Research Group of China Rural Governance Research Center, Wuhan University.
In the past 20 years, the China Rural Governance Research Center of Wuhan University has organized thousands of people to conduct research in nearly 1,000 villages across the country, and has accumulated more than 100,000 working days in the villages to observe rural changes up close. In addition to theoretical research, the situation on the ground is also recorded in the form of essays and policy reports, and some of them are edited into an internal report "Wind from the Field" (1 issue per week). In the near future, we will select some of the reports on "Wind from the Field" and publish them in "New Countryside".
Recently, when the team of the China Rural Governance Research Center of Wuhan University went to Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Anhui, Gansu and other places to carry out special research on education, it was found that the phenomenon of rural mothers returning to their hometowns to accompany them to study is becoming more and more common, and accompanying them is a passive choice that rural families "have to make". Accompanying students not only increases the burden of peasant family education, but also makes a large number of rural laborers bound to their families, restricting the overall industrialization and urbanization development of our country. This issue urgently needs policy attention and resolution.
The overall characteristic of accompanying students is that migrant mothers return to their hometowns and go to the county to accompany them full-time. The specific characteristics are: first, the accompanying group from the elite to the public, from the high school stage to the primary and secondary schools of the full cycle of accompanying reading, according to unofficial statistics, Gansu Huining County escort women reached 10,000;Second, it is mainly accompanied by young mothers, and a small number of grandparents accompany them. The young mother goes back and forth between working and accompanying students;Third, most mothers are full-time accompaniments, and a small number are part-time accompaniments. There are a large number of small garment factories in Dongzhi County, Anhui Province, and my mother can accompany her while working, but there is a lack of industrial base in other places, so my mother cannot work part-timeFourth, the accompanying reading is mainly in the county, and the accompanying reading of renting a house is more than that of buying a house.
One. The problem of rural migrant mothers returning to their hometowns to accompany them.
There is no reading, and the reading effect is poor.
The education level of the post-80s and post-90s generations in most rural areas in the central and western regions is limited to junior high school or technical secondary school, and it is difficult for them to actually participate in the academic process of their children. Mothers returning to their hometowns to accompany them to school do not directly improve their children's grades, and they are often only responsible for daily care, supervising mobile phones, and supervising homework. For example, a post-80s mother in Xiaochang County, Hubei Province, who returned to her hometown from Beijing to accompany her to study, said: "I can only help them support their Xi habits, take care of their food and clothing, and let them write their homework as soon as they get out of school, but I can't help with homework, and they still rely on themselves to learn Xi." There is no direct relationship between the child's academic performance and the mother's accompaniment, a man in Xiaochang, Hubei Province said to his accompanying wife: "The child's grades are not good, your accompaniment has no effect, and I have no strength to work."
The economic cost is high and the economic pressure is high.
As a result, young mothers are confined to their families and unable to go out to work, which reduces the income of peasant familiesIn order to go to the city to accompany the students, the peasants need to spend hundreds of thousands of yuan to accumulate the accumulation of real estate, or rent a house to enter a private school with an average fee of 20,000-30,000 yuan per year, if there are two children, it will cost at least 40,000-50,000 yuan a year to accompany the students to go to the city, but most of the families have an annual income of about 100,000 yuan, and the educational expenses generated by the accompanying students account for 40%-50% of the total family income, which overdraws the wealth of the peasant familiesMoreover, after the whole stage of accompanying students from primary school to high school, the economic pressure brought about by accompanying students will continue to increase, and some families will fall into the risk of falling into poverty and returning to poverty.
Students and parents have a heavy mental burden.
The mother returned to her hometown to accompany the students, always supervising the students' Xi, and inappropriately said that the church constantly intensified the pressure of students' Xi studies;All the life of the accompanying mother revolves around the child, no income, no friends, easy to self-doubt and denial, such as a accompanying mother in Dongzhi County, Anhui Province, said: "Accompanying the student is not something that ordinary people can do, washing clothes and cooking every day, living a repetitive and boring life";The economic and mental pressure of young men is extremely high, as a father in Dongzhi County, Anhui Province said: "I feel that life is being pushed away, and I dare not stop."
Inhibit farmers' willingness to have children.
The high cost of accompanying students has led to more and more young farmers choosing to "give birth to fewer children and better accompaniment", especially the new generation of farmers who have just achieved stability in the city, they are the group that most want to give birth but dare not give birth toBecause young people are under great financial pressure, and their mothers need financial and living support from the elderly, the elderly are reluctant to have more children. An old man in Ludi Township, Wuling District, Hunan Province, said: "I originally wanted to persuade my daughter-in-law to have a second child, but when I talked about it, she said that it was okay to give birth, but you must pay 100,000 yuan, and I felt that it was none of our business to give birth or not, and I was too lazy to care", a retired rural teacher in Yiling District, Yichang City, Hubei Province, said: "I have been in the city for 10 years at the age of 60 to bring my eldest grandson, and now I am 70 years old, and they have another one, I can't take it with me at all, of course I can't support them to have a second child, otherwise I can't support the elderly at all."
Intensify the "starting line" competition and underlying anxiety.
Accompaniment makes parents have to participate in the educational competition of their children, intensifies the educational competition, and induces the anxiety of the bottom. On the one hand, after the accompanying group has moved from the elite to the public, some mothers who do not plan to return to their hometowns to accompany them have to return to their hometowns to accompany them in order to keep up with the social competition situation. A mother who accompanied a student in Xiaochang, Hubei Province said: "If others accompany you, you don't accompany, which means that you don't pay attention to education, then I'm sorry for the children, although I can't guarantee that they are better than others, but others have, I can't let me have fewer children", which intensified the "starting line" competition. On the other hand, there is a mismatch between farmers' lower household economic income and educational ability and higher cost input and expectations of accompanying students, which leads to the development anxiety of the bottom. A young father in Lu County, Henan Province, said: "We go back and forth like this, running around, and letting our wives come back to accompany them, if their grades are not good, we have no point at all."
Two. Mother of rural migrant workers in the Midwest.
Analysis of the reasons for returning to the hometown to accompany the study.
First, the demand for education for farmers has increased, and the supply of education at the county level is insufficient.
With the increase of economic income, farmers' requirements for children's education resources and accommodation environment have improved. However, the quantity and quality of public education services provided at the county level do not meet the needs of rural families. First, there is a continuous loss of high-quality students and teachers in rural schools, poor school infrastructure and educational quality, and farmers have to send their children to the cities in order to obtain better educational resources and quality. Most of the parents interviewed said: "If there are good teachers and excellent students in the township, the quality of education and the rate of admission to higher education, we are not willing to go all the way to the county to accompany the study".Second, after the withdrawal and merger of schools, the distance for peasant children to go to school has become farther away, and the supply of accommodation and transportation services such as school dormitories and school buses in the central and western regions is not in place. For example, many township junior high schools in Hengnan County, Hunan Province, have poor accommodation conditions, and the walls often fall off the wall, and the school has no money to provide students with hot water for bathing, and students can only use cold water in winter. In order to ensure the safety of children going to and from school and improve the children's accommodation conditions, farmers have to arrange for young mothers to return to their hometowns to accompany them to the county. Third, the rapid entry of students into the city has led to a shortage of places in county public schools, and high-quality public education resources are in short supply. Most families with no real estate and weak social ties have to choose more expensive private schools in order to move to the city, and these private schools are also more popular with parents because of their better accommodation and militarized management.
Second, the educational goals of farmers have been upgraded, and the competition for high school admission has intensified.
In order to increase their children's chances of going to high school, mothers choose to return to their hometowns to accompany them. The importance and expectations of peasant families for their children's education have generally increased. The older generation of farmers hope that their children can learn a skill to work and make money, but the post-80s and post-90s, as the new generation of migrant workers, generally expect their children's education to be undergraduate, and the bottom line requirement is a junior college, which requires children to go to high school. In order to let her daughter after the middle grades be admitted to the general high school, a mother in Hubei spent nearly 100,000 yuan to enroll in a cram Xi class and find a relationship to let her daughter study for an extra year and the third year of junior high school. However, the supply of high school places has become increasingly fierce, especially after 2019, and the rigid implementation of the 1:1 "general job diversion" in some places has intensified the competition for further education, resulting in many new-generation migrant workers generally worrying that their children will not be able to go to high school and university, and become manual laborers like them. In order to obtain higher opportunities for further education, my mother returned to her hometown to accompany her in order to obtain higher opportunities for further education.
Third, rural children are addicted to mobile phones, and parents must return to their hometowns to supervise.
Teachers and parents in rural schools in Henan, Hubei, Anhui, Hunan, Gansu and other places reported that children's mobile phones are difficult to manage, especially the left-behind children in rural areas are obviously addicted to mobile phones. A 4-year-old left-behind boy in Mengzhou, Henan Province, is addicted to mobile games every day, and his uncle said: "This child swipes Douyin with one hand when he eats, and plays games with both hands when he doesn't eat, he has no future." Generally speaking, as long as parents are around to supervise, the problem of children's mobile phones is not serious, so the direct reason why many women return to their hometowns to accompany them is to prevent children from indulging in mobile games and Douyin, Kuaishou and other small **.
Fourth, the responsibility of education is family-oriented, and the school guides parents to accompany them. Home-school co-education is a major trend in education reform in recent years. On the one hand, the increase in students' out-of-school time increases the pressure of family discipline and participation, and in order to enrich their children's extracurricular time and activities, parents return to their hometowns to accompany them, such as enrolling students in classes and Xi;On the other hand, the intelligent development of school education activities requires young parents to accompany them, such as mobile phones to complete students' homework punching and clocking, these tasks cannot be completed by grandparents, and young mothers can only return to their hometowns to accompany them.
Three. Suggestions to alleviate the pressure on farmers in the central and western regions to accompany students and gradually reduce the phenomenon of accompanying students.
First, improve the accommodation services in public schools.
A considerable number of peasants need the state to provide unification.
First, there is quality and all-care education services, it is recommended that qualified counties should comprehensively promote fully closed boarding schools in the compulsory education stage, so that peasant children can learn and Xi live in public schools most of the time, reduce the pressure of peasant families and the pressure of educational competition, and reduce the phenomenon of accompanying students. In addition, the goal of compulsory education service provision is to meet the needs of the majority of people with high-quality public education services, rather than simply allowing families to compete with students through free public education.
Second, it is necessary to run township schools well so that the children of peasants can attend school nearby.
Townships should be the most basic unit of education service supply, and township schools have a scale effect compared with "village size", and cost savings are lower than those of county schools. According to the situation of rural population flow, the layout of schools should be adjusted in accordance with local conditions and forward-looking, small-scale schools should be withdrawn and merged in an orderly and reasonable manner, and resources should be concentrated to improve the software and hardware conditions of township schools, especially school buses and accommodationWe will continue to improve the quality of teachers in townships and towns, improve the quality of education and the rate of admission to higher education in townships and towns, and enable rural children to attend schools at low cost in the nearest places.
Third, we should consolidate the national burden reduction policy and strengthen its implementation.
Home-school co-education should not become a burden for farmers to go out to work, let alone be forced to limit the full labor of rural families to the family because of children's mobile phone management and homework punching. It is necessary to further consolidate the national burden reduction policy and strengthen its implementation. Give schools more authority and autonomy, and appropriately guide parents to the school's mobile phone management;Increase quality education activities in schools, open school libraries, nourish children's minds, and enrich the growth process of rural children with a rich and colorful lifeImprove the construction of rural leisure and recreation and infrastructure, such as community libraries and sports fields, to provide a relatively centralized and safe venue for rural children's extracurricular activities.
Fourth, increase women's flexible employment and alleviate the economic pressure of accompanying students.
On the whole, families who can work part-time and accompany children take care of their children and economic production are not only less financially stressed, but also women can realize the value of their labor, live a more fulfilling life, and have a more relaxed parent-child relationship. Local governments should create conditions to encourage relevant local factories and enterprises to increase some flexible employment positions suitable for women to accompany them, which not only promotes local economic development, but also enables women returning to their hometowns to work part-time.