Sowing Seeds of Comprehensive Development

Life-changing Farming Experience

Last summer 465 students from Beijing Shangdi Experimental School came to a training base at Beijing Agricultural Mechanic Experimental Station. During the week-long training, students learned how to plough, plant vegetables, make bean curd, milk cows, and make soap. The training base now has 33 courses for students, from farming to fishing.

Xue Wenyu ploughed a field with a shovel, prepared the soil, carried the manure to the field, and eventually planted vegetable seedlings. She then drew water and watered the seedlings. “I am all wet but I learned a lot,” she said. “It’s not easy to work like this all the time, like farmers. Grain is the fruit of diligent work so we should cherish it.”

Due to the fact that Chinese families usually have only one child, parents do not want their children to do manual labor, let alone heavy farmwork. When talking about the farming activities organized by schools, one parent commented that the school had helped them to teach their child something that they had wanted to teach them for a long time but did not know how.

China is traditionally an agrarian nation. The younger generation, however, especially in urban areas, has few opportunities to experience farming. To rectify this, Beijing launched the farming education initiative among junior middle school students in October 2015. So far, about 20,000 students have taken farming activities (such as weeding, applying fertilizers, and cultivation) at more than 30 agricultural bases like Beijing Vocational College of Agriculture and Beijing Agricultural Mechanic Experimental Station.

Every student is required to participate in field activities, prepare and cook dishes themselves, and deal with their own bedding and cleaning. As they are placed in new groups, they also need to work with students they have never met before. Afterwards, parents find their kids perform better in independent living and self-management, and are more considerate and cooperative. “A week influences a life,” some parents commented, in light of the positive changes they witnessed in their children.

To guarantee the participation and outcomes of the extracurricular activities, a minimum of 10 comprehensive social practicums are required for each school year according to the evaluation standards for junior middle schools. The students’ performance in this regard also weighs on the enrolment process for senior middle schools.

Tao Xiping noted that the strengthening of after-school education fosters students’ comprehensive abilities, allowing students from different family backgrounds, talents and endowment to tap their own potential.