Re-Urbanization: A Study In The Education Of The Children Of Migrant Workers

The writer of this thesis, who has served in the field of education for many years, has always focused his attention and energy on the education problems faced by the children of migrant workers from rural areas in China. Therefore, the writer is devoted to investing in the establishment of special schools for those kids, which makes him in constant pursuit of firsthand data of this issue. In the original motivation, the writer planned to report on the facts, crisis and solutions to the issue of educating the children of migrant workers. In fact, there are too many similar essays and reports in terms of analysis and contents, but in this thesis, the writer has chosen a newperspective as well as created a new perception-------RE-URBENIZATION,upgrading the thesis to a level of macro-governance and forward-looking, which also makes the study more challenging. The title of this thesis comes up in such a background.The main goal of this thesis is to establish an intrinsic link between the trend of re-urbanization and one of social hot issues, the education problems of migrant workers' kids, because today's re-urbanization is not only in the fields of material and construction but also in those of citizens, culture and spirit of this metropolis. Being an inseparable part of urban construction, migrant workers and their children have a greater possibility to settle down in Shanghai. Though migrant workers and their families are uncertain population of the city today, some of them, especially the children, might become permanent dwellers and citizens in the future. This shows that the necessity to combine the education problems of the next generation of migrant workers with the issue of re-urbanization is our worries about future citizen's quality. Hence we should not ignore the planning and governance of the education of migrant workers' children to maintain and improve the future quality of citizens in Shanghai beforehand. One of the key problems of Re-urbanization is the quality of the citizens. Nevertheless, through a great number of field surveys, the writer found that the work to solve the education problems of those children was slipshod and the government lacked a systematic plan and policy to solve the problems so what they could do was to maintain the current situation.As stated above, Chapter 1 of the thesis mainly introduces the motivation and background of the writer and the essay, emphasizing on the relations between the re-urbanization and citizen and education. Through the document study in libraries and Internet, role-play observation in practice, case study and analysis and face-to-face interviews with headmasters and officials, the writer identify the conception as migrant workers from rural areas, urbanization, re-urbanization, care ofeducation, industrial workers and floating population--------which is also the source ofquestion in the writer's questionnaires and the framework of interviews.Chapter 2 to Chapter 6 is the main body of the thesis. Chapter 2 shows the conclusion and analysis from the filed surveys including the round-table discussionand visits and questionnaires to migrant workers and their children, teachers, headmasters, experts of education and the experts as executive leaders. Particularly, the writer directly contacted, discussed and chatted with migrant workers, and made a policy-consultant with high-profile experts and leaders of municipal and district governments, which informed the writer of a number of urgent problems in the education of migrant worker's children. Chapter 2 gives an overall summary of the discovery and problems uncovered by survey as well as the analysis of the part of survey in other chapters.Chapter 3 is focused on the reason why the children of migrant workers cannot have education or cannot have a good education. In the writer's thesis, it begins with the discussion on the obstacles of China's compulsive education system and residence registration system, the limitation of fiscal investment in the compulsive education of floating population and the government responsibility in it in a macro perspective; and then analyses the difficulties and reasons of the problems on a basis of survey in a micro perspective.In Chapter 4, the writer demonstrates such a view that: Children of migrant workers today will be the majority of Shanghai's industrial workers tomorrow; migrant workers and their families are uncertain population of the city today, but a part of them, especially their children, might be the permanent city dwellers tomorrow. The key nature of re-urbanization is the quality of the citizens, thus we should devote our resources to the quality-oriented education of migrant workers' children.Chapter 5 offers advice and solutions formed through document study, interviews with experts and adoption of the experience in foreign countries and regions. This chapter is focused on what and how the government should do to solve the education problems of migrant workers' children, of which the axis is from macro to micro, from government attitude to investments and resources. On the other hand, because of the key word 'Re^-urbanization', this chapter also includes the analysis of and the solution to the orientation and assignment of the junior high school graduate of migrant worker's children. At the end of Chapter 5, the writer studies the necessary conditions to realize the ideal education of migrant worker's children in our society on the basis of feasibility analysis.