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Flying from a county seat in Jiangsu to Denmark is the boldest decision that Jin Lingzhi, the mother of the county, has ever made. After her husband was sent on a job assignment, out of an escape from anxiety, she took her daughter to try the liberal education in Denmark, trying to find some new possibilities between different soils.
The school does not mention grades
The open campus in Hillelør, Denmark, has no towering walls or atmospheric gates, and the school building has three or four groups, only one story high. The first time I sent my daughter to school, a "shabby atmosphere" came over me: there was no 400-meter plastic track, only a cement floor with a grid painted on it for children to play "hopscotch"; there was no shortage of traditional bunkers, swings, and climbing frames.
Every day when he comes home, he takes off a coat with sticky mud spots. I suspect that instead of going to school, she went down into the mud.
My daughter told me that this was because during recess, the teacher asked them to go outdoors, even if it rained. This reminds me of the pre-school school rule that requires children to have rain boots and waterproof pants. Since then, as long as there is a little moisture on the ground, I will let my children wear rain boots and waterproof pants to school.
Pisit was my first impression of the local students. At first, He studied at a language school for half a year. Due to the lack of teachers, classrooms are often moved to the forest. The whole class gathered in the classroom and went to the forest to play literacy games and learn about leaves and flowers. Even if it is almost winter, the school often allows students to run away for a limited time in Senlili, and run as long as they can. Lower school kids like scales have started teaming up to play soccer, handball, and some like jump rope, hopscotch, and even climb trees.
Figure | The children climbed the trees in the school
"Aren't schools and parents afraid of accidents?" I urged my dad to ask my Danish colleagues quickly, and the reply I got was that it was okay. They all believe that children should take certain risks in growing up and have free medical care, and parents can also buy additional accident insurance for their children.
However, in front of hiking, this is still a small witch. In the third month of entering the language school, Weighing experienced hiking in the forest for the first time. On the eve of departure, the teacher sent a text message informing us that we would take the child on a hike in the farther forest the next day, instructing the child to wear shoes and warm clothes.
I thought: That's it? Didn't any parents question safety as much as I did? As it turned out, there really wasn't.
The next day, two homeroom teachers in their 50s drove the class of seven children to the forest. The forest is about four kilometers from the school and is overgrown with beech, and the forest is dotted with ponds, walking trails, benches and wooden houses. Weighing and classmates follow the cycling route to the campground, and go deeper to see the ancient ruins. For a child of this age, the most attractive thing is the thick trunks of trees with different falling postures, fixed stumps, large stones... These can be climbed.
In Danish forests or roadsides, where animals are found, signs can be seen, usually deer. If you're lucky, you'll still be able to run into a fox, that's what Weigh's dad said. Weighing had waited for a long time and hadn't seen one. Apart from that, Weighing was happy with everything about the hike.
In China's primary schools, travel is a very grand thing. This is a counter-statement - in order to reduce the risk of accidents for students, many schools now do not have spring and autumn excursions, and even if there are, they will disappear after a walk in the park near the school. In kindergarten, there were spring and autumn trips, but every child had at least one parent to accompany him. Here, apparently, parents don't care about this.
Two years ago, I was not very optimistic about this kind of "sheep herding" education. At that time, my husband was transferred to the Danish head office, and he could not return home several times a year, and he suggested that I take the scales to Denmark to live for two years, at least as a family reunion. I thought about it for almost a year, and finally resigned in a hurry at the end of last year and boarded a direct flight to Copenhagen with my daughter. Among the luggage were the second-grade textbooks used by my daughter and a stack of commonly used dictionaries, seven or eight extracurricular books, and a lute.
Two months after entering a public elementary school, When Weighing attends a school physical examination, the health teacher points to a group of small yellow faces and asks her which face are you in school? Hunched over, unwavering, smiling, or grinning? The scales pointed to grinning memes, and the teacher smiled and praised her for being "super."
This has also become an important indicator for schools to report to parents. At the parent-teacher conference, the teacher first pointed to the full smiley face entry and said to me: This is the child's emotions at school, obviously she likes the school and is very satisfied with her emotions, because she chose "very happy".
I quickly grasped the importance of happiness in Danish schools. In the 15-minute parent-teacher conference, the teacher showed my husband and I a self-assessment sheet for our children, including items on whether we were happy at school, whether we had good friends, whether we could eat well, and how satisfied we were with ourselves. There is no option for grades in the content.
I asked in a roundabout way: How is the child doing in class? The teacher said that he was very good and performed positively, and did not mention the word "grade" at all.
Go find the problem
Like what I've found online, there are no exams and rankings in danish primary schools. The daughter's public school is not divided into elementary and junior high schools, only grades 0 to 9. Grades 0-6 mostly have no exams, no transcripts and no outstanding student selections.
However, the first time he gained a sense of presence in school was because of his grades. After school at 2 p.m., in a soccer match against the fourth grade, my daughter and classmates were despised for their small size and rough skills, and as soon as they took the ball, they were booed by their opponents. The students pointed at her and shouted, "She is the first math in our class!" ”
Weighing is the defender in the team. That day, she became the hope of the whole team. The whole team of five or six children kept cheering "Math first!" "to boost morale.
Another thing that allows the scales to find a sense of presence is to do it by hand. In the local after-school tutoring class, Weighing Will give handicraft classes every day, which is her favorite. When I picked her up at school a few days ago, she showed me the "Cube Pikachu" she had sewn in the craft class that day, which was the inspiration she got after playing the Attack on Titan Ninja game.
She mysteriously took out the yellow "Pikachu" with a huge red tongue, and I spoke directly, jokingly telling her: This is so ugly! She ignored me and ran to the classroom with the "square Pikachu" to show it to her classmates and teachers. I stood outside the classroom and saw through the glass window that she was walking towards the teacher with Pikachu, and when the teacher saw it, he immediately told her "super!"
Figure | Pikachu made by scales
The real integration into the local education environment is at the end of the year. In November, the school convened an event for the whole school called "Child Rights Week". When I heard about the event, I thought it was a big theme — a week-long group discussion around "child rights protection" among elementary school students, and finally a poster designed together.
On the day of the presentation, I saw this poster: everyone's point of view was made into a sticky note-sized card, next to which a small rocket was drawn, and inside the small rocket was a self-portrait of everyone. In addition, half a card made of A4 paper is attached to the classroom window, which is a summary of the results of each group discussion.
Figure | Children's Rights Week poster at the Scales Class
Looking closely at the children's rights proposal on the poster, to be honest, I can't imagine how far third graders can implement such an empty theme.
What the scales say is that everyone's name should not be teased; everyone has a place of origin and has their own nationality; parents should also care more about their children after divorce.
In the group at the scales, a student proposed the "right to privacy." I asked The Scales, what do you mean by privacy? Privately, I feel that children don't understand what privacy is. The classmate told us that his parents would not allow him to close the door, and that the door must be opened at any time. But in fact, he sometimes doesn't want to leave the door open, he wants to do something of his own.
Weighing at home relayed: Some people say that my parents are divorced, then I can receive double copies of my birthday gifts, and now they only send one, but I can seriously think about seeing only one parent every day, and I suddenly feel that the gifts are not fragrant. Children whose parents are divorced are very concerned about whether their parents still love themselves after the reorganization of the family, and Weighing feels that this problem absolutely needs to be paid attention to by adults, and they must write it down and say it.
At the end, all parents and students were gathered in the open space of the school. It was already dark, and a piano was placed in the center of the clearing where children were chasing and playing on weekdays. Drizzle fell from the sky to everyone's head, and parents and children in grades one through nine gathered together, waiting for the principal's brief speech, and then singing "The Tree of Life" together.
This song has been around for a certain number of years, and I have seen adults and children in the audience singing it. Except for my husband and I, two people who didn't know Danish, stared dryly at the side. At the end of the scene, I asked my husband, who was standing next to me: Do you have any feelings? He said: Very good, think a lot.
I said: You see? So, don't always chase after your child and ask: Do you have anything on your mind? Ask, there must be a way.
Make-up classes at home
Before going abroad, I lived in a fourth-tier county town in Jiangsu. Although the competitive atmosphere here is not as good as that of first-tier cities, it is also gradually heating up.
After the epidemic, many parents have enrolled their children in online classes, some people in order to consolidate the foundation, more people are still in order to advance learning, as little as one or two, more than four or five, are eager for children to be one step ahead. Occasionally, everyone brings their children to a meeting, and it is inseparable from various intellectual quizzes. Some friends like to give children Olympic number questions, and the children who can answer them are naturally proud, and the children who can't answer them are worried. Some mothers can't help but spit behind their backs: Aren't they not going to do Olympic number classes now? Is it too anxious to let a seven- or eight-year-old child do Olympiad problems?
Competition has long since spread from the classroom to the corners of life. Some friends have complained that they go to relatives every New Year's Festival, and the topic always goes to children. "How did you go?" How many? Are you a good student? "The soul torture three times in a row is not something that can withstand every time. The elderly people in the family also had to go down one after another, picking up their children to participate in various classes and exerting their residual heat.
Even The scales are consciously pursuing one step ahead. She will often sneak into the parents' QQ group to pay attention to the mathematical knowledge points released by the teacher every day, and often go to the class QQ group to see what the excellent composition selected by the teacher is like.
I didn't buy online classes for her. I always feel that there is no need for children to spend a lot of time in primary school to brush up on problems and competition. But looking at the county seat, very few parents have done so. In the first semester of the second grade, my daughter and her classmates learned an advertising poem from a teaching and training institution and sang it to me when she came home. The lyrics are: online lessons, tutoring with apes; do exercises, go to the ape question bank; to search for questions, search for questions on small apes.
My heart clattered, and I thought of a sentence: The mantle of my town as a subject has been passed down! I suddenly found that what I was afraid of was the opposite of the chicken baby's advocacy, I was just afraid, after the child was too "chicken" too hard, all I could see was to do the problem. Is there really no other possibility?
After more than half a year of hesitation, my heart was crossed. I think that anyway, the primary school stage is still relaxed, it is better to go outside to see if there is any other way to be a parent.
My concern is the grades of danish students. I watched a documentary called "Danish 9 Year Z Class vs China Junior High School Class 13". In the film, junior high school students in the two countries performed PK. In reading, mathematics, teamwork and creativity, Denmark lost to China and won only in English. I also found that the knowledge that the scales could learn in the classroom, especially mathematics, was less difficult and dense than in China.
In order to keep the scales from falling behind after returning home, I decided decisively to give my children make up lessons at home. When she enrolled in language school, I became her governess.
During the day, after the end of his studies at school, he participated in extracurricular interest classes and went home at 3 o'clock. Before dinner, I urged her to learn Chinese and practice for 1.5 hours, do Chinese and math exercises after dinner, watch Danish or English cartoons at seven o'clock, and spend 30 minutes to 1 hour a day reading. Counting the time spent in school, the total daily study time is comparable to that in China. On Saturday, I also arranged a pipa online lesson for Wei Zhen to connect to China.
During the winter vacation in Denmark for half a month, I taught according to the textbooks sent by my family from Home. The key chapters are arranged for 5 days, such as the division vertical style of the third grade book. Some content that is closely related to life, such as kilograms and grams, can be explained by going to the supermarket. After the morning lectures, mathematical exercises are arranged in the afternoon, usually no more than 40 minutes.
The xueer thinking online class that I used to think of as an accomplice to the chicken baby has now become a fragrant feast. In the matter of teaching children to write essays, I felt that I was not too sure, and I could only turn to learning and thinking about online lessons. Every Saturday, Wei Yan will take the initiative to go online to the teacher's live broadcast room to tutor Chinese. However, since Xueersi no longer schedules classes on weekends, due to jet lag, it is impossible to catch up with the live class, and The scales will watch the replay on Saturday.
A few days ago, Weighing said to me that in Denmark, such a place without ranking, she regretted that she still wanted to be the first place. I asked: You all don't have exams, how do you get the first place?
She counted to me several aspects of the Danish students' competition: I was definitely better at math than them; I was the one who answered half the way to English class; I did the best at my craft, and what style I made, others always had to follow me.
I thought to myself, this child is still too obsessed with the first place, really a little bit poisoned by social Darwinism. So, quickly added: it doesn't matter if you can't get it. As long as you improve a little bit from yesterday, it is a victory.
- END -
Written by | Jin Lingzhi
Editor| Shi Runqiao