Life Skills of Potential Young Migrant Workers: the Current Status. and the Education and Training

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1 Life Skills of Potential Young Migrant Workers: the Current Status and the Education and Training Wang Ying Institute of Modern Distance Education, the Open University of China Li Cuihong Economic management Department, Hebei University of Science and Technology [Abstract] There are 150 million migrant workers migrating from rural areas to urban areas for work annually, which has been the biggest migrating group in China. The majority of migrating populations leave rural areas as soon as they finish the 9-year compulsory education. According to two aspects respectively on how well to know about job-related information in cites and basic understanding of city life, adopted by interviews and questionnaires, the investigations were conducted on life skills current situation of students being graduated from secondary vocational schools in rural areas (so called potential young migrants). On one hand, it is found that junior high schools place undue emphasis on the proportion of the graduates who are admitted to schools of a higher level, but lose sight of cultivation of basic life skills. On the other hand, secondary vocational schools focus more on students vocational skills rather than education for culture quality and life skills. Accordingly, it is suggested to pay attention to the following aspects when regarding the educational training for potential young migrants: 1. the content of curriculum concerning life skills should be added; 2. students can acquire knowledge through practices and the traditional teaching model of cramming should be improved; 3. the corresponding teaching staffs should be developed, etc. 1. Raising Questions The data from National Bureau of Statistics show that the national total number of migrant workers in 2009 was million, 4.92 million more than that of the previous year, an increase of 3.5%. In this large population of migrant workers, with the aging and gradual return to rural areas of the last generation of migrant workers, a new generation of young migrant workers begin to enter the city and will be the subject of migrant workers, accounting for 60% or more of the total migrant workers; according to statistics, this group is still in the rapid increase at a speed of 8-9 million per year. This new thing with full vitality young migrant worker is an important symbol for the transformation of China from a traditional society to the modern society, is the new workforce emerged in the rapid development stage of industrialization and urbanization of China, and also the tremendous force to promote the changes in economic and social structures of China. 1

2 Young migrant workers eager to integrate themselves into the urban society, but China is currently in the society transition period, and there are many aspects that are not fully prepared to accept them. Additionally, most of the young migrant workers are not well-educated. Among them, 1.1% is of illiterate, 10.6% with primary school education, 64.8% with junior middle school education, 13.1% with high school education, and 10.4% with secondary and higher education. According to statistics, most of them are from rural areas, and 62% of China's rural population aged is now working in urban areas. As it can be seen from the above statistics, this group of young migrant workers are mainly from rural junior secondary schools, graduates of vocational or high school, and dropouts; therefore, their literacy level is relatively low, after going to society from schools, they become the so-called young migrant workers, so this paper calls such students who are going to graduate from two secondary education schools as the potential young migrant workers (students who are still not flowing into society). This is such a large group; due to resource constraints, the focus of this study lies in the secondary vocational school students in rural areas. Most of the potential young migrant workers, particularly the secondary vocational school students in rural vocational education system, do not receive skill trainings from the school to adapt to society (13% of young people has started to work before the age of 16); they enter society from the schools, enter cities from rural areas, facing huge challenges, and the changes in the life environment make them hard to adapt, so they are under the dual impact of rural background and urban environment; in addition, these young people are in the emotional, social and sexual maturing period, and their values and behavior are under the transition. Whether they have certain life skills? Are they ready to go and work? These become the focus of the study. 2. Contents and Methods 2.1 Research Contents Life Skills Survey of Potential Young Migrant Workers Different peopele give the different definition of life skills. Hamburg believes that life skills refer to skills needed to live with others, and succeed in a complex society. 1 " Gilchrist points out in the study that, "life skills, which assist in the development of an adolescent's self-efficacy, include the ability to solve problems, to communicate honestly and directly, to gain and maintain social support, and to control emotions and 1 World Health Organization: Life skills education in schools (WHO/MNH/PSF/93.A Rev.1) WHO, Geneva. 2

3 personal feelings. 2 " Other descriptions of the life skills such as life skills are to deal effectively with interpersonal relationships and social responsibility to avoid harming themselves and others, to make choices and solve problems. 3 World Health Organization (WHO) holds that life skills are a person's psychosocial competence. Then the psychosocial competence is interpreted as: Psychological competence is a person s ability to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. It is a person s ability to maintain a state of mental well being and to demonstrate this in adaptive and positive behavior while interacting with others, his/her culture environment. And points out that the life skills include ten (five pairs) abilities, namely: self-awareness - empathy; effective communication - interpersonal relationship skill; coping with emotions - coping with stress; creative thinking - critical thinking; decision making - problem solving. 4 Current research on life skills focuses on health education, in view of the fact that the object of study is the graduates of rural secondary vocational education schools (the biggest problem faced by graduates is the adaptation of rural-urban transition), as they live in rural areas for long term, their understanding on urban life and work is very likely to directly affect their future survival and development in cities. Therefore, this study focuses the research scope of living skills to the "basic understanding of urban life" and "basic understanding of job-related information in cities". The two aspects are exactly the necessary security conditions for them to survive in cities Education and Training Situation of Potential Young Migrant Workers In the rural secondary vocational education of China, the education and training are more likely to be reflected through the courses offered by the school, that is, the course design. The course design is the concentrated expression of the school training objectives in the course plan, it reflects and implements the objectives, and also plays a guiding role in the implementation; at the same time, it has an impact on the course management and course resources; the course design mainly includes the course structure and course contents, namely the teaching subjects offered by the schools, the structural relationship among the subjects and the proportion distribution of credits and hours of the individual subjects. This study focuses on the research of course structure, course content, and course implementation of the researched schools, so as to determine whether there is any content and implementation method on the life 2 Gilchrist LD,Schinke SP,&Maxell JS.Life skills counseling for preventing problems in adolescence.journal of Social Service Research (2-4): Gilchrist LD,Schinke SP,&Maxell JS.Life skills counseling for preventing problems in adolescence.journal of Social Service Research (2-4): Gilchrist LD,Schinke SP,&Maxell JS.Life skills counseling for preventing problems in adolescence.journal of Social Service Research (2-4):

4 skills in the course. 2.2 Methods In this study, questionnaires and interviews on life skills are adopted to 145 students from two secondary vocational education schools in rural areas of Cangzhou City in Hebei Province who often go outside and are going to graduate. SPSS13.0 statistical software is used for analysis of survey data. 3. Results 3.1 Life Skills Survey Results Basic Understanding of Urban Life The questionnaire survey finds that only 23.4% of the students do not know how to prevent fire, to use electricity, to prevent gas poisoning and other precautions in cities, and 38.6% of the students have certain understanding. Only 42.1% of the students know that one must comply with traffic rules in cities, 11.7% of the students do not know whether or not to comply, and 9.7% of the students think they may not comply with traffic rules. The interview shows that most of the students know some most basic common sense of urban life, two students A and B from Qingxian Vocational Education Center in Cangzhou City of Hebei Province say in an interview that, "Although I've never been to big cities and do not understand urban life, one of my teacher once talked about some of the basic alarm calls in the classroom, including 110, 119, and 120. I also know that one may not turn across the road railings, and one need to walk across the zebra crossing when passing across the road." When ask them whether they know more common sense, the two students say that they can not remember. As to the question of what documents are necessary for renting house in cities, up to 70.3% of the students do not know what documents are needed. The interviews show that, most students believe that only ID card is necessary, but in practice, temporary residence permit is also needed. 31.0% of students say they do not adapt to urban life. As to the question of how to find a job in cities, only 7.6% of the students know multiple channels to find a job, such as job agencies, internet, and television. 55.9% of the students do not know how to find a job in cities. The interviews also show that, many students believe that they may let their school to find jobs for them. 36.6% of the students know one or two job applying channels. (See Figure 1) 4

5 60.00% 55.90% 50.00% 40.00% 36.60% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00% 7.60% Multiple channels One or two channels Do not know Figure 1. Channels to find jobs in cities Basic Understanding of Job-Related Information in Cities As to the understanding of the job-related information in cities, this study carries out survey on protection of rights, labor disputes, labor protection, etc., and the survey shows that the potential young migrant workers grasp of knowledge on protection of rights and interests closely related work is not optimistic. Student C from Qingxian Vocational Education Center in Cangzhou City of Hebei Province says that, "I usually pay little attention to job application information, do not quite understand how to fill the contract, and even do not know how to fill contract after work. His classmate D says he does not know what the protection of labor rights is, but only bends forward to learn the test subjects. The questionnaire survey results show that, the situation of students C and D is common in the objects. 41.4% of the students do not know how to sign labor contracts, 11.7% of the students know part of the contract contents, 42.1% of the students are not sure whether they know it or not, and only 4.8% of the students know how to sign contracts. (See Figure 2) 5

6 45.00% 40.00% 41.40% 42.10% 35.00% 30.00% 25.00% 20.00% 15.00% 10.00% 5.00% 11.70% 4.80% 0.00% Don t know Don t sure Know partial Know Whether know contents Figure 2, to grasp the situation of labor contracts If their rights are violated, only 4.8% of the students know where to find rights-protection organizations in cities, 43.4% of the students do not know, and 51.7% of the students have a certain understanding. The survey on secure job-applying channels shows that, only 10.3% of the students know the more secure way to find a job, but 31.7% of the students totally do not know the secure job-applying channels. 3.2 Survey Results on Status of Course Design Course Structure Course structure is the skeleton of course system and the organization of various parts of the course, which mainly stipulates that the disciplines of course system, as well as the ratio of the contents of various disciplines, and setting of compulsory and optional courses, subject course and comprehensive course, etc., and it reflects the course philosophy and design values to a certain degree. Among the courses offered by the invested vocational schools, there are mainly three parts of courses, namely, the moral education (Career Planning, Professional Ethics and Law, The Economy, Politics and Society, as well as Philosophy and Life), basic cultural courses (different basic courses are set depending on different specialties, primarily the Chinese Language, Mathematics, and Foreign Language), professional skills course (mainly basic professional course), and the ratio of the number of class hours is 1:6.1: Course Contents Based on the central theme of this study, our survey on course contents focuses 6

7 on the content related to urban life. The survey shows that the moral education offered by the vocational schools involves in the contents related to urban work, such as career planning. Through interviews, I have learned that the schools usually invite experts to carry out mental health education seminars, and set up a "Career Guidance Course" for students about to graduate. However, the content planning and scheduling are of random. In addition, as the lack of specialized teachers, the guidance content is not comprehensive, but just some basic knowledge, for example, enhancement of security awareness and courtesy Course Implementation The survey shows that, there are two main methods of teaching for secondary vocational education schools, one is the theory of teaching, while the other is practice teaching, and practice teaching is mainly used in professional skills lessons. As to the basic cultural courses and moral courses, the traditional cramming method of teaching is mainly used, and sometimes the form of lectures may be used. We learned through interviews with students that, the way for students in rural secondary vocational schools to obtain knowledge of life skills is relatively single, due to the implementation of closed-end management by the schools, the majority of knowledge acquisition is taught by teachers in classroom, and few students obtain such knowledge through multiple channels. Lectures and seminars are one-way transfer teaching methods, for the skill mastering, its teaching effect is not ideal, which have adverse impact on converting knowledge into skills, and applying in real life and work. 4. Conclusion and Discussion The above survey shows that, the potential young migrant workers understanding of urban life and work is not very satisfactory, although most students can grasp the basic contents (such as alarm calls), this knowledge is not enough to deal with complex urban life, especially their weak legal protection awareness poses a serious challenge to their survival and development in cities. Currently, the secondary vocational schools in rural areas do not pay attention to students life skills training, and lack appropriate urban life skills training courses. The main source of knowledge for these potential young migrant workers is teacher s teaching in classroom, and teachers occupies a dominant position in the school, their ability directly affect the student s knowledge learning and ability formation. Interviews show that teachers in secondary vocational schools are relatively weak. Some teachers have not even lived in cities and lack of certain understanding of urban life, then to teach life skills and knowledge to students faces enormous difficulties and challenges. 7

8 If the secondary vocational schools increase the education and training relevant to the urban life skills, it may be able to help students to really enter the cities and society, and access to decent work and dignity. Of course, the mastering of life skills relies on experience more; through interviews with responsible persons of ordinary secondary schools, the paper learns that, because most of the students are from rural areas, they rarely have the opportunity to experience the urban life. Social activities offered by the schools often serve as a course, but the course seems a mere formality, the content is rarely involved in urban life skills or common sense. If the schools take advantage of the summer holidays to organize some practice education and training activities for the students, such as carrying out social activities with urban secondary schools, urban summer camps and other practical activities, and it perhaps may allow students to experience the urban life, to understand the essential knowledge needed in urban life, and to solve problems in real life experience. Of course, statistics from the questionnaire show that the way for students in rural secondary vocational schools to obtain knowledge of urban life skills is relatively single, and the majority of knowledge is taught by teachers in classroom. So, the overall quality of teachers directly affects the teaching quality. Through surveys on the school's statistical data on teachers can be seen that the overall quality of teachers is not very high. The distribution of the educational structure is: 0.49% are masters, 59.47% are undergraduates, 32.77% are college graduates, and 7.28% are normal school graduates. Distribution of skill structure: 6.80% are technicians, 6.80% are senior technicians, 10.92% are intermediate technicians, and 75.49% are with no skill certificate. Distribution of title structure: 9.95% are with senior titles, 53.64% are with intermediate grade titles, and 36.41% are with no title. Different from the theoretical knowledge on books, life skills knowledge need to be understood and mastered through experience and participation; therefore, as to teaching methods, the experiential and participatory teaching methods rather than traditional cramming method of teaching may be adopted. The participation-style or peer-style teaching may allow students to learn the knowledge that can not be learned in classroom, and may promote students to actively, consciously, and spontaneously learn, rather than passive learning. References: [1] World Health Organization: Life skills education in schools (WHO/MNH/PSF/93.A Rev.1) WHO, Geneva. [2] Gilchrist LD, Schinke SP, &Maxell JS. Life skills counseling for preventing problems in adolescence. Journal of Social Service Research.1987,10 (2-4): [3] Maurice J Elias, Social Decision Making and Life Skills Development.Aspen pub,1993. [4] UN - Spain MDG Achievement Fund Joint Program on Protecting and Promoting the Rights of China s Vulnerable Young Migrants Education to Improve the Employability and Life Skills of Potential Young Migrants A Proposal on Policy and Course. [5] Zhou Kai, Ye Guangjun. Education on Life Skills in Study of Students in Career School [J], 8

9 Chinese Mental Health Journal, 2002,16 (2) : Acknowledgements This article is subsidized by the "Rural Young Migrants Employment Status Investigation and Education Policy Analysis", a key project of the National Office for Education Sciences Planning of the Ministry of Education (DJA100328). About Authors: Dr. Wang Ying, female, an associate professor of Institute of Modern Distance Education, the Open University of China. Research domain: educational technology. Li Cuihong, female, born on 8 May 1986, a current master student in Hebei University of Science and Technology of China. Research domain: human resources. 9