一個家庭四五百塊人民幣的助學金意味著什麽？
What Does It Mean To Have a 400 Yuan Educational Grant?
助學金，原來不單單隻是把錢給家長。我們跑遍大山裏的每個學校，開家長會。跟家長討論區區這筆小錢該怎麽用，能真正用在孩子們的身上。盡量說方言，但方言還必須翻譯成傈僳話，說明這筆錢不能拿去買煙買酒，而是要給孩子多買件床單或衣服，可以讓學生在學校替換著用，不至於整間宿舍臭烘烘。低年級學生很用力地幫自己家長寫名字，家長再按下手印，拿到這筆錢。我心裏說不出什麽，至少，看到一點希望。
Sending out educational grants is not as simple as to putting money to parents’ hands. We travelled through every school in the mountains and held parent conferences, discussing how to put good use of these tiny grants. We had to talk in local dialects, which would then be translated into the language of SuSu. We listened to the locals declare that the money will not be taken for alcohol and cigarettes, and will be used to buy clothing and bedding for the children---- it is very important for students who live in school to have those so that the dorms wouldn’t smell bad. Lower grade students helped their parents write down their names clearly, parents pressed down their finger prints firmly. I can’t say too much in my heart, but at least, I see some hopes.
驅車深入大山裏的小學。從麗江到石鼓鎮、到黎明鄉中心、蜿蜒老君山上遊美樂河兩岸千岩萬壑縱穀深處的村落，不通公路。越野車，顛顛晃晃地攀上山坡邊的小學，灰撲撲的小學生們跑到坡邊上來好奇張望外來的我們，恭敬的說聲老師好。
We drove to schools that are located deep in the mountains. From Li Jiang to Shi Gu Zhen, to Central Li Ming district, we followed the windy roads of Lao Kun Hill and the cliff paths of Mei Le River, and arrived to remote villages that don’t have a paved road. Bumping up and down in our jeep seats, we reached hill side schools and greeted by students in their dusted outfits, they curiously ran out and politely said “Hello Teachers” to us.
我們坐在教師食堂的火塘邊烤火，山裏的寒氣嗬著灰蒙蒙的天氣，等待需要走上四五個小時山路的家長們下來開會。助學金發放加上家長會在這裏彷佛是件大事，足以耗上一天半天的時間。
In the cold mountain mist, we kept warm by the fire near the teacher’s dining hall, waited patiently for parents who had to walk down four, five hours to get to the school’s parent conference. It is such a big event here to have grants distributed, plus the parent conference---big enough to spend a day and a half for that.
黎明鄉中心校領導陪著我們討論家長會開會內容，以及農村裏正在發生的多項問題。例如落戶；許多學生的父母未到法定年齡結婚生子，因此無法幫孩子報戶口，有的甚至不在意，造成許多孩子無法接受義務教育，或者有的實際年齡與學齡不符。再如衛生；學生住在學校隻有一身衣服一床被套，衣服一個禮拜回家換洗一次，被套則是整學期沒換，到了夏天，彼此傳染皮膚病。還有一直以來的抽煙喝酒問題、從來不太清楚的家庭經濟管理觀念，有了錢容易花，錢卻不容易找等等。我們琢磨該如何進行，如何以最簡單共同參與的方式和家長聊這些問題。
The head of Li Ming District Central School accompanied us and discussed the materials for parent conference, along with many other issues in the village. For instances, how to register a student’s residence? Some parents gave birth to children before reaching their legal marriage age, and resulted many unregistered births. But to get into the system for school admission, kids have to be locally registered and matched to their actual age. Many parents don’t even want to care about those details. Another issue is sanitation. Students only have one set of clothes and one set of bedding, they washed clothes every week at home, but the bedding did not get washed for the entire school semester. And that is a cause for contagious skin disease in summer times. Then is the never-ending issue of alcohol drinking and cigarette smoking. Many families are not keen on money management, they do not understand the grants can be easily spent but hard to get. We thought about how to proceed, and how to communicate with parents using the simplest yet mutually participating methods.
資助可以有很多方式，可以直接將錢打到學校帳上轉發，或者直接發放物資，還是帶著教育意義的親自對話？一點點的心思和一點點的費力，也許像是播下一些小小的種子，會在某些地方微微發芽。There are many ways to distribute funds. We could do a direct fund transfer to the schools’ accounts, in-kind distributions, or this sort of face-to-face educational dialogs. A little bit of thoughtfulness and a little bit of efforts, similar to spreading seeds, perhaps, they may grow somewhere, someday.
助學金背後- 「助學」的意義
Behind the Grants: the Meaning of “Assisted Learning”
二十多年的助學金支持，滋根從最初支持女童上學的助學到隨著社會環境變遷而有所改變。最初的助學支持承載了改變在鄉村裏的女孩沒有權利上學的觀念；而現在當男孩女孩都能上學的時候，助學金承載更多因貧困或家庭困難（包括孤兒、單親）而失學的學生的支持意義。同時，貧困的概念本身一直隨當前社會經濟快速變化而變化，因所謂貧困而失學的學生類型也變得多樣。項目工作人員不得不對貧困定義重新思索，對失學原因細究，同時思考助學金的項目內容：這樣一點錢能在一個家庭起到多大作用，這筆錢背後究竟能承載哪些改善或教育的內容意義？
The twenty years practice of assisted learning has transferred Zigen from its original goal of helping rural girls to go to school. The original commitments helped change the rural notion that young girls had no rights to go to school. And now, when boys and girls can all go to school, Zigen’s commitments have turned more towards assisting poor and disadvantaged families (including orphans, single-parent children) to continue learning. Along with the rapid changes that come to the society and economy in the past decades, the concept of poor and disadvantage keeps changing, and the reasons that kids quit school also become varied and complex. Project managers have to rethink about the definitions of poor and disadvantage, to study the reasons of quitting school, and to really think about the projects themselves: how much help this little money can bring to a family? How much change or educational value this small fund can bring to a student?
當我們發放黎明中學助學金的時候，挨著名單一個一個問，才發現九十名受助學生已有七名不讀，整個學校四百多名學生，在這學期中以前已有五十多名學生輟學，大山深處出來的學生輟學率更高。失學原因遠比小學生複雜得多，不再單純隻是父母付不出生活費讓小孩念書，或者因雙親四處打工、單親疏於照顧而就學流離。初中學校管理與教學是一方麵的問題，更多是長大的少年接近工商業生產線的鏈帶，在城鄉差距的推拉之下，書沒念完就被吸附到附近城市打工，更遠的到達深圳、廣州（有工廠直接到村裏來招人的）。貧困已經完全是另外一層意思，和城市水平相比，農村裏部分父母基本鼓勵孩子外出打工，度過家裏困難為優先。
When we sent out grants in Li Ming Middle School, we talked to the assisted students one by one. We found out that among the 90 students that received our financial aids, seven had quitted school. In the entire student body of more than 400 students, 50 of them have quitted, and the dropout rate for students living in the mountain areas is even higher. The reasons for quitting school are more complex than primary schools, not simply because parents can’t afford the living or studying fees, or parents have to work elsewhere, or lack of cares by single parents. Besides the problems of middle school management and teaching quality, more of an issue is the economical unbalances between a rural and an urban society, and the growing commercial temptations to young students. Many students are tempted by the job opportunities in the cities, so they quit school and start working in a nearby city. Some students even travel far to work in Shenzhen or Guangzhou (there are factories that come to villages for direct hiring). The concept of being poor or disadvantage has a total different meaning now, it could mean a certain match to city living standards. Many rural parents encourage their children to work outside, and to take care of the family’s financial troubles first.
跟學校教育相比，談及家庭教育，和父母對話顯得困難。
Compared to the discussions on school education, family education, and the conversations with parents went a lot more difficult.
家長們陸陸續續地走進學校開會，有的父母不在家是爺爺奶奶來了，有的拿著酒瓶，有的手上的煙未曾停過，黝黑的皮膚縫隙隱約有股山裏的濃濃土味以及汗酸。他們渴望自己的孩子走向城市，明顯的外出務工要比讀書會更快速得到實際效益，如果學生在學校裏的學習讓他們看不見未來，或者對於學習成就失去信心的話。 Parents streamed into school for conference, in cases when parents were absent, a grandma or grandpa came. Some carried along a wine bottle, some were smoking nonstop. You can almost sense some sort of mountain smells from their tanned skins. They were eager for their kids to work and live in a city, and expressed clearly that working outside of home can make a better living than studying here at home. If they can’t see a future for their kids in school, or see that their grades are failing, they said, it is better off that the kids can start working right way.
助學金作為一個對話的引子-家長、學校以及鄉村發展
Educational Grants as an Introduction of Dialogs --- Parents, School, and Village Developments
我們試圖從對貧困意義與教育的關係闡釋裏開啟對話：“我們就是因為心情不好才抽煙喝酒，因為沒什麽收入，家裏又那麽多事，生活苦悶，隻好抽煙喝酒，可以讓心情好一點啊！”“我們家是幾乎連菸酒都買不起，”“我抽煙那麽多年了，這種習慣是不可能改掉了。這是我們這一代人的生活習慣，我們這一輩就是這樣活過來的，我們沒機會受好的教育，也沒機會賺什麽大錢，就隻是個農民。學生娃娃有的是機會，他們現在命好，有機會受好的教育，學校老師要好好地教，讓他們養成好習慣，我們父母做不來的，就要學校老師多費心，從他們這一代改變起。”
We tried to start the conversation by explaining the relationship between being poor and having an education:“We started smoking and drinking to get rid of bad moods. We don’t have much income, so many headaches in life and not much to hope for. The drinking and smoking help the moods.”“In my house, we can hardly afford buying alcohol and cigarettes.”“I have smoked for many years and it is impossible for me to kick this habit now. This is the life style of our generation, and this is how we live. We did not have a chance to get a good education, and did not have the opportunity to get rich, we are just farmers. Now the young kids have plenty of opportunities and can get a good education. Teachers must do a good job teaching them, so that kids can form good habits. Things that we parents can’t do, teachers please try more efforts, so that this generation can change.”
這幾位家長的話語裏頭強烈吐露一種宿命感，像是守著沒幾畝地的包穀田，頓時讓我想起父親一輩他們對自己的生活命運有著堅定的宿命觀，任何奢侈的事都不覺得歸他們的份，把孩子好好養大成人有個好成就好歸宿便什麽都好了。自我懂事以來，父親便是一直蹲在摩托車前操弄他的工具，車子一直換，他的姿勢不變二十多年。我有時想著，該如何去理解上一輩的時代命運在他們身上刻劃的痕跡，我似乎不能簡單地拿著我們這一輩的理想去撼動上一輩人既定的價值觀。
There is a great sense of fate in these conversations, similar to those farmers who spend their entire life working around some small corn fields. I recalled my own father and his generation, who also share a very strong sense of fate. They don’t believe any kind of luxury life had anything to do with them. Bringing up their kids to a successful and prosperous life is the only thing to make their lives complete. Growing up, the picture of my father crouching in front of a bike and fixing things has never changed. Bikes changed, but his posture never did for twenty some long years. Sometimes I would think: how to understand the marks of fate that had casted into them over the hard years? I simply can’t change their firm believes and value system by using my generation’s dreams and hopes.
除此之外，用很簡單的算帳方式和家長們談家庭經濟管理的重要性，除了開源也要節流。每有一點對話空間，教育就在裏頭慢慢滲透了，如涓涓細流，或許有那麽點滴的改變。我們談及了這個大山裏組建中草藥種植合作社項目的可能性，如何與當前幾家已在種植的農戶組織合作，就剛起步的或有興趣的農戶給予培訓支持，透過合作產銷，避免中間商收購，將利潤真正回歸到農民身上。也談及了如何以天然方式在山坡邊進行土雞養殖相關的培訓，養出健康的土雞，而非以不良的飼養方式低價競爭。 一旦有機會啟動，將是一條漫長的學習道路，教育與發展平行如春天吐露的花瓣在農村小道上緩慢而如實地鋪開。
Besides that, we talked about how to use a simple way to calculate family budget and the importance of family finance, and the need to save money while making money. Whenever there is a chance for conversation, there is some sort of education getting in. Like small streams, may be a few drops of change may come along. We also talked about the possibility of a cooperation venture of herbal planting in the mountains, and how we have talked to a few farming families on that already, and will provide training and supports to the interested and new growers. Through a direct cooperation model, we can avoid brokers so that profits can return to the growers. We also talked about the training program to raise organic cage free chicken in the hill sides, and strategies of keeping fair prices on healthy chicken instead of getting into a price war by reducing feeding costs. This will be a long learning road. Whenever there is an opportunity to get started, growth and education will slowly explode in parallel in those country roads, like the flowers of a spring.
文、圖/林慧珍
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