Survey on Social Responsibility Status of Junior Middle School Students ()
1. Introduction
For a long time, the exam-oriented education of students in the test-based education environment has seriously lagged behind. In 2017, The State Council of the People’s Republic of China called for strengthening and improving ideological and political education in the new situation opinion, with special emphasis on social and legal construction and education on the sense of social responsibility. The secondary school period is an important period for students to form their view of the world, life and values, and their ability to think, understand, think and innovate takes its initial shape with the development of adolescence. The key to the success of socially responsible awareness education lies in the middle school years, the importance of which cannot be overstated. Some scholars believe (Huang et al., 2016; Chen, 2020) that the cultivation of social responsibility from individuals can shape the psychological quality of body stability and realize the noble sentiment of individuals to actively take social responsibility or help others. Other scholars believe (Zhang, 2018) that the cultivation of junior middle school students’ sense of social responsibility can implement junior middle school students’ awareness of social responsibility and responsibility cognition, and achieve consciousness of action. Cultivating junior middle school students’ sense of social responsibility is a social responsibility and social obligation for schools at the junior middle school stage.
Most studies on social responsibility have focused on the connotation and extension (Huang et al, 2016; Zhang, 2018), lack of existence (Ye, 2014; Zhang, 2017, 2019) and problem attribution (Zheng, 2014; Su & Shan, 2018) on these three aspects. The foreign ideological and moral education is called invisible education, which was proposed by Jackson, and its “hidden curriculum” has an important influence on the cultivation of citizen responsibility (Rowe, 2000). In general, there are relatively few studies on the factors influencing junior middle school students’ sense of social responsibility, and there is a lack of quantitative studies on them, which is exactly where this study will be launched.
China is in a period of advancement in the full implementation of socialist core values, Social responsibility is not only the ethical basis for practicing socialist values, but also an important cornerstone for the construction of socialist legal system. In the face of the strong promotion of exam-oriented education, there are deficiencies and shortcomings in the education of social responsibility awareness among junior high school students in our department. In order to better promote and implement the State Council’s opinion on strengthening and improving ideological and political education under the new situation. Our subject group conducted a survey on the current situation of social responsibility for middle school students in Anhui, to understand and find out the problems and development bottlenecks of social responsibility awareness education for middle school students, and to provide data support for the government to deepen the reform of social responsibility training for middle school students.
The next part of the article is structured as follows: the first part focuses on the tools used to collect data and the basic information about the collected data; the second part focuses on the main results; and finally, the discussion part analyzes the possible causes of the problem and related suggestions.
2. Methods
2.1. Data Collection and Analysis
Students from five middle school in Anhui were selected, and questionnaires were administered randomly at the entrance of the schools, when students were released from school. These five junior middle schools cover 2 model schools and 3 general schools. The students coming from both rural and urban areas, and the data of the study are representative to some extent.
To ensure the quality of the research, six graduate students in psychology and health management were selected to undertake all the work of the research. Before the research, the investigators were given uniform training to clarify the purpose of the research and the research methods. Questionnaires were conducted under the condition of informed consent of the respondents, and small gifts were given after completing the questionnaires. The study was reviewed by the ethics committee of Anhui Medical University and met the ethical requirements.
2.2. Measures Used
2.2.1. Questionnaire on Social Responsibility of Junior Middle School Students, QSRJMSS
QSRJMSS is used to investigate the status of secondary school students’ social conscience. The questionnaire is designed by combining the perspectives of self- responsibility, others’ responsibility, collective responsibility and human responsibility. The survey on the awareness of responsibility includes “Question 1: Daily time for self-study”, “Question 2: Willingness to keep exercising”, “Question 3: Willingness to undertake household chores”, “Question 4: Awareness of community service”, “Question 5: Willingness to give way to the elderly on public transport”, “Question 6: Awareness of water conservation”, “Question 7: Awareness of water conservation”, The questionnaire passed the reliability test (Cronbach’s α coefficient of 0.78).
For each question, answer A indicates a strong sense of initiative, high quality of completion, and an obvious sense of responsibility; answer B indicates an average sense of initiative, average quality of completion, and an average sense of responsibility; answer C indicates a weak sense of initiative, poor quality of completion, and a poor sense of responsibility.
2.2.2. Self-Created Questionnaire
The basic information includes gender, whether the child is an only child, the grade level and the education level of both parents.
2.3. Statistical Methodology
SPSS19.0 software was used. Count data frequencies and statistical indicators were described, and χ2 test was used to analyze the count data; P values were all two-sided probabilities, with P < 0.05 as a statistically significant difference (Sun et al., 2020a, 2020b, 2020c).
3. Results
3.1. The Statistical Description of the Basic Information of the Sample
A total of 600 questionnaires were distributed and 569 valid questionnaires were recovered, the effective recovery rate: 94.83%, of which, 280 were male and 289 were female. The proportion of only child is 57.8%. Age were 12.90 ± 0.919. The detailed characteristics are shown in Table 1.
The overall level of education of the students’ parents is low (Table 1). Mother’s level was lower than father’s in terms of education. This coincides with our country’s basic national conditions 20 years ago.
3.2. Descriptive Statistics
There were significant gender differences in the responses to the questions “willingness to keep exercising”, “awareness of community service” and “awareness of water conservation” in terms of “positive, fair and weak”. Middle school students who answered the questions “Time spent on self-study every da”, “Willingness to keep exercising”, and “Willingness to take care of household chores” were “active”, There was a significant difference in the choice of whether or not the child was an only child in terms of “average and weak”. There were significant
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Table 1. Data related to demographic characteristics.
grade differences in the responses to the questions “time spent on self-study each day”, “willingness to keep exercising”, “willingness to perform household chores”, and “willingness to participate in community service”. There were significant grade-level differences in the choices of “active, average, and weak” among middle school students. There were significant differences in the responses of middle school students to questions related to social responsibility based on their mothers’ educational level. With the exception of the questions “Awareness of water conservation” and “The rise and fall of the world is the responsibility of everyone”, there was a significant difference in the father’s education level on the middle school students’ responses to the questions related to social responsibility. Detailed information is shown in Table 2.
79.94% of only children spent more than 2 - 3 hours of self-study per day on average, 69.17% higher than non-only children; the self-study time of middle school students was correlated with grade level; the lower the education level of parents, the longer the self-study time of middle school students.
Relatively few students currently adhere to self-exercise, accounting for only 9.31% of the students studied, and the proportion of girls who adhere to self- exercise is 10.03% significantly higher than that of boys 8.57% (χ2 = 21.40, P < 0.01). The proportion of only children who adhere to self-exercise 10.94% is significantly higher than that of boys 7.08% (χ2 = 13.58, P < 0.01). Self-exercise is negatively correlated with grade level. The lower the education level of the parents, the stronger the habit of self-exercise among middle school students.
Among the surveyed middle school students, 66.67% of non-only children took the initiative to undertake household chores significantly more than 56.53% of only children; the percentage of middle school students who took the initiative to undertake household chores was slightly higher in the lower grades than in the higher grades, and the percentage of middle school students who took the initiative to undertake household chores was relatively lower the lower the education level of their parents. Research data on community service shows that the proportion of girls actively participating in community service during holidays is slightly higher than that of boys at 87.54% than 80% (χ2 = 9.41, P < 0.05). A slightly higher percentage of junior middle school students in the lower grades volunteered for community service than in the upper grades. The higher the education level of the parents, the higher the percentage of junior middle school students who actively participate in community service.
Research data on human responsibility shows that a relatively low percentage of students in the study (accounted for only 8.43%) actively gave up their seats for the elderly on the bus, which is clearly correlated with the education level of their parents. The results of the research on the awareness of water conservation and taking the world as your duty showed a weak sense of overall responsibility consciousness, and also showed a correlation with the mother’s education level, The more educated a mother is, the greater her sense of responsibility is relatively high.
4. Discussion
The results of this study show that the investigated junior high school students do not have a strong sense of responsibility, which is consistent with An Baozhen’s study (An, 2007) and slightly worse than Liang Wenrui et al.’s study that “the level of responsibility of junior high school students is in a state of public acceptability” (Liang & Kuang, 2011). This is closely related to the current development stage of China and the age stage of middle school students. Comrade Xi Jinping emphasized that socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, and the main contradiction in our society has been transformed into the contradiction between people’s growing need for a better life and unbalanced and insufficient development (Central Discipline Inspection Commission Supervision Department website, 2021). In this situation, the family education style, the school curriculum, and the social education environment can all affect poor secondary school students to some degree.
This study found that the self-study time of only child is basically higher than that of non-only child, which may be related to the parenting style of children in the family, The only child lack communication partners and devote more time to study compared to non-only child. The reason why secondary school students’ self-study time is correlated with grade level may stem from academic pressure, such as high school entrance examination pressure, which is consistent with the results of the literature (An, 2007). The possible reason for the longer self-study time of secondary school students with lower parental literacy comes from the self-motivation to learn, when the individual is completely in a state without external support, the individual’s potential state far exceeds the external support situation
The results of the study showed that relatively few students exercised themselves, with only 9.31% of possible reasons being the influence of family life, such as parents working in offices for long periods of time and lack of field exercise habits infecting the next generation, In addition, with the decline of the current air environment, there are fewer days of good air quality in a year, and the habit of exercise is changing, so that the younger generation of secondary school students are influenced by it. The proportion of self-exercise among girls is significantly higher than that of boys, which may be due to the fact that secondary school students are in the stage of puberty, especially girls, and the love of beauty is common among all, so exercise for weight loss must become a driving force (Chen, 2018; Liu, 2017; Zhu, 2017). The negative correlation between self-exercise and grade level may be due to the fact that the upper grades spend most of their life studying and less time exercising. The lower the literacy level of the parents, the stronger the self-exercise habit of the secondary school students, which is relatively easy to understand. The lower the educational level of parents, the poorer the working environment and the lower the income, the living conditions of middle school students can also be imagined At this time，the secondary school students, in addition to studying, the rest of the time is basically self-exer- cise.
The results show that, the proportion of non only child actively undertakes housework is higher than that of the only child, which is related to the family rearing style; the lower the education level of parents, the lower the proportion of middle school students who take the initiative to undertake housework, mainly because parents as the main bearers of housework, at the same time, the indulgence and favoritism of children make them abandon the opportunities for middle school students to experience (Wu, 2008; Sun et al., 2016, 2018a, 2018b, 2019; Sun, Zhang, & He, 2018).
In the study of community service, it is found that the proportion of girls who actively participated in community service during holidays is slightly higher than that of boys, which may stem from the delicacy of girls; the proportion of junior high school students who actively participated in community service is slightly higher in lower grades than in higher grades, which may stem from the difference in allocable time; the proportion of secondary school students who actively participated in community service is higher in students with the higher literacy of their parents, which stem from the difference in educational philosophy of their families.
The results of human responsibility research show that the proportion of secondary school students who actively give up their seats for the elderly on the bus is relatively low, and the research results for the awareness of water conservation and taking the world as their responsibility show that the overall responsibility awareness of students is weak, which is enough to show the lack of responsibility of secondary school students, which deserves our attention (Feng & Jiang, 2017; Jiang, 2017). Secondary school students are the hope of our motherland and also bear the responsibility of human society, and if this continues, it is difficult to see them shouldering the hope of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
5. Conclusion
There is a correlation between the sense of responsibility of junior high school students and the literacy of their parents, and a stronger correlation with their mothers. So we advocate to expand the platform of lifelong learning for all, strengthen the awareness of lifelong learning for all, improve the overall cultural quality of the population, and lay the foundation for improving the sense of social responsibility of secondary school students.
We propose to pay attention to women, improve the overall cultural and moral quality of women, promote the social status of women, and make efforts to enhance the social responsibility of social groups.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Anhui Province Natural Science Foundation (1908085MG233), Quality Engineering for Research Projects of the Anhui Province (2020wyxm108, 2020jsk1341), Natural Science Foundation for the Higher Education Institutions of Anhui Province of China (KJ2019A0945), and Projects for policy consultation of Health Development Strategy Research Center in Anhui Province (2021szk004). The authors would like to thank all the individuals in China who offered their time and energy to participate in this investigation.