Education Equality: Bring Knowledge to Remote Village
Description
Observing that in China, even nine-year compulsory education has basically been popularized in the whole country, the quality of education that people receive differs evidently under the influence of regions, family backgrounds, gender, and some other should-not-related factors.<br />
The education of children is of great importance and every single child has the right to be educated<br />
Deeply investigating the fact that some regions has not yet formed a closely integrated organization that is powered by the local people to help improve the region's overall ability of education and help to reach education equality along with the government.
Maxinzhuang Primary School is located in a small village that is near an economically developed city, but the situation here is of great difference compared to the city that’s just 40 minutes’ drive away. There are only 72 pupils in the school, and many of them drop out of school half way during the six years and there are still a great number of them don’t go to school at all due to a disadvantaged family background. I think maybe I can organize a group of people to donate books and bring the book to that school, which might inspire them to pursue further study.<br />
Getting support from the school and village committee is not difficult, because the enthusiasm of the book donation is unexpectedly high. But the real problem is with some children’s parents. Because of the fact that there is only a small number of children enrolled in school in the whole village, so I tried to get all of them to come to the book-receiving events. But some parents refused to let their children go because they want them to help the family earn money instead of going to school. In order to make this activity influence more people, it took our team nearly a month to lobby the uncooperative parents to finally agree to let their children attend the event.<br />
The idea struck me in May,2017. The book donation lasted for a month and the event finally held successfully in 1st September which is the first day of their new academic year.<br />
The goal is to inspire the children already enrolled in school to pursue further study in the future and to let more children and parents to realize the significance of education and support their children to receive primary education. Furthermore, I made effort to draw attention of the village committee and ask for a donation for the school from the local government to refresh some school facilities.<br />
Bearing in mind that according to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the 4th goal means ensure inclusive and quality education for all, this activity is designed for acceleration of the whole progress. Education is the key that will allow many other SDGs to be achieved. Children education is the first step towards life-long learning and especially for those who are born from an economically disadvantaged family. Education offers them a great chance to break from the cycle of poverty, therefore helps to reduce inequalities from the beginning of the societyâ€â€Ã¢â‚¬â€school. It is also crucial to foster tolerance between people and contribute to more peaceful society which in line with the spirit of the 2030 Agenda.
The Royal Road English Training School, which is one of our main shareholders think this is a charity behavior of great significance to accelerate the process of educational equality and feel honored to participate in such an activity, also happy to contribute into this whole process.
But there are also some students eager to go to school but still banned by their parents because of a disadvantaged family background. Even though primary education is free, but letting a child go to school means losing an income source for a family. Our activity kind of raised the tension in some of the families because the children themselves don’t really want to go to school in the first place, but now they do. In order to solve this problem, we contact the local government, and they agree to give financial aid to the extremely poor family and make it clear that education is not only a right but also a duty, as education in primary school and middle school is compulsory in my country therefor things were made easy.
Until today (Oct. 2018) almost a year after the practice, all the children in that village can go to school without financial burden. And the parents are happy to see their own child making progress at school. Some children even said to me that they want to go to university and study overseas in the future.
Because girls in general do a better job, like getting good grades in school than boys. It’s also promoting gender equality in that specific area significantly.
Also the local government and the law is of great help when it comes to compulsory education and giving financial aid to family in extreme poverty. Only because of these actions could the parents agree to let their child go to school as I mentioned above. They made it very clear that primary education should be free, compulsory and well sourced. And they promised to encourage the development of different forms of education, including general and vocational education, make them available and accessible to every child in the whole area, and take appropriate measures such as the introduction of free education and offering financial assistance according to the needs of poor children.
The success of this practice made me realized that no matter how young a person is, there must be something you can do to make the world a better place. Gather all the young man with the same enthusiasm as you and just do it. We all can make a difference and bring wonder to other people’s life.
This recycle of book also can be seen as a great contribution to the earth environment, and for the fact that all the books are second-hand, the financial cost is really not that high. Also, since we are sponsored by two kind and generous companies, the villagers not only get the books for free but also receive many stationary items.
Next time what we will do is not only about giving free books, we are currently calls upon setting up special funds for education to be used mainly for assisting poverty-stricken areas in enforcing compulsory education there.
The future plan will involve exchange programs in different areas, which can not only give children from underserved communities more and better opportunities to gain knowledge and skill training but also put more efforts and manpower to send volunteers and advanced technology into the poor area. Hopefully we can arm all the children with consciousness of law and self-protection such as requiring education and paying so that they can defend themselves such as delivering their plea in the form of petition to the local government.
Also, as a team who directly interacts with students, we hope in the future, that we can offer appropriate training session in active teaching and learning with hands-on experience in effective learning environments in order to deliver quality learning. This sort of training should build teachers’ capacities to maximize learning outcomes for a diverse range of learners.
1. Emphasizes that primary education should be relevant, age appropriate, participatory, flexible, inclusive, protective and human rights-based in order to deliver quality learning outcomes to the full range of learners.<br />
2. Emphasizes that a curriculum is needed, which sets the standard of competencies in the key areas of learning targeted for diverse groups of learners and is relevant for acquiring the essential learning tools that are critical in continuing to acquire higher levels of skills, abilities and knowledge.<br />
3. Take the advantage of the technology to benefit student needs, improve training quality and ensure that everyone has the equal right to receive quality education.<br />
4. Different department of the government cooperate with each other and help each other in the field of education.
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- Asia and Pacific
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Contact Information
Qianyu Wang, Youth Training Programm participant