A Study On The Educational Equity Of Urban And Rural Areas From The Cultural Perspective

The paper directs at the current situation in which emphases is laid on the tangible factors, such as policies and the economy while the important role of culture to promote equity of urban and rural education is neglected so that the balanced development of urban and rural education hovers in the low status.By taking the educational equity of urban and rural areas highly concerned by the current research and practice as the research object, based on the theories of cultural capital, justice and cultural ecology, while,culture as the perspective and breakthrough point, the paper studies deeply and systematically the topics such as the relations between culture and the educational equity of urban and rural areas, the essence and the problems as well as the cultural attribution and propulsion strategies of the educational equity of urban and rural areas from the cultural perspective, aiming at deepening the theory research of the educational equity of urban and rural areas and exploring the practical propulsion strategies, in order to realize the highly balanced development of urban and rural education.The paper firstly states the research origin from three aspects of necessity, urgency and subjective reasons before reviewing the research of educational equity at home and abroad, pointing out the characteristics and deficiencies in the current research of educational equity, and clarifying the problems such as the purpose and the significance as well as ideas of the research, including the keys and the difficulties as well as research methods and so on.The paper interprets the basic concepts such as equity, educational equity, urban and rural educational equity and so on, differentiates and analyses the relationship between culture and educational equity of urban and rural areas, states the choice of the different cultural perspective, introduces the three main theories of cultural capital, justice and cultural ecology, and analyzes the correspondence and the enlightenment with the research.The problem representation of the educational equity of urban and rural areas and its attribution analysis being the main parts, the paper firstly presents and analyzes the problems of the educational equity of urban and rural areas from three different cultural perspectives of family, school, and society. Then the paper chooses four cultural perspectives attributing to the above-mentioned problems. The first are the differences between western and Chinese cultures. The paper explores and analyzes the reasons for the long-term relatively lags in terms of research and policy as well as practice on Chinese urban and rural education equity from the perspective of western and Chinese culture contrast, and points out the fact that Chinese traditional culture emphasizes hierarchy while despising democracy and equity is the profound historical cultural root cause to the problems of educational equity in urban and rural areas. The second is the heterogeneity of the urban and rural culture. The paper maintains that the urban and rural education respectively lies in the different urban and rural cultural circles, the different characteristics and endowment of urban and rural areas that give different influence on the urban and rural education, which are the important practical reasons for the problems of urban and rural education equity. The third is the political culture's tendentiousness. The imbalance of urban and rural political consciousness and the value orientation of education policy influenced by the political culture are important reasons. The fourth is multicultural coupling. The contradiction among internationalization, urbanization and localization causes the weakness of the countryside culture. The entanglement of multi-culture leads to the value looseness of urban and rural education, the conflicts among the traditional, modern, postmodern culture that brings about the disadvantages to rural education are the important factors for analyzing the problems of educational equity in urban and rural areas.By focusing on the ways promoting the balanced development of urban and rural education from cultural perspective, the paper explores its way through four aspects: to lay its basis on the concepts, to do research first, to focus on the culture, and to guarantee with policy. The first is to enhance the equality of urban and rural education with the concepts of people-orientation ,cultural care, features distinguishing, ecological prosperity and harmonious development to make the development of human's life comprehensive, harmonious, life-long and sustainable, based on cultural care, features distinguishing, ecological prosperity and harmonious development. Cultural construction acts as the starting point, where reform and innovation serve as the driving force for the multiple and independent development of urban and rural education, with"the People's Education","to run each school well, to teach each student well","to promote the comprehensive development of each student"as the aim. The second is to expand and deepen the cultural studies on the rural and urban education equality, to explore the influence of different cultural shapes, to strengthen the research of the basic category concepts, academic history, reform experiment, international comparisons, basic theory, educational policy and other theoretical systems. Emphasis should also be put on the macro research between the traditional culture and rural and urban educational equality, on the medium research between rural culture and rural and urban education equality, and on the micro research among the family culture, school culture and social culture. The third is to comprehensively strengthen the culture construction and integrate different cultural resources to promote rural education equity, learn the essence of traditional culture to fix the scientific orientation of urban and rural education, integrate urban and rural areas'cultural resources to create a fair environment for the development of urban and rural education, strengthen family, school, community and other cultural ecological construction and optimize the cultural equity environment of urban and rural education to narrow the gap between urban and rural education. The fourth regards the institutional mechanisms to be improved to ensure the role of culture to be fully played in promoting the urban and rural education equity. The guiding role of the scientific planning is to make scientific programs of education culture describe the developing blueprint of the urban and rural education. Adjusting effect of justice policies relates to enriching the contents of education policies to highlight the justice value orientation of urban and rural education. The protecting role of the institutional mechanisms is to develop the institutional mechanisms to promote the efficient operation of urban and rural education equity. The model of innovation development seeks to explore the model of balanced development to achieve the combination of the internal and external development. Promoting pilot reform sites aims at establishing the experimental areas to set examples for other areas to promote the harmonious development of urban and rural education. Reform and development also strive to improve fair quality of education and increase the effective supply of high quality educational resources for urban and rural areas.The paper conducts a cultural introspection on the balanced development of urban and rural education at the high level: the low equilibrium is the inevitable stage and foundation for the balanced development of the high level; the high equilibrium is target and value pursuit for the low balanced development. The high balanced equilibrium that pursues higher efficiency, better quality and the balance is a long-term, dynamic, dialectical spiral historical developing process; it is a unification of the tangible and the intangible, starting point, process and result, quantity and quality, the regional and global, the static and the dynamic. Cultural concern is the new value orientation to realize the balanced development of urban and rural education at high level, setting up the culture consciousness, objective and comprehensive understanding the importance of culture in the process promoting urban and rural equity, and fully exerting the roles of different cultures from the ecological angle of view will promote the balanced development of urban and rural education more effectively the high level.The concluding part points out that the gaps between urban and rural education are becoming larger and larger, the forms are getting more and more concealed; they have reached a critical point, and must be heeded by the researchers, decision makers, policy makers and practitioners. Culture has the important theoretical and practical value for the urban and rural education equity, therefore, we should pay attention to cultural influences, advocating cultural concern, strengthening culture construction, giving more preferential policies in allocation of the cultural resources and cultural construction for the rural areas, combining the tangible and intangible factors, hardware and software, the short-term and the long-term development organically, and deepening the study of the urban and rural education equity, solving effectively the problems of education equity of the urban and rural areas, promoting the comprehensive and in-depth development of the urban and rural education equity from low to high balanced equilibrium, and realizing the better and balanced development of the urban and rural education.