The author | Du Jingyi, Chen Xiuhua, Zhao Peng, Wu Xixing, Yao Ruoshui (Member of dachuang 2020 project team of Chinese Min University)
The picture is | Chen Xiuhua is an undergraduate student in the College of Liberal Arts of Chinese University
Responsible editor| Lu Lidan is an associate professor at the School of Society and Population of Chinese University
Since 1978, the Spring Festival has become an important window of interaction between urban and rural areas. The migrant workers who come and go are like messengers, one end connected to the dream, the other holding the nostalgia, creating a migrant poem. Fast forward to 2022, which is also the second year of the "Local New Year" initiative, and many migrant workers can only stay at work again because of the epidemic. For rural left-behind children, the faces of the "messengers" who have once again "broken the appointment" are becoming more and more blurred in their memories, but they are becoming clearer and clearer in their poetry.
All left-behind children staying in school during the holidays
The social roots involved in the problem of left-behind children are complex, and the household registration system and the education system are deeply linked. The question of the healthy growth and physical and mental development of left-behind children is like a thorn in people's hearts. Although the relevant government departments, many public welfare organizations and social forces have given a lot of attention and support, the card point still exists, and the exploration of the left-behind child care model has entered a difficult stage. In the face of this "dilemma", what else can we do for left-behind children?
"New poetry education based on language classrooms may be a breakthrough."
Based on this, in 2020, a large creative team of Chinese University conducted a survey on "the education and reception of new poetry for left-behind children". Let's get closer to the little new poetry world of left-behind children.
What can new poetry education bring to left-behind children?
The current situation of new poetry education for left-behind children
(Coordinates: Jiangxi)
Our research team distributed two questionnaires to fifth- and sixth-grade students and Chinese teachers in three Jiangxi primary schools, and the three primary schools surveyed in Jingdezhen, Wannian and Qiukou provided us with a lot of valuable information.
The Chinese teacher comforts the left-behind children who have just made a video call with their parents
We found that language teachers can play a vital role for left-behind children, and that the closeness between left-behind children and language teachers will have a significant positive impact on children's acceptance of new poems.
Left-behind children and their language teachers
In order to better produce new poetry collections for left-behind children, we continued to investigate the preferences of students and found that left-behind children prefer to learn and appreciate new poems in the form of videos rather than texts, and that left-behind children's dependence on mobile phone fragment information has become very serious. It also raises further concerns about the language learning environment in which left-behind children live.
Based on these findings, we believe that it is necessary to expose left-behind children to more enlightening, educational, and more beautiful language, and to fully explore the positive role that language teachers may play for left-behind children, and new poetry education is a reasonable path.
With left-behind children
There were 3 people in the Jiangxi research team, and we visited many places, and many deep memories of this investigation were retained in our hearts.
Chen Xiuhua: "In wannian county five primary schools, many left-behind children have been left in school for a long time because of family poverty and divorce of their parents, and some children have even been left-behind children since kindergarten. On weekends or holidays, teachers take turns going to school to care for students. They even brought some clothes, shoes and socks, books and stationery to the children from home. ”
Wu Xixing: "In several primary schools in Jingdezhen, Wuyuan County, and Wannian County, students' understanding of new poems is almost only in the classroom and the few poems in the textbook, and there is nothing more than that. ”
Zhao Peng: Recalling Lu Xun's "Kite", for left-behind children, did the "kite" not appear from beginning to end? Left-behind children are hidden in the children's group, but they are always uniquely remembered by local teachers. ”
Interview with new poetry education experts
(Coordinates: Beijing)
The Qingyuan Xingsi Great Zen Master of the Song Dynasty said something like this: "When the old monk came to zen thirty years ago, he saw that the mountain was a mountain and the water was water; and later when he saw knowledge with his own eyes, there was an entry, and he saw that the mountain was not a mountain, and the water was not water; and now when he has to rest, he still sees the mountain or the mountain, and sees the water or the water." "Thus get the three realms of life." Initially, we are familiar with the superficial things that we are familiar with. As the elders taught, "At your age, the most wonderful and carefree time, cherish it." For such a teaching, editors and young readers are familiar with their childhoods, but at that time, you and I are difficult to really understand the meaning; later, through reading, learning, traveling, etc., young readers can get rid of the identity of "20xx students xxx students of x county x city x primary school in Jiangxi Province". Become "a beautiful girl with an oil-paper umbrella in the qingwa lane of the ancient city of Kasuga Jiangnan in the early 20th century", become a "heartbroken teenager on the train in the Gobi desert in the 1980s", and can become a bridge, a brick, a dream, a concept, an emotion, a sigh, a touch of morning light. We hope that the new poems will bring a stage for left-behind children to express themselves frankly and freely, as well as to receive and understand the world deeply and deeply.
Expert interviews
The education of new poetry can bring many inspirations, but also raise corresponding questions and challenges. Our team in Beijing visited several experts on left-behind children's issues and new poems and their educational research. They provide us with perspectives and ideas for broadening the path of interpreting problems and systematically summarizing existing practices.
Lin Xijie
Researcher of Beijing Haidian District Academy of Educational Sciences
Group leader of the drama education project of primary and secondary schools in Haidian District
Deputy Secretary-General of the Art Popularization and Education Committee of the China Performance Industry Association
"In elementary school poetry classes, they can be combined with the music and dance integrated art class and taken together. It's not just a reading, it's not just something in a language class. Often, the interpretation of poetry in primary and secondary schools is completely linguistic, rather than the theoretical criticism in new poetry, which is a very big difficulty and problem, and the communication between professors, recipients and new poems has become very difficult. ”
Zhang Jieyu
Professor, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Chinese Min University
He is a member of the Society of Modern Chinese Literature
"The selection of new poems is actually more broad. Taking into account different groups of children, this may be the contribution of your research to the problem of new poetry anthologies – how to read, how to treat friendship, how to treat family affection, how to look at the lack of parents and the hardships of parents... Literature provides some avenues of understanding. ”
Swipe left or right to view the atlas of new poems
Team members are selected from the survey
The research in just a few days has also left us with deep touch and memory, we measure with our eyes, listen with our ears, and feel everything about "them" with our hearts.
We really felt the importance of field research, and in the process of communication and investigation, we mobilized all enthusiasm, hoping to be more cautious and calm in the face of the specific situation while arousing interest. In a nutshell, this survey touched people's hearts, was concrete and practical, and achieved great results.
——Du Jingyi
"Sinking"
Xu is drifting for a long time,
The heart has been dulled.
Empathy
Tied with a long cotton thread,
Floating,
It's just a thin sheet of plastic.
Sank,
Goldfish kite in the child's hand.
Sinking,
It was a bitter honor for me.
——Zhao Peng
Recalling the school for left-behind children that is almost a desert of new poetry, I am even more deeply aware of the lack of left-behind children in this regard. What our society should do for the children left behind. How to build a richer ecosystem for the new poetry education of left-behind children and plant oases in the desert requires more attention, thinking and efforts of the whole society. In the information society, it is not untouchable for left-behind children to read and write all kinds of good new poems.
- Wu Xixing
Looking at the childish and innocent face in the photo, it is inevitable that ripples will ripple in my heart. They deserve to enjoy a happy and carefree childhood like ordinary children, but they build barriers inside and protect themselves like small animals covered with thorns in a simple way that isolates the world. Hopefully, we'll be able to melt them with new poems, because they're all the same.
—— Yao Ruoshui
or not over
Left-behind children do not lack the content of life, they are the generational inheritors of Fang Yin, and they use their short childhood to feel that China's urbanization process is unfolding in the small space in which they live. If they are lucky enough, they can also feel the pulse and breath of industrial society through the network, from the shimmering light leaking from the pores of the information society, and examine the agricultural society in which they live. But they lack convenient reading conditions, lack of ways to observe more lifestyles, and lack of opportunities to experience a longer history of mankind, richer scientific knowledge and deeper self-knowledge from various channels, and the pandemic has added an obstacle to this barrier. It is hoped that these left-behind children will:
"God gave him the wisdom he knew himself,
His joy, his poetry, swayed before the wind. ”[i]
[i] Excerpt from Chen Mengjia's "A Wild Flower" from the team's new poetry reading book, I Climb along the Bubbles.
appendix:
Based on the research of the field investigation in Jiangxi Province and the interviews and exchanges with several experts and scholars, the project ends with an exploration and practice of the above shortcomings exposed in the new poetry education of left-behind children, and independently compiles new poetry reading books suitable for left-behind children from the upper primary school to the junior high school (9-12 years old), in order to find development ideas for the aesthetic education of left-behind children and the popularization of new poetry education.
It is hoped that this collection of poems will serve as the end of this project and as the beginning of an attempt to educate left-behind children in new poetry.
The way left-behind children design new poetry reading books
The poems are based on thematic topics, in order of the degree of abstraction of the poems and the degree of closeness of the poems to the lives of the reader group. Under each unit, 3-4 new poems that echo the theme of the topic are selected, each poem identifies the author, accompanied by a brief introduction, and a number of open interactive questions are compiled after the poems for the reader's reference and answer, giving the reader creative inspiration, or assisting the reader to understand the content of the poem and experience the emotion of the poem.
When reading this collection of poems, young readers can read it in the order they like. Poetry focuses on experience and perception, and which poem can bring spiritual touch and emotional resonance through it can be said that such a reading experience has gained. Each new poem is followed by interactive titles in a variety of forms, including open-ended questions that help readers open their minds and create freely. In this initiative all readers try to answer. There is no fixed answer to the question, and unlike the homework and exams in the classroom, no one checks and reviews, and each reader's answer is unique. Readers may wish to take these topics as novel topics and share them with their classmates, parents, relatives, friends, and teachers, and there will be new discoveries.
The poetry collection is loosely typeset, with blank space next to it, and readers can also write down any inspiration or ideas they have when reading. Let this poem be integrated into the reader's "inspiration record book" of his youth, and after years and decades, looking at these chapters again, he may be amazed by his rich ideas and delicate emotions at that time.
Through this new collection of poems, the editor hopes to let young readers realize that everything in the time and space we are in can find the hidden beauty in it, and all things are beautiful, and everything can become poetry.