Family education should return after the "double reduction"
The "double reduction" policy affects thousands of households.
Renovating off-campus training institutions, strengthening on-campus burden reduction and improving quality, and promulgating the Family Education Promotion Law... A series of measures have leveraged the overall reform of basic education and are promoting the accelerated construction of a new educational ecology.
According to the deployment arrangements of the Ministry of Education, the "double reduction" work will remain the top priority this year.
Building a home-school-community collaborative education system is a major focus of the "double reduction" to make a breakthrough in depth, and activating the endogenous motivation of parents and giving play to the irreplaceable role of family education in Lide and cultivating people is one of the key points. ring.
After the "double reduction", although subject extracurricular classes have been effectively rectified and shut down, the thinking of some parents outsourcing their children's extracurricular time to training institutions has not fundamentally changed, but it is only based on sports, aesthetic education, science and technology, etc. Non-disciplinary institutions take their place.
The lack of high-quality companionship between parents and children, and the lack of motivation for parents to actively take responsibility for parenting are still the common situation of parenting in big cities.
The question that arises from this is: How can parents get rid of their over-reliance on schools and institutions, and participate in the process of children's growth more "mindfully"?
The current lack of motivation for parents to participate in parenting is influenced by many factors.
Under the baton of exams, the result-oriented and external education evaluation system makes parents think that they are "inadequate professionalism" and give way to schools or institutions.
At the same time, in order to attract customers, training institutions continue to create anxiety in combination with the pressure of further studies, which brings great external pressure on parents to explore and practice parenting methods that are suitable for their families and children.
Under the superposition of the two, parents are often "driven" by institutions, thinking that it is due diligence to arrange a dense schedule for their children, and they lack reflection on the question of "what role should family education play in children's growth".
Some parents also have a more one-sided understanding of "child-centered", often equating it with "everything for the child", the whole family revolves around the child, and the parent-child lacks a joint for common growth.
"Father makes money, mother makes overall plans, children go to class, grandparents pick up and drop off", which has become a typical family division and cooperation model for "chicken babies" in big cities.
The family is more of a rational functional unit that operates on the axis of efficiency, rather than an emotional community: all resources are concentrated on the child, instead of respecting the child as an independent individual; Let go and "leave blank" for the child's independent growth.
In addition, problems such as too fast work pace, too much pressure, too long commute time, and insufficient vacation flexibility in big cities also objectively limit the time and energy parents can participate in childcare.
And family-friendly public spaces in cities aren’t nearly as accessible, and parents often don’t know what to do, even when they want to be with their kids.
So, how to activate the motivation of parents to participate in family education?
For parents, first of all, we must correctly understand the importance of family education.
"Home" is the foundation of "being a human being", and family education is life education and life education: parents, through love and teaching by example, can fill children's hearts and learn to be independent. This is what schools and institutions cannot replace.
Therefore, in the face of the current large external pressure, parents should be a good "filter layer" between the outside world and their children and a "locator" for their children's growth. Rational use of external resources, giving play to the dislocation advantages of family education from schools and institutions, and helping children find the most suitable development point for their own growth.
It is necessary to find the "greatest common divisor" among family members and correct the one-sided understanding of "everything is for the children".
Parents should reflect on the organization of family life dominated by their children’s various extracurricular classes, leave a moderate amount of blank for their children, and moderately loosen their bonds for themselves, make good use of family time, and do things that each member can be interested in and benefit from, such as outdoor exercise. , museum exhibitions, friends gathering, etc.
In this way, the performance of parenting is no longer a one-dimensional effort, and family life becomes a source of nourishment for each other.
In addition, it is necessary to increase support for parenting in the workplace, accelerate the construction of urban public spaces, create more community public cultural activities, and build a family-friendly, multi-party parenting support system.
Education is a long-term plan.
The purpose of "double reduction" is to return education to its essence and the core of "being a human being".
This is a systematic project that requires parents, children, schools, and society to find the optimal solution under the existing conditions, so that education can reach its deep goal.
(Author: Shi Yunqing, special researcher at the Research Center of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Deputy Director of the Research Office of Gender and Family Sociology, Institute of Sociology)