"Interview" Yao Yang, Dean of The Northern Development Institute: Flattening educational resources and achieving common prosperity is 80% complete

Intern journalist | Chen Zhenfang

Editor| Yang Yue

In 1989, Yao Yang, who graduated from Peking University, entered the transformer factory of Xi'an Electric Power Machinery Manufacturing Company. During his two years here, he observed factory restructuring, the dismantling of technical schools, and vocational education giving way to undergraduate education.

In the past two years, Yao Yang has frequently attracted heated discussions because of his high-profile opposition to the diversion of the middle school entrance examination, advocating a ten-year compulsory education, and proposing the cancellation of English for the college entrance examination.

Since last year, the Chinese government has continued to introduce a series of policies and guarantee systems on vocational education, county secondary education, rural revitalization, and guarantee of teachers' basic salaries. The "double reduction" policy introduced in late July has brought the education industry unprecedented attention and discussion, but what is rural education experiencing in the wider fields?

The day before the interview with Yao Yang, Yao Yang was on the hot search because "the professor of Peking University said that the senior high school did not appear", and also received an attack email. He didn't care, "I can't explain it to everyone, he didn't even read the interview." ”

On January 12, Interface Education interviewed Yao Yang, dean of the National Institute of Development Studies of Peking University, and in addition to his ongoing secondary vocational education research project, he also discussed topics such as rural education, middle school entrance examination diversion, and double reduction policy.

Secondary vocational education has entered a dead end

Interface Education: Please introduce the project you are investigating first.

Yao Yang: The reason is that an entrepreneur saw my remarks about "diverting the middle school entrance examination" and was willing to provide 1 million yuan for relevant research. We just came back from a survey in a city in Hebei two days ago.

The city's vocational education is among the best in the country, but the local education bureau has always been confused: what vocational education should do and which direction to go, especially vocational high school.

Through our research, we found that almost 100% of students who went to vocational high schools (hereinafter referred to as vocational high schools) or technical schools still want to go to university. Since you want to go to college, why not study culture classes directly through high school, and then go to technical universities or higher vocational colleges (hereinafter referred to as higher vocational colleges), and now there are a number of technical universities that can solve the problem of vocational education.

This raises a big question mark, how useful is secondary vocational training?

Parents want their children to go to work without graduating from junior high school; if they go to high school, whether it is general high school or vocational high school or technical school, parents expect him to go to college, otherwise high school education will be wasted. When ordinary people do education investment calculations, they are leap-forward decisions.

In addition, now the dual teaching system of employers and vocational high schools, the so-called internship is only to treat students as cheap labor, do simple repetitive work. For enterprises, students still have to go to college, they will not come to employment, and enterprises are not willing to invest too much.

Technical schools have 3+2 programs, and students read out as college students. Enterprises also have the motivation to cooperate with such technical schools, the combination of factories and schools is very close, and the people trained can work directly. From the choice of enterprises, it can also be seen that higher occupations are more important, so where is the significance of middle jobs?

There are also problems with the professional setting of the middle job. For example, nursing majors, before the health school can be a nurse, now parents want their children to read a junior college, the general hospital also requires a college degree or above, the local education director is also asking: "Does the nursing profession need to read vocational high school?" ”

The local government hopes to integrate the bad pugao into a comprehensive secondary school. In the comprehensive high school, the students with the best grades take the undergraduate examination, and other students take the road of vocational education, and may go to the county vocational education center for internship two days a week, and spend 3/5 of the time to learn cultural classes, so that the vocational education center becomes a real vocational education center.

Interface education: After the end of the nine-year compulsory education, many rural children can only choose to go to vocational schools or go out to work, can rural secondary vocational education provide a solution?

Yao Yang: Judging from the survey results, secondary vocational education has entered a dead end. When families make educational decisions, they either go to work at the age of 16 or go to college. We can no longer think of doing a good job in vocational education, and it is useless to do a good job.

How high the educational return rate of secondary vocational education still needs to be studied, at least in the early stages of secondary vocational education, not much higher than junior high school education, because junior high school students work three years earlier.

Rural families have a very high discount rate, and their future income plays a small role in them, he only looks at the returns for the next three or five years, and they decide through the accounting that their children will end their learning careers if they do not enter high school.

Our investigation found that rural children's learning is not good and they are delayed. Parents' education is very important, and if you slowly progress on your own, there will be no fundamental change in the decades.

It is recommended that the family planning team of 10 million people be transformed on the spot to focus on the early education of women and children. Family planning recruits high-quality talents, and now the state advocates family education, which happens to lack an external force, so they turn to social work and intervene in the gap of family education.

Interface education: In the context of the academic society, everyone is reluctant to go to vocational colleges, but long-term free choice is incompatible with social and economic development, how do you think of this contradiction?

Yao Yang: This is a myth. Students who graduate from higher vocational schools are skilled workers, and the number of workers has not decreased. Secondary vocational students are not qualified for the work of blue-collar workers, and few middle-aged vocational students can now work on the assembly line, and junior high school students can be competent in three months of training. This kind of work is about to be eliminated. In addition to this kind of work, other jobs have a certain technical content, and it is best to have a higher vocational education degree.

Interface Education: Why are workers' social recognition and protection low?

Yao Yang: This is the result of globalization, which has knocked industrial workers to the bottom, because they are the easiest to replace. In a market economy, especially in an American-style market economy, no one will look up to American construction workers. For example, the labor market has shifted from Europe and the United States to Asia, and now in Southeast Asia, there will be poorer countries waiting. Therefore, the countries that are walking in front are very tired, and their industries and workers' skill levels must go to the high end.

Education must be considered 20 years, 30 years later, when the assembly line work may be gone, general education will play a role, everyone has a high Chinese, if the ability is not good, there are opportunities to improve themselves.

The abolition of the diversion of the middle school entrance examination can narrow the gap between urban and rural areas

Interface Education: You propose to implement ten years of compulsory education, delay or cancel the diversion of the middle school entrance examination, and in what ways can the cancellation of the middle school entrance examination be able to promote educational equity?

Yao Yang: First of all, we can narrow the gap between urban and rural areas. Many people defend the diversion, believing that the structure of the student's mind is different, some people are accustomed to rational thinking and abstract thinking, and some students have strong hands-on ability, so they should be diverted.

In the technical schools we surveyed, almost 100% of the students came from rural areas, and 1/4-1/3 of the children were from single-parent families, which were also at the bottom in rural areas. Although there is no data yet, the proportion of rural students in higher vocational education should not be low.

If it is solidified in secondary vocational education, it is believed that "rural children should be hands-on, and their abstract thinking ability is too poor, they should go to middle jobs." "It's not just class stratification, it's even biological stratification. Is it true that rural children's thinking ability is not good? How many of the people who say these things themselves come out of the countryside.

What are the benefits of extending compulsory education? Some children graduate from high school and are forced to work under family pressure, and when they have accumulated, they improve their employability through self-examination for adult college or university. Without a high school diploma, the road is blocked.

In contemporary and future Chinese society, university education will become a basic skill requirement. This can refer to neighboring countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Interface Education: You previously suggested that the college entrance examination cancel the English test, why?

Yao Yang: It is too important to cancel the English test. Children in the city start to learn English from kindergarten, foreign teachers teach directly, rural children have no learning resources, and English test requirements are becoming more and more difficult, is this not obvious discrimination?

English is related to reform and opening up, which is a trend, but any trend has passed through the time, and now it is necessary to correct it. The abolition of English will not affect China's internationalization, and those who really deal with foreigners and read English materials will not even reach 5%.

After 2017 is the era of correction, the past 40 years we have gone too radical and need to pull back. Including English learning, general education, but there are still many discussions on correction, pay attention to mastery, English tests have not yet begun to correct deviations.

Interface Education: How do you see the "double reduction" policy?

Yao Yang: The original intention of the "double reduction" policy is good and has achieved certain results. For example, children stay in school for an extra hour and a half, dual workers are liberated, the school introduces teaching and auxiliary institutions, and it is good to engage in some extended education in the school.

I'm also ambivalent. There are reasonable elements in controlling teaching and auxiliary institutions, and in the past period of time, teaching and auxiliary institutions have become "printing machines", which is equivalent to a parallel education system, which must be resolutely stopped. However, it is also not possible to beat the teaching and auxiliary institutions to death with a stick.

However, the "double reduction" policy can not really stop the teaching and auxiliary industry, these institutions have gone underground, the fees are more expensive, ordinary people can not even afford to teach aids, the gap will be even greater. The "double reduction" policy is to stop the boiling of the soup, not to draw salaries from the bottom of the cauldron, and the result is even more unfair. It is necessary to find a way to find a way to extract salaries from the bottom of the system, but it is more difficult to start from the system.

The root of common prosperity is educational equity

Interface education: At the end of the 1980s, China carried out a huge comprehensive reform of rural education, the core of which advocated the "three education co-ordination" of general education, adult education, and vocational and technical education, emphasizing the combination of education and agriculture, science and technology, and rural economic development. But in the early 90s, it didn't work out, what do you think?

Yao Yang: After the 1990s, we gradually became a kind of exam-oriented education, and education is for the college entrance examination. The same is true of rural education, which has resulted in the concentration of resources in a small number of super secondary schools and an imbalance in education in rural areas.

In my hometown of Xingan County, Jiangxi Province, I was taught math by a primary school physical education teacher who had studied because there was no physical education equipment. Because educational resources are too concentrated, the difference between urban and rural areas is too great, and in recent years, cities have also changed in this way.

In addition, agriculture is a shrinking industry that does not require so many people. In the 1990s, everyone's first choice was to work in coastal areas, and the cultivation of agricultural talents did not conform to the trend. At present, vocational education is also in line with the trend of training workers for large-scale industry.

Industry is squeezing out labor, industrial and employment demand is shrinking, and China's industrial relative labor productivity is higher than that of other countries. This contradicts the idea that a large number of workers are needed in the country. In this way, vocational education will repeat the old path of rural education in the 80s, and it will definitely fail in the end.

Manufacturing employment in the United States accounts for about 9% to 10% of total employment, and the added value of manufacturing is estimated to be 13%-15% compared to the added value of all industries. In the future, China's manufacturing employment accounted for 11% of total employment, but the added value of manufacturing accounted for 30% of total GDP, and the labor productivity of manufacturing is almost three times that of the other two industries.

Interface Education: What are the urgent and top priority issues in rural education?

Yao Yang: The average resources of students in rural areas are very unbalanced, and the resources are too small. Education has become a county-level affair, and the low financial resources and low investment in rural areas are also a very important reason for the collapse of the county.

First, I think education should be unified at the provincial level, at least at the municipal level, which is a resource allocation. Of course it's very difficult and you need to flatten it slowly.

Second, the deeper and more difficult reason is that the early education of 0-3-year-old children in rural areas is completely blank.

Scott Rozelle, a professor at Stanford University who has been doing research in China for a long time, found that three-year-old children in rural areas have an IQ below 90, which is normally 110, and the intelligence of rural children is not developed.

Interface education: In modern society, education is the most important factor in determining personal development. Is the talent training model for rural areas too simple?

Yao Yang: Yes, this is extremely unfair to rural children. His education in elementary and junior high school is poor, and when he reaches high school, he is still the worst education, and going down this road is class solidification. In the countryside, only children with good families and strong motivation can take the lead, these children go to the city to study, good teachers also leave, the remaining children think that they are eliminated, and the county is empty. We now want to take the road of common prosperity, and the root of common prosperity is educational equity.

At present, the central government has issued a document to protect the educational resources in the county, and it is not enough to have an administrative order, but to have measures. At this stage and for a long time to come, the solidification of education is the direct cause of class solidification.

Interface education: What kind of framework and position should rural education be placed in? What factors are influencing the development of rural education?

Yao Yang: It should be considered in the whole country. You can't assume that rural children should stay in the countryside, which is completely wrong, but there are still about seventy or eighty percent of people who think so.

Why rural education is not successful, because you assume that they should stay in the countryside. Education should open up a space for everyone to give the right of choice to the people, to the children, to the family, not to design for him.

The main income of rural residents mainly comes from non-farming, and it is completely wrong to say that rural revitalization is equivalent to agricultural revitalization, and the countryside needs industry. Therefore, the entry point of rural revitalization should be the county economy, activate the county economy, and let the people move to the county town to live, which is the direction of development.

Interface Education: What is the relationship between rural revitalization and rural education?

Yao Yang: The two are complementary. Labor-intensive enterprises will certainly not live more than ten years, and after the income level increases, young people may not be willing to work on the assembly line, in addition, the county can not accommodate labor-intensive industries, they must be automated and upgraded, the rural economy needs industrial upgrading, and workers who can manipulate lathes must be college students.

Primary and secondary education should be based on the cultivation of people, not selection, which we may not have been able to do in the past, but can now be done. China's economic and social development also requires us to do this, fundamentally to reduce the difficulty of the college entrance examination, only to test the mathematical language, plus X, in the X selection, in fact, the mathematical language can also select people, to be from the perspective of the question to carry out test question innovation, similar to the GRE test, simply test IQ rather than brush questions.

Interface education: In recent years, everyone has "reduced the burden" on students, including the introduction of a "double reduction policy". But rural children are still herding sheep, what is the root cause of this misalignment?

Yao Yang: In addition to the uneven allocation of resources, there is also the problem of rural families. I went back to my hometown, one of the measures to reduce the burden is to let the children stay in school for an extra hour and a half, 300 yuan per month, rural parents are unwilling, they can not see the value. The complete difference between the countryside and the city is a very unsolvable problem.

The problem has been accumulated for a long time, and now if you want to change it, you have to work hard and improve the education level of your parents.

Interface education: Rural education and universal diversion are all worldwide problems, which countries can learn from them?

Yao Yang: We need to break out a road ourselves, follow the path we have traveled, and find a way to work the margins.

After the 1990s, state-owned enterprises carried out restructuring and structural adjustment, abolished technical schools, learned from the United States, and adopted comprehensive personnel training. Before this, Chinese education was to learn from the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union learned from Germany, so the roots of the Chinese education system were in Germany, especially vocational education.

The first proponents of diversion have been talking about the German and Swiss models, and in fact we simply can't get up to them. The United States has gone to the other extreme, walking through high school in unison, some people going to good colleges, others going to community colleges, community colleges in the United States actually can't learn much, and China can't become like that. We need to strike a balance between the German and American models.

Before 1992, I basically studied the German model, and then learned the American model for more than 30 years, and to find a balance, we need to combine the two. Many things in China, I am afraid, will eventually have to find a balance between Germany and the United States.

Interface education: If "urban-rural integration" is the direction of rural revitalization, under ideal conditions, what does rural education look like under urban-rural integration?

Yao Yang: First of all, the allocation of resources should be equalized. First of all, ten years, at least in the city to flatten the average student budget. By 2035, it will be flattened across the province, and to achieve this, there will be great progress in education for urban-rural integration.

Second, we must attract more excellent teacher resources to the countryside, and give rural teachers higher salaries, and now the situation is reversed.

Interface Education: When you talk about Chinese studies, you once said, "Touch every tree in the forest, and then go up the mountain to overlook the forest." In rural education, what do trees and forests mean? And how to get to the top of the mountain?

Yao Yang: Rural children's trees have not yet been clearly understood, and they are forced to run this forest, and most children stay at this level.

It is 5-10 times more difficult for rural children to get ahead than urban children. Common prosperity must have practical measures, we must grasp the key points, the focus is education, if we can level the educational resources in 2035, common prosperity will be 80% complete, the rest is fine-tuning.