Author | Water Beijing rain
Recently, I watched a documentary "Hello, Future Mankind", one of the episodes about Chinese education, which made me feel a lot.
It tells how the "tiger mother" with Chinese characteristics brings a baby and how to find the direction in the confusion.
The story begins with a mother and son...
01
In Britain, there is a mother and son who are widely known, they are Xiaofei, the "tiger mother" from China, and her son He Jiajin.
Because of the success of a famous British competitive show "Genius Child", the 11-year-old He Jiajin became famous in the First World War.
He possessed superior memory, mental arithmetic ability and on-the-spot reflexes, and was praised as a "little genius".
However, the British media reports focused one-sidedly on He Jiajin's mother, saying that she was demanding and forced the child to be too stressed.
The British media even wrote that in everyone's stereotype, Chinese children under the education of "tiger mothers" can't do anything except cope with exams, that is, high scores and low energy.
Is this really the case?
In order to explore the truth of the facts, the director team went to Birmingham High School in the United Kingdom, where He Jiajin studied, which is the best public school in the local area, and if they want to enter, they have to go through cruel competition.
The next finding surprised everyone:
The teacher said that He Jiajin has developed very comprehensively, played rugby well, has good music, can play violin and piano, has outstanding grades, and gets along very well with his classmates.
How did such a good result come about?
It turned out that Mother Xiaofei would set a class schedule for her children separately, because she felt that the content taught in the school was too simple compared with the curriculum learned by our domestic children.
In order to check whether her son has mastered at any time, the mother has always insisted on learning with her son.
Not only that.
From a very young age, his parents set him a clear career plan and goals, which was to become a doctor.
Mother Xiaofei will strive to provide all the guidance and resources related to medicine in her son's family from childhood to adulthood.
In order to arouse his son's career ideals, he also took him to the University of Birmingham and followed the professor to do biological science experiments.
Such a payment is really not something that ordinary people can do!
02
"Parents are highly involved, is it good for their children to educate?" This is the reflection of documentary filmmaker Chen Yijia.
To this end, he approached Fabrizio Zilibotti, a prominent yale professor of economics.
Professor Fabrizio gave us a different perspective in the interview:
"In fact, parents all over the world are changing their parenting styles, and the similarity with Chinese parents' parenting styles is becoming higher and higher, and they are all moving closer to Chinese parents."
After that, the professor gave a set of data: the amount of time parents spent on parenting in various countries has continued to rise for nearly 40 years since 1987.
Documentary filmmaker Chen Yijia has been working and bringing babies in the United States for many years.
Even she had to admit: "I used to think that American children's childhoods were particularly relaxed, but now I find that in the United States, parents who want to let their children go to good schools are the same as Chinese parents, who are also worried about the same childhood." ”
Chen Yijia enrolled her 5-year-old son Beibei in the New York Talented Mother Counseling Center, and Beibei had to constantly brush up questions, do various trainings and tests under the guidance of the teacher.
Chen Yijia explained that Beibei still has one year to apply for preschool classes, and in New York, almost all children who can enter the primary school genius class have attended classes like Beibei.
Seeing this, I was overwhelmed with emotion.
It seems that the anxiety of education is the same everywhere.
Proper anxiety can be understood. However, everything is too late.
When parents push their children too much out of anxiety, when all the "help" parents give to their children is at the expense of their children's mental health, the crisis may not be far away...
03
In the documentary, what impressed me the most was that it was a game called "Chinese Parents", which simulated the growth process of children set in China.
From the moment the "baby" is born and wakes up, the game will start counting down, and there are still many rounds before the college entrance examination.
As the "parent" of the "baby", according to different ages, the player needs to arrange the child's time in each round, such as classes, entertainment, tutoring... Wait a minute.
Of course, there is a report card after a certain round, and the game ends with the "college entrance examination" as the ending.
Director Chen Yijia and "Tiger Mother" Xiaofei both participated in this simulation game.
Chen Yijia's final report card was that her child was admitted to Nanjing University.
After reading her results, Chen Yijia walked over to Xiaofei and asked her how the results were. Xiaofei, on the other hand, looked at the computer screen in surprise: the child completely collapsed because of excessive pressure.
Xiao Fei did not think at all that the children she had worked so hard to cultivate suddenly collapsed?
The game designer said: "When the game is designed, there are two values: parental satisfaction and children's stress index, these two values are mutually exclusive, and if they cannot maintain balance, they will directly game over."
This makes everyone sweat for the family: the child in the mother's game has collapsed, what will happen to the real son?
At Tsinghua University's Heart Listening Learning Center, He Jiajin conducted a space capsule test, and the results showed that Jiajin's various intelligence indicators such as spatial perception, working memory, mathematical cognition and imagination far exceeded those of his peers, and there was no shortcoming.
The only thing to worry about is that the pressure and tension on his subconscious level have also reached the top.
No one knows that one day in the future, this child may be unable to hold back...
At the end of the documentary, Xiaofei and Jiajin reach a reconciliation, and in the future life path, she will give children more freedom and room for choice.
I hope this mother can really understand: good love needs to be moderately let go.
—— End ——
Author: Shui Jingyu, a bao mom with 10 years of experience in preschool education, with professionalism and experience, accompany you to raise children! Winner of the Qingyun Project and author in the field of quality parenting. Some of the pictures are from the Internet, and the copyright belongs to the original author.