Rural Education And Social Mobility Of The Peasant

According to the research result of some sociologists, the agriculture laborers and the peasant—workers hold very low social position in contemporary China. In this background, education is the key means to change the original social position of the peasant's children, especially the children in the poor areas. Therefore, education has a peculiar significance to the peasants, they hope their children can get high social position by education and change their destiny.However, it is a pity that the peasant's children will encounter great difficulties in changing the social position by education. The first reason lies in the economic difference between the city and the countryside. The difference between the city and the countryside even means two different life styles. When the children of the countryside spend their childhood in fishing, cattle—feeding and playing, the children in the city have already enjoyed the modern technological civilization including computer, internet etc. and begun to learn piano or Cambridge English which the children in the countryside has no opportunity to learn. The second reason lies in the difficulties that the country schools encounter. The shortage of education finance, the seniority of the teachers and the drain of excellent teachers are all the difficulties the country school encounters. These difficulties make it hard for the rural children to enter the universities of high fame. The last reason lies in the high cost of higher education and the high risk in job seeking, which form the great challenge for the rural students to get high social position by education.The questions above lead to the main viewpoint and the thread of this thesis: what is the significance of social position achieved by education to the peasants and the schools? What is the influence of education function to the education demand and the education supply? What are the difficulties for the peasants' children to change their social position by education? What are the causes of these difficulties? What can we do to solve these problems? These are the questions thesis wants to answer.This thesis answers the questions above with the help of the relevant theory of economics, sociology, and economics of education. To get the first-hand date, the quantitative research is used. The author conducted carefully investigation in a county in Central China. Seven chapters constitute this thesis:Chapter 1 is the introduction of the theses. In this chapter, the questions to be answered are posed. The research done by the former scholars are collected and explained. The process of research and the research method are also carefully discussed in the part.In the second chapter, the author describes carefully the peasant's life in a village. The village is used as a case to represent the peasants' life in contemporary China. The description of the peasant's life is the foundation and the background of the whole thesis. The peasant's life, their economic life to be exact, is the foundation of their education decision. To understand their education demand and then-decision concerning education, we should first consider their life foundation. Different life foundation means different education demand and different educational decision. When their life foundation changes, the education demand will change correspondingly. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the life foundation for the unity of the whole thesis.In the third chapter, the author investigates the education demand of the peasants. The peasants hope to change the low social status of their children by education and this is their ultimate education demand. The peasants realize that only high scores can guarantee the entry of the famous university and the high socials status in the future so they hope their children can achieve high scores in school. Their education demand is one of the reasons to form the exam—oriented education. This chapter also compares the education demand between the peasant and the education expert. The comparison shows clearly that the peasants are economy—orientated. Considering the great changes that have taken place in the higher education, this chapter also investigate the changes of the peasant's education demand when the higher education enter into a new era.In the fourth chapter, the author discusses the education supply of the school. The education supply of the school is influenced by the education demand of the peasants. In the contemporary education evaluation system, the scores that the students achieve in the exam determine whether the students can get high social position, so the schools have no choice but to improve the scores of the students to meet the peasant's education demand. Furthermore, the school performance is evaluated by the scores that the students achieved in the exam, which also enforce the trend of exam—orientation of the schools.The fifth and the sixth chapter analyze the difficulties that the students encounter on the road to high social status by education. The shortage of culture capital, the declination of the rural school, the poverty of the peasant, the injustice in the university enrollment are all the difficulties that the students have to overcome on their road to high social position. The author also suggests some countermeasure to solve the questions.In the last chapter, the author states the main conclusion drawn from the whole thesis. The authors also make a thorough inquiry into some questions that are relevant to the theme but are not discussed in the thesis.