2008年12月15日 星期一

行知学校

中国 | 2008.12.15

访北京城边民工子弟就读的行知学校

让每个儿童都能够接受基础教育,这是2000年联合国《千年发展宣言》提出的发展目标之一。教育能提供人类战胜贫困和疾病的手段,并保证无论男女都享有同 样安全、健康和发展的权利。义务制基础教育在中国已经推行多年,但教育资源城乡之间分配不均,这将导致农民子弟无法与城市的孩子展开平等的竞争,下面是德 国之声特约记者发自北京的报道。

北京西五环附近有个龚村。城市化进程虽然已经到了村庄的边缘,但村子里的人们似乎对此毫无觉察。街道两边的商贩随意将污水和垃圾倾倒在路 边,私搭乱建的房屋让道路显得狭窄而弯曲,一间杂货铺对面的白墙上写着"同一个世界,同一个梦想",墙上画着奥运五福娃的形象,墙内传出的读书声提醒人 们,这是一所学校。

这就是专门招收外地来京务工子女入学的行知实验学校,其事迹曾经被搬上中央电视台的春节联欢晚会。但舆论上的关注并不能解决民工子女就学中的实际问 题。由于不能象公立学校那样得到政府的财政支持,学校运作处处显得捉襟见肘,教室是临时搭建的板房,冬季取暖用煤在操场上堆成了山,很多教学设备都必须依 靠社会捐助。行知学校的任海英校长认为,基础教育对人的成长至关重要,如果民工子弟仍不能接受良好的教育,他们的明天很可能仍然生存在城市的边缘,实现教 育平等,应从消除政策歧视做起。

行知学校的学生虽然身处城市,但是他们和外界的交往并不多,很多孩子来北京多年还没有见过天安门,长城,鸟巢等北京的标志性建筑。但在这个封闭而平等的环境里,孩子们都感到很快乐,都有着自己对未来的梦想。

对流动儿童的教育问题,中国国家教委在1998年的时候曾发布暂行办法,提出"严格控制义务教育适龄儿童的外流",这一措施的直接后果就是产生了大 量留守儿童和进城务工人员自救式,非正规的"民工子弟小学"。2003年,中国对该政策进行了修订,规定农民工子女入学应实行由流入地政府主管,以进入公 办中小学为主。但公办学校由于经费和场地限制,同时担心民工子女基础差,影响学校的升学率,只好找出种种理拒绝接收。这就形成了中央答应请客,说免费教 育;但地方资金匮乏,没法买单的尴尬局面。

在过去20年里,中国在提高识字率和扩大九年制义务教育范围上取得了进展,但由于中央政府教育经费拨款不足,基层资金使用效率低下,使得辍学率仍令 人担忧。有数据显示,中国初中入学率为97%,而高中入学率则降至一半左右,形成了高入学率和高辍学率并存的现象。由于高中阶段没有学费减免政策,许多年 轻人因承担不起学费而离开学校,进城打工,

中国目前已经实现基础教育阶段免除学杂费,政府也多次承诺加大教育方面的支出,将教育支出在国内生产总值中所占比例提高至4%,但这一目标一直没能 在全国范围内实现。与地产项目和基础设施方面的高额支出相比,教育支出一直裹足不前。另外,在中国教育支出中比例较高的部分用在了人事方面,安徽省天长市 教育局原副局长于祖印认为,在中国很多地方,有限的教育经费并没有得到有效的利用。

在中国教育资源的分配上呈现出明显的马太效应。凡是有的,还要给他,使他富足;但凡没有的,连他所有的,也要夺去。经济发达的城市除了拥有公立学校 之外,还有不少所谓的贵族学校,那里实行双语教学,外教授课,甚至在小学阶段便开始教授高尔夫课程。但在偏远落后的农村地区,办学条件和师资力量都相对薄 弱,教学质量根本无法保证,不少十五六岁的孩子还在读小学,初中部分的学生流失现象仍然严重。由于优秀的师资力量都在往经济发达地区集中,经济落后地区很 难留住人才,这造成了农村教师短缺。目前,中国政府正鼓励城市大学毕业生去西部和农村地区任教,承诺给他们未来晋升的机会。由于中国大学毕业生就业形式正 在变得严峻,"广阔天地,大有可为"的农村也的确吸引了一批大学毕业生进入农村基层教育领域。

也许这能够为薄弱的农村教育带来一些改变,但这一切还需要靠时间来证明。行知学校是以推行平民教育为己任的教育家陶行知命名的。陶行知曾经说过,教 育的根本意义是生活之变化,生活无时不变,即生活无时不含有教育的意义。因此生活即教育,社会即学校。正在接受生活教育的行知学校的孩子们,今后会用怎样 的眼光看待这个世界呢。

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2008年12月7日 星期日

菜園花園教育

這種菜園花園教育 我在四十多年前的大甲國小受過半套 如此而已

Sowing the Seeds of Gardening

George Ruhe for The New York Times

GREENING Lucia Firbas, a fourth grader at Riverside Elementary in Princeton, N.J., tends a garden at the school.


Published: December 5, 2008

Princeton, N.J.

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In the Region

Complete Coverage
George Ruhe for The New York Times

Joseph Rodrigues, botany teacher at Bloomfield High in Bloomfield, Conn., picks Red Russian winter kale with some of his students.

ASK Maddie Deutsch, a fourth grader at Riverside Elementary School here, what she likes best about her school’s herb garden, and her answer is one rarely heard spoken by a 9-year-old: “I like to eat the pineapple sage. It tastes cool. The lemon sorrel is good, too.”

Welcome to the Princeton School Gardens program. Here, children regularly work in one of the district’s 15 gardens during school hours, preparing garden beds, planting herbs and vegetables and harvesting them when they are ripe. The students eat raspberries from their own raspberry plants, sample cherry tomatoes off the vine and take bok choy, kale and cabbage home to cook and eat.

“We made sure that everything in our herb garden was edible, and when the children go out there, you can see them eating fistfuls of flowers and plants — they’re just munching them right on the spot,” said Dorothy Mullen, a parent who was the driving force behind the school gardens project in Princeton, which started seven years ago.

From Scarsdale, N.Y., to Bloomfield, Conn., to Lawrenceville, N.J., students are getting hands-on lessons in how to plant vegetables, compost and prune. The garden is a year-round commitment, and it is being used to teach subjects like math, science and language arts.

Home gardeners may be cleaning up their beds and putting away their tools for next year. For schools interested in creating a garden program, now is just as busy as in the spring. It is the time to start planning a new garden. It can take months to obtain money, like grants, or to get permission to start a garden from a school district or principal. At some schools, the work is just beginning for students who are growing plants from seeds indoors.

“You can teach almost any school subject through a garden,” said Marc Bouvier, executive director of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey. “And a garden is also a wonderful vehicle for kids who don’t do well in traditional classroom settings. For kids who are disengaged in school, we often find that gardens are a place where they thrive.”

The benefits don’t stop there, said Mr. Bouvier. Working in school gardens encourages kids to be physically active and it gets them out in nature. And children who grow their own vegetables are more inclined to eat them. “On every level, it’s such a win-win situation,” he said. “People come out of school gardens feeling very empowered. It really engages people and builds confidence for kids and parents.”

In Princeton, Ms. Mullen and other members of the Princeton School Garden Cooperative wanted to make it easy for their teachers to use the gardens in their classes, so they put together sample lesson plans for various subjects.

For instance, in math, children can learn how to measure the rows in a garden, determine the perimeter of the bed and chart the growth of plants. The cooperative has made all the lesson plans available free at www.prs.k12.nj.us/GardenCoop/, its Web site.

THE district now has gardens in every school, including the middle school and high school. Other schools frequently visit to learn how to put together their own garden programs, and Ms. Mullen offers free workshops on the subject, including how to write grants and tap into local businesses to fund garden projects.

In Scarsdale, a school garden program being run by a nonprofit group takes all the vegetables grown in the gardens during the summer and donates them to the local food bank. Last summer, more than 1,000 pounds of vegetables, including tomatoes, eggplant and broccoli, were donated; organizers hope to triple that number next summer.

“It’s exciting to see kids in Scarsdale — which has one of the best school districts in the country — using nature to give back to the community,” said the aptly named Russell Greenleaf, owner of Greenleaf Gardens, which runs Scarsdale’s four-year-old garden program.

Scarsdale students also host harvest festivals twice a year, using their gardens’ vegetables to make dishes like potato leek soup or eggplant parmigiana, which they eat along with their parents and teachers. Many of the vegetables are also used in the school cafeterias.

And Mr. Greenleaf is planning to plant several apple trees at the schools. One of the elementary schools is built on land that was once an apple orchard, so he found the variety of apples that once grew there. In a few years, he hopes that students will be able to eat apples from their own trees.

It’s the understanding of where the food they eat comes from that many school garden advocates point to as one of the most important advantages of these programs for children.

In Bloomfield, Conn., the high school students work in the school garden in their botany classes, then cook the food that they grow in their culinary arts classes. Much of that food, like winter kale picked last week, is then served in the school cafeteria.

“I don’t think these kids were really aware of where their food came from before,” said Joseph Rodrigues, who teaches botany and environmental science at the high school. “But once they get their hands into the soil and see the fruits of their labor, and then they prepare something, I think it really gets them to change their mind about their food choices. It’s so much better to have them involved in the process rather than just talking to them about it.”