In 2012, Yezhai Middle School organized students to paint the tombstones of anti-Japanese fallen soldiers red. In recent years, the activity has been changed to depict the inscriptions on the campus in red. Profile picture
Before this year's Qingming Festival, Yezhai Middle School carried out the Qingming Festival sweeping activities in the Square of the Zhonglie Ancestral Hall. Courtesy of Yezhai Middle School
In the history of Chinese education, this is a unique school – every year more than 3,000 students live with 985 anti-Japanese martyrs who are buried here.
It is a provincial demonstration high school located in the southern foothills of Tianzhu Mountain and on the shore of diving - Qianshan Yezhai Middle School in Anhui Province. Behind this school name with a strong local atmosphere, there is a tragic and majestic school history.
In 1943, when the anti-Japanese flames were filled, the remains of 985 anti-Japanese soldiers of the 176th Division of the 48th Army of the National Revolutionary Army were buried in Savage Village (now Tianzhu Mountain Town). Celebrities from the thirteen counties of Anhui and Hubei provinces jointly proposed "permanently commemorating the martyrs and cultivating the martyrs' remnants and local outstanding youth", and built a school to protect the tomb here, and the school was named Jingzhong Middle School, which was filmed for the meaning of Yang Zhonglie. In 1970, it was renamed "Yezhai Middle School".
Along with the feelings of home and country of the revolutionary martyrs, what has been passed down to the present day is the school's tireless exploration of students' character education.
Located in the realm surrounded by mountains, the location advantage is insufficient, but sitting on the Anqing City Patriotic Education Base and national defense education base, how to make these unique educational resources play a role, guide the character shaping of children in mountainous areas, and lay a good character foundation for them to go out of the mountains and return to the countryside in the future, which is an educational proposition that the whole school has been trying to crack.
In view of the phenomenon of "acting with knowledge and teaching with speaking" that once existed in moral education, since 2014, the school has innovated the character education model, with the goal of unifying knowledge and action, taking "moral education micro-action" as the starting point, adhering to the problem-oriented, attaching importance to students' emotional experience, and allowing students to cultivate good character through participation, experience and perception.
Since the implementation of character education, how effective has it been? Is this model worth replicating and promoting? A few days ago, a reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Network went to Qianshan Yezhai Middle School in Anhui Province and a number of local schools to conduct in-depth research.
"Rushing to sign up is not to complete the task, but to do a sacred thing with reverence and piety"
As soon as I walked into Yezhai Middle School, "patriotism" became concrete.
The campus is built on a mountain, with teaching buildings, dormitory buildings and cypress pine forests covering each other, commemorating the Anti-Japanese Martyrs Cemetery, Martyrs' Cemetery, Museum, Martyrs' Shrine, Haoran Pavilion and so on.
Every year on September 3 (the anniversary of the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression), a grand opening ceremony for freshmen is held in the Square of the Martyrs' Memorial Tower; the last activity before the senior high school students leave school is to bid farewell to the tombstone of the martyrs and take an oath... "Patriotic education is the tradition of the school, and 'character first, loyalty and filial piety first' is the theme of our character education. Xu Hanfu, general secretary of the party branch and principal of Yezhai Middle School, said that this is first reflected in the fact that the school will carry out activities at every festival node related to the War of Resistance and martyrs.
Peng Wenchao, who is now working in colleges and universities, still remembers the shock he felt when he entered school in the fall of 2005 and the teacher led his classmates to pay respects to the martyr's legacy. When he learned to sing the school song, he had a special feeling for the words "the tangtang cemetery rises from the hill, and the martyrs will always flow". "After graduating for many years, everyone remembers how to sing the school song."
When he was studying, Peng Wenchao liked to go to the Martyrs' Shrine and Haoran Pavilion at noon and evening, and in a quiet and solemn environment, he felt that the spiritual strength that the school had accumulated for more than 70 years flowed between the pavilions and pavilions, and also flowed in the hearts of the students.
Stepping into the middle of the campus, the reporter noticed that the school's college entrance examination admission list is different, and the list of students admitted to the military school is always in the forefront, and the propaganda page they occupy is also larger and more prominent.
In order to let students understand and love national defense, and encourage them to apply for military academies and dedicate themselves to national defense, the school specially formulated the "Great Wall Plan". Every year on August 1, at the award ceremony of the special "Great Wall Scholarship" and the "Seven Sons of National Defense Award", students, parents and class teachers who have been admitted to the military school are invited to speak. Once, when a leader of a military academy came to Yezhai Middle School to hear about the introduction of the "Great Wall Project," he was moved to tears and marched on the spot to show his respect.
Patriotism is carved into the bones of the students. Xu Fugui, head of the school's character education studio and deputy secretary of the school's general party branch, remembers that the school recruited volunteers in the first grade of high school to paint the inscriptions in the martyrs' cemetery red, and unexpectedly, nearly a hundred students signed up and who to choose became a problem.
In the end, the school league committee issued an examination question - whoever memorized the most martyrs' inscriptions could be selected. After the fierce competition, more than 20 students stood out. Before the official depiction, the children stood in front of the martyr's tombstone and took the oath. "Rushing to sign up is not about completing a task, but about doing a sacred thing with reverence and piety." A classmate recalls.
Xu Fugui observed that although the recruitment plans of various military schools are different every year, the enthusiasm of students to apply for military schools is high, and the number of people participating in the physical examination of recruiting flights has also increased year by year.
To love the country, start from loving your parents and loving your family. The premise of cultivating family and country feelings is to respect parents. At Yezhai Middle School, every year during the Qingming Festival, students complete a special assignment - listening to their parents, grandparents telling the stories of their ancestors, and writing a diary. In Xu Fugui's view, the inheritance of good family style is crucial, and "remembering ancestors" is the most meaningful "ancestor worship".
In previous years, teachers also found that when children celebrate their birthdays, many parents bring cakes and gifts to the school for hospitality, and there is still a phenomenon of buying gifts among classmates. To this end, the school designed the "Mother is the protagonist of the birthday" campaign. On their birthdays, students have to do something for their mother and go on stage to tell the most touching little thing between them and their mother. Many teachers remember the children talking on the podium and bursting into tears.
Xu Xin, a first-year graduate student, still remembers the birthday scene of that year. As a left-behind child, she has a vague concept of her mother, only knowing that her mother is busy in the commissary for many years and rarely goes home to accompany herself. Before her freshman birthday, she didn't know what to do for her mother, and Xu Fugui, who was the vice principal at the time, asked her to write a letter to her mother.
Xu Xin deliberately went to the school commissary to buy an envelope with a pink floral pattern, sat at the desk, pondered for a long time, and solemnly wrote a letter, telling him that he was young and ignorant, always alienated from his mother, hoping that his mother would forgive and take her out on a trip later. To this day, my mother still treasures Xu Xin's letter.
"My mother is an ordinary rural woman who has not read any books, but in my eyes, she is very extraordinary and has supported a family." It was also the 3-year letter writing activity that made Xu Xin realize that the protagonist of the birthday was actually his mother. She also understood the deeper meaning of the old saying "the birthday of the child, the difficult day of the mother".
After graduating from high school for more than 5 years, she would call or video her mother every birthday, no matter where she was, and she maintained the habit of writing to her mother regularly. "This is what the school taught me, and it is also the agreement between me and the principal."
Students gain success and self-confidence in one activity after another, develop good character, and then radiate family and society
The cultivation of family and country feelings, the first button for students, how to systematically carry out the next character education?
Xu Fugui said that an important starting point is to design and carry out a series of targeted "moral education micro-actions" in view of the problems existing in life and study, so that students can experience and understand in the activity design, organization and implementation, summary and evaluation, commendation and reward, and strive to achieve the ultimate in each activity.
In 2014, the school's first character education campaign was "Disc Action." In view of the phenomenon of waste of students eating, the school requires students to eat how much to eat, and the students supervise and record the number of discs, and incorporate the disc rate into the corresponding assessment of the class. In less than a week, the disc rate of each class reached more than 90%.
In the ensuing "Trash Cans" campaign, students claimed to clean and clean 40 trash cans throughout the school, and they spontaneously pasted their original environmental mottos and personal names on the trash cans. One student said, "I want to accept the supervision and praise of the whole school!" ”
Chen Yihua, secretary of the Youth League Committee of the school, introduced to reporters that all activities are peripheral affairs, such as Yixing training, "civilization starts from the No. 3 bus", "leave a neat teaching dormitory for students and sisters", review materials for charity sale, etc., but it contains a series of important contents of character education such as willpower, sense of responsibility, and gratitude cultivation.
The inspiration for "giving the class teacher a day off" was a fortuitous incident. In 2016, when the school leaders were inspecting, they found a class teacher in the first grade of high school asleep leaning on a chair, and after inquiring, he learned that he had been working overtime for 4 consecutive days for students. The next day, the grade department held a meeting of all the class cadres, and then the class cadres held a meeting in the class to discuss a theme - how to let the class teacher rest one day a week?
Subsequently, each class sorted out the list of existing problems in internal management, and proposed solutions, and submitted the plan to the grade department for approval. On the "rest day", the class teacher can go home after class, not appearing in the class, playground, dormitory and canteen, the day students manage themselves, the next day early reading, the class leader summarizes the list of problems, and when the class starts, the class teacher will thank all the students.
"In addition to thanking the class teacher, this activity also cultivates students' problem-solving ability, planning and organization ability, and contract spirit, which is the cultivation of students' comprehensive character." Xu Fugui said.
The implementation of character education is not without resistance.
On the eve of the 2017 college entrance examination, the senior third grade department originally planned to organize a hiking activity to cheer up the test takers, but due to the weather, it waited until mid-May. At that time, only ten days before the college entrance examination, some students, parents and teachers expressed opposition, fearing that they would be distracted. In the end, the school leaders collectively discussed and decided to resist the pressure and proceed as usual.
The event tempered their will and relaxed their mood, and the confident students put up a queue with the words "Ono must win" in the square, and the teachers and students present were encouraged.
In the view of the teachers and students of Yezhai Middle School, character education should run through the entire life of students. Even on the day of graduation, high school students will continue to carry out the activity of "leaving a neat teaching room for students and sisters". Before leaving school, clean the classroom and write a message of blessing to the students on the blackboard. This activity has now become a school tradition and has been passed down from generation to generation.
After 8 years of continuous exploration, Yezhai Middle School has reached two important conclusions: one is that empty talk is useless, and character education is "done"; second, the development of character education will not affect the students' grades, and children with good character will naturally not have bad grades.
The school's college entrance examination data in recent years can be corroborated by: 67% of the 2016 class reached a line rate, 77.3% in the 2017 class, 85% in the 2018 class, and in 2020, this number is as high as 86.95%.
Principal Xu Hanfu believes that students can gain success and self-confidence in one activity after another, cultivate good character, and then let good character radiate to the family and society, so that the goals and values of moral education and ideological politics can truly land and realize the Lide tree.
From feeding back to the alma mater to giving back to the society, let gratitude become a habit
Last year, Jiang Hao, a 17-year-old high school senior, did something inexplicable — donating the 1,000 yuan bonus he had received as one of the "Top Ten Character Youths of the School" to the class for daily expenses. She insists that this is a ritualistic "little love" and a way to realize self-worth.
This act of kindness stems from an equally ceremonial public welfare activity, the "Annual Donation of One Dollar".
Every year on November 9th is the school celebration day of Yezhai Middle School, which is also the annual donation day, and the school will carry out the "annual donation of one yuan". Each student donates one dollar and is only allowed to donate one dollar, holding the coin in both hands and putting it into the donation bag in the hands of the class teacher, who will say "thank you" to each child. Subsequently, the students signed the donation bags, which are permanently preserved in the school archives.
Jiang Hao remembered that at the donation ceremony at the school level, the principal and the student representatives shook hands one by one to express their gratitude. "I didn't expect to donate such a small act of kindness as a dollar to get such a big appreciation, and it turned out that donating was a very happy thing."
Xu Fugui recalled that even if many students graduated, they still maintained the habit of donating one yuan to their alma mater, and he still remembers that there was a girl named Wang Qian, who sent WeChat to ask about the "annual donation" just after going to college, which made him deeply moved. In the end, Wang Qian transferred one yuan to the group leader of the high school class group, and then handed it over to the school parent committee to donate on her behalf. "There are many examples of graduates asking for donations, but as long as children don't have jobs, whether they are in college or graduate school, the school only encourages them to donate a dollar." He said.
In the long-term educational practice, Yezhai Middle School has found that the factors affecting character formation include language, role models, environment, experience, etc., and the most direct moral education role models around students are often alumni of previous years.
Picking up the steps on the campus, the reporter could see dozens of stone carvings donated by alumni along the way - the starting stone, the Siyuan stone, the Jingzhong stone, the school motto stone... Perhaps, in the eyes of these alumni, there is nothing more like this way to repay the alma mater and make the feeling of gratitude last forever.
Multimedia equipment in classrooms, cabinets in museums, and even the grading system and monitoring system have donations from alumni. In addition to donations, alumni donate books and collections, or use network introduction studies and industry leaders to give lectures.
"When students are in the middle of it, how can they not understand the meaning of gratitude? This is the most intuitive and vivid moral education material, and donation has become a habit of wild people. Xu Hanfu said.
When the 70th anniversary of the school was celebrated in 2013, the mountain school received more than 12 million yuan in alumni donations. It is worth mentioning that the Yezhai Secondary School Education Development Foundation, funded by alumni, has pooled more than 20 million yuan and set up more than 10 scholarship and assistance funds such as "Qihang Scholarship" and "Can Change Scholarship and Bursary", which also provides strong support for the implementation of character education in the school.
The experimental results are promoted at the county level, and multiple models explore realistic paths
In 2018, the character education practice of Yezhai Middle School won the first prize of Anhui Provincial Teaching Achievement Award.
The Qianshan Municipal Education Bureau promotes this achievement throughout the city.
In 2019, the city selected 16 "experimental schools" and 25 "seed teachers" who agree with the concept of character education. In 2021, these two figures will increase to 38 and 63.
Nowadays, in Qianshan, ordinary high schools, private junior high schools, vocational schools and even remote villages have found their own coordinates in the growing system of character education and opened up their own paths, and these practices have undoubtedly confirmed and enriched the theoretical construction of character education.
In the view of Cheng Housheng, general secretary of the party branch and principal of Tianzhu Mountain Tourism School, the performance of vocational school students in cultural classes is relatively weak, and character education plays a role in "bottom-up" and "awakening", which is more often reflected as a kind of "bottom-line" education.
"Self-confidence, self-discipline, self-reliance" is the core concept of the school's character education. Cheng Housheng said that it is necessary to let students be mentally healthy and happy, consciously abide by school rules and regulations, stay in the classroom to study with peace of mind, form a sound personality, adapt to social needs in the future, and become talents with parallel moral skills.
The school conducts a quantitative evaluation of the work of the class teacher, assigns points to civilized class evaluation, excellent dormitories, theme class meetings, dormitory cleanliness and other projects, and links it with the class teacher allowance to encourage the class teacher to devote himself to moral education and influence students. At the same time, the school's 180 teaching staff serve as moral education tutors to help students in need one-on-one.
Sun Jianhua, the school's class teacher, remembers that at the beginning of a school, he noticed that a girl who was not very tall was very rebellious and had an extreme personality. "But there is also a merit in the girl, she is very aura, and she is the first student to call out the names of the whole class."
Sun Jianhua encouraged her to become a work committee, and the main task was one thing - to unite the students, let everyone concentrate on studying, and try not to go out of the campus at will. As long as there are activities such as recitations and singing competitions, Sun Jianhua encourages her to go on stage to show, so she receives cheers and applause from her classmates.
After that, the girl was the first to enter the classroom every day, never missed class, and finally was admitted to one college after another.
There is also a boy surnamed Yu from the mountains, who has been living with his father. In his sophomore year of high school, he suddenly called Sun Jianhua and said that his father would not let him study. During that time, he was very depressed.
Sun Jianhua specially ran to the student's home and asked him in person: "Do you want to read it yourself?" Do you want to go to undergraduate, which relative in the family cares about you? Eventually, Sun Jianhua returned to the county with the student and sought support from his uncle and uncle. After some persuasion, the two assured Sun Jianhua that they would do their best for their nephew to read.
At that time, Yu happily hugged Teacher Sun and burst into tears. After hard work, he was also admitted to an undergraduate college.
"The meticulous care of teachers and homeroom teachers is another form of character education, discovering children's strengths, reducing children's shortcomings, and cultivating and developing children's emotional intelligence." Sun Jianhua sighed that when children understand things, education will be successful.
"The concept of character education can be understood as the enlightenment of wisdom and the formation of habits." Zhu Taiping has been teaching at Yezhai Middle School for a long time, and after being transferred to the principal of Qianshan No. 2 Middle School in 2019, he led his teachers to carry out character education reform in a big way.
Qianshan No. 2 Middle School is located in the urban area, with more day students, and the school management work was facing greater pressure before. Zhu Taiping linked character education with food, clothing, housing and transportation, and designed operable "character activities" such as CD-ROM action, traffic safety, dormitory culture, and civilized volunteer service, so that students can achieve self-discipline.
In addition, every week, the students of one class maintain the order of managing the whole school, and select 4 grades such as civilized classes and excellent classes, so that students can experience the difficulty of managing students, so as to achieve "discipline".
Teacher Lin Douyin, who has worked in the school for more than 30 years, observed that the students' behavior habits have changed visiblely - there are fewer children sleeping in class, their spirits are high, and the students in the teaching building are endorsing and learning, and there is no disturbance. The children became more polite, and he walked from the first floor to the fifth floor many times, and his ears were full of "hello teacher" greetings.
On the campus of Qianshan No. 2 Middle School, there is also a private school, Weimin Junior High School, which is a full-boarding school with left-behind children as the mainstay. Journalists were captivated by the layout of the classroom — the walls were lined with blackboards, and each student had a stage to show off his ideas at any time.
Principal Chu Zhunan introduced that in view of the poor autonomy of many students, the school boldly innovated the "four-level autonomy" system. "Students first plan their own learning, the class sits together in small groups, and the administrative team leader, discipline team leader, health team leader, and subject leader lead everyone to study and discuss."
By analogy, class autonomy and school autonomy are on top, with students managing the students by the Student Self-Management Committee and the "Student Principal" supervising and managing the students, and all the teachers retreating behind the scenes.
"Junior high school is a critical period for self-management, students begin to form independent personalities, values and judgments, and the cultivation of autonomy is crucial." Chu Shunan said that insisting on handing over the classroom to the students and giving up time to the students is a kind of character polishing.
Chu Zhunan remembers that there was a classmate surnamed Xiao in the school, who had a weak learning foundation and was only in the first year of junior high school at the age of 16. After the tempering of self-management, at the graduation ceremony of the third year of junior high school, he actually took the stage to give a speech, and one course in the middle school examination also obtained full scores, and later was admitted to a vocational college, and is currently employed in a company in Jiangsu.
"One more ruler to measure, one more batch of excellent students"
The league organization and education department of Qianshan City joined hands to promote character education, in addition to regularly carrying out activities such as theme group classes, Qingming festival sweeping, and protecting the mother river, they also integrated character education into activities such as the centralized departure ceremony and the members of the regiment holding hands and small hands, so as to realize the seamless connection between the character education between the Young Pioneers and the members of the regiment.
In recent years, the results of Qianshan character education experiments have gradually been recognized by colleagues in the education circles in the province and even in other provinces, and Yezhai Middle School, a school deep in the mountains, has become the focus of attention for a while, and schools that have learned from the truth have come to visit. They not only introduced the connotation and concept of this education system, but even brought back the four words of "character education" as they were.
Since December last year, the Chuzhou Municipal Bureau of Education and Sports has promoted the character education model in the local area; recently, the results of character education have attracted the attention of the "Liu Xiuxiang Moral Education Studio" in Guizhou Province, and Xu Fugui was hired as a studio consultant.
It is worth mentioning that the Jin'an District Education Bureau of Lu'an City, Anhui Province, has been piloting character education in 15 schools for nearly a year. Previously, the Jin'an District Education Bureau has organized primary and secondary school leaders to visit Yezhai Middle School, and has invited Xu Fugui to the district for guidance many times.
A staff member of the District Education Bureau introduced that in the past, there were "fragmented" and "slogan-style" pain points in the work of moral education, and it was urgent to find a grounded character education model and a mature activity system.
"It turns out that character education can do this, infiltrate the idea of moral education in the curriculum, activities, and campus management, and play the role of spring wind and rain." Lu'an Maotanchang Middle School belongs to Jin'an District, and now Zhang Xinzhu, the third class teacher of high school, is busier than before, according to the series of character micro-action requirements carried out by the school, he and his colleagues have carried out inspirational education, coming-of-age ceremonies, sunshine morning run, red study and other activities.
In the view of Yu Cunbao, principal of Maotanchang Middle School, if character education is to achieve practical results, it must be paid equal attention by the whole school to achieve "full participation, no bonsai, and full of spring colors".
It is understood that the school combined the red resources of the old revolutionary area and the characteristics of the school, designed four basic activities of red education, civilized etiquette, mental health education, and "one song per week", and then carried out "self-selected actions" at all grades, so that students can harvest education and growth from campus labor, gratitude speeches, design cultural corridors and other surrounding events.
At present, in Jin'an District, some primary and secondary schools have developed school-based courses such as "The General on the Red Land", implanted character education into morality and rule of law classes and class meetings, opened up a campus "character culture wall", and showed "character masters" and "character stories".
"Character education creates a multi-dimensional evaluation method, and students with low grades can experience the joy of success in various activities." As a veteran educator, Xu Fugui often calls for the fact that in order to further promote character education, the whole society should correct the evaluation concept of "only achievements", and cannot only measure children with scores. "One more ruler to measure, one more batch of excellent students."
(Wang Zi of tuanqianshan municipal party committee also contributed to this article)
China Youth Daily, China Youth Network reporter Wang Haihan Wang Lei Source: China Youth Daily
Source: China Youth Daily