentrated in large and medium-sized cities. From the perspective of knowledge acquisition, rural children do not have the advantage.
"But for children in mountainous areas, there may be more'materials' and favorable conditions for fostering quality education."
For example, in Nishui Village, children have been up and down the waters since childhood, accepting the nurturing of nature, helping their parents with housework and farming, and developing good qualities such as diligence and courage.
"There are some things that can't be compared to big cities, but one thing our teachers can do well is to cultivate children's character. In addition to doing their best to impart knowledge, we must pay close attention to character education. This will benefit children for life." He said.
"Character education is done by'doing' it, transforming preaching into experience." Xu Fugui introduced that Yezhai Middle School has been exploring character education for 7 years. The Qianshan City Education Bureau has promoted the successful experience of this school in the city's primary and secondary schools. "Moral Education Micro-action", "Character Youth Selection" and other activity carriers, realize the educational purpose of cultivating morality.
"We just want children to know that education is not to force students to take high scores, but to study to change the destiny of themselves, their families, and their country."
"In the past few years, many cases have confirmed that focusing on character education will not affect student performance, but will help improve student performance." In Shi Jingzhong's view, Qianshan Education’s "unique exploration" in the new era is actually right. Education is really back again.
The children of Nishui Village back then walked to the other side of success along this "road of character".
Conclusion
At this point, our search has come to an end temporarily.
From elementary school to junior high school and then to high school, this is the complete educational roadmap for most students in Nishui Village.
Along this line, we asked every interviewee the same question-"Where is the mystery of Doctor Village?" Unfortunately, we found in the interview that there was no strong evidence to show that, It is a special, even magical, single factor that played a decisive role.
The educational phenomenon in Nishui Village actually has no myth, and there is no secret that can be quickly copied and promoted. It is the epitome and sample of the development of rural education in China since the reform and opening up. The results of not relaxing.
Of course, we cannot divide history. Looking back at the green mountains and mountains behind us, it is not only a golden mountain and a silver mountain, but also a rich cultural soil. It has nurtured a style of writing and family style in the orientation of entry, creating a social atmosphere of respect for teachers and education, and will be used by future generations. .
Here, the landscape ecology and traditional civilization are perfectly integrated, allowing Gengdu China to shine in the new era.
(Chu Chengjie also contributed to this article)
China Youth Daily · China Youth Daily reporter Wang Lei Wang Haihan Source: China Youth Daily
Version 05 on January 11, 2021