The general offices of the General Office of the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council recently issued the Opinions on Further Reducing Students’ Homework Burden and Off-campus Training Burden in Compulsory Education, emphasizing that schools and parents should guide students to do housework as much as they can after school. This is a very important measure to promote the work of "double reduction", and housework is the core carrier and important starting point of family education, which contains great moral education value. Participating in housework plays a positive role in promoting the formation of excellent moral character of primary and secondary school students, accompanying their growth process and having an important impact on their future life development.
Housework helps students improve their personality. Participating in housework is the starting point for primary and secondary school students to know and be familiar with the living environment. Primary and middle school students can know themselves through housework, establish their relationship with others and the world, so that they can gradually establish their sense of order, responsibility and accomplishment, and then improve their personality.
Housework brings a sense of order. Sense of order is a kind of self-control ability, and it is also a kind of rule formation, which helps the self to establish an organic connection with the surrounding things. Everyone has a natural sense of internal order, and the process of primary and secondary school students participating in housework also contains the elements of "order". When they resonate at the same frequency and are integrated, the inner sense of order of primary and secondary school students will be further maintained and consolidated, thus promoting the formation of healthy personality and good habits.
Housework brings a sense of responsibility. Cultivating children’s sense of responsibility and obligation is the core issue of moral education. Primary and secondary school students’ participation in housework can eliminate their dependence on their parents and enhance their sense of responsibility.
Housework helps students sharpen their character. "Sweep, respond, advance and retreat" is a consistent tradition of ancient family education. In the Analects of Confucius, Zi Xia once said: "Although there is a trail, there must be a considerable person." Education starts from a small place, which is the spirit of knowing from a small perspective. Housework represented by "sweeping" is the two-way interaction and cooperation between parents and children, which can teach them the ethical relationship and moral norms of standing in the world and treating others.
Housework makes father and son related. Learning to be grateful, housework can make primary and secondary school students feel the hard work of their parents and learn to care and understand their parents. Only when parents let their children participate in housework, can they feel the happiness of being rewarded after giving, and can they feel the kindness of their parents, thus forming an intimate and harmonious parent-child relationship.
Housework keeps the young and the old in order. Children have a natural dependence and admiration for their parents, and they think their parents are role models. If primary and secondary school students get the support of their parents and complete a piece of housework, they will have respect for their parents. Similarly, the same is true for other elderly relatives and elders. In a subtle way, primary and secondary school students form an orderly ethics and morality, and form a harmonious interpersonal relationship in dealing with others.
Housework helps students achieve themselves. Family links individuals and society, and undertakes childhood and adulthood. The ethics and order norms formed in family work can be transferred and extended to social life, laying the foundation for the independent life of primary and secondary school students after they become adults. As the saying goes, "what is done is done from the inside, but it is famous for future generations".
Housework leads the value orientation. Although housework is small, it is the earliest form of labor for children. Primary and middle school students get the fruits of labor through their own efforts, such as neat desks, delicious meals, clean clothes or some pocket money, which will make them realize the true meaning of "labor creates wealth", thus accepting and gradually enjoying the bitterness and fatigue in the labor process, sublimating it into spiritual pleasure, and gradually establishing the value concept of "labor is the most glorious, noble, greatest and beautiful".
Housework cultivates innovative spirit. Housework is an effective way to train the innovative spirit of primary and secondary school students, because it is a task that needs independent thinking and action to complete. Primary and secondary school students will judge in advance, try to overcome difficulties and finally achieve their goals when facing the goals and tasks. This process needs the guidance of parents, but also needs to make their own decisions, which provides a platform for them to develop their thinking, exercise their ability and cultivate their innovative spirit.
Housework cultivates the feelings of home and country. Confucianism has the idea of self-cultivation and family management, and self-cultivation and family management begin with themselves and their families. For primary and middle school students, taking part in housework is to lay the ideological and action foundation for building the country in the future. To serve the family is to serve the country and the people. If even a small room can’t be properly managed, how can there be a lot of trouble and planning to deal with major events?
Housework is the link for primary and secondary school students to complete the transformation from naturalness to sociality, and it is the beginning of their life. The moral education value contained in housework will help primary and secondary school students develop in an all-round way and grow into pillars, thus better serving the society and building the country.
(The author is from the Marxist College of University of Science and Technology Beijing, and this article is the achievement of the key research project of philosophy and social sciences of the Ministry of Education, "Research on the Inheritance and Development of Chinese Traditional Virtues" [19JZD034])
China Education News, 8th edition, November 18th, 2021.