Chen Liqun and student
Wenchang Palace
Chen Liqun and student
Chen Liqun and student
Chen Liqun and student
mt.htmlOn September 5, Zhanfu Village held a commendation meeting. Chen Liqun made a home visit.
Chen Liqun has been the principal in Hangzhou for more than 30 years, and has seen countless students, and has sent away hundreds of Tsinghua and Peking University students. But when he first came to Guizhou Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture in 2016, he was still shocked by the "complaints" of the local principal.
A village with a population of more than 2,200 people did not get the first college student until 2014.
Some rural children set out to school before dawn. One is that the road is long, and the other is that once they are discovered by their neighbors, they will be pulled back - "Our children do not study, they go to school, and they will bully us when they come back in the future."
Some parents go to school to send daily necessities to their children on weekends and will bring homemade earth cigarettes to their children. In the eyes of parents, "being able to smoke and drink is a sign of manliness." 14 months later, Chen Liqun, who retired, was invited to Guizhou to serve as the principal of Taijiang National Middle School and was voluntarily taught for four years. Hijiang County The county magistrate once praised him at a meeting, saying that he would not want to give money. Chen Liqun joked, "You can't afford to give what you want, but you can give too little, so just don't want it. It sounds nicer."
, a school that originally ranked at the bottom in the state, submitted a new transcript - as the only general high school in the county, in 2008 and 2011, only one person in the school got the first batch. In 2020, there were 1,047 candidates in the school, 270 of them entered the first-tier line, and 829 of them reached the undergraduate line, and the undergraduate admission rate increased from the original 10% to 79%.
Many people come to Chen Liqun to learn from the scriptures. He said that in the east, a good school mainly relies on the principal, but in the west, a good county magistrate is more important than a good principal. As soon as school starts, more than 60 dropped out of school
Taijiang County is located in the eastern part of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. It is known as the "No. 1 Miao County in the world". It is a national-level poverty-stricken county. The G60 Expressway and National Highway 320 pass through the county. There is no train open so far. There is currently no traffic light in the city. 98% of the population is Miao.
The old principal who talked about how to cultivate "future leading talents" in the east did not expect that after coming to Taijiang National Middle School, he turned into a "nanny". There are more than 3,000 teachers and students in the school, and there are only more than 800 seats in the cafeteria. There is only one pot in the operating room, and there are flies stacked on the wires. Some people say, "Our children here will get sick if they don't eat a few flies in summer." As soon as the ringtone rang during mealtime, many students rushed to the school gate and went to the streets and alleys of the county town to find food.
night self-study classroom is "as noisy as the vegetable market". Back to the dormitory, dozens of people live in a large room, and some people hide in the game of "Chicken Eating". There is only one bathroom on each floor, which smells scent.
He urged the dormitory building that had not been accepted to start construction again, from one canteen to six canteen. When he learned that nearly half of the left-behind children in the school, the proportion of students who have left one meal but not one meal once they are on holiday is equivalent to "free-raising", he stipulated that the implementation of fully closed boarding was implemented.
He went to a second-year high school class to attend the class. The "vision wall" in the classroom was covered with colorful notes, and a heart-shaped piece of paper said, "Marry a wife and go home."
This boy told him that there are many bachelors in their village, and his parents told him that it doesn’t matter if he is almost studying, and he must marry a wife and go home.
These things are "very exciting" to Chen Liqun. In the Xuejun Middle School, where he served as principal for three years, students ranked in the top 5% of the high school entrance examination in Hangzhou, and they are expected to become professors, doctors, and scientists. But here, studying is just to get married.
Chen Liqun received an anonymous letter from a student, saying that at least 500 people cheated on their mobile phones in the middle of the high school entrance exam. Some went to high school just to get a diploma, and some were looking for wives, "there were too many students who didn't want to learn." At the end of the letter
, the student who said "it's all about his heart" said that he dreamed of starting a business and opening a company with a net worth of 10 billion yuan, driving a luxury car and living in a villa, and planning to drop out of school next semester and go out to work hard. "Education is just a piece of paper."
School starts after the Spring Festival in 2017, and more than 60 students do not report to the school. Chen Liqun was so anxious that he quickly called Long Feng, director of the county education and science bureau. Long Feng comforted him that this was the least in recent years. More than 100 people usually dropped out of school after previous years. Chen Liqun was surprised by such a "shocking number".
He couldn't sit still and called with his class teacher, persuading him one by one, thinking of "holding one by one". Only a few people were persuaded to come back, and some came back to study and left.
Chen Liqun asked a girl why she didn't want to study. The girl said that the money for dinner was gone and her parents both died. It was because her brother who worked outside gave her money from time to time to support her in school. As the Spring Festival approached, she did not receive the money and could only borrow money to eat. After hearing this, Chen Liqun immediately gave her 1,000 yuan and asked her to recharge her card to buy food.
But after the Spring Festival, the girl followed her cousin to Dongguan to work. Chen Liqun transferred 2,000 yuan for her and asked her cousin to take her back on the high-speed rail. When the girl rushed back to school at 11 o'clock in the evening, Chen Liqun was very happy and patted her on the shoulder, asking her not to worry about money and study quietly. But after the summer vacation, the girl dropped out of school to work again and had a boyfriend.
repeated persuasions made Chen Liqun "feel very failed". He has been teaching for more than 30 years, but he has never been so troubled by his students not going to school. There was also a girl who left without a word while taking the exam. The teacher searched for two days without any news. On the third day, the girl sent a photo to the head teacher. In the photo, she was wearing the Miao wedding dress - she went home to get married.
He decided to go to the students' homes to take a look.
understands the students' wish to "marry a wife and go home"
The more than 3,000 students in the school, more than 1,300 people from poor families with registered files. Over the past four years, Chen Liqun has visited more than 180 of them, and has driven 50,000 miles on the winding mountain road. The farthest home visit requires driving for an hour and a half, then taking a 45-minute diesel boat, and then taking a half-hour drive away.
He can call out the name of the village at will, and walk to which hillside will his students live, and several college students will be admitted to the village this year. Chen Liqun wore glasses and was tall and thin. He was always wearing a suit, a pair of leather shoes, and a backpack. He walked among the brown and yellow Miao village stilt houses, which was particularly eye-catching. Most men in the village go out to work, while women stay at home to grow corn and sweet potatoes, taking care of the elderly and young.
Chen Liqun often mentioned a girl later. The girl's father died of illness, and the family relied on the 2,000 yuan sent back by the mother who worked in Guangdong every month. The house "the table is not like a table, and the stool is not like a stool". There is only a wooden bed tied with iron wire and a quilt is covered with. Because there is not enough quilt at home, the five brothers and sisters squeezed into the same bed and did not take off their clothes when they sleep in winter.
Chen Liqun looked sad and bought 3 quilts for them in a small department store in the county. The girl's monthly living expenses are 200 yuan. In order to save money, she never had supper after going to high school. Chen Liqun provided her with 500 yuan in living expenses every month and urged her to have supper.
The brother and sister worked hard, and the walls of the house were covered with certificates. Chen Liqun felt relieved and counted them, 53 pictures. After careful look, there were two posts that were overturned. After asking, I realized that the child’s mother was illiterate and accidentally posted them overturned.
At first, every time Chen Liqun visited his home, he would pay 500 yuan to the students. There are too many poor families, and his red envelopes have been reduced from 500 yuan to 300 yuan.
is given at most five digits. That was a college entrance examination student this year. His father passed away and his mother remarried. He was in his teenage years. During the winter and summer vacations, he went out to work to earn living expenses for himself and his two younger brothers.
This boy's home is on a mountain with an altitude of nearly 1,000 meters. He takes one hour to take a bus and walk for nearly 20 minutes. He steps through one stone steps higher than the other. The three-story stilt building has just been renovated, and there are only 12 days left before the college entrance examination. The foundation of the house has settled due to heavy rainstorms for several days, so the boys had to rush home to deal with it. Chen Liqun immediately paid 10,000 yuan to ask the boy to repair the foundation.
Chen Liqun remembered that in Hangzhou, students learned piano, art, and hosting since childhood. They were filled with various extracurricular classes during the winter and summer vacations. After returning home, their homes were more strict than those in the school. Many children here only need to meet their parents for a year, and they are even worried about eating, "It's impossible to even have a good meal." After the college entrance examination, many children still have to work during the summer vacation to earn college tuition for themselves.
Chen Liqun gradually understood why students wrote the wish of "marrying a wife and going home".
In the village where college students were not admitted for more than ten years, many parents in the mountains could not speak Chinese, and faced only endless rice fields and invisible distant mountains. They only hoped that their children would get married and have children.Here, family education is so limited that students can't cross the mountains.
Chen Liqun thought of many ways. In the playground, he gave everyone the anonymous belief that 500 people cheated on their exams on their mobile phones, and warned everyone that if they don’t study, they will most likely become a “reserve army for migrant workers” like their parents. Only by studying can the next generation get rid of this vicious cycle and complete the leap from “illiterate and semi-illiterate family” to “knowledge family”.
He studied Miao Village culture and used Miao culture's worship of trees to let students write down their college entrance examination goals and life goals, put them in their wish bottles, and buried them in the woods of the school.
In the past, it was snowing in winter, and the school was going to have a holiday. In the winter of 2017, the meteorological department just announced that it was snowing, and the holiday notice came. The next day, the unified examination for the whole state of the senior high school entrance examination was temporarily stopped. Chen Liqun did not let go, and the snow did not fall in the end. At the end of 2018, it was snowing heavily, and Chen Liqun still did not have a holiday.
Chen Liqun explained that he is challenging the long-standing "leisure culture". "If it snows, it will take a holiday. How much time does northerners have to take a holiday in a year?" He held a snowman competition throughout the school to let students play snowball fights.
less than two months after taking office, two teachers were suspended for a row
When Chen Liqun first arrived at school, the classroom was in chaos. Some teachers stood in the corridor chatting during class, some went to have breakfast after checking in the morning reading class, and some went to the office halfway through the invigilator. He organized all teachers in the school to take the senior high school entrance exam, and the teachers treated them perfunctorily, whispered to each other, copied other teachers' answer papers, and did not take them seriously. Chen Liqun personally invigilated the exam, but some teachers failed the exam.
Less than two months after taking office, Chen Liqun stopped classes from two teachers, causing a sensation in the whole county. A Chinese teacher did not prepare lessons in class and mistakenly told the end of the composition to the beginning. Chen Liqun immediately returned it to the county. A math teacher did not prepare lessons and was also suspended from class and persuaded him to leave.
At Xuejun Middle School in Hangzhou, a student admitted to Oxford University recalled the interview process to Chen Liqun and said that the teacher compiled two math questions for him to do on the spot, but they did not care about the answers, but only cared about the content of thinking in each step, and asked him what he thought in his heart every step he wrote.
Chen Liqun was very inspired and believed that compared to repeating mechanical questions, students' thinking capacity should be improved. How much things are placed in the students' mind depends on the people on the podium. Chen Liqun often said, "Third-rate teachers teach knowledge, second-rate teachers teach methods, first-rate teachers teach ideas." He invited many teachers from Kaili No. 1 Middle School to start "same courses and different structures" throughout the school. In the same class, teachers from both schools will give lectures once, listening and evaluating each other. A math teacher said that after listening to Teacher Kaili’s class, he realized that it would take at least 5 days to truly prepare a class.
Due to low salaries, several teachers in the school leave every year. Chen Liqun goes to the county to gain resources for teachers. In April 2018, the Hangzhou Municipal Government gave Taijiang 10 million yuan in assistance, and the county allocated 3.2 million yuan to Taijiang people. Chen Liqun used it to reward teachers, and he also paid more than 200,000 yuan at his own expense to establish a teacher's teaching fund.
But Chen Liqun doesn't want the teacher to take the score too seriously. He said, "Education cannot only care about students' time now, but must consider students' long life."
Taijiangmin Middle School students have one hour of activity time in the morning, middle school and evening. Chen Liqun does not agree to shorten students' time and carry out "quasi-militarized" management, nor does he agree to make-up classes during the holidays. He believes that this practice only has "test scores" and no "people", and its essence is no different from cultivating "45-day fast-growing chicken".
In Chen Liqun's view, learning how to be a person is more important than getting higher scores. On July 2 this year, a senior high school girl in the school worked at a construction site in Guangzhou and was hit by a glass placed against the wall and died after failed rescue efforts. In order not to affect the child's college entrance examination, the mother did not tell the girl, and quietly took the ashes home and buried them.
Chen Liqun heard about this and went to a girl's house the next day. He told the mother that the college entrance examination is not that important, and it is always there every year, but when you see the ashes, you only have one chance to send your father home. On the morning of the 9th, as soon as the college entrance examination was over, he discussed with the girl's mother and accompanied the students to the mountain to pay tribute to the girl's father.
There is a girl from a poor family in the school who has been receiving funding from Chen Liqun, but she asked other teachers for money and put on heavy makeup after the college entrance examination. Chen Liqun felt that he still owed the student the last lesson, "If you want to tell her the identity, you should do whatever you want."
"Hot the educational atmosphere"
he felt that the lesson he owed the most was in the village.He gave lectures to village cadres and the first secretary stationed in the village, and should attach importance to education. He said that only by "leveraging the bottom of society" and forming respect for teachers and education and people's customs can Taijiang's education leap in the true sense.
In the summer of 2017, he began to take his teacher to the homes of students who passed the first-class entrance examination to send good news and set off firecrackers, and posted the admission list on the most conspicuous wall of the village. He wants everyone in the village to see it and “heat the educational atmosphere.”
html On September 5, at the college student commendation meeting in Zhanfu Village, Taigong Town, those parents who value education were also rewarded. Some of them wore slippers, some had cigarettes on their ears, and some were wearing blue Miao embroidered clothing.However, the principal said bluntly that Taijiang Minzhong passed the first-class student in 2020, and 12 students passed the undergraduate degree in Zhanfu Village, but they were all second-class students, which shows that the reading atmosphere is not enough.
In the past two years, more and more villages have held commendation meetings, and the bonuses have become higher and higher.
Not long ago, a county leader asked a deputy county magistrate in charge of education if he would like to exchange 270 books for 2 Tsinghua and Peking University. The deputy county magistrate said he would not change it, and the county leader said he would take half of it to replace it, and the deputy county magistrate said he would not change it. Chen Liqun was very annoyed when he heard about this. Later, he said in front of the county leaders that this was a "crazy idea", which was essentially "the poor love face" and were concerned about political achievements.
htmlFor more than 130 years, Chen Liqun has sent away hundreds of Tsinghua and Peking University students. Hangzhou Xuejun Middle School first-tier online rate is 97%, and the number of admissions to Tsinghua and Peking University is about 30 per year. There are also students who are admitted to Oxford University and Yale University in advance. But Chen Liqun said that in areas with weak education like Taijiang County, high-quality resources cannot be tilted to a few people. The most urgent task is to let more families taste the "sweetness" of studying changing their destiny and "feel the power of education."In 2020, there were about 2,200 high school entrance examination graduates in Taijiang County, and only half of the students entered Taijiang Minzhong. Chen Liqun also thought about where the students who did not come to Taijiang Minzhong will have a way out. During a conversation, he told the local leaders that there is another vocational high school in Taijiang and should also be supported and developed.
Some people suggest that vocational high schools cooperate with schools and enterprises and work in first-tier cities after graduation. But Chen Liqun opposed, "This is nothing more than a senior job." He suggested that Vocational High School focus on the development of three majors in science and technology agriculture, tourism, and handmade production, and cultivate talents that are in line with local economic development. This model can also be replicated in other poor counties.
In his eyes, education in the west must have a western model.
In the west, a good county magistrate is more important than a good principal
As the principal is long and longer, he found that some things are powerless by a principal.
According to the China Education Daily, in 2016, Taijiang County's annual fiscal revenue was 270 million yuan, but its fiscal expenditure was 1.5 billion yuan, mainly relying on central fiscal transfer payments.
When he first served as principal, Chen Liqun told the county that the funding for running schools at a national-level poor county was relatively lacking, but he hoped that the guarantee during his tenure as principal could be achieved. However, over the past four years, he has been worried about money. The school’s class teacher allowance, substitute class and over-class allowance are often owed, and the wages of temporary workers cannot be paid.
At the end of 2019, more than 60 temporary workers in the school did not receive their wages for five months, and some people resigned because they could not bear it. In order for the normal operation of the canteen, the school can only ask people to find temporary workers everywhere. Since 2015, Yuhang District, Zhejiang, which has assisted Taijiang County, has sent four teachers to Taijiang Minzhong to teach every year. The Taijiang County Government will allocate 10,000 yuan per person to the expenses of the teaching canteen every year, but the teaching teachers will go one after another, and the money has not been allocated to the school so far.
At the end of 2017, the school administrative principal brought a bank staff member to Chen Liqun to sign, saying that he would mortgage the school to the bank, and the loan would be made urgently in the county.
"If there is a repayment default, how can the bank take back the school? Where will the more than 3,000 students go to school?" Chen Liqun did not sign, and his first reaction was, "Probably all the mortgaged ones have been mortgaged."
's funds are not guaranteed, and the infrastructure cannot keep up. In the first year of Chen Liqun's visit to Taijiang, the school often stopped water, and the longest time was 5 days. On hot days, the teaching building and dormitory were all paralyzed and the stench was stinking. The school can only ask for help from the fire brigade and bring water to ensure that the canteen uses water and that the school will not suspend classes. Because of frequent power outages, many students have candles in their drawers.
County Education and Science Bureau Director Long Feng also worrys about money every day. A township primary school principal complained to Longfeng that the school's electricity bill could not be paid, so he had to take more than 2,000 yuan from his salary to advance. He told reporters that the county allocated only 20,000 yuan to the Education Bureau every month, and holding a school sports meeting was not enough, so he did not dare to go to the schools in the township and villages to inspect the work. The principals asked for money. Some said that the cooking pot was broken, and some said that the roof was leaking, but they could not solve anything. "It was too annoying."
These difficulties are something that the eastern region will not face and cannot imagine. In 2018, the Yuhang District Education Bureau supported 3 million yuan in aid for Taijiang County No. 3 Kindergarten. The director of the Yuhang District Education Bureau came to Taijiang for exchanges. He heard that the total cost of building a kindergarten was about 10 million yuan, and he expressed surprise to Long Feng, saying that the kindergarten of the same scale spent 30 million to 40 million yuan in Hangzhou.
is a matter of course in the east, and Chen Liqun needs to fight for it again and again here. In 2017, Chen Liqun went to junior high school to recruit students in person. In previous years, only 20 of the top 100 high school entrance examinations in the county remained in Taijiang, and 95 were the first year. To welcome the new major events in the whole school, Chen Liqun decided to re-main the No. 1 dormitory building. After several applications, the county decided to fund the repair and supervise the worker.
During the summer vacation, the school clearly informed the construction party that the maintenance should be completed before August 12, and the students should start school to register for military training. At 5 pm on August 11, the deputy director of the school's general affairs office hurried to Chen Liqun's office and said that the student dormitory had not yet been repaired.
Chen Liqun quickly asked Long Feng to discuss countermeasures. Long Feng asked the construction team leader, and the construction team leader said that he had just learned that the repair had not been completed. Chen Liqun immediately proposed to postpone the school for 6 days and notified the students to postpone the arrival of the school. I thought the school would start smoothly this time. As a result, at 5 pm on August 17, the deputy director came to the office again and said that the bathroom was not repaired and could not be checked in.
When Chen Liqun heard this, he was so anxious that he "everyone was about to faint." He asked the deputy director to consult the county. The construction party proposed to buy a batch of temporary toilets. "That's a large amount, where can I buy it in one day and where can I put it? What should I do if I use it?" Chen Liqun's patience reached the extreme. "The government is so playful about education, I must have an attitude." He took his luggage and drove to Kaili, but the county did not reply any phone number.
The county began to pay attention to it. The deputy county magistrate in charge began to go to the site to supervise the construction every day, and he would eat boxed lunches on site at noon. Three more days later, the school finally started. As a principal, the normal start of school cannot be guaranteed, and Chen Liqun's self-confidence is challenged. "There are too many factors that cannot resist my own strength."
Chen Liqun also often hears the bitterness of the principals. In his opinion, what is lacking in poor areas is the real emphasis on education. He has repeatedly stated that whether a good school can be established in the eastern region often depends on a good principal, but in the western region, whether a good school can be established in the good county magistrate.
Historically, Taijiang County also had the style of respecting learning and worshipping education. On the east hillside of the county town, there was a wooden square building Lotus Academy with a courtyard house. The Wenchang Palace was built in front of the academy. The two buildings were built during the Guangxu period. The advocate was Zhou Qingzhi, who was the Tongzhi of Taigong Hall at that time.
As early as more than 100 years ago, Zhou Qingzhi realized that Miaojiang would be in education in the future. "The memorization of the Miao people is actually caused by shallow knowledge and the barrier of writing, and it is by no means stupidity." At the beginning of his tenure, he established 32 urban and rural charity schools to persuade Miao children to study in the museum, and the trend of respecting teachers and valuing education gradually became stronger. However, the atmosphere of valuing education gradually declined after he left office.
Now, the courtyard is empty and the academy is withering. Due to years of disrepair, the top of Wenchang Palace has tilted 1.5 meters southward.
"The current leaders' understanding of education has not yet reached the height of Zhou Qingzhi."Chen Liqun joked with the county leaders, and the answers to Taijiang education questions were concentrated in the Lotus Courtyard and Wenchang Palace, "This should be the spiritual highland of the people of Taijiang. "
At the initiative of Chen Liqun, the county rebuilt Wenchang Palace and Lianhua Academy. Chen Liqun paid more than 80,000 yuan at his own expense and bought a statue of Confucius and placed it in the academy. He suggested that the county open a Taijiang Library in the two-sided rooms outside the hall, which was lively here, "Maybe the spring of Taijiang education is coming." Guizhou
, which is inseparable from, was extended to 4 years of teaching support in the initial agreement.Chen Liqun also retired as principal. In the past four years, he traveled between Hangzhou and Taijiang for no less than 70 times, and each time he took 8 hours to take the high-speed rail. He is 63 years old. In the past two years, his lover was with his lover. Later, his granddaughter was born and his lover went to take care of his granddaughter. He stayed in Taijiang alone.
He has always been unaccustomed to Taijiang's diet. The Miao people like to eat spicy and sour food, and are proud of their high meat and full of wine, but his taste is light, he does not like spicy food, does not drink alcohol, and there is nowhere to eat at dinner. Cut off the chopsticks. The southwest is very damp. Every night, Chen Liqun wants to take a walk along the river to remove dampness and go to the massage shop to scrape it regularly. Before coming to Taijiang, he fell seriously ill. The doctor told him to take two medicines for life. In Taijiang, he asked his family to send the medicine from Hangzhou every month.
Before, people had no impression of this principal who always wore a suit. Now, when walking on the side of the road in Yanhe in the city, there is always someone who wants to take photos with him. During home visits, an old man enthusiastically called him "Principal Chen". He said he had seen him on TV.
The news that he was leaving spread throughout the small town. People thought that after this summer, he would not be able to see him. A teacher sent him a book to memorial, and a senior high school class made a video to say goodbye to him. In the video, the students called themselves "Chen Family Army". Some said they missed his speech under the national flag every Monday, some said that they hoped to walk out of the mountains as soon as possible to see a more beautiful world, and some people left messages to Chen Liqun, hoping that he would "come back to see them often. "
They don't know that just after September, Chen Liqun, who was resting in Hangzhou for a few days, came again. He plunged into the village again. This time he visited the poor students who took this year's college entrance examination to solve the university tuition problem. A Hangzhou company contacted Chen Liqun to donate money to students. Chen Liqun took the list and went to the students' homes one by one, asking them where they went to college and how much tuition, and told them not to worry about tuition. The donor would put the tuition into the card before they started school.
Even if they retired as principal, Chen Liqun was still busy "like fighting". Not long ago, he flew to Gansu again to give lectures to the principals there. For a long time in the future, he will also travel frequently to Hangzhou and Guizhou to give voluntary lectures to the principals here. Jiangren gave him a new identity - the lifelong honorary principal of Taijiang Minzhong.
Chen Liqun said that Taijiang is not his last stop. Maybe he would go to which school he should be the principal. Over the years, he has published 16 books on education. Long-term thinking at his desk made him develop the habit of smoking and can smoke a pack a day. There are several books in the trunk of the car, and he will sign his name during home visits and give it to students.
Before resigning as principal of Taijiang, a media outlet followed Chen Liqun to visit his home, thinking that he would not go back to Taijiang again, so he named the filming video "Chen Liqun's last home visit". Chen Liqun was very angry. He said that he never wanted to say goodbye to here.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Network reporter Yin Haiyuewen and photographed
He couldn't sit still and called with his class teacher, persuading him one by one, thinking of "holding one by one". Only a few people were persuaded to come back, and some came back to study and left.
Chen Liqun asked a girl why she didn't want to study. The girl said that the money for dinner was gone and her parents both died. It was because her brother who worked outside gave her money from time to time to support her in school. As the Spring Festival approached, she did not receive the money and could only borrow money to eat. After hearing this, Chen Liqun immediately gave her 1,000 yuan and asked her to recharge her card to buy food.
But after the Spring Festival, the girl followed her cousin to Dongguan to work. Chen Liqun transferred 2,000 yuan for her and asked her cousin to take her back on the high-speed rail. When the girl rushed back to school at 11 o'clock in the evening, Chen Liqun was very happy and patted her on the shoulder, asking her not to worry about money and study quietly. But after the summer vacation, the girl dropped out of school to work again and had a boyfriend.
repeated persuasions made Chen Liqun "feel very failed". He has been teaching for more than 30 years, but he has never been so troubled by his students not going to school. There was also a girl who left without a word while taking the exam. The teacher searched for two days without any news. On the third day, the girl sent a photo to the head teacher. In the photo, she was wearing the Miao wedding dress - she went home to get married.
He decided to go to the students' homes to take a look.
understands the students' wish to "marry a wife and go home"
The more than 3,000 students in the school, more than 1,300 people from poor families with registered files. Over the past four years, Chen Liqun has visited more than 180 of them, and has driven 50,000 miles on the winding mountain road. The farthest home visit requires driving for an hour and a half, then taking a 45-minute diesel boat, and then taking a half-hour drive away.
He can call out the name of the village at will, and walk to which hillside will his students live, and several college students will be admitted to the village this year. Chen Liqun wore glasses and was tall and thin. He was always wearing a suit, a pair of leather shoes, and a backpack. He walked among the brown and yellow Miao village stilt houses, which was particularly eye-catching. Most men in the village go out to work, while women stay at home to grow corn and sweet potatoes, taking care of the elderly and young.
Chen Liqun often mentioned a girl later. The girl's father died of illness, and the family relied on the 2,000 yuan sent back by the mother who worked in Guangdong every month. The house "the table is not like a table, and the stool is not like a stool". There is only a wooden bed tied with iron wire and a quilt is covered with. Because there is not enough quilt at home, the five brothers and sisters squeezed into the same bed and did not take off their clothes when they sleep in winter.
Chen Liqun looked sad and bought 3 quilts for them in a small department store in the county. The girl's monthly living expenses are 200 yuan. In order to save money, she never had supper after going to high school. Chen Liqun provided her with 500 yuan in living expenses every month and urged her to have supper.
The brother and sister worked hard, and the walls of the house were covered with certificates. Chen Liqun felt relieved and counted them, 53 pictures. After careful look, there were two posts that were overturned. After asking, I realized that the child’s mother was illiterate and accidentally posted them overturned.
At first, every time Chen Liqun visited his home, he would pay 500 yuan to the students. There are too many poor families, and his red envelopes have been reduced from 500 yuan to 300 yuan.
is given at most five digits. That was a college entrance examination student this year. His father passed away and his mother remarried. He was in his teenage years. During the winter and summer vacations, he went out to work to earn living expenses for himself and his two younger brothers.
This boy's home is on a mountain with an altitude of nearly 1,000 meters. He takes one hour to take a bus and walk for nearly 20 minutes. He steps through one stone steps higher than the other. The three-story stilt building has just been renovated, and there are only 12 days left before the college entrance examination. The foundation of the house has settled due to heavy rainstorms for several days, so the boys had to rush home to deal with it. Chen Liqun immediately paid 10,000 yuan to ask the boy to repair the foundation.
Chen Liqun remembered that in Hangzhou, students learned piano, art, and hosting since childhood. They were filled with various extracurricular classes during the winter and summer vacations. After returning home, their homes were more strict than those in the school. Many children here only need to meet their parents for a year, and they are even worried about eating, "It's impossible to even have a good meal." After the college entrance examination, many children still have to work during the summer vacation to earn college tuition for themselves.
Chen Liqun gradually understood why students wrote the wish of "marrying a wife and going home".
In the village where college students were not admitted for more than ten years, many parents in the mountains could not speak Chinese, and faced only endless rice fields and invisible distant mountains. They only hoped that their children would get married and have children.Here, family education is so limited that students can't cross the mountains.
Chen Liqun thought of many ways. In the playground, he gave everyone the anonymous belief that 500 people cheated on their exams on their mobile phones, and warned everyone that if they don’t study, they will most likely become a “reserve army for migrant workers” like their parents. Only by studying can the next generation get rid of this vicious cycle and complete the leap from “illiterate and semi-illiterate family” to “knowledge family”.
He studied Miao Village culture and used Miao culture's worship of trees to let students write down their college entrance examination goals and life goals, put them in their wish bottles, and buried them in the woods of the school.
In the past, it was snowing in winter, and the school was going to have a holiday. In the winter of 2017, the meteorological department just announced that it was snowing, and the holiday notice came. The next day, the unified examination for the whole state of the senior high school entrance examination was temporarily stopped. Chen Liqun did not let go, and the snow did not fall in the end. At the end of 2018, it was snowing heavily, and Chen Liqun still did not have a holiday.
Chen Liqun explained that he is challenging the long-standing "leisure culture". "If it snows, it will take a holiday. How much time does northerners have to take a holiday in a year?" He held a snowman competition throughout the school to let students play snowball fights.
less than two months after taking office, two teachers were suspended for a row
When Chen Liqun first arrived at school, the classroom was in chaos. Some teachers stood in the corridor chatting during class, some went to have breakfast after checking in the morning reading class, and some went to the office halfway through the invigilator. He organized all teachers in the school to take the senior high school entrance exam, and the teachers treated them perfunctorily, whispered to each other, copied other teachers' answer papers, and did not take them seriously. Chen Liqun personally invigilated the exam, but some teachers failed the exam.
Less than two months after taking office, Chen Liqun stopped classes from two teachers, causing a sensation in the whole county. A Chinese teacher did not prepare lessons in class and mistakenly told the end of the composition to the beginning. Chen Liqun immediately returned it to the county. A math teacher did not prepare lessons and was also suspended from class and persuaded him to leave.
At Xuejun Middle School in Hangzhou, a student admitted to Oxford University recalled the interview process to Chen Liqun and said that the teacher compiled two math questions for him to do on the spot, but they did not care about the answers, but only cared about the content of thinking in each step, and asked him what he thought in his heart every step he wrote.
Chen Liqun was very inspired and believed that compared to repeating mechanical questions, students' thinking capacity should be improved. How much things are placed in the students' mind depends on the people on the podium. Chen Liqun often said, "Third-rate teachers teach knowledge, second-rate teachers teach methods, first-rate teachers teach ideas." He invited many teachers from Kaili No. 1 Middle School to start "same courses and different structures" throughout the school. In the same class, teachers from both schools will give lectures once, listening and evaluating each other. A math teacher said that after listening to Teacher Kaili’s class, he realized that it would take at least 5 days to truly prepare a class.
Due to low salaries, several teachers in the school leave every year. Chen Liqun goes to the county to gain resources for teachers. In April 2018, the Hangzhou Municipal Government gave Taijiang 10 million yuan in assistance, and the county allocated 3.2 million yuan to Taijiang people. Chen Liqun used it to reward teachers, and he also paid more than 200,000 yuan at his own expense to establish a teacher's teaching fund.
But Chen Liqun doesn't want the teacher to take the score too seriously. He said, "Education cannot only care about students' time now, but must consider students' long life."
Taijiangmin Middle School students have one hour of activity time in the morning, middle school and evening. Chen Liqun does not agree to shorten students' time and carry out "quasi-militarized" management, nor does he agree to make-up classes during the holidays. He believes that this practice only has "test scores" and no "people", and its essence is no different from cultivating "45-day fast-growing chicken".
In Chen Liqun's view, learning how to be a person is more important than getting higher scores. On July 2 this year, a senior high school girl in the school worked at a construction site in Guangzhou and was hit by a glass placed against the wall and died after failed rescue efforts. In order not to affect the child's college entrance examination, the mother did not tell the girl, and quietly took the ashes home and buried them.
Chen Liqun heard about this and went to a girl's house the next day. He told the mother that the college entrance examination is not that important, and it is always there every year, but when you see the ashes, you only have one chance to send your father home. On the morning of the 9th, as soon as the college entrance examination was over, he discussed with the girl's mother and accompanied the students to the mountain to pay tribute to the girl's father.
There is a girl from a poor family in the school who has been receiving funding from Chen Liqun, but she asked other teachers for money and put on heavy makeup after the college entrance examination. Chen Liqun felt that he still owed the student the last lesson, "If you want to tell her the identity, you should do whatever you want."
"Hot the educational atmosphere"
he felt that the lesson he owed the most was in the village.He gave lectures to village cadres and the first secretary stationed in the village, and should attach importance to education. He said that only by "leveraging the bottom of society" and forming respect for teachers and education and people's customs can Taijiang's education leap in the true sense.
In the summer of 2017, he began to take his teacher to the homes of students who passed the first-class entrance examination to send good news and set off firecrackers, and posted the admission list on the most conspicuous wall of the village. He wants everyone in the village to see it and “heat the educational atmosphere.”
html On September 5, at the college student commendation meeting in Zhanfu Village, Taigong Town, those parents who value education were also rewarded. Some of them wore slippers, some had cigarettes on their ears, and some were wearing blue Miao embroidered clothing.However, the principal said bluntly that Taijiang Minzhong passed the first-class student in 2020, and 12 students passed the undergraduate degree in Zhanfu Village, but they were all second-class students, which shows that the reading atmosphere is not enough.
In the past two years, more and more villages have held commendation meetings, and the bonuses have become higher and higher.
Not long ago, a county leader asked a deputy county magistrate in charge of education if he would like to exchange 270 books for 2 Tsinghua and Peking University. The deputy county magistrate said he would not change it, and the county leader said he would take half of it to replace it, and the deputy county magistrate said he would not change it. Chen Liqun was very annoyed when he heard about this. Later, he said in front of the county leaders that this was a "crazy idea", which was essentially "the poor love face" and were concerned about political achievements.
htmlFor more than 130 years, Chen Liqun has sent away hundreds of Tsinghua and Peking University students. Hangzhou Xuejun Middle School first-tier online rate is 97%, and the number of admissions to Tsinghua and Peking University is about 30 per year. There are also students who are admitted to Oxford University and Yale University in advance. But Chen Liqun said that in areas with weak education like Taijiang County, high-quality resources cannot be tilted to a few people. The most urgent task is to let more families taste the "sweetness" of studying changing their destiny and "feel the power of education."In 2020, there were about 2,200 high school entrance examination graduates in Taijiang County, and only half of the students entered Taijiang Minzhong. Chen Liqun also thought about where the students who did not come to Taijiang Minzhong will have a way out. During a conversation, he told the local leaders that there is another vocational high school in Taijiang and should also be supported and developed.
Some people suggest that vocational high schools cooperate with schools and enterprises and work in first-tier cities after graduation. But Chen Liqun opposed, "This is nothing more than a senior job." He suggested that Vocational High School focus on the development of three majors in science and technology agriculture, tourism, and handmade production, and cultivate talents that are in line with local economic development. This model can also be replicated in other poor counties.
In his eyes, education in the west must have a western model.
In the west, a good county magistrate is more important than a good principal
As the principal is long and longer, he found that some things are powerless by a principal.
According to the China Education Daily, in 2016, Taijiang County's annual fiscal revenue was 270 million yuan, but its fiscal expenditure was 1.5 billion yuan, mainly relying on central fiscal transfer payments.
When he first served as principal, Chen Liqun told the county that the funding for running schools at a national-level poor county was relatively lacking, but he hoped that the guarantee during his tenure as principal could be achieved. However, over the past four years, he has been worried about money. The school’s class teacher allowance, substitute class and over-class allowance are often owed, and the wages of temporary workers cannot be paid.
At the end of 2019, more than 60 temporary workers in the school did not receive their wages for five months, and some people resigned because they could not bear it. In order for the normal operation of the canteen, the school can only ask people to find temporary workers everywhere. Since 2015, Yuhang District, Zhejiang, which has assisted Taijiang County, has sent four teachers to Taijiang Minzhong to teach every year. The Taijiang County Government will allocate 10,000 yuan per person to the expenses of the teaching canteen every year, but the teaching teachers will go one after another, and the money has not been allocated to the school so far.
At the end of 2017, the school administrative principal brought a bank staff member to Chen Liqun to sign, saying that he would mortgage the school to the bank, and the loan would be made urgently in the county.
"If there is a repayment default, how can the bank take back the school? Where will the more than 3,000 students go to school?" Chen Liqun did not sign, and his first reaction was, "Probably all the mortgaged ones have been mortgaged."
's funds are not guaranteed, and the infrastructure cannot keep up. In the first year of Chen Liqun's visit to Taijiang, the school often stopped water, and the longest time was 5 days. On hot days, the teaching building and dormitory were all paralyzed and the stench was stinking. The school can only ask for help from the fire brigade and bring water to ensure that the canteen uses water and that the school will not suspend classes. Because of frequent power outages, many students have candles in their drawers.
County Education and Science Bureau Director Long Feng also worrys about money every day. A township primary school principal complained to Longfeng that the school's electricity bill could not be paid, so he had to take more than 2,000 yuan from his salary to advance. He told reporters that the county allocated only 20,000 yuan to the Education Bureau every month, and holding a school sports meeting was not enough, so he did not dare to go to the schools in the township and villages to inspect the work. The principals asked for money. Some said that the cooking pot was broken, and some said that the roof was leaking, but they could not solve anything. "It was too annoying."
These difficulties are something that the eastern region will not face and cannot imagine. In 2018, the Yuhang District Education Bureau supported 3 million yuan in aid for Taijiang County No. 3 Kindergarten. The director of the Yuhang District Education Bureau came to Taijiang for exchanges. He heard that the total cost of building a kindergarten was about 10 million yuan, and he expressed surprise to Long Feng, saying that the kindergarten of the same scale spent 30 million to 40 million yuan in Hangzhou.
is a matter of course in the east, and Chen Liqun needs to fight for it again and again here. In 2017, Chen Liqun went to junior high school to recruit students in person. In previous years, only 20 of the top 100 high school entrance examinations in the county remained in Taijiang, and 95 were the first year. To welcome the new major events in the whole school, Chen Liqun decided to re-main the No. 1 dormitory building. After several applications, the county decided to fund the repair and supervise the worker.
During the summer vacation, the school clearly informed the construction party that the maintenance should be completed before August 12, and the students should start school to register for military training. At 5 pm on August 11, the deputy director of the school's general affairs office hurried to Chen Liqun's office and said that the student dormitory had not yet been repaired.
Chen Liqun quickly asked Long Feng to discuss countermeasures. Long Feng asked the construction team leader, and the construction team leader said that he had just learned that the repair had not been completed. Chen Liqun immediately proposed to postpone the school for 6 days and notified the students to postpone the arrival of the school. I thought the school would start smoothly this time. As a result, at 5 pm on August 17, the deputy director came to the office again and said that the bathroom was not repaired and could not be checked in.
When Chen Liqun heard this, he was so anxious that he "everyone was about to faint." He asked the deputy director to consult the county. The construction party proposed to buy a batch of temporary toilets. "That's a large amount, where can I buy it in one day and where can I put it? What should I do if I use it?" Chen Liqun's patience reached the extreme. "The government is so playful about education, I must have an attitude." He took his luggage and drove to Kaili, but the county did not reply any phone number.
The county began to pay attention to it. The deputy county magistrate in charge began to go to the site to supervise the construction every day, and he would eat boxed lunches on site at noon. Three more days later, the school finally started. As a principal, the normal start of school cannot be guaranteed, and Chen Liqun's self-confidence is challenged. "There are too many factors that cannot resist my own strength."
Chen Liqun also often hears the bitterness of the principals. In his opinion, what is lacking in poor areas is the real emphasis on education. He has repeatedly stated that whether a good school can be established in the eastern region often depends on a good principal, but in the western region, whether a good school can be established in the good county magistrate.
Historically, Taijiang County also had the style of respecting learning and worshipping education. On the east hillside of the county town, there was a wooden square building Lotus Academy with a courtyard house. The Wenchang Palace was built in front of the academy. The two buildings were built during the Guangxu period. The advocate was Zhou Qingzhi, who was the Tongzhi of Taigong Hall at that time.
As early as more than 100 years ago, Zhou Qingzhi realized that Miaojiang would be in education in the future. "The memorization of the Miao people is actually caused by shallow knowledge and the barrier of writing, and it is by no means stupidity." At the beginning of his tenure, he established 32 urban and rural charity schools to persuade Miao children to study in the museum, and the trend of respecting teachers and valuing education gradually became stronger. However, the atmosphere of valuing education gradually declined after he left office.
Now, the courtyard is empty and the academy is withering. Due to years of disrepair, the top of Wenchang Palace has tilted 1.5 meters southward.
"The current leaders' understanding of education has not yet reached the height of Zhou Qingzhi."Chen Liqun joked with the county leaders, and the answers to Taijiang education questions were concentrated in the Lotus Courtyard and Wenchang Palace, "This should be the spiritual highland of the people of Taijiang. "
At the initiative of Chen Liqun, the county rebuilt Wenchang Palace and Lianhua Academy. Chen Liqun paid more than 80,000 yuan at his own expense and bought a statue of Confucius and placed it in the academy. He suggested that the county open a Taijiang Library in the two-sided rooms outside the hall, which was lively here, "Maybe the spring of Taijiang education is coming." Guizhou
, which is inseparable from, was extended to 4 years of teaching support in the initial agreement.Chen Liqun also retired as principal. In the past four years, he traveled between Hangzhou and Taijiang for no less than 70 times, and each time he took 8 hours to take the high-speed rail. He is 63 years old. In the past two years, his lover was with his lover. Later, his granddaughter was born and his lover went to take care of his granddaughter. He stayed in Taijiang alone.
He has always been unaccustomed to Taijiang's diet. The Miao people like to eat spicy and sour food, and are proud of their high meat and full of wine, but his taste is light, he does not like spicy food, does not drink alcohol, and there is nowhere to eat at dinner. Cut off the chopsticks. The southwest is very damp. Every night, Chen Liqun wants to take a walk along the river to remove dampness and go to the massage shop to scrape it regularly. Before coming to Taijiang, he fell seriously ill. The doctor told him to take two medicines for life. In Taijiang, he asked his family to send the medicine from Hangzhou every month.
Before, people had no impression of this principal who always wore a suit. Now, when walking on the side of the road in Yanhe in the city, there is always someone who wants to take photos with him. During home visits, an old man enthusiastically called him "Principal Chen". He said he had seen him on TV.
The news that he was leaving spread throughout the small town. People thought that after this summer, he would not be able to see him. A teacher sent him a book to memorial, and a senior high school class made a video to say goodbye to him. In the video, the students called themselves "Chen Family Army". Some said they missed his speech under the national flag every Monday, some said that they hoped to walk out of the mountains as soon as possible to see a more beautiful world, and some people left messages to Chen Liqun, hoping that he would "come back to see them often. "
They don't know that just after September, Chen Liqun, who was resting in Hangzhou for a few days, came again. He plunged into the village again. This time he visited the poor students who took this year's college entrance examination to solve the university tuition problem. A Hangzhou company contacted Chen Liqun to donate money to students. Chen Liqun took the list and went to the students' homes one by one, asking them where they went to college and how much tuition, and told them not to worry about tuition. The donor would put the tuition into the card before they started school.
Even if they retired as principal, Chen Liqun was still busy "like fighting". Not long ago, he flew to Gansu again to give lectures to the principals there. For a long time in the future, he will also travel frequently to Hangzhou and Guizhou to give voluntary lectures to the principals here. Jiangren gave him a new identity - the lifelong honorary principal of Taijiang Minzhong.
Chen Liqun said that Taijiang is not his last stop. Maybe he would go to which school he should be the principal. Over the years, he has published 16 books on education. Long-term thinking at his desk made him develop the habit of smoking and can smoke a pack a day. There are several books in the trunk of the car, and he will sign his name during home visits and give it to students.
Before resigning as principal of Taijiang, a media outlet followed Chen Liqun to visit his home, thinking that he would not go back to Taijiang again, so he named the filming video "Chen Liqun's last home visit". Chen Liqun was very angry. He said that he never wanted to say goodbye to here.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Network reporter Yin Haiyuewen and photographed
