The Way to Realize the Morality-establishing and Talent-cultivating Responsibilities of Postgraduate Tutors in Agricultural and Forestry Universities

Man WANG, Fengjun ZHANG

College of Humanities and Social Development, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, China

Abstract With the continuous expansion of postgraduate enrollment in China, the phenomenon of postgraduate tutors’ experiencing dereliction of duties, morality and behavior in colleges and universities has become prominent in recent years. It has repeatedly attracted widespread attention from the whole society, producing a negative impact on postgraduate education. Agricultural and forestry universities take root at the grassroots level, serve agriculture, rural areas and farmers, have simple and practical education characteristics, and have made positive adjustments to mutual assistance between teachers and students, teachers’ self-examination and regulatory system. This article analyzes the reasons for the current unethical and dishonest behaviors of postgraduate tutors in colleges and universities from the perspective of postgraduate tutors, and puts forward the implementation mechanism of the morality-establishing and talent-cultivating responsibilities of postgraduate tutors in agricultural and forestry universities combined with the school-running characteristics and practical experience of agricultural and forestry universities, so as to provide a reference for the construction of postgraduate tutor teams in colleges and universities.

Key words Agricultural and forestry colleges and universities, Postgraduate tutor, Establishing morality, Cultivating talent, Realization path

1 Introduction

Education is the basic of a one-hundred-year strategy, teachers are the basic of education, and morality establishment of the basic of teacher cultivation. Education is related to the cultivation of national talents, and the important task of cultivating talents is mostly borne by teachers. Therefore, the ideological and moral cultivation of teachers directly affects the future talent pool of the entire country. For colleges and universities that train master and doctoral students, the ideological and moral quality of the postgraduate tutor team is very important to the student’s academic career and future life. In this article, from the perspective of postgraduate tutors in agricultural and forestry universities, the causes of the current unethical and dishonest behaviors of postgraduate tutors in colleges and universities are analyzed, and combined with the school-running characteristics and practical experience of agricultural and forestry universities, the implementation mechanism for the morality-establishing and talent-cultivating responsibilities of postgraduate tutors in agricultural and forestry universities is put forward.

2 The value appeal of establishing morality and cultivating talents of postgraduate tutors in agricultural and forestry universities

In 2018, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued theOpinionsonComprehensivelyDeepeningtheReformofTeachingStaffintheNewEra, which put forward the requirements for the construction of teaching staff in the new era and takes the teacher’s ethics and style as the first criterion for evaluating teachers’ quality. Subsequently, the five ministries including the Ministry of Education jointly issued theActionPlanfortheRevitalizationofTeacherEducation(2018-2022), which clearly states that "teachers should continuously improve their own moral cultivation". In a series of speeches, General Secretary Xi Jinping put the construction of teacher ethics at the top of the quality of teachers. The construction of teacher ethics has become the key to creating a team of high-quality teachers. High-quality and high-level postgraduate tutors are to adapt to the requirements of the times and to meet the needs of students’ study, life, and scientific research development, and postgraduate tutors must be endowed with high ideological and moral qualities and correct moral concepts to make them qualified for teaching.

Both the 18th and 19th National Congress of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China emphasized the fundamental task of establishing morality and cultivating talents. Cultivating socialist builders and successors with comprehensive development of moral, intellectual, physical, art, and labor is critical to China’s future. Morality establishment and talent cultivation needs to take the morality of teachers as first and imparting knowledge as the last. The moral quality and professional sentiments of postgraduate tutors in colleges and universities directly affect students’ world outlook, outlook on life, values and the development of a good lifestyle, and it determines the quality of all-round development talents cultivated and is related to the realization of the dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Therefore, postgraduate tutors in colleges and universities must first establish teacher ethics, and only in this way can they shoulder the educational mission of establishing morality and cultivating talents entrusted by the state and realize the goal of education.

As early as in 1934, the organizers of the Northwest Agricultural and Forestry College left their expectations for the posterity: "To govern the county and the people, the first priority is to promote moral education"[1]. In the new era, in the context of poverty alleviation and rural modernization, higher education in agriculture and forestry is promising. How to cultivate high-quality agricultural and forestry professionals and build a good academic environment is the task faced by agricultural and forestry universities and postgraduate tutors. Therefore, how do postgraduate tutors of agricultural and forestry universities uphold the spirit of "down to earth, serving the country and the people" and forge ahead in the aspect of establishing morality and cultivating people has become an important proposition for the cultivation of postgraduate students in the new era.

3 Unethical and dishonest performance of postgraduate tutors in colleges and universities

At present, the tutor first responsibility system is generally adopted in the training of postgraduate students in China’s colleges and universities. This requires tutors not only to focus on the cultivation of students’ academic research capabilities, but also to pay attention to the students’ mental dynamics, physical and mental health,etc., and comprehensive guidance and education should be given to students. Under these circumstances, while having great rights, tutors also bear heavy responsibilities. "Some tutors abuse their power and ask students to work for themselves and make profits under the threat of not letting them graduate"[2]. In addition to academics, some tutors deduct financially, interfere emotionally, and even sexually harass students. Some students are too stressed and overwhelmed, so they drop out of school and even commit suicide. Therefore, postgraduate tutors must maintain good morals at all times, in order to avoid teaching accidents to a certain extent, and finally train students to develop in an all-round way.

In recent years, with the gradual improvement of China’s scientific research level and mass education level, scientific research results have emerged one after another. While enhancing academic influence, good scientific research results also encourage the general public to further understand the current scientific research trends and improve people’s wisdom. With the general concern of the social vision, in addition to fruitful new scientific research results, some universities have also shown "academic misconduct" hidden under the cloak of scientific research[3]. Academic morality is the primary prerequisite for scholars to conduct scientific research, and is a necessary quality to be a teacher. However, looking at the current entire academic world, academic misconduct by graduate tutors is not uncommon, which runs counter to the morality-establishing and talent-cultivating educational purpose of China. For example, in December 2018, the "pre-80s" professor Liang Ying from the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences was suspected of academic plagiarism. It reflects the disregard of "academic ethics" by individual postgraduate tutors in the scientific research process. More attention should be paid to the basic requirement of "ethics" when postgraduate tutors are exemplary. The tutor is not only the "academic teacher" for solving puzzles, but also the "teacher of virtue" for students. Therefore, the first step of "moral education" is to inspire postgraduate tutors to clarify their status and tasks in the work of "building morality and cultivating people" in postgraduate education, and to enhance their own consciousness.

With the development of economy and society, the diversified development of social value orientation, moral evaluation, material needs and lifestyle has been constantly impacting the ideology and morality of young teachers[4]. Some bad values in society also give wrong guidance to postgraduate tutors, especially some young tutors. When faced with personal and collective interests, they often lose their way. A few tutors have a relatively indifferent sense of responsibility and are keen on part-time jobs outside of school to earn extra money, putting the cart before the horse, and perfunctory to teaching and educating. Some young and middle-aged teachers are on the front line of teaching and undertake a lot of teaching and research tasks, and coupled with family burden, it is difficult for them to spare time and energy to achieve the improvement of their own moral character. Some teachers lack the awareness of "teacher", do not abide by the teaching discipline, do not prepare lessons carefully, propagate according to the text, and have a negative attitude. There are even some teachers who make random comments on the major policies of the party and the country, producing a negative impact on the growth of students.

Some doctoral supervisors and master supervisors regard themselves as so-called "bosses", and use their graduate students as cheap labor, turning the supposedly harmonious teacher-student relationship into an indifferent relationship between superiors and superiors, lacking humanistic education, and cutting off the teacher-student relationship. In recent years, from time to time, the media exposed incidents of tutors’ physical and mental abuse of students. For example, in March 2018, Tao Chongyuan, a third-year postgraduate of Wuhan University of Technology, had been oppressed by her tutor Wang Pan for a long time, and finally committed suicide by jumping off the building. What’s more, some tutors scorn the dignity of teachers and harass students, violating the teachers’ morals and style. The incidences above have a negative impact on the overall image of the teacher team in China, and produce great damage to the physical and mental health of students.

In summary, there have been many adverse events that violate teachers’ ethics and morals in China’s higher education. This is contrary to the requirements of comprehensively revitalizing the dignity of teachers and shaping the image of teachers in the new era. Therefore, how to build a team of high-quality teachers in the new era with strong political quality, superb professional ability, and superb educating level is the key to ensuring that colleges and universities achieve the morality-establishing and talent-cultivating goal of education. Agricultural and forestry colleges and universities take root at the grassroots level and serve the agriculture, rural areas and farmers, and most of them regard simplicity and hard work as the foundation of the school. In recent years, scientific research results of agricultural and forestry colleges and universities have come out frequently, forming good public opinion. This is inseparable from its good and harmonious teacher-student relationship. In the following, starting from the school-running characteristics and school rules and mottos of agricultural and forestry universities, how the postgraduate tutors of agricultural and forestry colleges and universities in China should implement the fundamental task of establishing morality and cultivating people and guide students to be positive, truth-seeking and pragmatic is analyzed in this article, with a view to putting forward referable measures for postgraduate tutors in the entire university scientific research system to enable them to better give play to the responsibility of establishing morality and cultivating people.

4 The implementation mechanism for morality-establishing and talent-cultivating responsibilities of postgraduate tutors in agricultural and forestry universities

First, postgraduate tutors must not only become the leaders of scientific research, and they should also be models for postgraduate students’ moral character. They should establish a correct world outlook, outlook on life and values. Postgraduate tutors should cultivate people with academic attainments, lead people with cutting-edge theories, impress people with moral qualities, and educate people with personality charm. A true scholar and a good tutor of agricultural and forestry colleges and universities beloved by students should establish a correct outlook on the world, life and values, and adhere to a correct outlook on education, talent and quality. In teaching and research, postgraduate tutors should firm the ideals and beliefs of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, keep abreast of the thought trends of postgraduate students, conduct regular heart-to-heart talks with students, correctly understand the development trend of the world and China, correctly understand the responsibilities of the times and historical missions, cultivate postgraduates’ patriotism and international perspectives, encourage postgraduates to study for China’s renaissance, guide the postgraduates of agricultural and forestry colleges and universities to take the road of integrating social development and industrial needs combined with professional characteristics, and serve agriculture, rural areas and farmers, thus contributing to the realization of rural revitalization.

Second, postgraduate tutors should study hard and be dedicated to their jobs to lead students with a solid scientific research attitude. Postgraduate tutors of agricultural and forestry colleges and universities should be familiar with the country and the postgraduate education policies, take teaching work seriously, adhere to advanced educational concepts, master the laws of talent training, attach importance to the frontier leadership of courses, innovate teaching models, enrich teaching methods, make efforts to carry out scientific research, insist on tracking the development trend of academic frontier, combine with the development needs of China and agriculture, rural areas, and farmers, and be brave to explore and innovate to improve the quality of scientific research. In addition, postgraduate tutors need to consciously abide by scientific research integrity and academic ethics, formulate the training plan and research direction of postgraduate students, in accordance with the concept of teaching students in accordance with their aptitude and personalized training, carry forward the fine tradition of "writing papers on the ground", and train postgraduate students’ ability of thinking, asking questions and solving problems. While guiding postgraduate students to publish high-level research results, tutors should guide postgraduate students to do a good job in the transformation and application of scientific research results.

Third, postgraduate tutors should promote the spirit of "sincerity, simplicity, diligence, and innovation", pay attention to the humanistic care for postgraduate students, and make the atmosphere of establishing morality and cultivating people become popular. Postgraduate students and their tutors study and live together in the same school for several years, which is precious. "Be a teacher for a day, be a teacher for life". Tutors are the "relatives" who know the growth experience and future career intentions of postgraduate students best. Therefore, tutors must do a good job of guiding thought while helping postgraduate students to solve practical problems, pay attention to the study, life and thought dynamics of postgraduate students, strengthen communication with postgraduate students, establish good teacher-student interaction, cultivate a healthy personality for postgraduate students, support and encourage postgraduate students from agricultural and forestry universities to participate in on-campus and off-campus practical activities, pay attention to the academic and employment pressure of postgraduate students, guide postgraduate students to make career planning, and give timely help and guidance. Agricultural and forestry colleges and universities should also incorporate teachers’ professional ideals, professional ethics, academic standards, and mental health education into the entire process of pre-employment training, admission, post-employment training and management of postgraduate tutors. At the same time, agricultural and forestry colleges and universities should establish a model of outstanding teacher ethics and style, increase the publicity of model teachers, exhibit the spiritual outlook of contemporary teachers, promote the formation of a good atmosphere of emphasizing and nurturing morality to provide a good campus culture atmosphere for postgraduate tutors to play the role of establishing morality and cultivating talents and spread positive energy, increase the introduction and publicity of advanced deeds of postgraduate tutors to the society, demonstrate the noble morality of teachers in colleges and universities, and lead the public to establish a new trend of respecting teachers and teaching.

Fourth, agricultural and forestry colleges and universities should strengthen the system construction, build a long-term mechanism for postgraduate tutors to establish morality and cultivate talents, and improve a complete set of work systems that integrate access review, education and training, supervision and assessment, rewards and punishments. First, they should improve and perfect the qualification admission system for postgraduate tutors. For example, Northwest A&F University has implemented the annual review system for postgraduate tutors. The enrollment qualifications of postgraduate tutors are reviewed annually, and in the review, the "one-vote veto system" is adopted to strengthen the inspection and evaluation of the professional ethics of postgraduate tutors. Second, they should promptly formulate and improve the professional ethics and implementation rules for postgraduate tutors to further improve education and teaching standards, academic research standards, social service standards and other supporting policies and measures, and implement the requirements of teacher morals in the daily management of postgraduate tutors. Third, the training of postgraduate tutors needs to be strengthened. Northwest A&F University organizes tutor training meetings every year, and it invites experts from inside and outside the school and representatives of outstanding tutors to train new tutors of the year in business, thinking, and teacher-student relations to enable new tutors to better assume the responsibilities. Fourth, agricultural and forestry colleges and universities should strengthen supervision, put the education of teacher ethics and style throughout the training of postgraduate tutors, give full play to the guiding and supervisory role of teacher ethics and style and normalize and institutionalize it, and guide postgraduate tutors to consciously practice the requirements of teacher ethics and style in specific educational practice activities such as education and teaching, scientific research and academic activities, and social services. Fifth, it is necessary to study and formulate scientific and reasonable evaluation methods and rewards and punishments for postgraduate tutors. The teacher’s ethics and style shall be regarded as the primary content of postgraduate tutor performance evaluation, job title evaluation, job hiring, and awards. Tutors with outstanding teacher ethics will be recognized and rewarded, and tutors who do not perform well in teacher ethics should be exhorted and urged to rectification promptly. Tutors who fail to teach morality must be dealt with seriously in accordance with laws and regulations. The evaluation files of ethics and morals of postgraduate tutors should be established and improved to effectively implement the "teacher ethics priority system."

5 Conclusions

In order to comprehensively improve China’s high-quality scientific research capabilities and promote the formation of a good scientific research atmosphere, accelerating the implementation of the morality-establishing and talent-cultivating task of postgraduate students has become the top priority of college education. Postgraduate tutors are the main body of teaching and educating people, and they are a guarantee for the orderly progress of scientific research and the healthy development of academic research. Only by emphasizing moral education can newcomers of the era who can take on the important task of "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" and new-era postgraduate students with comprehensive development of scientific research literacy and good morals be cultivated. Although some colleges and universities have some negative phenomena that violate the morality of teachers, agricultural and forestry colleges and universities, with their sincere and diligent attitude and a pragmatic academic spirit in running schools, have carried out a lot of system exploration and practice in cultivating students, restraining teachers and establishing long-term mechanism. As a result, a harmonious, orderly, and humanistic campus environment has been created. This helps to realize morality establishment and talent cultivation, promote education fairness and cultivate socialist builders and successors with comprehensive development of morality, intelligence, physical, arts, and labor, eventually meeting the requirements of postgraduate education work in the new situation to connect with national strategies and serve social development.