Author: Liu Xiaohong (Associate Professor, School of Educational Science, Chongqing Normal University, Distinguished Researcher, Institute of Child Education, Chongqing Second Normal University); Fan Yongfeng (Professor, Faculty of Education, Southwest University)
The Law of the People's Republic of China on the Promotion of Family Education, which has recently been implemented, clarifies the fundamental tasks and goal pursuits of family education to cultivate morality and promote the healthy growth of minors, and clarifies the responsibilities of parents, the state and society. The Ministry of Education has made the implementation of the Family Education Promotion Law an annual priority.
Since ancient times, the mainland has had a good tradition of family education that emphasizes tutoring, family training, and family style. From "Yan's Family Training" and "Zhu Zi's Family Training" to "Zeng Guofan Family Book" and "Fu Lei Family Book", it has inherited excellent cultural genes for the chinese nation's family education. In recent years, the relevant government departments and professional institutions of the state have taken a number of measures and issued a series of important documents to actively promote the publicity and guidance of family education.
The importance of family education has become a social consensus, but the problems of "parenting anxiety" and "improper teaching" are still more prominent, and the lack of high-quality resources has become the main factor restricting the quality of family education. In the context of the implementation of the "double reduction" policy, the contradiction focuses on the lack of relevant resources occupied by the family - insufficient time resources, information resources and space resources.
Insufficient time resources refer to the unsaturated and dissatisfied state of parents in living with their children, playing together, reading together, and participating in the kindergarten, school activities or anniversary activities that children expect. The results of the survey on the time spent with their children by parents in the 2018-2019 research show that the vast majority of urban parents agree with the view that "companionship is the best education", but almost all parents are afraid that "they are still at work, and their children are on vacation".
Insufficient information resources refer to the lack of quality, authority and public welfare of the family education platform and information that the parenter understands and occupies. Under the guidance of the policy, all localities, led by the Women's Federation and other departments, have expanded the parent schools, implemented a variety of activities such as the preparation of the family education outline, the family education lecture hall, and the million lectures into the community, and have achieved great results in promoting the participation of parents in children's education. However, in many aspects such as the supply of educational resources, content planning, the choice of parenting methods, the construction of parent-child relationships and the establishment of correct examples, there is still a long way to go between the support that most parents can provide for their children and the real realization of the "whole-person education system with family education as the mainstay".
Insufficient space resources refer to the lack of free, open, natural and well-equipped space for families and children to play and learn conveniently and safely anytime, anywhere, near communities and living areas. There is a lack of resources for the educational space of children in both rural and urban areas. Rural areas have a relatively broad natural space, but the unchanged environment makes children and families accustomed to it, and cannot be derived into a space for educational functions; the extreme lack of natural materials, art, science and technology and other venue resources affects the speed and level of cognitive development of children in rural families, and also leads to a large extent the dependence of rural children on smart phones. In recent years, since the trial implementation of "child-friendly cities" and "child-friendly communities" in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chengdu and other places, urban family education has been greatly improved, but there are still many problems in outdoor family and children's activity facilities, indoor educational functional spaces, and the density, convenience, public welfare, management and maintenance of environment and space. The lack of spatial education resources has brought about the problem of serious imbalance in family education resources, which seriously restricts the input quality and equitable quality of family education.
Resource empowerment is the key path to improve the quality of family education in the new era. According to international and domestic research, in the field of pedagogy, the quality of parents and parents' time investment (accompaniment) are the key and direct factors affecting the quality of family education, which also belongs to the factors that parents can regulate, and is the place where educational decisions and initiatives can be made, which can be empowered by resources so that families can obtain timely support and can immediately act on the family education process.
Enhance the social consensus of "child-friendliness", and empower families with time resources. Allowing parents to assume the main responsibility for their children's family education is not achieved by family efforts or parents' wishes, but requires the whole society to take the development and rights of children as a common responsibility and jointly support parents to fulfill their obligations as parents. Promoting the consensus of "child-friendliness" in the whole society is a prerequisite for achieving this goal. The concept of child-friendly society is a child-friendly community and a child-friendly city, which has been initiated by the United Nations and has achieved sustainable development in Sweden, Finland, Japan and other countries, and in China, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Chengdu and other cities have also launched construction plans and achieved great results. In the context of building a child-friendly society, parents will be given special provisions and certain considerations in terms of maternity holidays, work arrangements for parents of school-age children's families, flexible work flexibility for parents of school-age children, and leave systems for child-related holidays and holidays for children's employees, so as to ensure the family time required by parents of school-age children.
Improve the family education data platform, and information resources empower parents. The incorporation of family education into the basic public service system is the basic spirit and task of promoting family education work on the mainland. According to the survey, the main channels for young parents to obtain parenting information are virtual channels such as childcare clients and public accounts. Institutions that lead the family education service system should change their work thinking, use professional and technical strength, and design a family education service cloud platform that meets the characteristics of the times.
Promote the construction of child-friendly communities, and empower children with space resources. Child-friendly communities have rich connotations, not only to provide cultural and sports facilities and educational spaces that meet children's needs, but also to promote children's active participation in social governance and social practice, so as to make children's living environment more friendly. Therefore, it is necessary to comprehensively promote the construction of child-friendly communities on the basis of the aforementioned urban experiments, provide parents with more public welfare and educational venue resources, and meet the various choices of parents to take their children out of the portal. Construct parks and squares that contribute to children's intellectual development, motor and physical development, and partnership interaction, expand and optimize children's perspectives and participatory and experiential libraries, museums, art galleries, science and technology museums, zoos, etc., empower children through rich spatial resources, and provide a strong supplement for family education resources.
(This paper is the result of the Humanities and Social Sciences Project of the Ministry of Education "Research on the Historical Stage and Empirical Characteristics of preschool Education Development in the 70th Anniversary of the Founding of New China" [20XJC880005])
Source: China Education News