Recently, eight departments including the National Rural Revitalization Bureau, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism jointly issued the “Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Cultivation of Rural Craftsmen” (referred to as “Opinions”). The “Opinions” make it clear that the cultivation mechanism for rural craftsmen will be established and improved, a group of rural craftsmen will be excavated and cultivated, inherited and developed, and strengthened to stimulate the innovation and creativity of the vast number of rural handicraftsmen and traditional artists, drive the development of rural characteristic industries, and promote Farmers’ entrepreneurship and employment provide important talent support for the overall revitalization of the countryside.
The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that we should speed up the construction of a strong agricultural country and solidly promote the revitalization of rural industries, talents, culture, ecology, and organizations. Promoting the cultivation of rural craftsmen is an important part of promoting the revitalization of rural industries, talents, and culture. It is necessary to promote the training of rural craftsmen and combine it with the development of labor education at the stage of rural compulsory education and the development of rural vocational education. Let rural craftsmen go to rural schools to guide students to take good labor classes, inherit traditional culture and handicrafts, and at the same time, set up rural craftsman studios in rural vocational colleges to promote the integration of production and education, and cultivate a large number of rural craftsmen in the new era.
Starting from the new semester this year, my country has made labor education an independent course. Many people believe that labor education in rural schools has natural advantages: there are farmlands everywhere in the countryside, and rural children doing farm work are doing labor education. This is a narrow understanding of labor education. To carry out labor education, for rural children, it is not only to go to the farmland to do farm work, but also to experience other productive labor and service labor. Through these labors, they can master the labor skills for independent living, broaden their horizons for vocational enlightenment, and establish correct labor, professional values.
But to carry out such labor education, rural schools lack teachers, and many rural schools have teachers of Chinese, mathematics and other subjects “replacing” labor classes, mainly telling students about loving labor and cherishing the fruits of labor Reasonable, but it is difficult to carry out targeted labor skills training for students. Cultivating rural craftsmen can be combined with labor education in rural schools. On the one hand, rural schools can combine labor education, employ local skilled craftsmen from all walks of life as part-time labor education teachers of the school, and use their workplaces as experience bases for rural students to receive labor education, offering unique labor courses; On the one hand, rural artisans can also use schools as exhibition and inheritance bases to strengthen the promotion of traditional rural handicrafts, cultivate students’ interest in traditional handicrafts, and promote their own career development in the process of training students.
The “Opinions” proposes to encourage and support rural craftsmen to set up rural craftsmen workstations, famous teacher studios, and master training institutes to carry out master-apprentice inheritance and impart traditional skills. One of the powerful ways to make workstations and studios land is to cooperate with local secondary vocational and higher vocational colleges to establish related workstations and studios. It is worth noting that secondary vocational education in rural areas of our country is not attractive to students due to the influence of local industrial development and the limitations of teachers. Some students who enter secondary vocational schools also choose to give up their studies and go out to work halfway. lack of talent.
In recent years, in response to rural revitalization, some scholars have proposed that “universities should be established in counties.” Universities here mainly refer to higher vocational colleges. It is necessary to build higher vocational colleges in qualified counties to train talents for rural revitalization. From a realistic point of view, under the background that the gross enrollment rate of high school has reached 91.4%, and more than 70% of secondary vocational graduates choose to go to higher education, my country can vigorously promote the integration of secondary and higher vocational education and the integration of middle school and develop vocational education. Higher vocational colleges (and vocational undergraduate programs) run in counties can recruit junior high school graduates to directly study through middle and higher vocational education or middle school education, and guide them to devote themselves to the cause of rural revitalization after completing their studies.
This is a school-running idea that combines rural talent training and rural revitalization, instead of sending students out of the countryside and trying to get them back to the countryside in the future. In this regard, cultivating rural craftsmen is an important exploration to combine rural talent training with rural revitalization. Rural craftsmen face rural students, carry out master-apprentice inheritance, and impart traditional skills, which can enrich the content of rural education, change students’ understanding of the countryside, and broaden students’ career development space.
(Author: Xiong Bingqi, source: Guangming Net Current Review Channel)