"My friends, remember this: there are no bad weeds or people who are born evil, only bad breeders"
- Hugo, Les Misérables
The true story to be told today, although it takes place in Germany, has nothing to do with the words "elite", "high class" and "gilded", which seems to inadvertently express the true meaning of education.
The protagonist is a group of teenage children, mostly refugees or forced by life, whose families migrate to a small, little-known town in Germany, with a variety of cultural barriers and psychological problems, struggling to survive at the bottom of society.
And the class teacher with these children, Mr. Bachmann, originally studied sociology, dropped out of school, worked as a singer, engaged in sculpture...
Anyway, he is not willing to be a teacher, and the school's seriousness is not in line with the seriousness of the eight characters, is an ordinary old man who likes freedom and happiness, in order to support his family, he reluctantly did the job of a teacher, and sometimes when he encounters questions from students, he has to scratch his head: "Oh, I don't know, wait until I check it out..."
It is such a group of students who are doomed to be bad, and a teacher who looks unreliable, but it has a different spark...
Relaxation occurs in casual education
In the winter morning, students came to the classroom with sleepy eyes, there was no mountain of textbooks and homework in front of them, and the empty desktop became a good place for students to sleep back in the cage.
Mr. Bachmann casually instructed the students: if you are sleepy, you will sleep for a while, and by the way, wait for the late baby.
Ma Ya, such a kind and gentle teacher, directly made me envious!
Think about the early school we experience in life: children get up at 6 o'clock in the morning, constantly be urged to hurry up and don't grind, come to the school teachers over and over again to emphasize discipline, severely punish lateness... The last school hate can not be the same as the war, how can there be such a good thing as collective sleep?
Looking back, is the nervousness and hostility in the students' minds toward school likely related to the strictness that violates nature?
The more "excessive" in this class is yet to come.
During class time, most of the time the students sit like this:
There are half-lying horizontal and vertical ones, and the reading time can even sit on the table, lean on the sofa, drill under the table, and be happy with you.
Just put on a pair of pajamas and then a pair of slippers, just like the home relaxation time is no different.
Thinking about when I was a child, whether at home or at school, I was always required to sit up straight, and if I didn't sit well, I was punished for standing, which was really sour.
And Mr. Bachmann and his students are so casual and relaxed about the class.
In fact, class and study should have been part of ordinary normal life, and the piles and piles of small things should be carefully cut and specially taken care of, but it is easier to stimulate disgust.
In their classrooms, there are still a variety of instruments, and sometimes the class is not exciting, and Mr. Bachmann is always ready to form a band with the students to play a song.
On this day, I just sang a nice song at random, and the lyrics just happened to meet two boys who were in love...
A girl listens and shakes her head – in her perception, such things are very "disgusting and abnormal".
I have seen children talk to parents about such topics, and as soon as parents hear it, they are like enemies, and immediately instill it in their children: "This is not right, you can't do this..."
Anyway, regardless of three seven twenty-one, first implant your own biased position in the child's mind, so that the child cannot look at the problem objectively and rationally.
And what did Mr. Bachmann do?
He neither agreed with the girl's views nor criticized her ideas, but continued to ask casually:
"Why do you feel sick?" "What's the reason?" "Or did someone else tell you this disgusting?"
Whatever the values of the past, in the course of this discussion, we see a child arguing with the "only right" in his own perception.
The value of the problem lies precisely in what is triggered behind the problem, not in the problem itself.
Seeing the big from the small is the way to cultivate the child's growth mindset, rather than using a black and white truth to trap the child and stereotype the child's thinking.
This approach also permeates Mr. Bachmann's teaching activities.
For example, in the Language class, he uses the method of storytelling to intersperse the knowledge of grammar and writing, talks about the key plot, and invites everyone to discuss how the story should develop next, how the plot will advance, and the hand will create opportunities for students to use what they have learned.
In math class, he put the marked ping-pong ball into the bag and let the students line up to draw it, experience it themselves, and understand what luck is and what probability is.
In this way, Mr. Bachmann grasped a key point in education in all kinds of random small things - not judging the child, listening more, observing more, and creating a free, relaxed, and deep thinking environment for the child.
Education is one tree shaking another tree,
Rather than forced brainwashing and indoctrination
It is common for Mr. Bachmann to suddenly raise topics that cause headaches and are shrouded in the classroom, because every child is allowed to express his opinions freely.
On this day, the two students suddenly disagreed.
Boys feel that in marriage, their husbands are more difficult, they leave early and return late, and they earn money to support their families, but their wives enjoy happiness at home.
A girl was angry after hearing this, and immediately retorted: "The wife is at home to do housework, it is not easy to pull the child, if everyone can respect each other, there will not be so many things..."
Everyone has their own ideas and reasons, and talking about it again may turn into a large tearing X scene.
At this time, Mr. Bachmann intervened in time to pull the question back to the question raised by the girl herself: Where does respect come from?
After discussion, the girl gave a philosophically fascinating answer - born of love. Everyone praised it, and the boy who stood on the opposite side gladly accepted it, and the topic ended happily.
In the process of guiding students to discuss and explore the answers, Mr. Bachmann will also pay attention to not allowing students to set limits on themselves, and always use an open and inclusive mind to resolve one "dead end".
For example, when a child cries because of another child's inadvertent fault, people usually focus on comforting the crying child and ignoring the other.
And Mr. Bachmann, comforting the crying child, will also say to the girl who feels wronged because she "did not mean it": "She is not necessarily crying because of your words, maybe it is because your words remind her of other things."
"What else is going on? Ever trauma? Why? Why did I accidentally say this..."
Two children who should have been embarrassed to stop paying attention to each other in the future will think and communicate more deeply in this way, deepening their understanding and love for each other.
Like all classes, the children in this class have poor grades.
Mr. Bachmann's proposal to have good students help some of the students with bad grades was met with an outcry from jamie, a good student.
The reason for the protest is that they can't learn well on their own, what matters about me, and their own fault should be borne by themselves.
What to do? Blaming Jamie for being selfish and uncollectivist and forcing him to accept it? Or let the poor grade baby give up seeking help and work her own?
Mr. Bachmann did not say much, and guided another former "poor student" to take the initiative to share his experience of counterattack and mental journey, those difficulties, struggles, so that children who have had similar experiences have also joined in to share.
During the conversation, Jamie became more and more silent, and some of the experiences of his classmates resonated with him, and he developed a deep empathy for the "poor students" and took the initiative to accept the task of helping them improve their grades.
If there is no acceptance and understanding, no empathy, no matter how to forcibly instill brainwashing, the child cannot take the initiative from the bottom of his heart, just like forcibly giving the rooster Sammy.
True education is never about telling children the standard answers with strong authority.
As educators, we don't have to know the answers to all the questions, we just need to be a person with a heart, create an open discussion space, trigger children's continuous and in-depth thinking, and let one tree shake another tree, and a cloud push another cloud.
Something more important than grades
The story of this class was made into a documentary " Mr. Bachmann and His Students " , which won many awards.
In the shot, Mr. Bachmann gives the children a vivid lesson, and the viewer outside the camera seems to have followed a warm and profound educational lesson.
There is no grandeur, preaching sensationalism, just an ordinary daily life of a teacher and a student, but let us see the child's emotional problems, communication problems, interpersonal problems considerate, sincere and effective treatment, feel the smooth communication between the two generations.
When these problems no longer bother children, they can go light and carry out lifelong learning and continuously broaden their own life pattern with a full state of motivation.
Have Mr. Bachmann's students, all ended up with excellent grades, achieving the so-called lofty ideals?
There was a girl who did not have a good academic performance and dreamed of becoming a singer, but because of the poverty of her family, her father did not accept this "unrealistic" dream.
After learning of the situation, Mr. Bachmann chose to support the child's dream, but instead of forcibly convincing the parents, he took up the guitar to accompany the girl and invited the child's father to listen to his daughter's singing voice.
Finally, the girl's father smiled in surprise and changed his mind- it turned out that he had never known that his daughter was so talented.
There was also a child who had a sudden idea when he was about to graduate, and he wanted to be an apprentice to a barber, and Mr. Bachmann did not deny this idea, but advised him to understand the profession before making a decision, and by the way, he also pointed out that he still had the specialty of boxing, which was also a good development path.
As a class teacher, Mr. Bachmann has the KPI of student achievements on his head, and everyone has to face the anxiety and pressure of further education, but he is more inclined to patiently listen to the ideas of students and parents before giving corresponding suggestions and help, rather than blindly beating chicken blood and insisting that children take an inappropriate road.
Even if you are not happy in your heart, you still have to give the students a score...
In the last class before graduation, Mr. Bachmann held up the children's final transcripts before graduation and said movingly:
"These achievements are only temporary, it is not really you, you are very different from it. The score is not representative of you at all, it is just an image of a certain moment, recording your performance in various subjects. It doesn't matter whether you're good or bad, what's more important is that you're all great kids and young people. You are very sincere and will continue to uphold this innocence. ”
Yes, life is obstructed and long, the results on the roll are just too small a speck of dust, and there is a broader world outside.
No matter what path you choose, as long as you have a confident and healthy mindset, can dialectically look at the ups and downs of life, and learn the ability to think independently, why worry about not living your own wonderful?
Life itself, with its own upward vigor, as Hugo famously said at the beginning: there are no bad weeds or people who are born evil, only bad cultivators.