Jiang Xueqin. (Photo/Photo courtesy of the interviewee)
Jiang Xueqin immigrated to Canada from Guangdong with his parents when he was six years old, and as an immigrant, he never lived a happy life.
The father, who does the low-level work, is discriminated against, has a short temper, and often beats and scolds his son. At school, Jiang Xueqin's hairstyle and clothes were "dirty and slaggy", his personal hygiene was not good, and he was alienated by his classmates. He never really integrated into Canadian society and just wanted to escape.
That's why he returned to China alone as soon as he was freed many years later.
When I was young, my only hope was for ivy schools, "I want to apply to Ivy League schools, not because I know enough about those schools, in fact I don't know anything, I just want to escape from the fixed track of life, escape from my life in Canada." 」 ”
He managed to transfer to Toronto's finest public high school, commuting to and from school, reading The New Yorker or The Atlantic in crowded subway cars, joining soccer teams, organizing quiz clubs, and becoming editor-in-chief of the Colonel's newspaper. When I return home at seven o'clock in the evening, I will immediately pass out for two hours because of exhaustion, get up again to read, complete my homework, review, carry it until four o'clock in the morning, and go to sleep again because of exhaustion. I got up at eight o'clock to go to school and the cycle began.
In 1995, Jiang Xueqin was admitted to the Department of English Literature at Yale University. After graduating four years later, Jiang Xueqin returned to China alone to teach. He was only willing to deal with famous schools, and successively moved to Beijing No. 4 Middle School, Peking University Affiliated Middle School, Shenzhen Middle School and Tsinghua Affiliated High School to promote his mixed reform plans. For a long time, in the post bars of relevant schools, some people asked: When will Jiang Xueqin leave.
After leaving Peking University High School in 2012, Mr. Jiang admitted that every reform he pushed had failed. In his books Innovative Chinese Education (April 2014) and Invisible Forces: The Truth About Success, Learning, and Creativity (June 2021), he reviews his own education reform and seeks a true success for education.
It is difficult to judge whether Jiang Xueqin's reforms have failed in the end. Under the Douban short comment of "Innovative Chinese Education", some readers left a message saying that they did not understand Jiang's intentions at all, and when the reform caused great controversy, they did not understand what was going on, but just followed Jiang's arrangement and "lived a boring life". However, the reader said that after spending several years in American schools, he vaguely understood Jiang's thoughts.
After leaving three prestigious universities, Jiang Xueqin is now a researcher in the Global Education Innovation Program of the Harvard Institute of Education. On October 13, 2021, Jiang Xueqin was interviewed by a reporter from Southern Weekend to discuss a series of issues in China's education reform and innovation.
The Invisible Force: The Truth About Success, Learning, and Creativity, Chinese University Press, June 2021. (Infographic/Figure)
Southern Weekend: After graduating from Yale University, why did you teach at a middle school in China? (This option is rare.) ）
Jiang Xueqin: From January to August 1998, I worked as a foreign teacher at Beijing No. 4 Middle School. This is my first time back in China. Before, I was lonely in Canada, had no friends, was often bullied, and (later) couldn't talk to my classmates at Yale. But in China, I can be friends with many teachers and students. In fact, my father and grandfather used to be teachers. My father studied very well from an early age, from the rural examination to Jiangmen No. 1 Middle School to high school, could have become the first college student in our family, unfortunately, he graduated from high school in 1966, did not go to college, became a primary school teacher, and later became a middle school biology and mathematics teacher because of his good teaching.
Back in China, I wanted to look for students who were as talented as I was but hadn't been discovered. When I went to Beijing No. 4 Middle School as a foreign teacher, I was later admitted to Yale undergraduate program, and one of them became a tenured professor at Yale Law School. At that time, I only wanted to contact china's famous schools, and then went to Shenzhen Middle School and Peking University Affiliated High School. In 2012, after leaving Peking University High School, I suddenly found that I had failed in education.
At that time, I was superstitious that only some students in this world were talents, and the work of education was to select these students and give them the best education. Now I realize that this kind of education will only make the world more and more unfair, education more and more inward, and students more and more inferior.
Southern Weekend: Why do you feel like a failure? Is it because of the disappointment with elite education?
Jiang Xueqin: In 2008, Wang Zheng, the principal of Shenzhen Middle School, invited me to establish a special system for going abroad to train students to go to the United States to study undergraduate. After communicating with these students, I found that they may have two defects in going to the United States to read, one is that they do not read enough in English; the other is that they lack the ability to think critically and cooperate. To this end, I invited ten students who graduated from the American Ivy League school to come to the reading and discussion class, and also added some extracurricular activities, such as students running their own coffee houses and student daily newspapers. However, these modes of thinking and reform have great contradictions with the school headquarters. At that time, some people said that this was to use public resources to serve some students. After I left, many of the previous reforms were negated. (Editor's note: At that time, the students who went abroad were not in a good situation.) ）
I began to doubt elite education, and I challenged myself to take many different classes, talk shows, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, skydiving, cooking classes, to meet young people in different circles. There is an 18-year-old girl in the cooking class, who gets up at 4 o'clock every morning to exercise, goes to work at the catering company at 8 o'clock, leaves work at 5 pm, goes to cooking school at 6 o'clock, and leaves class at 10 o'clock in the evening, and truly loves cooking. I was touched by their attitude, values, and level of effort. There are many different talents in society, you can't say that this child has a high IQ and good grades, that is, talent, others are "waste", this society may be biased towards children with high IQ, but this is unfair.
Southern Weekend: You once said that Peking University Tsinghua should take the path of elite education and help Chinese society become more innovative, but at the cost of affecting educational equity. Do you still hold this view?
Jiang Xueqin: I have some changes in attitude, Peking University and Tsinghua University should not take the road of elite education, which will make society more unfair, I suggest considering turning them into academic universities and purely engaging in scientific research. They can also be asked to use their academic resources to promote social equity, such as helping weak schools develop. Top universities should be the brains of society, doing scientific research and cultivating intellectuals, rather than cultivating the "elites" and excellent "businessmen" of society. There is a certain intersection between intellectuals and social elites, but the two are better separated. If an intellectual sets the pursuit of power, wealth, and fame as a goal in life, it is bound to affect the objectivity and independence of thinking.
Fair education should meet the requirements of diversity and pluralism in society. First, education should be diversified, there should be a variety of schools, each child's interests are different, and all children cannot be measured by one standard. Second, education should be flexible, you can go to secondary school and junior college at the age of 18, and want to go to a university again at the age of 40, people's needs at different stages are different, it is inevitable that they will take some detours, and education should provide one more choice. Third, education looks at the vulnerable, taking autistic children as an example, in the West, autistic children often enjoy the best education.
Southern Weekend: In your self-description, "Three Things Yale Didn't Teach Me," you say that "students at elite universities expect success and expect immediate success," what does "immediate success" mean?
Jiang Xueqin: Students at elite universities have basically not faced the concept of failure, and it can be said that they do not want to succeed, but want to avoid failure. They worry that if they fail, the teacher will no longer praise them, the parents will not love them, and the classmates will look down on them, which is why students at elite schools often choose the safest path to success. They will make success their first goal and feel that as long as they are successful, they will have a sense of happiness. But there is a difference between success and happiness, we will think of success as having money, fame, and power, but these things do not necessarily bring happiness to people. Harvard University began tracking its students in 1938, starting the "The Grant & Glueck Study" study to observe their life development and understand who would find happiness and how. They found that the happiest Harvard alumni were not necessarily the richest, most famous, and most powerful, but had the best relationships with those around them.
"Innovative Chinese Education", Central Compilation And Publishing House, April 2014. (Infographic/Figure)
Southern Weekend: You often mention the inner volume of education, in your opinion, when did American colleges and universities start to roll up?
Jiang Xueqin: Previously, American universities were divided into three categories. The first is the so-called aristocratic schools, such as Yale University and Harvard University, which are more like clubs, allowing the children of the nobles to get to know each other and become friends. The second belongs to academic research universities, such as the University of Chicago, which imitate German universities and give scholars a relaxed research environment. The third is a state university, more like a junior college, that cultivates students' skills in agriculture and industry. With the development of the Industrial Revolution, more and more successful people in the United States graduated from scientific research universities or junior colleges, and aristocratic universities felt a sense of crisis, so they transformed into comprehensive universities and copied the functions of other schools.
30 years ago, university rankings appeared, and the ecological balance of universities was broken. If you want to succeed, people must go to the top ten universities, and Education in the United States began to roll in. I applied to Yale in 1995 and remember that the percentage of admissions was 15 to 20 percent, and this year it was only 4 to 5 percent. A late-blooming student like me wouldn't get into Yale today. Whether it is china's 985 or the American rattan school, education is becoming more and more inward-looking.
Southern Weekend: You went from rural Guangdong to Yale University and completely changed your destiny, isn't this social mobility? Is the social mobility function of education still there?
Jiang Xueqin: I think public education has three major functions. First, cultivate a sense of citizenship and social responsibility. Second, cultivate lifelong learning skills. Third, promote fair and balanced social development and help vulnerable groups. In the inner volume era, everyone is eager to go to a prestigious school, whether in China or the United States, public education has become tainted, good public schools are in a hurry to produce results, students will become utilitarian, lose curiosity and motivation to learn, and make society more unfair. This violates the principles of public education.
The cause of this phenomenon can be attributed to the market economy and the ideas behind it, such as neoliberalism. Neoliberalism believes that the market is a place of fair competition, and only by fair competition can the people of a country produce wealth most efficiently. In this mindset, universities screen out smart, efficient people who generate the most wealth, while others can be eliminated. In this way, everyone must rely on their personal redoubled efforts to compete for limited opportunities to prevent being eliminated, and naturally there will be internal papers - admission to college is not to change fate to a certain extent, but to keep yourself from being eliminated by society, in order to guarantee the bottom and meet the minimum standards set by this society, which is also a sense of fear.
Southern Weekend: You mentioned that "top universities and their selection mechanisms only emphasize external drivers, but neglect to cultivate students' sense of security", why emphasize security?
Jiang Xueqin: External drive mainly refers to the external conditions of students, such as standardized test scores and awards, and students are "forced" to pursue these results from an early age, without giving enough space for exploration, failure, and enjoyment. Security is cultivated in an open, relaxed, democratic atmosphere, and successful children under the inner volume are more or less insecure. Security is mainly closely related to intrinsic motivation, cooperative spirit, creativity, and happiness.
In 1996, my friend He Wei (American writer Peter Hessler) came to Fuling, Sichuan, China, as a teacher. He grew up feeling the love of his parents, grew up in the American countryside, has a sense of security, he became a journalist because he really likes to write, so he is not afraid of failure, not afraid of rejection, so he can insist on writing, and has completed the Chinese trilogy "Jiangcheng", "Oracle", "Finding China". In other words, I am insecure and eager to succeed, and if I am rejected once by an editor, I am likely to choose to give up.
Southern Weekend: Where does this sense of security come from?
Jiang Xueqin: Having a sense of security means that you believe that there is someone in this world who loves you unconditionally and will always support you no matter what happens. This person is your safe base. Losing your sense of security is the so-called "betrayal" of you by your safe base, most commonly, the parents from unconditional love to conditional love. For example, parents used to give their children a very inclusive and relaxed environment, and after going to school, they suddenly required their children to have excellent grades, go to a prestigious school, and compare with other children.
The sense of security is mainly derived from the family, followed by the students themselves, the school and the social evaluation standards. If a family structure is relatively stable and the relationship is harmonious, parents will convey the message of loving their children in the dialogue with their children, which is conducive to the construction of students' inner security. However, if parents pass on their negative emotions to their children, there is violence, which will cause a lack of security. In this case, it will affect the relationship between the child and himself, the school teachers and classmates. A sense of security affects your values, and values affect behavior and choices.
February 24, 2021, Dalian, Liaoning Province, a public kindergarten. (Visual China/Photo)
Southern Weekend: To pay more attention to cultivating a sense of security, how can Chinese education innovate at present?
Jiang Xueqin: I personally believe that China's education needs to promote three major reforms. First, provide high-quality nurseries. For example, in Finnish kindergartens, teachers have a bachelor's degree or above, and the fees are tiered, high-income families need to pay money, and families with financial difficulties enjoy free childcare. According to OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) statistics in 2016, Finland invests less than 1% of total investment in early childhood education in kindergartens. Second, the resources are tilted from 985 colleges and universities to vocational education. In Germany, the state and the private sector run schools together, and 1/3 of the funding of vocational schools is borne by the state and 2/3 by enterprises. The third is the establishment of a community college system. There are almost no admission standards for American community colleges, and the curriculum is flexible and suitable for young people working. If China can establish a community university, then "Peking University's most cattle security" is not an example, community colleges give everyone the opportunity to continuously improve themselves, which is to give everyone the knowledge to change the ability to change their destiny. Education in the context of the inner volume is a "threshold", and education must become a "ladder" in the future, in order to truly give everyone the opportunity to "climb up".
Southern Weekend reporter Su Youpeng Southern Weekend intern Liao Xueqin