Wang Jingyun: Enhancing Social Synergy in the Development of a Leading Country in Education
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out at the National Education Conference that "the education powerhouse we seek to build is a socialist education powerhouse with Chinese characteristics, which should possess strong ideologically-led power, talent competitiveness, scientific and technological support, livelihood protection, social synergy, and international influence." The construction of an education powerhouse is a systemic project; it is the mission of the times and the shared responsibility of the entire Party and all of society. Developing education to the satisfaction of the people [1] is inseparable from strong ideological synergy, power synergy, and resource synergy.
Forming a Strategic Consensus
Since the 18th CPC National Congress, China's educational cause has achieved historical successes. A series of quantitative indicators, including the scale of education, popularization levels, the gross enrollment rate in higher education, and the educational attainment of the population, have risen significantly. However, the transformation from a large nation in education to a powerhouse in education is not merely an accumulation of quantity, but more a process of systemic leap and qualitative change. In this process, the primary task is to form a strategic consensus on collaborative construction among all sectors of society, thereby achieving a high degree of ideological identification and unity of action.
At present, the world is undergoing changes unseen in a century [2] at an accelerated pace. A new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is developing in depth, and education has increasingly become a key factor in enhancing national core competitiveness and seizing strategic initiative. As the main channel for disseminating mainstream ideology and the spiritual bond for cohering social consensus, ideological and political education must transform macro-level national strategies into ideological resonance across all sectors of society. It must enhance total social value identification with the strategic positioning of education powerhouse construction as a support for Chinese-path modernization, laying the cognitive foundation for various social subjects to take the initiative in participation and collaborative efforts. Only by reaching a strategic consensus with consistent cognition can we ensure that the Party and the state obtain lasting social support in the implementation of major educational policies, thus consolidating a broad mass base for building an education powerhouse.
Teachers are the guides for students during their "jointing and earing" [3] stage of growth; they determine the efficacy of the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education (立德树人) [4] and the quality of talent cultivation. The Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Honoring the Spirit of Educators and Strengthening the Construction of High-Quality Professionalized Teacher Corps in the New Era particularly emphasize promoting the social custom of respecting teachers and valuing education, and deeply cultivating a culture of the same. On the one hand, we must strengthen the construction of teacher ethics and professional conduct, using the spirit of educators to "mold the soul and strengthen the teachers" [5]. This enhances the ideological and political literacy and professional capabilities of this key subject, enabling them to love and excel at teaching, devote themselves to nurturing people, and win social respect through solid scholarship and exemplary words and deeds. On the other hand, we must enhance teachers' sense of professional identity, honor, and mission, making teaching truly one of the most respected professions in society. By fostering an atmosphere of respecting teachers and valuing education throughout society, we can inspire more outstanding talents to commit themselves to the cause of education, building a solid foundation of personnel for the construction of an education powerhouse.
Enhancing the Synergy of Nurturing People
Building an education powerhouse is an endeavor that cannot be accomplished by a single region or school alone; it requires forming a collective force across society for running education, led by the government, implemented by schools, supported by society, and fulfilled by families.
The government is the leading force in building an education powerhouse, playing a vital role in top-level design, including resource allocation, policy orientation, and institutional guarantees. Governments at all levels should establish a correct outlook on political performance, always placing education in a strategic position of priority development. They should optimize the orientation of educational evaluation and discard the evaluative fallacies of "only focusing on scores" or "only focusing on enrollment rates" [6]. They must improve the mechanisms for fiscal guarantees in education, increasing comprehensive assistance and investment in underdeveloped areas and key educational fields. Furthermore, they should improve the teaching system, refine the mechanism for collaborative nurturing between home, school, and society, and optimize the coordination among various educational subjects to consolidate and expand the main forces building the education powerhouse.
Schools of all levels and types shoulder the major mission of cultivating newcomers of the era who can put the Party's mind at ease, are dedicated to the country, and take on the heavy responsibility of national rejuvenation. School education must actively respond to the requirements of the era for developing new quality productive forces and improve the institutions and mechanisms for fostering virtue through education. We must integrate fostering virtue through education into every link of ideological and moral education, cultural knowledge, and social practice, connecting it through the disciplinary, teaching, textbook, and management systems to vigorously promote "all-staff, all-process, and all-directional" nurturing. Adhering to the concept of "running schools with open doors," schools should actively link up with society and families to participate in nurturing practices. On this basis, we must accelerate the integrated construction of ideological and political education across primary, secondary, and tertiary levels, construct a "Great Ideological and Political" (大思政) nurturing system, and continuously enhance the capacity to serve the construction of a modern powerhouse.
Society serves as the spatial extension of the nurturing field and a vital source of educational resources. It plays an irreplaceable supportive role in promoting the diversification of educational content, the innovation of learning methods, and the socialization of nurturing goals. Various social organizations and enterprises should actively respond to the "Great Ideological and Political" construction concept. Through methods such as the integration of industry and education, campus co-construction, and venue linkage [7], they should continuously expand the practical fields for nurturing, driving social forces and school education to form a strategic synergy in terms of value identification and practical pathways.
The foundational role of family education in building an education powerhouse cannot be ignored. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "No matter how times change, no matter how economy and society develop, for a society, the life-support function of the family is irreplaceable; the social function of the family is irreplaceable; and the civilizing role of the family is irreplaceable." Through methods such as leaders taking the initiative, experts providing strategies, and social advocacy, we must guide social members to form good family traditions and styles in daily life. This will allow them to practice socialist core values imperceptibly and ensure that family education moves in the same direction as national talent-cultivation needs.
Converging Social Resources
Building an education powerhouse requires gathering more social resources conducive to high-quality development, effectively integrating resource elements, optimizing resource allocation, and providing all-around guarantees.
Material resources are the fundamental guarantee and rigid support for achieving high-quality development of the educational cause and promoting educational equity and balance. Constructing an education powerhouse requires systemically integrating and optimizing the allocation of sufficient and balanced social material resources to bridge regional gaps, ensure educational fairness, and drive educational quality leaps. We must guide social organizations, enterprises, and the public to take initiative in assuming their responsibilities in building an education powerhouse. Through government leadership, school organization, social donations, and individual philanthropy, we should form a targeted investment mechanism. Relying on the social supervision system, we should conduct scientific evaluation, feedback, and continuous optimization of resource usage to provide strong material guarantees for the education powerhouse strategy.
Talent resources are the "first resource" for comprehensively building a modern socialist powerhouse. This scope covers not only the teaching force but also extends to professional talents in scientific and technological innovation, industrial practice, culture and arts, and public services. We must synergistically leverage the expertise of school education and talents from all walks of life, striving to promote the deep integration of a high-quality education system with high-level self-reliance and strength in science and technology. This will provide cutting-edge perspectives and social experience for school curriculum development, talent cultivation, educational governance, and social practice, building a diversified learning platform and career path for student growth. The principle of the Party managing talent (党管人才) [8] must be implemented throughout the entire process of talent selection, cultivation, evaluation, and incentive. This will drive experts, scholars, corporate elites, and cultural masters to innovate educational practices collaboratively with frontline teachers and students, providing talent support for the leap from a large nation in education to an education powerhouse.
Policy protection is the fundamental institutional resource for building an education powerhouse. It functions as a guide for direction and a stabilizer for operations, and it is the key element for breaking through institutional and mechanistic obstacles in education and forming social synergy. In practice, we should implement the Party and the state's educational concepts and policies into medium- and long-term development plans and educational regulations to form authoritative policy texts and institutional arrangements. Through policy dissemination and interpretation, we can effectively enhance social identification with and execution of these policies. At the same time, we must construct cross-departmental coordination mechanisms to ensure that policies related to education, propaganda, finance, and human resources are consistent in actual operation. This will guide governments at all levels and social organizations to work in the same direction within the established policy framework, providing continuous and precise institutional and mechanistic guarantees for the construction of an education powerhouse.