Six questions parents love to ask

What if my child doesn't love to learn?

What should I do if my child has poor grades?

What should I do if my child procrastinates and is sloppy and doesn't pay attention?

What if the child is disobedient and often clashes with the teacher and family?

Children are very poor in mathematics, do you want to learn Olympiad? How many grades do you need to start learning Olympiad?

Children don't love to read, don't read any books, and play with the computer and mobile phone all day.

What should I do if my child's teacher has a bad temper and can't teach?

……

In an interview with Teacher Xu Li by Sanwu Hoe, she answered some of the issues that parents often mentioned that aroused great concern.

Behind many, many "how to do", adults especially want to find a trick to "do" the child, want to dominate and control the child's life, learning, and let the child become what they expect.

Xu Li | the introduction of the guests

Xu Li is a well-known curriculum designer in China, a curriculum development consultant for schools and institutions, and a columnist.

The first Jingchu Education Master, Chutian Outstanding Teacher, the winner of the second "Whole Person Education Award" nomination award, has written "Imagination of the Future Curriculum", "The Power of Believing", "Pedagogy in Children's Books", "Education Without Accusation and Humiliation", "Nothing That Can Be Said Is Painful" and other monographs.

Pay attention to the continuing impact of innate endowments on people

1

In 2018, scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder) found that the amount of a person completing school was related to more than 1,200 genetic variants. Today, more books, theories, and expert reports mention and point to:

The impact of genes on people is more profound than we think, and may even exceed education.

If genes (i.e., people's innate endowments) really affect people more than education, then is it necessary for us to try to guide and educate children? This is where the confusion of many parents lies when the theory is proposed.

Xu Li: We emphasize the great influence of innate endowments on children's growth, not to deny the value of family education or school education to children's development.

It's just that we find that too many teachers and parents forget the innate characteristics and endowments of each child, and then think that they can make an effort to shape or create a perfect child.

By valuing the continuing influence of innate endowments on children, parents and educators will not rush to develop their children's perfect life plans and educational plans. Instead, it is more to understand the characteristics of the child, try to cooperate with the child's nature, and help the child to show himself.

Emphasizing the impact of innate endowments on people is to make families and schools realize that we cannot transgress at any time and cannot violate the laws of children's own growth.

In daily life, our understanding of children is actually a long process, and children are constantly changing, so we cannot be satisfied with what we think, nor can we be satisfied with what we know more than children.

In this regard, we also emphasize the importance of family education and school education, because our ultimate goal is to help children live independently and make independent choices and judgments through education.

Therefore, on the one hand, we recognize the great influence of innate endowments on the continued life of a person, and on the other hand, we emphasize the importance of family education and schooling. Because, if family education and schooling do not cooperate with the child's nature, imposing many "external forces" that think they are right, in fact, it destroys the child's internal strength or weakens the child's ability to develop independently.

Be a supporter of children and a collaborator of teachers

2-3

Our generation can be said to have grown up in a very experimental educational environment, and when faced with the new problems such as "language development", "natural phonics", and "Sudoku logic" required in the process of educating children today, parents often fall into a cognitive gap that cannot be started.

Even, we have to face many fresh, high-pressure educational environments and our inner conflicts with the ideal educational model of our children. In the face of repeated exercises and exams, parents collapse with their children. As parents, how should we face the conflict between children and ourselves in the real educational environment?

How to solve the conflict between the real environment and the parents' educational philosophy?

Xu Li: First of all, I understand this sense of conflict in the hearts of parents in the current educational environment. In fact, this sense of conflict is not only shared by parents, but also by education practitioners - on the one hand, everyone wants to respect the characteristics of children and let each child grow up slowly according to his own rhythm, on the other hand, there is a unified examination, or a unified evaluation of teachers' work.

Therefore, parents should regard the teacher as their collaborator, the teacher as the same person who bears this conflict and pressure as themselves, rather than thinking that the teacher thinks that it is right, we think this is wrong, so they use the power of a family to oppose the power of school or social education.

How to understand large-scale paper-and-pencil tests and repetitive exercises?

Xu Li: As education practitioners, we criticize neither exams nor exercises, we often criticize "excessive", excessive evaluation and excessive exercises are harmful.

As an inexpensive and fast method, the exam can quickly understand the mastery of a certain knowledge and skill by a large number of students. However, people with a certain degree of professional knowledge believe that paper-and-pencil tests can only test part of students' abilities, and many things, such as children's emotional development, physical coordination, collaborative communication, etc., are difficult to measure through paper-and-pencil tests.

If the exercise is valuable, then we call it "meaningful repetition." We don't think of a person doing one thing over and over again as obliterating creativity. Therefore, the exercise is not a problem, and excessive exercise will lead to the child's boredom, disgust, and even confrontation for learning, thereby reducing the child's continuous enthusiasm for learning, and in turn affecting the child's learning performance.

As parents, we should understand where the role of the exam is. What are the disadvantages? What is the point of the exercise? What are the dangers of over-practicing? Rather than a blanket opposition to all current educational practices.

For, on the one hand, we are creating, on the other hand, we are inheriting, reorganizing the meaningful experiences of the past, rather than denying all the past experiences and starting all over again.

Over-evaluation will only exacerbate the comparison between children

4

As parents, what we feel most is that from the moment a child is born, his height, weight, teething time, opening time, behavioral development, brain development, etc. are all quantified and recorded. But in reality, does a child's growth need to be quantified? What is the meaning of quantification?

Does a child's growth need to be quantified?

Xu Li: Throughout puberty and pre-adolescence (0 to 10 years earlier, 0 to 12 years later), we have always emphasized "low evaluation and low competition", especially the evaluation of children's development status and development level, and we are cautious.

Because, if this evaluation cannot help teachers and parents, it will only exacerbate the pressure of competition between children.

If the child has not really and completely shown his inner characteristics, but the adult uses "comparison" to destroy the child's sense of self-worth, hinder the child's natural display, and even let the child mistakenly think that he is not good, or learning is painful, which is very bad.

In fact, anyone who is with a child will see the differences that exist between children. Even if we don't evaluate or compare, this comparison already exists, and if we still want to strengthen it, it will only exacerbate unnecessary competition.

The robbery is the kidnapping that needs to be examined

5

We may all feel that once the "four mixed operations" began to learn in elementary school, and now a 4 and a half-year-old child needs to understand that the widespread phenomenon of advanced learning makes parents not only anxious, but also do not know how to choose? Is it really necessary for children to learn ahead?

How to view the widespread phenomenon of "advanced education"?

Xu Li: We have always thought that this kind of "advanced education" only exists in China's north, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, but it is not, it is world-wide. Even in the UK, the after-school tuition industry is a fast-growing industry.

In fact, there is a cultural consensus in the entire Chinese circle (the Chinese circle in the broad sense, even including East Asian cultural circles such as Japan and South Korea), worrying that children learn too little, thinking that children can learn, children should learn more. We live in a universality of:

First, it is always good to think that it is always good to learn a little more; second, it is good to let the child always be ahead of others and win in the competition.

Therefore, we will find that areas with better economic development, whether it is the development of the off-campus training industry or the needs of parents, are very positive and exuberant.

But we think backwards, what if we assume that this background is wrong? Is it that if a child can learn, he is suitable to learn at this age? Is it possible that the child can get ahead of the curve and get more opportunities, and he can always be a hundred steps ahead of others? Even, is the life of winning always our ideal life? Many parents also think, what if my child learns ahead of time and does not learn? What if my child still has no advantage in this advanced learning process?

Therefore, what parents want to know is not whether to learn in advance, but worry that their children will learn early and fall behind. Parents are worried that after giving so much time and energy, the child still has not become a big winner in life.

In this case, it is not enough to criticize the greed of parents, the real reason for this is related to the entire East Asian cultural background, and even our attitude towards children and children.

Such a cultural background and attitude to life prompt us to spend all our strength on children, and in the whole world, the chinese industriousness and the advantages of the Chinese in knowledge learning are very obvious.

We can choose not to change, to treat it as a place to grow, to continue to be ahead of this race, but we have to understand that this is a race that does not necessarily win, as long as we can accept defeat.

As a child rights person, I feel that it is not necessary to learn ahead, and it is enough to respect the child's original learning progress and development laws.

Because a 4-year-old can learn four mixed operations, does not mean that he is suitable. What a 4-year-old child should do is not to learn the four mixed operations, not to develop his brain, but to develop emotions and drive thinking through the movement of his hands and the movement of the body, rather than thinking and moving, but the whole body is in a state of rest.

What time is right for what to do, the child himself has his own laws of growth. Although the theory on this aspect is still in conclusion, there are already some accepted answers, for example, 4-year-old children, the best way to learn is to play freely, children learn the ability to resolve conflicts through free play, the ability to perceive thinking, the ability to understand judgment, the ability to logical reasoning, and so on, rather than completing the development of thinking in the four operations.

In fact, when parents are not anxious, they can see the strength of the child, and then, do our best to help the child show this power, rather than doing our best to eliminate the child's strength and then give him a strength of ours. You will find that it is painful to destroy this power, and when it is given new power, he cannot catch it, and they are very painful to each other.

Comprehensive development does not mean that every subject gets an A

6

How do you view your child's all-round development?

Xu Li: Gardner's multiple intelligences have inspired us that everyone is different, and every child is never required to develop in eight aspects.

The so-called all-round development of man is definitely not the eight aspects that Gardner said, or according to different theories, four, five or six points, all aspects go hand in hand, put in primary and secondary schools is both liberal arts and sciences, that is, every homework is A.

From the perspective of educators, the innate endowment we are talking about refers to the child's ability and like in a certain field, or even in a certain field, and it never means that everyone should be a perfect personality, but a balanced development in eight fields.

A person who is happy and performs well in a certain field, even if he is good at only one thing in his life, as long as he shows his full potential in it, we still think that he has been fully developed.

In the process, we find that the child has a short board, and we have to ask ourselves, "Is this really a short board, or is it just a lag?" "In fact, after puberty is an important node for us to evaluate a child.

Because, after proper education, children will show good at and like in some aspects, and in some aspects they really only know and experience.

This is something that should be accepted, not something that should be changed.

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Crescent Moon, host of wuhan youth radio FM93.6 "New Moon Reading Club" column, 2017 "Reading changes China" annual lamplighter, once won the China Broadcast Host Golden Microphone Award.