——Written to a 2012 graduate of the College of Letters of Central China Normal University
College of Liberal Arts, Central China Normal University
He Shen, an undergraduate student of the 2008 class of the College of Liberal Arts, left a message on my NetEase blog a few hours ago: "Our teacher-student relationship is also the most beautiful!" This is He Shen's real emotional reaction after reading my blog post "The Most Beautiful Teacher-Student Relationship in the World" -
"What I want to tell Mr. Dai now is that we don't grin at our teachers as much as you write, and we don't know how to respect our own teachers. I remember in 2010, when we were selecting 'My Good Mentor', we relayed to each other and called on my classmates to vote, and the first thing I did every day when I opened my computer was to check your votes, so the teacher's words 'this matter passed quickly after the excitement' were really hard for us, your die-hard fans. We students have also written a lot of articles about you, at least I have seen no less than ten on the liberal arts forum, praise you, we are not ignorant of gratitude, but you did not see it. As for the applause we 'snapped' when we listened to the class, I don't think it's more rude than the Taiwanese students to smile, but the styles of the students on both sides of the strait are different, but I feel that the applause from the bottom of my heart is the greatest affirmation of you, and what I want to tell you is that we often smile at you, maybe you just don't see it. As for what you said after class, students are carrying their school bags and leaving, and will not say thank you to you, I really dare not agree, when we listened to your class, nostalgic for your funny lectures, I have seen more than once there are students around you to ask this and that, if time permits, they will walk out of the classroom with you and watch you leave, of course, we are not used to saying thank you to the teacher after class, but it is not disrespectful to the teacher. Still back to the beginning of the article, I am now very jealous of the Students in Taiwan, you only gave them two months of classes, the students left such a deep impression on you, and we have always respected and loved you, and we have been taking your classes for so long, but we can't get even half of the treatment of Taiwanese students, which is really a bit cold. Finally, allow me to say that the teacher-student relationship between us is also the most beautiful. ”
He Shen also commented after my other essay "Human Touch": "Teacher, after you stayed in Taiwan for a few months, you went around calling on the love between teachers and students in Taiwan to be beautiful, and you have been in Huashi for almost a lifetime, is there no student worth writing about?" Isn't your relationship with The Chinese Teachers and Students the most beautiful teacher-student relationship? Have you forgotten that the person who supports you the most will always be a student of Huashi? It is recommended that the teacher also write about the teacher-student relationship of the Chinese teacher! ”
After reading He Shen's comments and comments, I was very scared -- for those sentient and righteous students, why can't I often call out their names? I'm also ashamed – how much help and inspiration have I given my students, and have enjoyed the applause and flowers that students have given me for a long time? I am also very confused - why is it "accustomed" to the applause of mainland students over the years, but very sensitive to the gratitude of Taiwanese students? He Shen's message made me think for a long time, thinking a lot...
Yes, I should "write about the teacher-student relationship of The Chinese Teacher" the most!
In fact, I don't have the qualities to be a good teacher: my voice is not crisp and loud, my speech speed is too fast and unpacked, and my Mandarin is too unsatisfactory. After returning to work at my alma mater in 1985, as soon as I stepped onto the podium, I gave a lecture to the county chiefs of the central and southern provinces, and the name of the course seemed to be "Literary Accomplishment". In the morning, I spit on the four enclaves for two consecutive lectures, and the county magistrates quietly "washed their ears and listened." By the second class, there were many school and department leaders and teaching and research department teachers in the classroom, and at first I thought that my last class had been a hit, and this time I was even more energetic to give two lectures in a row. After the class leaders, teachers and student representatives held a discussion, I realized that I was not only not a "hit", but also likely to be "a slump". After listening to two lessons, the county magistrates wrote a letter to the school authorities, asking to replace me, a young teacher with a blank head, because "they can't understand what I'm talking about." When I was in college, my classmates often made fun of my dialect, and one of my brothers also sarcastically said, "Jianye speaks Chinese like reading English, and Jianye reads English like speaking Chinese." The leader did not let me "leave class", but only asked me to learn Mandarin as soon as possible. As the notoriety of not being able to lecture spread farther and farther, I became less and less confident in my ability to take good classes. Although Mandarin has been supplemented for two consecutive years, some undergraduates in the 85th and 86th grades still complain that they "can't understand it." For two or three years at the beginning of my job, I always felt that I might have chosen the wrong line.
The class of '88 only gave me the first time to applaud the class, and that applause made me excited for several nights, and I remembered it for a long time, and more than twenty years later, I can still remember the scene and "hear" the applause at that time. I was also very impressed with my Class of '88 classmates, and if I had started a blog at that time, someone as easily agitated as me would have written a blog post. Since then, I have become more and more calm and confident in the classroom, the applause given to me by my classmates has become more and more, and I have become more and more "accustomed" to applause, and the more "habitual" I am, the more numb I am, and I regard the "extra reward" that my classmates applaud me as my own "due remuneration" - as if my lectures are really wonderful, and the applause of my classmates is "taken for granted". In fact, so far I still can't read the four voices, I still can't distinguish between curled tongues and tongues, and I still speak very quickly, but my classmates are friendly and tolerant to forgive me for these problems, and even say that I like to listen to this kind of "Dai Mandarin".
My students know how to be grateful, but I don't know how to be grateful! Usually teach students to learn to be grateful, but I only know that I am ungrateful! It's ridiculous!
This shows that I still have "the dignity of the teacher" in my bones, thinking that the teacher is the giver and the student is only the recipient, invisibly taking the role of the teacher as a giver, and feeling that the students who are given charity should be grateful. In fact, in the more than twenty years since I took the university podium, students have given me far more than I have given them, and I said at the end of my forthcoming collection of academic papers, "Literature Examination and Literary Interpretation: Self-Introduction": "Thank you to the previous students I have taught, their applause has given me confidence and happiness, and their questioning has prompted me to reflect and think." "The students' applause gave me the peak experience of my life, the students' questions prompted me to learn to think deeply, and the smiling faces of the students' youth drove away the twilight in me - it was I who should be grateful, not the students."
I have been teaching at Central China Normal University for more than twenty years, and I have only been lecturing at the "National Pingtung University of Education" in Taiwan for just over two months, and the students of the College of Literature of Central China Normal University have undoubtedly given me more applause, and not only applause, I don't know which year of students began to collect and edit "Dai Jianye Quotations" and hang these quotations on the Internet. Since 1949, Chinese mainland only the "Quotations of Chairman Mao" of the great leader, and although the students compiled the "Quotations of Dai Jianye" and were suspected of "committing treason", this was a high honor and reward for me. When the graduate students of our school voted for the "good tutor in my mind" for the first time last year, I was presiding over the postgraduate defense in the College of Letters of Guangxi Normal University, and after the defense, I swam in the Li River, and when I returned to the school, I heard that I had "won the title", and I got four or five thousand votes among more than 7,000 graduate students, and I was very surprised - there were so many science graduate students who voted for me, and I was also very excited - the students must be the highest reward for my work. However, I did not ask myself whether I deserved this honor, and I did not think about how to repay the students' love for me.
Why do you care so much about the praise of those Taiwanese students? Am I different from my students? Maybe I am just a "guest" in Taiwan, always aware of my "guest" identity, and I am particularly sensitive to the praise of my Taiwanese classmates and colleagues, which is exactly like we are warmly received in other people's homes, and we always have to thank you when we leave. It is a bit unexpected to be highly praised by students in other schools, and it seems reasonable to be complimented by students in their own units, as if students from outside schools praise themselves as their "extra grace", and students in schools praise teachers as their "due duty". This reminds me of my early years of "housework". More than thirty years ago, after graduating from high school, I returned to my hometown to "receive re-education from poor and lower-middle-class peasants", and in the process of labor, I developed feelings with a Wuhan Zhiqing, who was also interested in me, she bought wool with her own private money, and personally knitted a sweater for me, which was the first time that this was the first time that a rural child wore a sweater. In fact, there is no need to "wear" this sweater, "looking" at it I am very warm. Later, "you at the same table" became the bride of others, and I also had my own happy family, and my wife personally knitted me several sweaters with better styles more than ten years ago, but I did not have the feeling of the first time I wore it, nor did I have the gratitude of the first time. This is by no means that I prefer my girlfriend in the past, but unconsciously feel that it is "natural" for my wife to knit sweaters for herself, so naturally I do not feel how much affection for my husband when my wife knits sweaters, and over time, the love conveyed to my wife becomes very numb and dull.
The wife is under no obligation to love her husband unless he is worthy of her love; and the student is under no obligation to praise his teacher unless the teacher's work is truly worthy of their praise. Even if it is worthy of love and praise, the beloved and the praised still have to learn to reciprocate, learn to be grateful, and those who do not know how to reciprocate and be grateful will inevitably change from numbness to selfishness, and from selfishness to coldness.
I take undergraduate classes more seriously than graduate students, which may be because the undergraduate classes are too large and the class time is not flexible. In addition, I think that graduate students should learn to read on their own, not always rely on teachers to lecture, and the ancients also despised "ear science" and attached importance to "ophthalmology". But undergraduates have not yet fully started, giving classes to undergraduates is to guide them, so I have long been paying attention to the academic progress of the profession, as far as possible to absorb the latest achievements in the teaching plan, and I have a new understanding of the writer's work and immediately write it into the teaching plan. The more clumsy the work under the podium, the more dashing the performance on the podium, no matter how familiar the course, I must prepare carefully before the class, never dare to be sloppy. However, no matter how "dedicated" I am, no matter how "wonderful" my class is, this is the work I should do, the state has already paid me the corresponding remuneration, my students have no obligation to give me another applause, not to mention that I am not dedicated enough, not to mention that my class is not wonderful at all!
The most proud thing in my life is to choose to be a teacher, the happiest thing is to meet so many innocent and lovely students, and the most embarrassing thing is to not be able to call their names when I reunite with them. I remember going to a meeting in another province a few years ago, a student came to see me by bus, she said that as soon as she heard me coming, she was very excited, and it was very warm to think about my class for many years, and she also said that I had praised her, but I didn't know what her name was. At that time, I really had no self-esteem, and I really wanted to go into the hole. Speaking from the heart, I especially want to remember the name of each of my students. When I first graduated from graduate school, I was a class teacher for a year, and I can still call out many of the thirty or forty students in this class, and I can even remember their voices and smiles. But our current teaching model makes it impossible for teachers to remember their students, one is that the number of students is too large, the second is that the contact time is too short, the third is that the teacher's burden is too heavy, and the fourth is that there are too many inexplicable chores. What is even more frightening is that the current management model of the school does not encourage communication between teachers and students, and the university only values the teachers' papers, and does not care too much about their teaching attitudes, let alone whether they communicate with students. As a result, a teacher focuses only on how to write a book and rarely thinks about how to teach. I think the school should take into account teaching and scientific research, divide undergraduate students into small classes, and let professors be class teachers in each class, so as to facilitate the communication between teachers and students, and teachers and students will become unforgettable friends after a long time, which will make students be influenced by all aspects, and will also let professors maintain the vitality of life forever. I think that the university is the most beautiful place in the world, and only this kind of place can accept scholars with distinct personalities, only this kind of place can tolerate deviant remarks, and only this kind of place can have a new wave of ideas. In such a place, students can gain new knowledge from the teacher's writings, and they can communicate with the teacher face-to-face to sharpen their thinking.
The longer the contact between teachers and students, the deeper the feelings between teachers and students, which I deeply understand. Zhao Muzhen, my own recent doctoral student, followed me from master's degree to doctorate, and the best years of his life were with me. He is not only my student now, but also my friend, I hope he will succeed in his studies, and I hope that he will live happily in the future. It can be seen that there is contact between teachers and students to have feelings.
There are very few "aircraft carrier-style" universities in Taiwan, the problem of low birthrate in Taiwan society is very serious, the number of students in each grade is not large, there are only twenty or thirty students in my class, and the seven classes per week are divided into three times. Our department of Chinese of Central China Normal University is the largest department in the school, and now recruits hundreds of undergraduates every year, more than a hundred students in a class, and it takes ten minutes to click once before class, I have always felt that this is not in class, but like doing academic speeches, teachers and students can not fully interact. I felt very sad that I had taught more than twenty students, but at most I was familiar with these students, and very few could call out names. This is not an inevitable cost of university popularization, it is a problem in our teaching management, and it is also a mistake in the value orientation of schools and teachers.
It is the students who bring vitality to the school, the students who bring vitality to the teachers, and the students who make the school full of spring feelings. Now our schools should reflect deeply: What kind of learning conditions does the school provide for its students? I myself should ask myself: Have I been "educating people" or "misleading people" for a long time?
I feel ashamed of my students. Mr. He Shen, thank you! As you said, "the teacher-student relationship between us" is the most beautiful and simple feeling in the world. Because of the cold at the class reunion a few days ago, today I am still suffering from a low-grade fever, looking at the messages of He Shen on my blog, flipping through the commemorative books of the graduation of previous students, my eye circles are full of waves. The smiles, warmth, encouragement and praise of the past classmates made me feel warm, made me confident, and made my work full of passion. In this life and in this life, I will cherish it as I cherish my own life.
Chinese department class of 2008 is about to leave their alma mater, and I should thank my classmates the most. Dear students, thank you! I have taught all the students, thank you! I will definitely redouble my efforts to make myself worthy of the honor and trust you have given me!
Goodbye, students!
June 1, 2012
Cambridge Mansion Maple Residence