A Case Study Of Rural Senior High School Students' Dropout

The dropout problem in rural areas has been an important issue ailing the development of education in China. Senior middle school is regarded as a tie between compulsory and higher education. However, the dropout problem at this stage seems increasingly prominent and becomes more serious, especially in the rural ordinary senior middle school. The outflow of rural senior school students conveys the information that they may give up the opportunity to change the underlying destiny through education. And this opportunity, which has been the anchorage of their living ideals and aspirations, used to be regarded as something like wizardry. Though the problem of poverty is no longer a matter of the main causes of dropout today, rural senior middle school dropouts have rendered getting worse. This study has been researched from the aspect of the sociology of education. We take the perspective of culture of poverty and counter-school to make empirical study of rural senior middle school dropout phenomenon, and make analysis of the social and cultural mechanisms behind the phenomenon.This paper adopts qualitative research methods, in a field survey of a rural ordinary senior middle school by interviewing, observing and physical analysis, we have found that the dropouts from an ordinary rural senior middle school have dominant and recessive difference. The "recessive dropout" problem is more serious. A large number of students show the insouciance of learning and often violate the school rules and regulations, although they are at school, they have formed the potential dropouts by" dawdling" at school. However previous studies have often ignored this part of the students. Recessive dropout is the preparation of dominant dropout, and there is no basic difference between them in the social and cultural root.Under the impact of the urban civilization with higher degree of modernization and prosperity, rural civilization that bred from farming culture gradually lost its spiritual connotation, and a deformity of contradiction material prosperity and spiritual emptiness is formed. People’s desire for money and interests is increasing, however, the spiritual emptiness and loneliness is more and more intense, and it results the rural culture of poverty. This culture revealed the shallow and poor side of rural culture. It is more of a response of the cruel reality that the channel for the children of farmers to achieve upward mobility through education is becoming more and more narrow, and also it is a psychological defense mechanism to adapt the pain. This culture is delivered to students through the interaction between rural communities and families. Under the impact of school’s mainstream culture, rural senior middle school students have formed the counter-school culture characterized by avoiding learning,"having fun", colliding the teacher, and collective revolt. The rural children struggling at the bottom of society have a profound insight into the instrumental schooling and their own destiny. But even they have a penetration and try to resist, they are difficult to escape the ultimate fate of the self-curse, eventually, it makes them to drop out of school. Rural senior middle school dropout is not a single specific phenomenon, but a phenomenon that gradually have been developed into common social facts. To resolve this issue, the priority is to return and reconstruct the rural education. On the one hand, we must have the courage to face the rootless rural education directly; On the other hand, we can make efforts on specific practices such as strengthening community education, re-establishing the value and dignity of the local culture, changing the single orientation of urbanization, strengthening the construction of teachers and attracting excellent teachers to take root in rural areas.