Although nearly 50,000 publicly-funded teachers with a bachelor's degree or above go to rural schools every year to teach, due to China's vast territory and many remote areas, rural schools are still facing the dilemma of teacher shortage.
In contrast, the convenience of living in a bustling city is more appealing, making it difficult for rural schools to attract and retain talent. Therefore, educators like Ms. Zhang Guimei, who stick to remote villages year after year and make great contributions to rural education, are even more precious and worthy of respect.
In this group dedicated to education, most of them choose to return to the depths of the mountains to teach out of love for their hometown and their commitment to giving back. At the same time, there are also people who have dreams of revitalizing the motherland.
Therefore, when this group is a foreigner, they are particularly conspicuous. Guangxi, a remote area of China, lived such a German boy, he had been teaching in the countryside of China for many years, and his deeds had touched the whole of China, but he politely declined this honor.
The purpose of his volunteer teaching is pure and noble, just because he loves those simple children deeply.
Luanke, a withdrawn and introverted young German, was born in Hamburg in 1968 to a middle-class family. His parents, both engineers, always find time to play with their two children, often making and building crafts together.
However, Luanke and his older brother have been introverted and shy personalities since childhood, and even when they grow up in such a harmonious and loving family, they are unable to fit in with their peers.
In order to better care for his two unique children, Luanke's father chose to leave his well-paid job and become a teacher. He firmly believes that while teaching and caring for more children, he can also get to know and understand his two children more deeply, so that they can live happier lives.
The couple put a lot of effort into finding the ideal school for the Luanke brothers. In this school, there are no stressful assessments and grades, and there is not even a set of dogmatic knowledge.
Children are taught how to explore and engage with the world. When looking back on this time, Luanke considers it to be a very important experience in his life, which allowed him as an introvert to accept and discover himself.
However, from the perspective of the time, this free and open way of learning brought with it a problem, that is, he did not learn enough knowledge to cope with the traditional graded exams, and no secondary school was willing to admit him.
Luanke's life was not all smooth sailing, and although he failed to get into secondary school, he did not give up on finding his passion. He started as an ordinary worker in a sailing factory, and although he was often criticized for his unskilled operation, he was not discouraged by this, but was keenly aware of his talent for the trade.
After a period of running-in and hard work, he has figured out all the sailboat making processes, and even innovated more schemes, so he has been rewarded and paid, which makes him feel very fulfilled.
This also makes us understand that there is no need to panic when we encounter setbacks in life, as long as we keep trying, we will always find a path that suits us.
From a young age, Luanke had a lofty ideal, and he wanted to contribute to the country. In order to realize this dream, he decided to join the army, which strengthened his will and gained the courage to dare to fight and try.
After leaving the army, Luanke decided to apply for the prestigious German State University of the Arts Hamburg. He sandwiched his hand-made sailboat in his application papers, and eventually, he was accepted by the prestigious university for an exemption from the examination for industrial design.
At school, Luanke began to systematically learn about the manufacturing and innovation of architecture and crafts, which led him to develop a strong interest in China. He was amazed by the patterns of Chinese handicrafts he saw in books.
China has always been a land of mystery in the eyes of Europeans. Although China and Europe share the same continent, China's history and culture are complex, with the ability to produce exquisite porcelain thousands of years ago, as well as the architectural creation of seamless mortise and tenon structures.
Luanke, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg, has the pride of "reading thousands of books and traveling thousands of miles", and he is eager to experience China's magnificent scenery and exquisite skills up close.
So, he came to China as a study tour and spent three months on an intoxicating journey. He admired the majestic untouched mountains and the delicate handicrafts, all of which made his eyes even hungrier.
Obviously, it is impossible to travel all the beautiful scenery of China in three months. After returning to China, he tried his best to successfully obtain the architecture major of Nanjing University in China, and returned to China as a student.
This learning experience completely changed Luanke's life. Before that, he had traveled to bustling cities or tourist attractions, and had never actually ventured into the impoverished areas of China.
While studying at Nanjing University, Lu Anke had the opportunity to set foot in the remote countryside of Guangxi, where he appreciated the magnificent scenery of nature and witnessed the huge gap between the rich and the poor.
The sight was refreshing, but when I looked down, I was filled with hunger and hardship, a stark contrast that deeply touched this young man who had never experienced the hardships of life.
He is even more concerned by the low level of education in the area, and many children do not even have access to books for the rest of their lives. Ten years of trees, a hundred years of people, education is the cornerstone of a region's development and progress.
If a poor region cannot effectively improve its education level, it will undoubtedly be difficult for the region to become rich.
Lu Anke's deep attachment to the mountain villages of Guangxi made him still remember China after graduation. Finally, he set foot on the land again and became a village teacher.
Take root in the countryside and cultivate peach and plum. Although he found a job as an English teacher in Nanning, he soon discovered the drawbacks of exam-oriented education, and no one paid attention to innovation and creativity, which made him feel unprecedented pain.
Therefore, he decided to return to the countryside to provide a better education for the children there.
During Luanke's educational career, the way he tried to educate was not accepted by everyone. In a middle school, his education method made only six students pass in the entire class, which caused countless parents to be dissatisfied and the principal to be troubled.
Eventually, Luanke left the middle school in confusion. In order to stay true to his educational philosophy, Lu Anke decided to go to a remote mountain village to educate his children. His heart was filled with the hope of changing the face of rural poverty.
The mountain village scene in Guangxi resurfaced in his mind, but this time, with hope and determination, he came to a small town in Donglan County, Hechi City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
This town is only 330It is 26 square kilometers and has a population of less than 50,000, mainly ethnic minorities. It was here that Luanke began his educational journey, hoping that through his own efforts, he could change the status quo of education here and help children achieve a better future.
Although the locals are native speakers of minority dialects, have limited knowledge, and are not even fluent in Mandarin, Luanke is confident in his educational career. He believes that he can subtly let these children acquire knowledge through non-traditional teaching methods.
Luanke rented a house in the village for only ten yuan a month, in very modest conditions, and most of his students were uneducated. What Luanke did not anticipate, however, was that his teaching experiment would be frustrated.
He was unable to instill new knowledge into the already solidified minds of these children, which were like drops of water on glass, gliding smoothly through the children's minds and then disappearing.
Luanke was deeply frustrated. After he decided to become a teacher in China, he developed the habit of recording his experiences during each period. Looking through his notes over the past few years, Luanke fell into deep contemplation.
It records his initial criticism of test-oriented education, and his repeated failures in rural teaching, which made him feel hopeless. Looking back, Luanke believes that his students are older, and he decided to teach in more remote and difficult places to open the hearts of the children.
So he went deep into the more remote mountain villages, where he taught. The traffic conditions there are tough, and it takes several hours to get to the nearest county seat. It was there that Luanke really saw the difficulties.
He saw with his own eyes sick old people lying in bed waiting to die because they were poor and could not get **, while their children could only pray on the ground and could not find a doctor.
He has also witnessed the lonely figure of left-behind children, whose filthy faces reveal a deep longing for their parents, and those silent eyes tell their expectations. At first, the villagers were wary of Luanke, suspecting that the blonde foreigner had come to China with no good intentions, and they were reluctant to leave the child in his care, speculating that he might have some intentions.
However, this did not discourage Luanke, who visited the villagers from house to house, patiently explaining the importance of education, and often stayed to help them with their farm work, so that the villagers could become familiar with him.
Over time, the attitude of the villagers changed, and they no longer resisted Luanke and were willing to let their children receive his education.
In the mountains, Luanke freely teaches the children to search for knowledge, and despite the rough roads, their faces are filled with joy because of their longing for the future. In his spare time, Luanke also helped the locals to farm and harvest, experiencing a kind of primitive joy.
The children loved Luanke, who lay under his lap and Luanke sat under the tree. Although the characteristics of the two faces are different, their smiles are simple and beautiful.
The mountains are high and the waters are long, and everything seems to be going well, but life is always tortuous and bumpy. Luanke was punished by ** for lack of legal work documents, including fines and deportation.
Ordinary people may choose to leave because of this, but for Luanke, this barren land and his unfinished business are an eternal concern in his heart. After unremitting efforts, Luanke finally obtained his documents and returned to the mountain village again.
His deeds gradually became known, and journalists interviewed him. However, for Luanke, devoting himself to education is his happiest, and he does not want to receive too much attention.
Luanke has been committed to providing education to poor children in the mountains, and his life has attracted the attention of many journalists. However, the impolite interruptions of these reporters bothered Luanke.
Although he was deeply moved, he didn't like to be surrounded by cameras and spotlights, and he didn't like to talk to people too much. He prefers to focus on the arrangement of the teaching plan so that he can better help these children.
In 2006, the Moving China program included him in the list of candidates, but he resolutely asked the program team to cut him out. He is not because of how much he has contributed to China, but because these children in the mountains have moved him and allowed him to find his own direction in life.
Despite his rich experience, his introversion and shyness have not changed. He is willing to dedicate his life to these children and help them achieve their dreams.
Despite Luanke's best efforts to restore peace to his life, he still can't get rid of the turmoil, and at the same time, the issue of his status as a teacher is also exploited by some people.
Some reporters used sensational headlines to attract attention by inciting the public to question his motives. Like the children's parents, many people thought that he must have given up his privileged living conditions to teach in the countryside for a purpose.
However, this time, he was unable to impress everyone with the sincerity he had done before. After all, these people were strangers he had never met. Faced with the overwhelming attention, Luanke felt terrified and lost, and he found that he could not live in this environment.
After much deliberation, he decided to return to China for a while and wait for the heat to subside before returning to China.
He used education to change mountain villages, but now the road back is full of dangers. Mr. Lu disappeared from public view after his last public appearance in 2012, and his credentials did not allow him to legally return to China as a teacher.
Since then, he has drifted away from the children he loves. Although he was once hailed as a pioneer in education and was vilified as an outsider, his story faded into memory with the passage of time.
Conclusion: At a time when journalism is increasingly emphasizing timeliness, journalists are doing whatever it takes to get hot news, but should we reflect on the fact that we should pay more attention and understand to those who are truly making an effort to change society?
Luanke's story is a beautiful story that deserves to be reported and is representative. However, due to too much attention and some wrong guidance, he lost the opportunity to teach, and also lost an excellent teacher in the mountain village.
Although in today's society, the state is vigorously supporting rural education, it is believed that more and more young people will join the mountain villages, and more and more rural children will be able to obtain educational opportunities.
However, in today's new chaos and frequent chaos, we can reflect on the boundaries and true meaning of news reporting through this event.