Zhu Yongxin: Promoting educational equity starts with children’s reading

A person\’s spiritual development history is his reading history. The spiritual realm of a nation depends on the nation\’s reading level. A school without reading will never have real education. Only a city full of books can become a beautiful spiritual home. Only by reading, writing, and living together can we have a common language, a common password, common values, and a common vision. Reading is the most effective, direct, and convenient way to promote social equity and strengthen national cohesion. There is no doubt that adults\’ reading ability comes from their cultivation in childhood. Reading is an important habit that should be developed in childhood. Reading starts with children. In 2000, as the deputy mayor in charge of education and culture in Suzhou, I launched a new education experiment with the purpose of helping members of the new education community \”live a happy and complete educational life.\” From the beginning, this experiment was based on the ten major actions headed by \”Creating a Bookish Campus\” and based on promoting children\’s reading. Reading should start with children. Through children\’s books, children understand the various connections and relationships in the world, and understand the fate and logic of various characters. Children continue to experience truth and falsehood, beauty and ugliness, good and evil from different books, constantly experience, feel, summarize, summarize and generalize, moving from concrete to abstract. Therefore, reading in childhood is the most important nutrition for their spiritual growth. The most basic and critical issue in children\’s reading is what to read. \”Man is the product of his own food\” (Feuerbach), and the height of reading determines the height of the spirit. Therefore, give the most beautiful books to the most beautiful childhood. For children who lack discernment, we should choose the best books for them as much as possible to help them develop a good appetite for reading, so that they can have real appreciation in the future. Reading classics is the safest, most efficient and most profitable form of reading. The reading problem of rural children is the shortest shortcoming restricting rural education and an important reason for the gap between urban and rural education. Over the years, with the popularization of compulsory education and the advancement of standardization in rural schools, the hardware gap between rural schools and urban schools has gradually narrowed, but the gap in reading resources has not received enough attention. In the more than 100 rural schools I have investigated, there are either no basic reading conditions, or there is a lack of excellent and suitable books, or there are books but they are not functioning. If remote rural schools can have as good reading resources as those in central cities, the spiritual growth of rural children may be on the same starting line as urban children. Reading brings light to rural children. So far, the new education experiment has established experimental areas in 172 cities, counties and districts across the country, with more than 8,300 schools and more than 8.3 million teachers and students participating in the experiment. About half of the New Education Experimental Schools are in rural areas. In the process of promoting the creation of scholarly campuses, we pay special attention to supporting rural schools. We ensure that every child has books to read by establishing rural school libraries and class book corners. , every child can read books of interest, so that every child can have the pleasure of reading, and every child can develop the habit of reading. We have noticed that in those rural schools with high-quality libraries and a good reading atmosphere for teachers and students, the spiritual aspects of teachers and students are better.The school looks more positive and upbeat, and all kinds of teaching quality assessments also rank among the best. By focusing on reading, it is quite common for rural schools to surpass urban schools in various educational indicators. Suixian County, Hubei Province is a typical rural county. Since becoming a new education experimental zone in 2011, through the implementation of the initiative of \”creating a scholarly campus\”, rural students\’ reading volume and academic evaluation scores have far exceeded that of urban schools. Two rural children from Sui County walked into the CCTV Reading Channel studio for the first time, and both entered the top 35 in the national bookish youth competition. There are 73 junior high schools in Suizhou City, 25 of which are in Sui County. Among them, 23 are among the top 30 in the city\’s comprehensive evaluation, 14 are among the top 20, and 7 are among the top 10. In 2013, the balanced development of compulsory education in Sui County passed the provincial evaluation, and in 2014, it successfully passed the national certification with a higher score. In 2016, the National New Education Experimental Zone Working Conference was held in Suixian County. Teachers attending the meeting were surprised to find that the eyes of children from rural areas in Suixian County were all bright! For another example, Dong Yan, a rural female teacher in the Huoqiu New Education Experimental Zone in Anhui Province, led her children to carry out a reading course of \”morning chanting, afternoon reading and evening reading\”, making all children fall in love with reading and writing, even children with intellectual disabilities. He also wrote his own poems. Xiamen Wulu School is a new school with the children of migrant workers as the main body. More than 90% of the students are the children of migrant workers. The school has participated in new education experiments since its establishment. From creating an environment, promoting courses, carrying out activities, There are four optimized paths for home-school education, and the construction of a scholarly campus has been fully launched. In less than ten years, it has become the best benchmark school in the district. Endless examples have vividly proved that by improving the reading level of rural children, it is possible to quickly improve the regional education ecology and greatly enhance the quality of basic education while the existing conditions remain unchanged. These rural children who have light in their eyes through reading will become people with light when they grow up. Educational equity, starting with children reading books is the best gift to promote social equity. In the book \”The Power of Reading\”, Stephen Krashen used a large amount of data to prove that factors such as the quality of the reading environment in schools and families, the presence and number of libraries, the number of books collected, whether parents and teachers read or not, and the amount of reading by students are related to factors such as The performance of students is closely related. For schools, hardware facilities are the foundation of education, but what determines the level of education is the level of software. The key to determining the level of software is reading level. Equity in reading resources is an important basis for educational equity and also for social equity. For rural children, the most important thing is how to deliver good books to them so that they can read good books. If this problem is solved, the problem of China\’s education will be easily solved, and the problem of social equity will also be solved. too much. Therefore, I make three suggestions: First, during the \”14th Five-Year Plan\” period, the country should launch a national rural primary and secondary school library construction project. Just like in the past when nutritious lunches were carried out, a standardized transformation of rural primary and secondary school libraries should be carried out and a Construction standards for libraries in rural primary and secondary schools. The most important thing is that the configuration conforms to the physical and mental development characteristics of childrenand excellent books for all ages, with librarians who truly understand and love books. Second, change the current low-price book bidding model and the traditional donation model, make book procurement and donation more open and transparent, and allow truly good books to enter schools. Third, encourage reading institutions and urban reading volunteers to work together to cultivate rural reading promoters. No matter how abundant the books are, if no one reads them, they are just a pile of waste paper. With good books, to really read and use them well, you need to master scientific reading methods. Only teachers who know how to read can truly stimulate rural children\’s enthusiasm for reading and guide them to read well. Therefore, it is very important to cultivate a group of rural reading promoters. We must also encourage urban and rural schools to pair up and work hand in hand to build a scholarly campus. Children are the future of the country and the hope of the nation. Today, with the birth rate declining year by year, it is even more necessary to help more children become talented by improving the quality of education. Reading is the simplest and most effective way. I hope that the whole society can pay attention to children\’s reading, use children\’s reading to shape children\’s beautiful selves, and use children\’s reading to create a beautiful future for the country and the nation.