Yunnan rural teacher among 12 outstanding educators

Nong Jiagui, a village teacher in Guangnan county, Yunnan province, for 38 years, has helped more than 100 rural students learn about the world outside of their isolated homes.

Nong Jiagui and his stuents

In 1986, the 20-year-old became the first teacher in the "leprosy village", which was once an isolated treatment center for more than 180 leprosy patients and their families in the 1950s.

Nong said he was welcomed by the anxious faces at the health center when he first arrived in the village.

"At that moment, all I wanted to do was turn around and run. But when I saw the helplessness and disappointed faces of the elderly and the eager eyes of the children yearning for knowledge, I hesitated to leave," he recalled.

With mixed feelings, he decided to stay.

During the first class, the parents stood far away after sending their children to make the only teacher in the village feel comfortable, he said.

Nong named the village Luosongdi, which means "peanuts" in the ethnic Zhuang language, the dominant crop of the village, so that the students could write down their families' addresses without anyone making a connection with leprosy when they registered at new schools.

 

Nong Jiagui gives a Chinese lesson.

All school-age children were enrolled in the primary school after Nong came, and the village has become more open to the outside world. "As long as one child in the village needs me, I will keep on teaching," he said.

The 58-year-old rural teacher was named one of the 2024 National Role Models for Teaching and Educating People along with 11 other outstanding educators ahead of this year's Teachers' Day, which falls on Sept 10 every year.

China released new guidelines on advocating the spirit of educators and strengthening the building of a high-quality professional teaching workforce late last month, highlighting the cultivation of more high-quality professionals, especially in rural and less-developed areas.

Multiple projects have been carried out over the past few years to promote the quality of the teaching workforce, including advancing tuition-free normal student education and drafting retired teachers to support western regions lacking educators.

Vice-Minister of Education Wang Jiayi said the guidelines will ensure about 18.92 million teachers at all levels in the country become competent educators to further support the largest educational system in the world.

Currently, China has 498,300 schools with 291 million students enrolled in formal education programs, and about 11 million students graduate from higher education institutes every year.

The overall development of educational modernization in China is now ranked among the upper-middle tier of countries worldwide, according to the ministry.