The bells of 2022 have already sounded. Looking back at the past year, there are many educational events that have attracted social attention.
In the new year, education will enter a new stage of development, what can we expect?
On January 5, 2022, Ni Minjing, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, delivered a keynote speech entitled "Urban Learning Is the Core Soft Power of Cities" at the 15th Shanghai Minjin Education Forum.
What is Urban Learning?
How did it become the core soft power of the city?
How will Lifelong Education in Shanghai move towards high-quality development?
Let's take a look at --
(The following is based on the on-site speech, with deletions)
Ni Minjing, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission
Today I would like to talk about how our education can enhance the soft power of cities from the perspective of lifelong education.
You may recall that on the night of October 31 last year, there was a "most romantic nucleic acid test in history." A case of COVID-19 was found that day and had been to Shanghai Disneyland. In a very short period of time, tens of thousands of people have completed the testing of the new crown virus. By 3 o'clock in the morning, we had all the 20,000 students and 2,000 teachers who had been to Disney in place, and the notices were in place, and we were quarantined at home.
One of the greatest strengths I feel about this is the power of a city. It embodies the spirit of Shanghai city, open-mindedness and humility. It also reflects Shanghai's urban character: openness, innovation and inclusiveness.
The spirit and character of the whole city are actually embodied through each of us, so everyone is soft power. The quality of each of our citizens has improved, and the soft power of our city has really improved.
Education itself is soft power, and I feel this very much.
In 2009 and 2012, Shanghai participated in two PISA tests, ranking first in the world. This has played a great role in enhancing the urban soft power of the whole of Shanghai. At that time, when I went abroad and told others that I was working at the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, I would be particularly warmly welcomed and respected.
Shanghai's lifelong education is also at the forefront of the country.
In 2019, Shanghai joined UNESCO's Global Network of Learning Cities, which convenes the International Conference on Learning Cities every two years.
In 2019, I will represent China in Colombia to participate in this global conference to introduce our lifelong education in China and lifelong education in Shanghai at the keynote forum. I was one of the six drafters of the Medellín Declaration adopted at the conference, illustrating the impact of lifelong education in Shanghai.
In 2021, Shanghai won the UNESCO 2021 Learning City Award.
Speaking at the awards ceremony, David Acholai, Director of UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning, said: "Shanghai has made outstanding progress in providing lifelong learning opportunities for its citizens, in a rapidly changing world where all citizens have the opportunity to continue to develop themselves and contribute to solving local and global challenges. ”
Everyone thinks that Shanghai's lifelong education is still doing well, but I am still very anxious in my heart. For example, our university for the elderly is difficult to find, the supply of lifelong education in cities and villages is obviously uneven, and there is the problem of migrant workers' education. For migrant workers in Shanghai, we did not give him enough educational support, which is also a great pain point for our lifelong education.
I tell you a data, there are nearly 10 million migrant workers in Shanghai, of which 65% have academic qualifications in junior high school and below, and 85% have high school and below. The average years of education of the main labor force in our entire city is only 12.5 years, and the developed countries are generally above 13.5, which is a big gap.
The 14th Five-Year Plan for Lifelong Education in Shanghai proposes that by 2025, it will take the lead in building a higher-level and higher-quality learning society driven by urban learning power, forming an inclusive, diverse, and ubiquitous lifelong learning environment.
There are three key words here, one is urban learning, one is higher quality lifelong education, and one is a lifelong learning environment. I'll just say a little bit about these three keywords -
Keyword 1: Urban learning
What we call learning, from the perspective of cognitive psychology, refers to the awareness of learning, whether you want to learn or not, the strategies and methods of learning, and some such qualities.
Urban learning is a sum of everyone's learning ability.
The OECD Study Guide 2030 points out that learning should allow learners to set their own course in unfamiliar environments, form strong adaptability and change capabilities, and focus on creating new value, coordinating contradictions and dilemmas, and taking responsibility. This is a new understanding of learning.
So learning ability not only refers to the ability to learn, but also the power of change, that is, after learning, we change ourselves, we change the city. Learning ability is the core competitiveness of the city, and learning ability is monitorable and evaluatable.
In August 2018, we published a research report on the learning ability of Shanghai citizens. This report tells us a very interesting conclusion: the more people who love to learn, the happier they are. So learning is about everyone's ability to be happy, and it's one of our goals to develop urban soft power.
Keyword 2: Lifelong learning environment
That is to say, if I want to learn, there is local studies, even in prisons, and we opened a college in prisons. Another very important feature is that if I don't learn, I will feel very embarrassed, then this environment will be formed.
The types of people who now love to learn the most are two "whites": one is white-collar workers, and the other is white-haired.
Our Education Committee and SMG launched the Golden Academy, and this channel is now viewed by 1 million households per day, indicating that the learning ability of our elderly people is fully stimulated. Our government is being chased to provide resources for them to learn from. Where is Shanghai's development strong? Children keep learning, white-collar workers keep learning, and the elderly are still learning.
How to provide the power of the whole society to people to learn?
We have done a humanistic walking project, and every year more than one million people walk through the humanities, stringing together some points in Shanghai and becoming a learning resource.
We developed a credit bank, during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, everyone here will have a credit bank account number, will record your entire learning experience, and be inspired.
Keyword 3: high-quality development of lifelong education
The state promulgated the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the 2035 Vision, and for the first time set up a separate chapter for education, called "Building a High-quality Education System", which mentioned high-quality lifelong education. High-quality lifelong education should be developed in the following aspects -
The first connotation develops. On the one hand, the scale of our lifelong education will be expanded, and the number of universities for the elderly in Shanghai will double within five years. We will also build hundreds of civic learning workshops. It is more important to improve the quality of the curriculum, teachers and activities, only in this way can we truly improve the quality of our lifelong education.
The second is balanced development. We are premised on the balanced development of basic education, and now we are going to mention the balanced development of lifelong education, and our suburbs may have better community schools and universities for the elderly.
The third is open development. It is not only to learn from advanced lifelong education at home and abroad, I think the most important thing is that lifelong education should break the circle. "Everyone, all the time, everywhere" not only refers to the ability to learn, but also includes the support provided for "everyone, all the time, everywhere" learning.
We did a call for teachers and volunteers at the University of the Elderly Community College last year. I thought it would be good to recruit 6,000 people, but how many people came? 420,000 people. "I come to be a teacher, I can arrange flowers, I teach them, I have a certain knowledge ability, I teach them." Shanghai's excellence lies in our people.
The last one is innovation and development, and there are several keywords here:
"Double subtraction" seems to be about children, and children are also a part of lifelong education, and the concept of lifelong education is formed in the basic education stage, which is really the formation of lifelong education. Family education, good family education is that children and parents learn together and grow together. There are hundreds of thousands of foreigners in Shanghai, and we must think about how to better integrate them into Shanghai, so that they can contribute to the development of Shanghai's city and become new Shanghainese.
The last staff education, this topic I want to leave to you. How to improve our ability and academic qualifications, how to improve the ability and academic qualifications of millions of migrant workers who only have junior high school and high school levels, this is a big problem to be solved during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, and it is also the biggest challenge for lifelong education in Shanghai.
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