Author: Fei Yi (Special Researcher, Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
A few days ago, the first National Reading Conference was held in Beijing. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out in his congratulatory letter to the conference, “I hope that children will develop reading habits, read happily, and grow up healthily; I hope that the whole society will participate in reading and form a strong atmosphere of love for reading, good reading, and good reading.” . Rural children’s reading has always been a weak link in the national reading in my country. For a long time to come, it will be a arduous task to further help rural children to open the door to reading.
English writer and children’s reading promoter Aiden Chambers once put forward a famous “children’s reading cycle” theory, which is composed of “selected books” (books in the collection, books close at hand, books within reach, books on display) method), “reading” (reading time, listening to the story, reading by yourself), “response” (“I really want to read it again”, formal discussion, and chatting after reading). It follows a certain cycle. Each link in between affects another result, and the cycle begins again and again. And in this cycle, all need “adults with the ability to assist” to give guidance and help.
In recent years, with the improvement of rural economic level and the increase of the state’s investment in rural education, children in rural areas are no longer without books to read. The author’s survey found that in rural areas, many parents have difficulty in taking on the responsibility of reading instruction. The proportion of parents who “almost never read with their children” accounted for 21.12%. Parents accounted for 66.25%, and only 12.62% often read with their children. This contrasts sharply with the reading status of urban children. The 2016 “China Urban Children’s Reading Survey Report” shows: “In terms of reading influence, parents, teachers and peers are the three most important types of people to develop children’s reading habits, of which parents take the first place with 34.8%.”
To solve “lack of effective reading guidance”, the main obstacle that plagues rural children’s reading, the key lies in rural teachers, because the cultivation of rural children’s reading habits basically depends on the supervision of school teachers.
Rural teachers are the main instructors of rural children’s reading. Their emphasis on reading, their strength of guidance and their ability to create a reading environment directly affect the reading level of rural children. The reading literacy and literary literacy of rural teachers also determine the reading quality of rural children to a large extent. However, due to the insufficient setting of children’s literature majors in my country’s colleges and universities, the relatively poor working environment of rural schools, and poor development prospects, it is difficult for rural schools to attract enough outstanding teachers. Some rural teachers are older, and their teaching methods are outdated and backward. In addition to teaching, many of them have to undertake farm work and housework. Some rural teachers lack the conditions and habits of reading, and their usual reading is limited to textbooks and teaching guide books. For example, a survey shows that 17.72% of rural teachers only teach textbooks and do not guide students to read literature. 16.78% of rural teachers School conditions are not enough, powerless. All of these show that to help rural children open the door to reading, we must first do the work of rural teachers.
On the one hand, local education authorities should encourage rural primary and secondary school teachers who have spare capacity to offer special reading courses, such as picture book courses, poetry courses, and story courses, according to the physical and psychological characteristics of rural children. Encourage rural teachers to learn and understand the concept and teaching method of “localized education”, connect reading and life, discover learning resources from the vast rural life, and extend classroom learning with limited time and space to unlimited “from life”. study”. For example, when reading books about nature, teachers can lead students out of the classroom, into the fields, feel the beauty of nature during field trips, and learn and create poetry or prose about nature. In this way, students have interest in learning, teachers can improve the otherwise boring classroom atmosphere, and both parties will have more fun. For rural teachers who organize students to carry out extracurricular reading activities and give guidance, schools should give appropriate reflections in performance appraisal. In addition, we must try our best to provide rural teachers with opportunities for training and study in colleges and universities, strive to improve rural teachers’ literary literacy, ability to read and appreciate literary works, and teaching design capabilities, and encourage them to develop rural textbooks that suit the characteristics of rural children.
On the other hand, it is necessary to do a solid job in the training of rural directional normal students, and actively cultivate excellent teachers for rural schools. We should encourage normal universities and high-level local normal colleges and universities to strengthen the training of rural teachers’ reserve talents, and cultivate new rural language teachers who have the general vocational skills of language teachers, have an understanding of rural culture, and are keen on rural education. In the process of cultivating oriented normal students, it is necessary to integrate rural cultural knowledge into the curriculum objectives and the organization and evaluation of the curriculum. Normal students should also be encouraged to go to rural schools during the holidays to open reading classes and organize reading clubs. Children are given reading instruction to deepen the normal students’ understanding of rural children’s psychological, emotional and reading needs, and to exercise their reading instruction ability.
In addition, various resources and forces should be integrated to support rural teachers in organizing children’s reading activities, such as setting up a special reading promotion fund, building a network platform circle of rural teachers’ “reading promoters”, and strengthening the exchange of experience among rural teachers. and sharing, so that rural teachers can become the most important reading promoters and guides for rural children. Increase the construction and promotion of public welfare reading resource service platforms. For example, the domestic children’s book publishing industry has established a public welfare website “Life Tree Children’s Book Network” to share many high-quality anti-epidemic children’s books for urban and rural children for free. Organize the development of a public reading course platform similar to “Classroom in the Air”, and through the “cloud sharing” of excellent teachers, let teachers and students in rural schools have access to high-quality teaching examples and rich reading resources.
Improving the reading status of rural children is a big project that requires coordination in many aspects, not only hardware support but also software support. In terms of hardware, it is necessary to use the power of public libraries to carry out library-school cooperation, promote the circulation of book resources, and provide sufficient book resources for rural teachers to carry out reading activities as much as possible; in terms of software, you can invite public library librarians or Experts and scholars in the field of reading promotion come to the school to offer reading promotion lectures, and train rural teachers to do a good job in book reading guidance.
In short, we should support and encourage more rural teachers to become “lighters” of rural children’s reading, guide the majority of rural children to develop good reading habits, improve their reading ability, promote a big atmosphere with small circles, and create a rural atmosphere. The society loves reading, reading good books, and a strong atmosphere of good reading.
Article source: “Guangming Daily” (June 01, 2022, version 13)
