The Ministry of Education will take action to accelerate
educational development in rural areas where 64 percent of the
Chinese population resides but education is not properly
emphasized.
"Further popularizing education in rural areas is crucial to
upgrading the skills of 800 million rural people and helping them
economically," Minister Zhou Ji said at a news conference yesterday
in Beijing.
He said the central government will conduct a national
conference on rural education later this month to develop and
implement strategic plans to equip farming families with updated
learning methods, writing abilities, and agricultural skills.
Illiteracy and poor education habits in rural areas have been a
longstanding bottleneck in China's move from a traditional agrarian
nation to a modern industrialized one, according to the
ministry.
Government statistics show that 95 percent of workers in
agriculture, forestry, fishery and animal husbandry sectors hold
only primary and middle school learning backgrounds.
On average, the education level of the rural populace of those
in ages 15 and above is less than seven years of schooling, three
years less than their peers in urban areas.
About 75 percent of the country's total 85 million illiterates
live in western rural, poor areas, the ministry's statistics
indicate.
To date, more than 90 percent of the country's population has
received primary and middle school level education since then. That
achievement has won acclaim from the United Nations' Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization and especially developing
countries, Zhou said.
However, the remaining 10 percent of the population residing
within in 372 counties in western areas has not received even a
primary or middle school level education.
Zhou said such education programs will be popularized among
these counties within the next five years.
Distance-learning methods, based on television and
computer-aided teaching programs, will be widely used in rural and
remote areas to provide lifelong studies, since the number of
teachers in those areas is insufficient, said Zhou.
Adult and vocational education will be further developed to
offer skill-oriented learning programs for farming people, he
said.
(China Daily September 16, 2003)