On 8 October, the Education Weekly of Guangming Daily launched a special edition of the report ‘Forging Ideological and Political Leadership, We Keep Moving Forward’, which deeply touched us. General Secretary Xi Jinping systematically explained the important qualities of a leading nation in education at the National Conference on Education held in September this year, namely, ‘strong ideological and political leadership, talent competitiveness, scientific and technological underpinning, livelihood security, social synergy, and international influence’. Among these ‘six forces’, the leadership of ideology and politics is placed in the first place, highlighting its important position and irreplaceability in building a leading country in education of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
As a key course for the taking solid measures to build strong moral character, Great Ideological and Political Courses and its connotations including the greatclassroom, great platform, great teachers and so on are not only the enrichment and expansion of the content of the traditional ideology and political courses, but also the centralized reflection of the Party's new regular understanding of the construction of ideological and politicalcourses in the new era. In order to create a strong ideological and political leadership, it is necessary to make good use of the ‘big ideological and political courses’, and build a new pattern of comprehensive education in enhancing the ideological and political leadership of young students.
1. Building a great classroom of ideology and politics, leading young students to set their own high ambition
The large classroom is an important carrier for the construction of the “big ideological and political courses”, which breaks through the traditional classroom and classroom teaching and extends the teaching space to a broader social field. To promote the construction of “big ideological and political courses”, it is necessary to combine the “small classroom” of ideological and political education with the “big classroom” of the society, to enhance the young students' knowledge and understanding of the social reality, and to guide young students to aspire to serve and strengthen the country and become stragglers.
Firstly,to make good use of the teaching resources of the social classroom, to make good use of social resources for the teaching of civic and political courses, and to extend the civic and political classroom to the social space and the real world. In the combination between history and reality, theory and practice, young students are guided to consciously put their life ambitions into practical action .
Secondly, to strengthen the practical teaching of the ideologicaland political courses and create a variety of “walking ideological and political courses”. Practical teaching is an extension and supplement to the small classroom of ideological and political education, and is an important content and main form of the big social classroom. Educators can rely on local red educational resources, historical and cultural sites, etc., to design thematic practical teaching activities, so that young students can deeply understand the nationaland people's conditions in the social classroom, plant a strong love for the country and the people, and then lead young students to actively strive for the country and the people.
Thirdly, to improve the national collaborative mechanism for the ideologicaland politicalcourses, and integrate the materials for ideological and political education in all time and space areas, both inside and outside the classroom, inside and outside the school, and online and offline, so as to build up a civic and political education programme that runs vertically through the whole school period of universities, middle schools and primary schools, and horizontally through the family, school and community. The elements of civic and political education contained in other courses and teaching activities should be explored in depth, and the elements of building moral character should be reasonably embedded in the professional teaching.
2. Building a great platform for ideological and political education to lead the development of young students
The big platform is an important way to construct the ‘big ideological and political courses’. To promote the construction of “great ideological and political courses”, it is necessary to carry out more diversified practical teaching and provide richer and more three-dimensional course experience with the help of digital technologies such as 5G, big data, artificial intelligence, etc., to stimulate the endogenous motivation of young students, and to enhance the attractiveness and influence of ‘big ideological and political courses’ in order to better lead the development of young students.
Firstly, to make good use of digital resources to build a resource base platform for the “great ideological and political courses”, providing nutrients for the growth and development of young students. An all-round, three-dimensional and high-quality digital resource base should be established through the in-depth integration of teaching resources for ideological and political courses , so that a large amount of digital teaching resources can be digitally assembled and shared. In the process of building the resource library platform for “great ideological and political courses”, teachers of ideological and political courses should screen and optimize the content of the massive resources, and classify the characteristics and categories of the ideological and political elements they contain, so as to make the resources of “great ideological and political courses” resonate with the content of classroom teaching, and better promote the comprehensive development of young students.
Secondly,to make good use of digital technology to create convenient conditions for young students to practice learning anytime and anywhere. With the help of digital technology, A network platform for ideological and political education integrating learning resources, interactive exchanges and network publicity should be built and mobile teaching software developed, by which to provide young students with personalize teaching services such as intelligent recommendation and customized courses. A digital, collaborative and regular online platform for virtual simulation practice teaching should be built to create a multi-dimensional practice system that is collaborative and complementary to offline and online teaching, so as to provide young students with practical learning unrestricted by geographical and time constraints.
Thirdly, to build a platform of “great ideological and political courses on the cloud” integrating resource sharing, online interaction and network publicity, and continuously expand the space and position for online education. Effectively integrating political education resources from home, school and society toestablishmulti-party interconnection mechanism and form the network matrix for building moral character. It is necessary to establish a working mechanism of positive interaction between online and offline, and form a regular collaboration mode. By means of the algorithms of the cloud platform and the precise recommendation of new technologies, we will build a programme for the comprehensive ability and literacy enhancement of young students, and promote the comprehensive development of young students in a scientific and effective manner.
Creating Master Teachers for Ideological and Political Education to Lead Young Students to Become Talent
Great teachers are an important guarantee for the construction of ‘great ideological and political courses’. The key to run a good ‘big ideological and political class’ in the new era lies in the teachers, which means to give full play to their enthusiasm, initiative and creativity.
On the one hand, efforts are made to build a high-quality team of teachers of ideological and political courses, so that they can lead young students to grow up and become successful by their own example. To become a good teacher, everyone should not onlybe strict with themselves, take the initiative to shoulder the responsibilities of being a instructor and guider for healthy growth of young students;everyone even more shouldplay an exemplary role, be strict self-discipline, keep unity of knowledge and practice, strict compliance with the code of professional ethics,advocate the themes of the times and spread positive energy; everyone but also should possess the quality of respectingunderstanding and tolerating students, being both the guide of the students and a companion for the growth of the students. Teachers should be good at finding and magnifying the advantages of young students, cracking the growing pains of young students with wisdom, paving the way for the growth of young students to achieve success with love, sincerity, responsibility , really succeed ininfluencing and leading the young students gradually and imperceptibly by their own words and deeds.
On the other hand, the convergence of multi-party synergy for building strong moral character to lead young students to grow up and become talentwith a richer variety of teaching methods. Qualified experts and scholars, master teachers, party and government leaders and cadres will be invitedas part-time teachers. Meanwhile, according to the needs of curriculum teaching or thematic education, representative figures from all walks of life, such as model workers, great master craftsmen, outstanding alumni, etc., who have unique work and life experience also will be invited into the campus to give “great ideological and political lessons” irregularly. More abundant and diversified teaching methods will be used to enhance the attractiveness and influence of theideologicaland political courses. All the above measures would form a pattern of educating young students to jointly lead them to grow up and become talents.
(The authors:
Fu Hong, Party Secretary of the School of Marxism, Nankai University.
Hou Yaozong, doctoral candidate of the School of Marxism, Nankai University.
Both two are researchers at the Research Center for the Theoretical System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, Tianjin)
