Left-behind children in rural areas are addicted to mobile phones, "whoever has WiFi will squat in the corner of whose house", how to rescue these children?

Core Takeaways:

• 1

  Some parents will take the initiative to give the mobile phone as a baby coaxing artifact when the child is crying, but they often do not deliberately adjust the mobile phone to teen mode, nor can they monitor what the child sees in real time. More than once, we have seen preschoolers in the village playing with their mobile phones. Some children and teenagers have become "Internet addicted teenagers" because of their lack of self-discipline and other discipline.

• 2

  What the first generation of left-behind children lacked was the company of their parents, and the environment of rural society did not change greatly and was not "problem-oriented"; The second generation of left-behind children is obviously "problem-oriented", their parents are not accompanied, and their ancestors' mobile phone management awareness and ability are not strong, and their lives and spiritual world are completely open to the Internet.

• 3

  There are generally two paths to prevent children from indulging in mobile phones: one is to incorporate mobile phone management into national governance, and control online games, short videos, and APP chaos, which is a blocking strategy; The second is to arrange children's time through various attractive activities to pull children back from the online world, which is a loose strategy and more fundamental.

First, the origin: where is the way out

In the past six months, our team has paid close attention to the problem of rural teenagers falling into mobile phone addiction. As one township middle school principal put it, "Every era has its own temptations, but the children of the smartphone age seem to be stuck deeper." "At the same time, we are constantly being asked how to solve this new problem. At first, we were also confused and couldn't seem to find a good way.

As a field observer, in the spring of 2023, the author was fortunate to participate in the construction of the "Hope Home" project in Sanliqi Town, Luotian County, Huanggang City, and the first project landed in Huanggangmiao Village, which was launched in March 2023 and began operation in July. Its direct purpose is to solve the problem of unattended and uneducated rural children, especially left-behind children, in the summer, and the Tuanluotian County Party Committee strongly supports the construction of this project. Unlike other villages, the village innovatively introduced the "Hope House" project, which is an extension of the normalization of the rural trusteeship service mechanism under the framework of the Hope Home system, and with the financial support of the Youth Foundation of the Provincial Youth League Committee, the village uses the idle space of the village committee to provide a micro-library for children and teenagers, solving the problem of lack of reading places, lack of children's books, and no one to guide children, and expand the content of Hope Home.

From the perspective of effect and operation practice, the rural "Hope Home" project has low cost, great benefits, and is welcomed by grassroots parents and children, and can be replicated and promoted. This reverses our pessimistic view of solving the problem of mobile phone addiction, and grassroots rural education can be extended to extracurricular areas. As long as the child's extracurricular time is arranged through a mechanism, the child will naturally reduce the time to touch the Internet, which can greatly alleviate the problem of mobile phone addiction.

The introduction of the Hope Home project in Huanggangmiao Village will start in 2022. Lei Xuxin, a retired teacher who was working outside the home at that time, returned to his hometown to retire because of his old age, and he observed new problems for rural children, "Returning from Wuhan, I saw children in my hometown playing with mobile phones all day, I asked them about some learning conditions, they couldn't answer, what should these children do?" Children in the city outside are not like children in the countryside. "He read books, read newspapers, and learned from practices elsewhere, and came up with the idea of setting up a custodial service. His son is Lei Yu, a post-80s college student who works at the Hubei reporter station of Zhongqing Daily and has always paid attention to and reported on the education of rural children. Aware of the prevalence of mobile phone addiction among rural children, he supported his father's idea, and proposed to establish a "Hope Book House" to mobilize the local forces of the rural "Five Elders" to establish a new mechanism for normalized custody services.

This report is based on two surveys conducted by the author in August 2023. Overall, the Huanggangmiao Village Hope Home Project was launched relatively smoothly, and the effect far exceeded expectations. After years of practice, the Hope Home project has become relatively mature, which is conducive to solving the problem of summer care for rural children. The "Hope Bookhouse", which originated from the "Hope Home", is a new thing, and grassroots cadres and volunteers are trying to establish a normalization mechanism.

Live interviews

Second, mobile phone addiction has spawned "new problem teenagers"

Located in Luotian County, Huanggang City, Sanliqi Town is a typical Dabieshan township and a town with a large population. The town has a registered population of more than 70,000, a permanent population of 42,000, more than 50,000 mu of arable land, and less than 1 mu of arable land per capita. The main village of this survey, Huanggangmiao Village, is a village about 10 kilometers from the town center. Huanggangmiao Village has a registered population of 1,539 people, 10 villager groups, and a permanent population of 600 people, mainly elderly people and children.

The survey found that a consensus among rural teachers and parents is that the main problem in rural education is that children's extracurricular time is occupied by electronic products, and a large number of rural children are addicted to mobile phones and become "new problem teenagers".

One of the main characteristics of children's exposure to the Internet is the younger age. They are indigenous people who really grew up with digital technology. Some parents will take the initiative to give the mobile phone as a baby coaxing artifact when the child is crying, but they often do not deliberately adjust the mobile phone to teen mode, nor can they monitor what the child sees in real time. More than once, we have seen preschoolers in the village playing with their mobile phones. Some children and teenagers have become "Internet addicted teenagers" because of their lack of self-discipline and other discipline.

Principal Zhu of Sanliqi Middle School reflected, "Students take mobile phones, not necessarily 1 out of 100 is used for studying, addicted to mobile phones, but academic performance does not decline, almost nothing, even moral character will be affected." "In 2021, the Ministry of Education issued a policy that teachers have the right to manage mobile phones, and schools have banned students from bringing mobile phones into school. The problem is that mobile phone management is effective inside the school and difficult to extend outside the school. Especially during the long winter and summer vacations, the phenomenon of rural children addicted to mobile phones is becoming more and more serious. In the survey, rural teachers also reflected this problem many times, "five minus two equals zero", children in school for five days of study, because they returned home to play with mobile phones for two days, they returned to zero. Unlike in cities, rural children still live free-range extracurricular life. Due to economic backwardness, the market for rural after-school care training is not developed. There are rural children who receive extracurricular services, but the proportion is not high, no more than 20%. The survey also found that even during long summer vacations, few parents arrange extra homework, and children have a lot of time to play with mobile phones.

If it is a left-behind child under the guardianship of grandparents, the problem of mobile phone addiction is even more serious. What the first generation of left-behind children lacked was the company of their parents, and the environment of rural society did not change greatly and was not "problem-oriented"; The second generation of left-behind children is obviously "problem-oriented", their parents are not accompanied, and their ancestors' mobile phone management awareness and ability are not strong, and their lives and spiritual world are completely open to the Internet. Sociologist Bozeman once had a concept, "childhood disappearance", in contemporary Chinese urban and rural areas, there are two complete childhood disappearance mechanisms: urban children's extracurricular time is mostly occupied by training courses, involved in fierce academic competition, is "involuted childhood"; Rural children's extracurricular time is mostly involved in the mixed online world, and the online content that children are exposed to on the Internet is mostly unfiltered, full of vulgarity and violence, and even has a lot of distorted content with three views, which is a "collapsed childhood".

Therefore, in recent years, surveys have found that some young parents, especially mothers, have given up the opportunity to go out to work and stay at home full-time to accompany them. Because compared with working to make money, in an increasingly complex and risky social environment where mobile phone Internet is popular, how to train children well, so that they become adults and talents has become a more urgent family task.

Third, the method of building a "home of hope"

1. Project organization, service objects and places

As a public welfare project, the smooth development of the hope home is inseparable from the local party committee government and the village committee. In order to facilitate the orderly operation of the Hope House, Huanggangmiao Village has formed the organizational structure of "Hope Home", which can be called the "Hope Home" Council, with a total of 8 people, all members of the village. Among them, the principal is the secretary of the village branch, the administrator is the village accountant, and the volunteer captain is Lei Xuxin.

Generally speaking, the service targets of Hope Home are the children of the village. There are many children who have signed up for the Hope Home Care Class, and children from surrounding villages have also signed up, but the capacity of the Hope Home Care Class is limited, and the village has to limit the scope of enrollment. According to the introduction of village officials, in 2023, the village hope home will only accept students from grades 2-6 within the village, and is divided into senior groups (grades 4-6) and lower groups (grades 2-3), with a total of 42 people.

Hope Home relies on existing places to build. Villages in Hubei Province generally have large service centers for the party and masses, some of which use idle primary and secondary schools, and some of which build new office buildings. But most of the function rooms are vacant, just enough to be used for Hope Home activities. Facilities provided by Huanggangmiao Village include: a large conference room on the third floor of the village, which can be used for daily classes and can accommodate up to 40 people. There are two rooms on the second floor of the village committee, the village has built a "hope book house", the provincial party committee of the Youth League has donated a batch of books, and rural masters have been invited to carry out novel designs. It can be used for children to read, draw, learn chess, etc. The square outside the village council is relatively large and can be used for sports activities.

Letter from Huanggangmiao Village

Huanggang Temple Hope Home Organizational Structure

2. The source and motivation of project volunteers

Hope Homes is run by volunteers, who have the knowledge and ability to provide services on a pro bono basis. From the perspective of sources, volunteers can be divided into two categories, one is volunteers sent by the Youth League Committee to contact universities, and the other is local volunteers.

Send volunteers. They may be motivated by dedication, by practicing personal abilities through participation in public welfare activities, or by completing school "credit" (practical credit) tasks. According to the convention, the village bears the accommodation and food of the university student volunteers, which is one of the conditions for the village to attract university students to sign up. In 2023, 4 college student volunteers from Wuchang Institute of Technology went to Huanggangmiao Village. According to the Tuan County Party Committee, in Luotian County, there will be 112 college student volunteers who signed up for Hope Home in 2023.

Local volunteers. Local volunteers need to have certain knowledge and ability, and they must have hometown feelings, and their selfless dedication is recognized by public opinion. Local volunteers fall into two categories.

The first is local in-service teachers or retired teachers, with 2 and 3 respectively, and these five teachers are the core force. They have professional knowledge, student management ability, are local teachers, have a certain hometown feeling, and live in the countryside for a long time, and have the conditions to provide regular services. These teacher volunteers provide necessary lessons, maintain centralized instruction, guide summer homework and reading, and protect student safety. These volunteers play a major role in the regular after-school care service.

The second is local returning college students, a total of 4 people, all of whom are returning college students from their villages, and their service hours are from July 3 to August 24. The Tuanxian Party Committee said that it would issue a certificate of student participation in social practice, and volunteers with outstanding performance in the "Hope Home" project would receive an excellent volunteer certificate issued by the Tuanxian Committee.

3. Project service content: basic and distinctive

The service content of Huanggangmiao Village Hope Home is rich and colorful, free from the shackles of formal school education. In 2023, the class schedule of Hope Home shows that the scheduled class time is Monday to Friday morning afternoon, 8:30 to 11:30 in the morning, three classes, and 14:30 to 16:15 in the afternoon, two classes. Saturdays and Sundays are closed. The general service time of Hope Home is 21 days and lasts 3 weeks.

As can be seen from the class schedule, the course activities are mainly divided into three categories: first, summer homework guidance, children reflect, concentrated summer homework, high efficiency, senior children can tutor younger children, volunteers can also tutor. The second is reading and composition, including independent reading, reading sharing, writing training, etc., which are the shortcomings of rural children. Among them, teacher Lei Xuxin taught the children the classic ancient text "Thousand Character Text", which was very effective. The third is various thematic activities. Themed activities include chess, calligraphy, watching movies, traffic safety education, drowning prevention education, fire prevention education, environmental protection education and so on.

Huanggangmiao Village Hope Book House was listed

Read at Hope Bookhouse

Huanggangmiao Village Hope Home also has two characteristics. The first is the construction of the Hope Book House. Even after the summer vacation Hope Home course, there is a "Hope Book House" in the village, where children can read books, and there are volunteers and teachers on holidays. The second is rich in design suitable for rural children to participate in themed activities. They experienced the study project in Cangxi Chong Village, organized a trip to the Luotian County Science and Technology Museum, the fire brigade, and watched animated movies. Wuhan teachers who taught Chinese painting were also invited to carry out a 12-day calligraphy and painting training, which opened the children's eyes.

While studying Chinese painting

Participate in research activities

4. Risk prevention and control mechanism

In all collective activities, especially those involving children and teenagers, the Party committee and government are most worried about safety. Xu, secretary of the Sanliqi Town Party Committee, said: "I was worried that there were no children coming and no volunteers coming, but now I am most worried about the safety of my children, and I am afraid that good things will become trouble." Therefore, the town and village have thought of many methods: installing anti-theft nets on the windows on the second and third floors of the village committee, signing a "safety responsibility commitment" with parents, arranging volunteers to maintain order in school and school, and often explaining safety knowledge to children. Grassroots governments are responsible. Secretary Xu said, "You can't say that you are afraid of risks, you can't do it." ”

Fourth, the effectiveness of the Hope Home Project

From the experience of the first year, Hope Home achieved the goals previously set, and the effect was direct. At the beginning of the Hope Home, Huanggangmiao Village stated the goal of the project in "A Letter to Parents and Friends", "Enrich the summer life of children in Huanggangmiao Village, and let children have a happy and meaningful summer vacation." "I hope that through a variety of activities, we can help students increase their knowledge, broaden their horizons, entertain their bodies and minds, and at the same time share their worries for parents who are away from home."

The most important thing is "companionship". The survey found that with the company of volunteers and the company of many children, the children participating in the project had a fulfilling and happy summer vacation. After participating in the childcare class, the child consciously does not bring a mobile phone, and there is no need to bring a mobile phone, because there are many children who play together, and there is also a small environment for learning and activities together. All the children we interviewed could feel that learning at Hope Home was joyful. None of the parents we interviewed did not thank the village committee or the state. The survey found that some parents expressed a willingness to pay a small fee to subsidize the village and volunteers, which is the most pressing need of peasant families.

Chen Yuan is the young deputy mayor in charge of the Youth League Committee, and she participated in the construction and main activities of Hope Homestead throughout the process. He can deeply feel that "children are highly motivated". "The child didn't bring a cell phone because there were friends to play with them, and the classes were fun, more fun than the school classes."

We interviewed multiple children. One of the children, Lei Sitian, is 9 and a half years old, a 3rd grade girl. She said: "If you don't study and do activities at the village hope library, after writing homework at home, you are watching TV and playing with your mobile phone. From the perspective of children and teenagers, the attractiveness of the village office hope home is as follows: First, it is cool, "there is air conditioning blowing here." The second is to have friends. There are dozens of children concentrated here, children can find good friends, and parents can rest assured. Third, it is conducive to learning. Children do homework together and receive guidance from volunteer teachers, so they can make progress together and feel more accomplished. Fourth, there is no need to spend money here. Fifth, the activities are rich and colorful, and I hope that the learning of the homeland is "edutainment".

In general, compared with the formal learning method of the school, Hope Home is an informal learning method, with a looser learning rhythm and more activities, and the children are happier.

There are generally two paths to prevent children from becoming addicted to mobile phones:

The first is to incorporate mobile phone management into national governance and control online games, short videos, and APP chaos, which is a blocking strategy; The second is to arrange children's time through various attractive activities to pull children back from the online world, which is a loose strategy and more fundamental.

With the support of the Party Committee, the Youth League Committee and the Village Committee, the Hope Home Project has brought into play the power of volunteers inside and outside the village to provide a collectivized and organized summer vacation life for rural children. The key resource required for this project is not the financial investment, but the strength of volunteers inside and outside the village. From our extensive rural surveys, this power exists.

Comparatively speaking, in rural areas, it is difficult for peasant families to arrange children's time, and there are no conditions for arrangement, parents have to go out to work, and even if they stay in the village, they lack awareness and time for efficient companionship. It is also difficult for regular schools to integrate all extracurricular time into unified management, and the system in this regard is not smooth. Rural parents welcome the extended after-school service and the school boarding service, but there are many problems. The formal education system is expensive to run, the responsibilities are heavy, and schools and teachers are not motivated. This is where volunteer-based community care services are essential.

Cangku Chong Village Hope Book House weekend event

Conclusions and policy recommendations

In summary, the survey of Hope Home in Huanggangmiao Village can draw the following conclusions:

Summer care for rural children is in high demand. In the context of the penetration of the Internet into the countryside, it is difficult for peasant families to manage mobile phones, and they hope to manage their children through public organizational forces so that they can receive a comprehensive education. From the nature point of view, the rural education provided by the hope home is essentially a new type of rural community education, which is a vivid case of "jointly creating" to promote the comprehensive revitalization of rural education, which is conducive to rural education taking root in the countryside, conducive to the participation of various social forces in education (greatly expanding the boundaries of education), it solves the problem of educational resource allocation that cannot be solved by peasant families and formal schools, and is a revolution in rural education.

From the perspective of the project practice in Huanggangmiao Village, Sanliqi Town, community education with Hope Home as the platform has two development stages, which are version 1.0 and version 2.0. With Hope Home as a platform, college student volunteers go to the countryside to teach is the 1.0 version of community education. According to data from the Provincial Youth League Committee, from 2018 to 2022, Hubei Province has built a total of 4,942 "Hope Home" project sites, serving more than 190,000 children and teenagers. Organically combine external resources and internal resources, take internal resources as the lead, establish a new type of hope home, and form a normalization mechanism, which is community education version 2.0. The future of this new type of Hope Home is bright. How to build such a home of hope, we believe that the following principles are important.

The first is the principle of community. Hope Home should be based in the community, the children are from the local area, the volunteers are mainly from the local area, and the activity venues are also local. The advantage is that the village is a society of acquaintances, and the power within the village is easily mobilized. The "five elders" in the villages, especially the old teachers, the in-service primary and secondary school teachers in the villages, and the young farmers with a certain culture who remain in the villages, are all potential volunteers. Rural idle village committee offices, primary and secondary schools, kindergartens, etc. are stock places, which can become hope homes with only a little transformation, saving human resources and construction funds to the greatest extent.

The second is the principle of public welfare. Hope Home is positioned as a public welfare project, providing "volunteers" for service personnel. Hope Home services follow the principle of demand rather than profit, and the villages that need the most care services (such as remote villages with more children who spend summer holidays in the villages) should receive the most support. The resources of public welfare projects are external at the beginning, and gradually transition to a combination of internal and external, mainly internal. The public welfare project is also not opposed to the support of the village peasant masses, especially the village sages. This support is used to improve the conditions of childcare services, to subsidize the cost of transportation, board and board for volunteers, to reward exemplary students, etc.

The third is the principle of simplicity. Simple rural construction is sustainable, and so is the Hope Homes project. From the perspective of local party committees and governments, hope homes cannot become top-down, indexed administrative tasks, nor do they need to be evaluated at every level. The internal organizational mechanism of Rural Hope Home is simple, and there is no need to register as a formal educational social organization, which is based on the trust and support of farmers' parents for the Rural Hope Home project, not on the formal system.

(At 22:31 on the evening of October 7, 2023, CCTV 13 News Channel "News Investigation" spent 42 minutes telling how the Hope Home project in this small mountain village changed children's summer vacation life.

https://tv.cctv.cn/2023/10/07/VIDE7fZ0gBawfXiw43uNmrVv231007.shtml?spm=C53156045404.PEuoXLv6mPmE.0.0

"Investigative Journalism" 20231007 Summer vacation in Huanggangmiao Village

Source : CCTV