The Analysis of Chinese Countryside Leftover Children’s
Education Problems
Written by: Wang Tao Supervised by: Gu Faliang
English Department School of Foreign Studies Anhui Normal University
March 2012
Acknowledgments
I would like to expre my gratitude to all those who helped me during the writing of this thesis.A special acknowledgment should be shown to Profeor Gu Faliang, from whose lectures I benefited greatly.I am particularly indebted to the headmaster, Qian Yelu, and the teachers in Xinhu Primary School, in the town of Guanqian, Chizhou, Anhui Province.Before I started my thesis, I taught in the primary school as a volunteer for three months.During that period, Mr.Qian and all the teachers gave me a great help to make an investigation about the situation and information of the leftover children in the school.With their help, I got lots of detailed data to prepare for the thesis.
I The Analysis of Chinese Countryside Leftover Children’s
Education Problems
Abstract
This paper, by the way of on-the-spot investigation research, surveys the present education situation of a group of special countryside children called the Leftover Children whose parents are not at home.Based on the two aspects of society and family, an initial exploration and an analysis are done to find the influential elements of this problem.The education problem of these leftover children is a special reflection which happened in the proce of the social transition in rural areas.The direct cause is that the rural labor works outside as migrant workers, which leads to the lack of family education.However, the root of these problems is that China’s long-standing policies of the urban and rural economic development are uneven, and there exists the extreme imbalance of the development between urban and rural areas.It also leads to the overall quality of the basic education in countryside falling quite behind.These children’s education problems are just a part of the specific performance of the unbalanced development.Based on these children’s education problems, the paper finally concludes with a series of practical solution strategies.
Key Words: countryside; leftover children; education problem
II 中国农村留守儿童教育问题的分析研究
摘
要
本论文以实地调查研究的方式从社会和家庭两方面综合考察了农村留守儿童的教育现状，初步探索和分析了留守儿童教育问题的影响因素，并在此基础上得出结论：农村留守儿童教育问题是我国农村问题在社会转型过程中的特殊表现。农村劳动力外出务工导致家庭教育的缺失是该问题产生的直接原因，其根源在于我国长期以来城乡经济发展政策不均，城市和乡村发展的极度不平衡，也导致了乡村基础教育的整体质量不高，而农村留守儿童教育问题正是这种城乡不均衡发展的具体表现。针对农村留守儿童教育问题的实际情况，本论文在最后提出了切实可行的解决策略。
关键词：农村；留守儿童；教育问题
III
Contents
Acknowledgement ………………………………………………………………..…I Abstract …..……..…………………………………………………….……………..II 摘要……….……………………..…………….………………….……………….…III Chapter 1 Introduction……………………………………………………………....1
1.1 The Concept of the Leftover Children………………………………...1 1.2 The Basic Information of the Leftover Children in China…………….1 Chapter 2 The Investigation Result of the Countryside Leftover Children’s Education Problems…………………………………………………...3 2.1 The General Situation of the Leftover Children in Xinhu Primary School………………………………………………………………….3 2.2 The Problems of the Local Leftover Children Suffering from………...3 Chapter 3 The Influential Factors in the Countryside Leftover Children’s Education Problems……………………...……………………………...5
3.1 Family Factors…………………………………………………………5
3.1.1 The Different Styles of Custody………………………………....5
3.1.2 The Lack of Family Education…………………………………..6
3.1.3 Low Degree of the Custodians’ Education………………………7
3.2 Social Factors………………………………………………………….7
3.2.1 The Gap between Urban and Rural Education………………….7
3.2.2 The Unbalanced Economy Development between the Urban and Rural Areas……………………………………………………...8 Chapter 4 The Solution Strategies of the Countryside Children’s Education Problems………………………...………………………………………9
4.1 Making the Family Education Work…………………………………..9
4.2 Making Full Use of the Function of School…………………………...9
4.3 Paying More Attention to the Leftover Children……………………..10
4.4 Narrowing the Gap between Urban and Rural Economy Development……………………………………………………………11 Chapter 5 Conclusion……………………………………………………………….12
IV Notes…………………………………………………………………………………13 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………....1
4V The Analysis of Chinese Countryside Leftover Children’s
Education Problems
Chapter 1 Introduction
In the past 30 years, China’s reform and opening-up play a very important role in this country’s economic development.With the development of industrialization and urbanization, Chinese cities need a large number of labors to develop their economy, and the group of cheap village labor forces is able to satisfy the cities’ needs well.However, because of various reasons, the migrant workers can’t take their children to the cities where they are working.Therefore, there come into being a special minors group-----the Leftover Children.Although the leftover children are in their key period of growth, because of the lack of family education, the slow development of village school education, and the complex influence from the surrounding society, the children are facing with striking problems on life, study, and psychological health, which will make a negative influence on their value system.Chinese countryside leftover children’s education problem has been an important iue of Chinese rural education.This problem will affect the harmonious development of the society and the future of Chinese education, which has aroused the attention of the whole society.
1.1 The Concept of the Leftover Children
The Leftover Children, means the children, at the stage of compulsory education, one or both of whose parents go out to be migrant workers, are left alone at home to be brought up by their grandparents or relatives.They are always at the age of 6 to 18.
1.2 The Basic Information of the Leftover Children in China
According to the statistics of the All China Women\'s Federation, the number of the leftover children all around China is about 58 million, and more than 40 million
1 leftover children are under the age of 14.Nowadays, the leftover children account for 28.29% of the total number of Chinese rural children, which means there will be one leftover child among every 4 rural children1.According to the pertinent data of the State Statistics Bureau, in 2003, the migrant labors take 23 percents of the total number of the rural labor forces.The number of the migrant workers who leave home to work with all the family members is about 24.30 million.The number of the migrant children, at the age of 6 to 14, is about 6.43 million.The leftover children left alone at home takes about 37.4 percents of the total number of the students in countryside primary and high schools2.
2 Chapter 2 The Investigation Result of the Countryside Leftover
Children’s Education Problems
In order to research Chinese countryside leftover children’s education problem concretely, I had made an investigation in Xinhu Primary School in Chizhou, Anhui Province.
2.1 The General Situation of the Leftover Children in Xinhu Primary School
As an important minors group in the rural areas, the leftover children always suffer from a series of iues, such as daily life problems, education problems, emotional problems, and psychological problems.For solving these iues, it is neceary to analysis the special living environment and educational environment in rural areas.In the investigation, as the respondents, the students’ ages are between 6 and 12.There are 147 students totally in the school.The number of the leftover children is 77, which takes about 54.4 percents, including 32 boys.Among these leftover children, 53.2 percents of them live without parents.And those whose parent working far away from home occupy a percentage of 46.8.And about 69.6 percents of their parents work in other cities far away from home.
2.2 The Problems of the Local Leftover Children Suffering from
Based on the investigation, because of the parents’ absence, a part of the leftover children are facing with many striking iues.
First, it is the leftover children’s daily life problem.In the countryside primary school, all the students’ homes are far away from their school, so they don’t go back home for lunch.If the family conditions permit, one of the children’s parents or grandparents will bring the lunch to school at noon.However, the survey suggests that about 26 percents of the children have to bring their lunch with a vacuum bottle in the morning.Usually, when the lunch time comes, their meals have cooled down.Because of the lack of parents’ care, 12 percents of the leftover children are under
3 nourished with bad physical health.Second, it is the leftover children’s education problems.According to the investigation, more than 70% of the students feel difficult in study.Only about 12% of them can study well.About 46% of the children spend more than three fourths of their free time watching TV, or playing with friends.Third, it is the leftover children’s psychological problems.The major causes include the lack of family care, the absence of social education and the ineffectivene of school security system.The leftover children are short of the care from emotion and psychology widely.They have no good listeners to hear their troubles or difficulties.Therefore, few of people can help them well.Some of the leftover children refuse or dislike communicating with others.Even some of them show quite negative individual mental characters, such as intrapsychical self-isolation, flattening of affect, autistic behaviors and so on.Disproportional character flaws and psychological disorder are their big problems.
Fourth, it is the leftover children’s moral iues.Because of the lack of family education, the leftover children live without proper moral constraints, so that some of them haven’t developed a healthy lifestyle and a good moral character.Fifth, it is the leftover children’s security problems.Since children’s adaptive capacity and their capacity of self-protection are quite weak, and their custodian’s are always old with relatively low culture level, it is impoible for them to set up the sense of security in children’s mind.
4 Chapter 3 The Influential Factors of the Countryside Leftover
Children’s Education Problems
3.1 Family Factors
3.1.1 The Different Styles of Custody
The first style of custody is that children under their grandparents’ custody.This style of custody refers to the children brought by their grandparents.According to the investigation, 84.85 percents of the leftover children belong to this case in Xinhu Primary School.Most of these children’s grandparents are very old and in bad health.Even some of them still need to do heavy housework.Generally speaking, there is a generation gap between the children and their grandparents.Because of the differences of the circumstances, views and values of different generations must be different and thus generation gap appears.Because of the lack of knowledge about the children, some grandparents tend to project their wishful ideas on their grandchildren, thus widening the general gap.The gap usually makes the young and their grandparents often fail to communicate with each other.Even sometimes although the children listen to their grandparents’ words, they do not put them into heart.By doing this, they send false meages to each other.In a word, the grandparents often fail to understand their grandchildren.However, another circumstance would be that the grandparents spoil their grandchildren overly without moral and spiritual guidance, so that they cannot educate children succefully.The second one is that children under their relatives’ custody.This style of custody refers to the children brought up by their relatives or their parents’ peers, such as aunts and uncles.However, children are more sensitive.It is easy for them to feel the sense of depending on others or being discriminated.They will become more withdrawn and more diociable, which will make a negative influence on their study.In this case, the children’s custodians are changeable, so that they cannot learn in a steady environment.According to the investigation, 9.96 percents of the leftover children belong to this situation in Xinhu Primary School.
5 The last one is that children under their teachers’ custody.This situation just appears in the recent several years.Some rich families entrust their children to their teachers or their head teachers.In Xinhu Primary School, 5.19 percents of the leftover children belong to this situation.According to the investigation, a teacher would take care of five or six leftover children.The disadvantage of this style of custody is that the teachers have no enough time to look after these leftover children, because the number of the children which the teacher need to take care is big, and the teachers are always busy with their own work and daily life.
3.1.2 The Lack of Family Education
According to the result of the investigation, in the local leftover children’s families, 63.2 percents of their parents return home three to four times a year, and 30.6 percents of them only go back home once or twice a year.Unfortunately, most of them cannot stay at home for a longer time.Low frequency of returning home and little communication with the leftover children will result in the lack of family education, which can also make children suffer from a variety of psychological problems.First of all, the leftover children’s world views, outlook on life and value system are influenced by materials deeply without proper education and guidance.Since their parents always work far away from home for a long time, there is little communication between parents and children.Therefore, they often use money to keep the relationship with their children.This situation will make children develop the worship of golden calf, which may weaken the links between parents and children.When the children suffer from troubles or difficulties, they don’t want to communicate with parents, or talk with their teachers in school, so that they often abandon themselves, and live with peimistic feelings.And they will feel the sense of loneline, because of the lack of trust and the sense of security.Second, in their emotion life, the leftover children are short of complete care and communication.It is easy for them to suffer from psychological disorder.The long-time separation with parents makes the leftover children can not feel their
6 parents’ love in the daily life.And it makes them cannot receive the spiritual support from parents when they fall in trouble.Their mistakes also can not be guided or corrected in time.As time paes, they will come into being obvious psychological troubles.For instance, they own inferiority mentality universally.They are bad at communication with others.They have great preure on their mind.They have a strong sense of self-preservation and even have acute behaviors.
3.1.3 Low Degree of the Guardian\'s Education
84.85 percents of the leftover children are under their grandparents\' custody.According to the investigation, more than 82.6 percents of the grandparents haven\'t accepted any education, and even some of them can not write down their names.Therefore, it is impoible for them to help the children’s\' study after school.
3.2 Social Factors
3.2.1 The Gap between Urban and Rural Education
The gap between urban and rural education is an important factor which motivates the appearance of the leftover children.Education has remained top priority during Chinese modernization development.In China, the number of rural school students is very large and about three fourths of the whole students who are receiving the basic education are in the rural schools.In order to improve the rural schools\' teaching conditions, our country have invested large sums of money to help countryside school build teaching buildings.Popularization of compulsory nine-year schooling is the key goal of China\'s elementary education program.Nowadays, much achievement has been made.Nine-year compulsory education almost is carried out all over our country to make children enjoy free education.However, the countryside schools always pay little attention to the importance of solving the leftover children\'s psychological iues.In fact, the confusion and problems developing in the leftover children\'s mind need schools to find and help to guide or correct timely.Unfortunately, because of poor general conditions, countryside schools cannot afford psychologists
7 to give children neceary physical education and psychological education.Therefore, it will lead to the leftover children\'s lack of moral consciousne and incorrect learning attitude, even playing truant and making troubles.
3.2.2 The Unbalanced Economy Development between the Urban and Rural
Areas With the development of Chinese modernization, China will suffer from terrible gap between rich and poor, and the gap between urban and rural areas, which motivates the appearance of the phenomenon of leftover children.Because of the influence of different historical circumstances, natural conditions and series of other factors, the income gap between the urban and rural areas has widened greatly in China.Therefore, it is impoible to only depend on improving the yield of land to improve peasants\' income.Therefore, in order to improve their own income and the living standard, the peasants have to go outside to look for a temporary job when the slack farming season is coming.At the same time, the gap between the rural and urban areas causes that the primary industry, the secondary industry, the culture industry and the education industry are concentrated in cities.Since rural areas have no enough economic power to promote the development of industry and to release the culture industry\'s potential，peasants have to go out for jobs to relieve their families\' economic burden when they grow up to adults.It can be seen that the urban-rural divide during the proce of Chinese modernization development is the main factor that results in the phenomenon of the countryside leftover children.
8 Chapter 4 The Solution Strategies of the Countryside Leftover
Children\'s Education Problems
The countryside leftover children\'s situation has been a serious social iue.With the proce that more and more countryside surplus rural labors work in urban areas or economically developed areas, the countryside leftover children\'s negative problems become more and more serious, such as poor academic performance, dropout of school and so on.Even some of them enjoy aault, theft, gambling, participating in cult activities.It will have a negative influence on the healthy development of the countryside basic education directly.Therefore, parents, schools, government and other social groups should pay close attention to the leftover children\'s education problems.To solve the countryside leftover children\'s education problems, we should try best from the following aspects.
4.1 Making the Family Education Work
First of all, before entrusting the custodians, the parents should deliberate carefully if the custodians own enough guard capability, such as their physical condition, financial position, ethical and moral situation.Secondly, the parents should make good use of different ways or approaches to communicate with children, children\'s teachers or custodians for their learning situation, living conditions, mental condition and some other aspects, in order to give the children neceary and right education guidance.At last, if the condition permiion, parents should take their children with them as far as poible, to avoid making the kids be the leftover children.We should make our children accept positive family education.
4.2 Making full use of the Function of School
First of all, the countryside schools should set up the document system of the leftover children.The files should completely reflect the basic information of the leftover children in all aspects, including the leftover children\'s name, age, moral character, behavioral foible, hobby, level of intelligence, traits of character, learning
9 motivation and attitude, learning capacity and method, the situation of getting along with their custodians, the situation of communication with their parents and so on; including the basic information of the custodians, such as name, age, degree of education, traits of character, the way they discipline the children and so on; including the basic information of the leftover children\'s parents, such as name, age, the degree of education, job category, economic income, requirement to their children, the situation that communication with their children and so on.
Secondly, schools and teachers should pay more attention to the leftover children and give them more encouragement and help.Love is the cornerstone of education.For those children who live alone for a long time, they are short of the love from their parents.Love is the premise of education and it should be put in the center.Teachers should make friends with the leftover children to care for them, cherish them and understand them.On security, we should remind them frequently.In life, we should give them help as far as poible.Psychologically, we should look after them and multi-communicate with them.In their study, we should often offer them guidance.We need to encourage them join in the group of all the clamates, in order to reduce the sense of loneline in their mind, which is to help them keep an optimistic attitude of study and living.
4.3 Paying More Attention to the Leftover Children
To solve the leftover children\'s education problems, it needs the whole society to work together.
First of all, we need to strengthen the general control of the government, and increase the support from society.The government should increase the investment to the educational facilities in the urban areas where the migrant workers concentrating.The schooling admiion charges of the workers\' children and the conditions of schooling should be reduced.We also should improve the learning conditions of the migrant workers\' children step by step.The government should gradually establish social regulatory system and break the urban-rural dual economic system, to give the migrant workers and their children practical treatment of the public.And the government should open up the green channel to solve the schooling problem of the
10 workers\' children, to make them enjoy the high level of education as same as the urban children.This is the fundamental way to solve the countryside leftover children\'s education problems.Secondly, we should step up publicity efforts and make full use of the role of the media, especially the internet media.We need to increase the news propaganda to arouse the concern and attention of various sectors of the community towards the leftover children.And we need mobilize all the social forces to seek ways and methods to solve the leftover children\'s problems together.
4.4 Narrowing the Gap between Urban and Rural Economy Development
The government should formulate policies to promote the economic development in rural areas and increase the rural surplus labor force\'s employment opportunities in the nearby areas, and encourage the migrant workers return to their hometowns to establish their own busine.In this way, the number of the leftover children will be reduced as far as poible.The government should properly adjust macroeconomic policies to fully support the economic development of rural and backward areas through the financial resources, human resources and other aspects, to accelerate the improvement of the rural infrastructure construction, to improve the investment environment of the small towns, and to increase the rural surplus labor force\'s employment opportunities in the nearby areas.The government should treat the rural labor force\'s employment as an important part of the new socialist countryside construction, vigorously develop the county economy, and improve the investment environment of the small towns.Furthermore the employment opportunities in the rural areas should be increased to make a part of the migrant workers can work locally and to shorten the migrant workers\' cycle of returning home.
Chapter 5 Conclusion
With the rapid development of China’s economy, more and more young rural people go to cities for works, which result in a phenomenon that a special group of children come into being who are called “the leftover children”.
The leftover children are a group of children who need help, care, concern and love.They do not live in a rich life and are not in a satisfying environment.They lack too much than those children who have a normal life.So they need to be paid attention by others.Now left-behind children have attracted lots of attention.Hope and believe their life can be lit better and soon.
In a word, the leftover children\'s education problem is a quite complex social iue.The problem is a new challenge the education work facing with.It is not only related to the healthy growth of the leftover children, but also to the stable relationship between the economic and social development of the vast rural areas, and it\'s also related to the healthy development of the rural basic education.Therefore, we should cooperate with and mobilize the school, family and society forces to collectively concern and effectively solve the leftover children\'s education problems, which will promote a better harmonious development of our society.
Notes
1段成荣、周福林：“我国留守儿童状况研究”，载《人口研究》，2005年第1期：“据全国妇联统计，全国留守儿童的人数约为5800万，其中14岁以下的留守儿童超过4000万。目前，留守儿童占全部农村儿童总数的28.29%，平均每4个农村儿童中就有一个留守儿童。”
2续梅：“1000万留守儿童期待关爱”，《中国教育报》，2004年6月5日第1版：“另据国家统计局有关资料显示，2003年农村外出务工的劳动力占农村劳动力的23%，其中举家在外务工的有2430万人，随同父母进入城市的6至14岁流动儿童643万人，留在老家的留守儿童约占农村中小学在校学生总数的37.4%”
Works Cited
Ye Jingzhong, Murray.Left-behind Children in Rural China.Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Pre, 2009.徐群(Xun Qun).“关注留守儿童教育与创建和谐新农村”．《现代农业科技》,2007
(11):156-157.常青(Chang Qing).“农村留守儿童人格特征研究——以江西玉山县为例”.《华东师范大学硕士论文》, 2007：17-23.方铭琳(Fang Minglin).“留守儿童的关爱教育机制”.《中国农村教育》, 2007 (10):32.高培文(Gao Peiwen).“和谐社会与未成年人思想道德建设——以四川农村留守儿童为视角”.《经济与社会发展》, 2006 (12):125-127.田景正(Tian Jingzheng).“关于农村“留守儿童”教育问题的思考”.《当代教育论坛》, 200.王璠(Wang Fan).“统筹城乡发展与体制创新研究”.《西北农林科技大学学报：社会科学版》, 2006, 6（5）:19-24.
