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Letters and Blogs
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-16 08:06
Make rural teaching an attractive job Several days ago, Tuo Lanlan, an excellent graduate from Beijing-based China Agricultural University, came to a township secondary school in Fengdu county, a national poverty county in Chongqing municipality. Before deciding to go teaching in the rural area, she rejected two decent jobs with high salaries offered by companies based in Beijing. On learning of her choice, her boyfriend deserted her immediately and all her acquaintances thought she was mad. All this did not stop her. In her eyes, only by teaching in backward rural areas can she feel fulfilled and repay the society. After reading her story, though I felt that her choice was noble and great, it is hard to follow suit at present. Her choice is against the current trend of job hunting. Most people in rural areas are fighting tooth and tail to leave their hometowns and find a better life in cities, let alone students from cities. Due to the financial crisis, jobs are harder to find, but students would rather linger in cities without jobs than go to rural areas where talents are needed. Against this background, anyone who would like to work in rural areas is considered an aberration. In sharp contrast with people's job orientation, the development of rural areas needs a large amount of young talent. Especially in the education field, the backwardness of rural areas has resulted from deficient investment in rural basic education. The weak basic education system in rural regions impedes the further development of rural economy. Rural population in the Chinese mainland accounts for 65 percent of the population. A large section of the rural workforce is illiterate and semi-literate. The biggest disparity between urban and rural education systems is not teaching facilities, but teachers. This problem has drawn the attention of the central government. In 2006, the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security jointly organized college graduates to work in rural areas for a certain period to assist rural education, agriculture, medicine and others. In order to encourage graduates to work in rural areas, the government has formulated a series of preferential policies. I have heard that the central government has decided to stop encouraging students to teach in rural areas for short terms and replace it with policies encouraging students to work in rural areas over the long term. This is a real step towards right direction. According to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, physiological need is the most basic need of a person and self-realization is the highest one. Hence, a feasible way to encourage graduates to teach in rural areas is to increase the salary of rural teachers first. Let the teaching jobs in rural areas become more attractive, and more students would then like to live and work there. Liu Dongming via e-mail (China Daily 10/16/2009 page8) |
