Yan Yangchu’s Educational Thought On Rural Education In The New Era Development Enlightenment

Rural development has been the basic problem of social construction and development,restricting China’s modernization process. China has implemented the plan of constructingnew rural areas and enhancing the development level of socialist rural areas; however, after along period of economic development, cultural and educational issues are increasinglyprominent. At present, farmers’ overall quality is not high, which restricts the development ofrural areas; only when we cultivate high-quality personnel, can we promote industrialupgrading in rural areas and achieve the transformation of traditional agriculture to modernagriculture. The establishment of new rural must solve the problems of education, becauseonly when quality education cultivates high-quality farmers, will the rural areas have a realdevelopment. To achieve such social goal, it is necessary to learn and learn from previoustheory and practice. Amongst last century’s construction of the rural areas, Yan Yangchu’seducational thought and practice provides a useful reference for today’s rural developmentYan Yangchu educational theory and rural transformation practice has formed a uniqueand comprehensive system, providing an important guiding significance for today’s ruralconstruction. Affected by the combined Eastern and Western cultures, Yan Yangchu integratedand formed his own thought system with the responsibility of concerning the country andbenevolence as its spirit core. Out of the deep sympathy and concern for the toiling masses, heshifted civilian education focus from urban to rural areas, and actively practiced hiseducational philosophy. To cure the rural areas’ folly, poverty, weakness and selfishness as theroots of backwardness, he proposed the rural education be carried out in four major areas ofthe arts, livelihood, health, civic education, known as the famous four education, and furtherproposed a three-dimensional educational system, comprehensively including schooleducation, social education, family education. Yan Yangchu’s theory was not only a majorbreakthrough in education ideology, but also had rich experience in practice. He gainedexperience and verified his theory with practice by carrying out pilot rural education in Hebeiprovince Ding county, which became a profound reform of China’s rural developmentpractice.The development of education in rural areas has made tremendous progress, but there arestill a lot of problems, which restricts the role of education in promoting rural community. Themarginalization of rural education development results in the following problems, such as its lower quality of basic education than urban educational, the development of vocationaleducation lagging behind the development of the rural economy, the lack of social educationresources and activities, the lack of a large number of outstanding talents of agriculture,farmers’ cultural low quality, and as well as the poor combination of family education,social education, and school education in rural areas. Therefore, such a series of problemshave hindered the development of rural education, delayed the training of personnel, andlimited the exertion of its educational function.Although there exist complex problems in rural education, yet Yangchu’s experiment hasoffered us a lot of beneficial inspiration. From the three aspects of the rural school education,social education and family education, Yan Yangchu’s educational thinking and practiceprovides the following inspirations: school education should be to strengthen the quality ofcompulsory education in rural areas, focus on the characteristics of rural education, cultivatethe comprehensive "new farmers ", provide the rural-oriented vocational educationconforming to rural development; social education should enrich the social educationalcontent and activities in the form, focus on the exploration and implementation of rural socialeducation resources, establish organizational mechanisms of social education in rural areas toenhance the rural migrant workers’ quality education, vigorously send technology to thevillages, and achieve the link of intellectuals and farmers by perfecting village official system,to strengthen the transformation of rural communities and social education; as to the familyeducation, we should lay attention on the combination of rural family education and socialeducation and school education, establish the organization system of rural family educationwith the aim to break the traditional educational thought and promote the establishment of therural learning family and at last build a rural three-dimension education system; as toeducation economic aspects, we should coordinate the development of urban and ruralareas to provide a good economic foundation for the development of rural education. To applyYan Yangchu’s educational thinking and practice and their inspirations to the development ofrural education, will surely lay a good foundation for the construction of a new socialistcountryside.