Research on the Role of Democratic Parties in Colleges and Universities in Building Morality and Cultivating People: Taking the General Branch of the Democratic League of Huizhou College as an Example ()
1. Research Status
In 2014, the report of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward the fundamental task of cultivating morality and cultivating people. In recent years, there have been tens of thousands of such research papers. Now university education ideology and politics courses have been basically linked to professional courses, choosing a model suitable for young people, subtly infecting them, like salt in water, in daily professional education, and establishing a correct outlook on life, world outlook, and social responsibility for them. Democratic parties are mainly composed of high-level intellectuals, such as teachers from universities, middle schools, primary schools, and related professionals. Therefore, as long as the democratic party team connects the three stages of university, middle school, and primary school, they can form a chain of beads, interlocking with each other. At the same time, college teachers need to maintain contact with society in order to ensure the continuous refreshment of professional knowledge.
To sum up, in order to give full play to the role of democratic parties in cultivating people, they should combine the social services and educational work of democratic parties. For example, in “Reflections on the Construction of Democratic Parties Themselves from the Perspective of Educational Practice Activities” by He Lianglin from Honghe University, it is mentioned that democratic parties should strengthen their own organizational construction, establish correct ideological consciousness, actively engage in political consultation and participation, serve the people, and form an organizational framework for the cultivation of professional ethics [1] . In the article “Reflections on the Democratic Parties’ Fulfillment of Social Service Functions” by Chen Wei, published in the Gansu Political Consultative Conference. He discussed the significance of the 1989 “Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Adhering to and Improving the System of Multi-Party Cooperation and Political Consultation under the Leadership of the Communist Party of China.” His paper reflected on the role of democratic parties in educational social service work, emphasized the need to clarify the purpose and scope of social services [2] . In recent years, the core content of the ideals, practice, innovation, and values proposed by President Xi Jinping combined with the advantages of the democratic parties in the educational work team, and formed the characteristics of the party serving the society in the education field from the perspective of building morality and cultivating people. From 2018 to 2020, a surge of literature on ideological education in universities targeting undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels emerged. Examples include the Party Committee of Renmin University of China Qi Pengfei’s article titled “The Key to Running Ideological and Political Theory Courses Lies in Teachers: Important Discourses on the Construction of the Teaching Staff for Ideological and Political Theory Courses Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China by General Secretary Xi Jinping”, He Zihua’s empirical study on “The Integration of Socialist Core Values into Campus Cultural Activities in Hubei Universities” and Gou Jianqiang’s research paper on “Research on the Path of ‘Three-Fold Education’ in Higher Education Based on the Cultivation of Virtue.” etc., these hundreds of articles are all responses to the call of General Secretary Xi Jinping, aiming to comprehensively reform higher education institutions in terms of teaching, nurturing students, practice, service, and management, with a focus on cultivating virtue and fostering moral character.
2. Build Morality and Grow through Exchanges
The democratic parties are involved in all walks of life, and the city committee of the democratic parties is to build a bridge for the democratic parties in various industries. To build morality and cultivate people, you should educate yourself first, and you must have a dedicated spirit of learning and evangelism that “comes with a heart and leaves without a half-grass” [3] . Academic research requires the improvement of professionalism, which requires communication between industries; preaching requires effective communication, and communication between teachers and students requires spiritual collision. The Huizhou Municipal Committee of the Democratic League of China, which takes the lead in giving back to society and cultivating moral character, organizes education workers of the Democratic League of China in universities, middle schools, and primary schools to participate in public welfare education activities.
1) Build a communication platform for group self-awareness
Democratic parties have the characteristics of serving higher education, and they need to gather wisdom and strength to do a good job of providing advice and democratic supervision. Democratic parties in colleges and universities need to dig deep-seated psychological boundaries and group characteristics in order to allow members to enhance their sense of identity with a party from the bottom of their hearts.
2Collective memory theory posits that “people typically acquire their memories in society. It is also within society that they engage in recollection, identification, and the positioning of memories.” This social framework of evoking, locating, reconstructing, and narrating memories is what is referred to as “collective memory.”
For example, the Huizhou Municipal Committee of the China Democratic League established the “Home of China Democratic League” in Guangming Primary School in Huicheng District, Huizhou City, to enhance the collective memory2 of members of the League through various activities. The collective memory of ideological education is a key factor affecting group cognition and belonging. The communication activities of indoor and outdoor activities can break down the barriers between industries and units. For example, the study of party classes and league history can strengthen the ideological unity of grassroots league members, and historical site research activities can promote ideological and professional exchanges among league members. As a local university, Huizhou University can exchange ideas with educators of the league from primary and secondary schools in areas such as ideological and political education, preschool education, basic education, career planning, etc, in order to promote the connection of various stages of local education.
2) Build a double-edged platform for public welfare exchanges
The communication platform can take into account public welfare activities. Guangming Primary School, co-organized by the “House of China Democratic League” of the Huizhou Municipal Committee, is a school that solves the schooling difficulties of migrant workers’ children. First of all, it can provide a communication platform for the educators of the Huizhou Municipal Committee of the Democratic League to connect with the education of universities, middle schools, and primary schools. Teachers of Huizhou University and can communicate closely with teachers of primary and middle schools to understand the learning, psychological, and ideological conditions of students at various stages and those related problems. This will help educators at all stages to understand the physical and mental development of the new generation to better complete the “three comprehensive education”. In terms of basic education, members of Democratic League of China in Huizhou University have conducted research on subjects in College Entrance Examination such as English, mathematics, and Chinese, in order to simultaneously apply it to the teaching of local high schools, which provides professional assistance for improving the basic education of adolescents. Second, in the transformation of local colleges and universities, inter-professional cooperation is an inevitable development direction for disciplinary breakthroughs and innovations. Inter-professional exchanges can broaden horizons. Only by increasing the breadth and allowing college researchers to improve in their own fields can they keep pace with the times Land establishes morality and cultivates people. For example, legal representatives of Democratic League of China in Huizhou and leagues of the Political Science and Law School of Huizhou University can communicate on this platform to better serve the local community and enhance the professional abilities of the college members. Third, combining public welfare schools to create a communication platform for the Democratic parties can not only help the local disadvantaged classes, but also give full play to the resource advantages of the front-line educators of the Democratic parties in terms of supporting educational teachers, and providing a platform for the majority of members to give back to the society.
3) Build an urban-rural exchange platform
The communication platform should serve as a bridge for communication between urban and rural areas. For example, educators from the Democratic League at Huizhou College visit towns such as Boluo, Huidong, and Longmen to experience the charm of rural revitalization, directly face urban-rural issues, reflect on teaching during exchanges, pay attention to social livelihoods, clarify their own social responsibilities, and enhance personal ideological cultivation [4] . Only by doing so can they comprehensively implement the relevant spirits of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council. Firmly establishing the working philosophy of “putting education first and moral education as a priority,” constructing a “Five-in-One” comprehensive education model [5] , and further improving the ideological and political qualities of the students, can we promote their comprehensive development [5] .
The Huizhou Democratic League Education Research Institute, a collaboration between the Huizhou Municipal Committee of the China Democratic League and the High-Quality Education Research Center of Huizhou University, has promoted the education work of grassroots members to build morality and cultivate people to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Comprehensively promote the ideological and political construction of the curriculum, clarify the objectives and requirements and key points of the ideological and political construction of the curriculum, scientifically design the ideological and political teaching system of the curriculum, promote the ideological and political construction of the curriculum in combination with professional characteristics, integrate the ideological and political construction of the curriculum into the whole process of classroom teaching construction, and improve the teacher’s curriculum The awareness and ability of ideological and political construction. Members of Huizhou University’s Schools of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Educational Science, Mathematics and Statistics, and Economic Management have applied for a number of ideological and political teaching research and demonstration courses based on their own professional characteristics, and have won several provincial and municipal awards.
3. Ideological and Political Integration of Majors and Rural Revitalization for Talents
In recent years, local colleges and universities are facing transformation, and the promotion of master’s degrees is in full swing in local colleges and universities. Most college teachers from the Democratic parties in colleges and universities have academic backbones. They should actively use the discipline development platform and combine grassroots organization activities with the transformation of the discipline development platform.
1) Educating people in response to the needs of society
The Democratic League in local colleges and universities has a wide range of social relations. They form teams to investigate counterpart units and disciplines, so that “dual-qualified” teachers can participate more in local grassroots work, support local construction, and bring the latest professional knowledge into the Campus teaches students. In recent years, the policy of rural revitalization is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it realizes beautiful countryside and promotes rural construction; on the other hand, it also provides a platform for front-line college teachers to realize scientific research and social practice. For example, the Science and Technology Special Commissioner of Guangdong Province [6] provides multiple platforms for members of the Huizhou College Branch of the Democratic League to demonstrate their scientific research capabilities, so that college teachers can go to the grassroots level in undertaking teaching tasks and reforms, understand social needs, and cultivate more down-to-earth contemporary college students, educating people for rural revitalization [6] .
2) Building courses in response to the needs of the society
Flexible teaching modes such as MOOCs (micro-classes), flipped classrooms, TBL, and case teaching in the teaching reform can be better embedded in local actual conditions [7] . Members of the Institute of Biological Sciences, as an expert team of Huizhou University, went to Luodong Village and Shiqian Village, the provincially designated poverty-stricken villages in Longjiang Town, Longmen County, to carry out the 2020 Guangdong Provincial Rural Science and Technology Special Commissioner’s “Summer Going to the Countryside” activities. Special training courses on planting and breeding technology are held to provide skills training for poor households or planting farmers who have technical needs for black goat breeding and longan planting in Luodong Village and need to transfer employment, so as to help them alleviate poverty. The architectural history team of the School of Architecture and Civil Engineering conducted research on the Dongjiang red historical sites in the Huizhou area and the overseas Chinese red culture in the Jiangmen Wuyi area, and integrated the research results into daily teaching. The main course of architectural design allows students to enter poverty-stricken counties through the activity of “Three Teachers Going to the Countryside”.
Facing social problems such as lack of educational resources for middle schools in poverty-stricken counties, difficulty in renovating old middle schools, and lack of funds for the transformation of high-density middle school design models. College students infected middle school students in the process of field research and also established the social image of contemporary college students in the minds of middle school students.
Ideological and political education no longer follows the scriptures, but in professional teaching, learning by doing, so that students can better understand their career plans and go to society with a better attitude. The teacher is more of an organizer and planner of teaching activities. They sort out the vast amount of knowledge online, filter and screens layer by layer, choose a corner of the “milieu” scene and build a forum to give lectures.
4. Cooperative Practice Base School Administration Serves the Local Area
The construction of the local practice base platform is not only a platform for the democratic parties in colleges and universities to realize the cooperation between the school, government, and enterprises, but also a button for the connection between universities, middle schools, and primary schools. The backbone teachers of the Democratic League General Branch of Huizhou University build a practice base for serving the local area through extensive contacts, provide students with a practical training platform, provide opportunities to serve the local area, and allow students to better understand the local culture and enhance their family and country feel. Build an educational place that synchronizes ideological and political education with popular science from local colleges and universities to primary and secondary schools, so as to maximize the use of educational sources and to facilitate “knowledge to promote action, practice to knowledge” to achieve continuous and coordinated relay between universities, middle schools, and primary schools.
Now, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is promoting the planning and construction of global tourism [8] , and the tourism planning routes are being organically combined with red cultural tourism resources to form various characteristic cultural tourism routes [8] . Various red education bases in the Greater Bay Area of Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao combine surrounding resources to ignite red education bases in the Bay Area for overseas Chinese and Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan compatriots with a single spark. For example, the modern historical buildings in Taishan embody the deep feelings of family and country of modern overseas Chinese from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. Make full use of the abandoned historical buildings in the hometown of overseas Chinese to build a research base for overseas Chinese culture facing the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area at home and abroad. Organize local colleges and universities in the Bay Area to integrate ideological, political, and cultural teaching into daily teaching activities through competitions to promote teaching and online and offline course design. In recent years, the College of Architecture and Civil Engineering of Huizhou University has held the “Chuangzhu Cup” joint design with universities for six consecutive years. It is with the help of the practice base in the Taishan area carry out the teaching of the revitalization and utilization of local traditional buildings and the planning of rural revitalization. The teaching mode is mainly based on the CIDO mode, which greatly stimulates the enthusiasm of students to learn and enhances the enthusiasm of students to devote themselves to the construction of their hometown.
The follow-up effect of the course has also inspired students to use the knowledge of the rural revitalization planning series they have learned to take their hometown as the research object, form teams to participate in summer social practice, climbing cups, and other activities, and achieve success in succession. The final effect of teaching forms the butterfly effect of “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
Cross-school exchanges, through an architectural design task book embedded in red ideology and politics, ignited the sparks of local architecture schools in the Bay Area. Especially for Jinan University and Wuyi University, which have a large number of overseas Chinese students, it can also play a united front effect. During the activity, Taiwanese teachers were joined to the platter course organization and unknowingly realized the united front work.
Summer social practice activities play an important role in the democratic party’s moral education. Participating in the activities of “Country-Guangdong League Tour” and “Lingnan Beautiful Village”, the teacher-student research activities not only contribute to the compilation of local chronicles but also contribute to the update of Lingnan rural tourism information.
Students use new technology to accumulate data for Lingnan rural tourism; through the inheritance and co-construction of teachers and students on the online scientific research public account, sow the seeds of social responsibility in the hearts of students; increase learning motivation and creative passion through a personal sense of success. The front-line research work allows students to better understand the hard work and dedication of the grassroots, understand the silent dedication and hard work of the country and society to the younger generation, and prepare for giving back to society in the future.
To sum up, members of the general branch of Huizhou College of the Democratic League make good use of local practice bases to integrate professional teaching, realize the reform of ideological and political education, and achieve good results, which can be extended to other democratic parties.
5. Summary
To sum up, the democratic parties in colleges and universities are dominated by professional backbone teachers, who are responsible for guiding students to the last leg of society, and are mentors for students to transform from teenagers to mature personalities. Therefore, we must make good use of the platform advantages of the democratic parties, communicate more with teachers in primary and secondary schools, and complete the three-stage whole-course education; educate ourselves and others to form an all-round education; make good use of the social practice platform to achieve the integration of school, government, and enterprise, guide students to make a smooth transition, serve the society, and educate all cross of life.
This article mainly focuses on the practical case analysis of the general branch of Huizhou College of the Democratic League. It is hoped that through the role of seeing the big from the small, the democratic parties will be promoted and optimized to play the role of cultivating people. The various activity carriers mentioned in the article are mostly common and normal cooperation between the government, schools, and enterprises, including cooperation within the local area of Huizhou and cross city cooperation. During the cooperation process, it may also cause project stagnation due to objective factors such as funding and policies. However, thanks to the large number of cooperation points, the school-government-enterprise model where teachers and students engage in social practice can still be sustainable. By utilizing collaborative platforms such as subject construction, scientific research platforms, and school-enterprise cooperation, the idealism of teachers in the ivory tower can be avoided, the development of professional teaching into practice can be better promoted, students’ ability to plan their careers in advance can be improved, and a further understanding of the operation of society can be built. At the same time, it also challenges teachers to improve their professional skills and keep up with the times through practical operations.