Wang Xuming, former deputy director of a general office, director of the information office, press spokesman, and later president of the Language Publishing House, and now a "freelancer", "broke the circle" with his "language is not shocking and endless" style of speech. He once led the revision of a set of language teaching materials, advocating that the lyrics of Jay Chou's "Snail" be put into the textbook, deleting the text "Who is the most lovely person" on the grounds that "it is generally inconsistent with the current situation", accusing Fan Meizhong of 2008, believing that "we can not be noble, but we cannot allow shamelessness."
However, most people who are really familiar with and familiar with Wang Xuming think that he is frank, frank, funny, talented, ancient and hot-hearted, objective and mature. Recently, the author took the time to understand some of Wang Xuming's words and achievements, and also believed more in what Liang Guosheng, editor-in-chief of the vocational education edition of China Youth Daily, said:
"Wang Xuming gives us three enlightenments. One is to be a frank person, to say the words of sincerity in his heart, the second is that people should have a little narcissism and be able to appreciate themselves; the third is to be a hard worker, after leaving office, he wrote millions of words, wrote blogs, wrote microblogs, and actively spoke, so that there will be today's wonderful. The only regret and inadequacy is that there is too little time to spend with the family. ”
At least, I deeply admire Teacher Wang Xuming's understanding of the three aspects.
First, "reading class is not equal to language class".
Despite emphasizing the great value of ancient characters and ancient culture, Teacher Wang still believes that children cannot blindly disseminate works such as the "Three Character Classic" and "Disciple Rules".
"I don't advocate that children under the sixth grade read 'Dream of the Red Chamber', and even junior high school doesn't necessarily have to read it."
On November 25, 2019, Wang Xuming said at the "2019 Beijing Children's Reading Week Primary and Secondary School Campus Reading Seminar".
The reason for this suggestion is not that works such as "Dream of the Red Chamber" are not classics, but teacher Wang knows that children's reading should not be limited to literary reading.
As other readers have suggested, when we say reading now, it is a traditional classic, that is, a literary reading, the field is too narrow, and the text is too similar. Schools and families should help children to read and classify, in addition to reading literature, but also reading non-fiction, reading popular science, reading history, reading news... The most important purpose of preschool and children in the first to third grades is to learn to read; above the fourth grade, the focus should be shifted to learning knowledge through reading and becoming a mature reader; to junior high school and high school, it is necessary to deal with complex situations through reading; after college, it is necessary to adapt to thesis reading.
Wang Xuming has a passage that can be described as "widely publicized" and circulated widely:
"The importance of language cannot be overstated. But I think that language education has not received the attention it deserves over the years. ”
But what real language education should look like, how real students should read, many people know nothing. No matter who they are, the texts they are exposed to in this life are all kinds, and only by smoothly going down the above reading process can they always have an interest in reading in order to establish good reading habits and become lifelong readers in the future.
Second, it is more important than attaching importance to selected texts and teaching materials, and attaching importance to teachers and teaching methods.
Every time a new Language textbook is released, the media and even the streets and alleys will quarrel over what new texts have been selected and what "classics" have been deleted. Is it that after compiling a textbook, there has been real progress and even evolution in language education?
Teacher Wang Xuming once instructed his subordinates to "deceive people":
"When I was the president of the Language Publishing House, I edited a set of language textbooks. I insist that the actual content of ancient poems in this set of textbooks should account for more than 45% of the entire textbook content.
"I explained to the staff that I can only say that this proportion is 25%. Why? Because the social pressure is very high, it may be said that we are retro restoration. I was also human, and I was in office at the time, and in the face of pressure, I could only do it secretly..."
Teacher Wang believes that as soon as the language reform is mentioned, all sectors of society will immediately pay attention to the selected articles. Which text went in, which text came out, who to choose and who not to choose? Debated. In fact, my point is: don't be carried away by "this hilarity". There is no doubt that the selection of essays is important, but not the only important. While attaching importance to the selection of essays, attention should be paid to teachers and teaching methods.
In the second half of 2017, the state decided to unify a language textbook, and Teacher Wang immediately proposed that language teachers across the country should regard how to teach this language book well and teach each text well as the top priority, and stop arguing about which text should be chosen.
As far as the results of Teacher Wang's subsequent visits and investigations were concerned, this set of national language teaching materials was compiled, and the new curriculum standards were also promulgated, but the preparation was quite insufficient. It is mainly reflected in the emphasis on theory, light on practice, emphasis on research, light promotion, rewriting books, and light teaching. He sincerely and sincerely put forward his "hopes" to the relevant personnel and departments -
"The high school curriculum standards were published in 2017, and I think this standard is very good, but I don't know in which school to do it, the pilot did not, how the trial was.
"So I hope that our curriculum standards, including teaching materials, will not be busy with new ones, but will focus on application." Before the introduction of teaching materials and standards, we must test them, and we must make the results of the experiments public, so that everyone in the country knows the success or failure of this standard. In this way, the teacher can avoid it as much as possible when using it. Now we do not test, some experiments do not publish the results after the test, some publish the results only publish the good aspects, how can it be applied scientifically and effectively to teaching? ”
The third is to have more teachers approach the word "real" infinitely.
Teacher Wang likes to tell the truth, do the real thing, and be a real person. He has his own set of "teachers' views". In an interview, Wang Xuming talked about his understanding of "true teachers":
"No matter how education is changed and how it is invested, from the perspective of the development trajectory of the world, teachers are not the richest or richest people in this society, and teachers are always in the middle of the social standard of living." You can think that this is unfair, why am I worse as a teacher than the small traders who sell vegetables and rice? They all got rich. If you have such a mentality, now 360 lines, the lines are very good, you can choose to do anything else, do anything, just don't be a teacher. The motivation of the profession of teacher is not only based on money, but more importantly, on affection and love. If you don't have feelings or love for this profession, I suggest you don't do it, you have spared yourself and the children you have educated. ”
In Teacher Wang's view, a true teacher needs real feelings and love. So, is relying on affection and love the real Chinese teacher in his mind?
In the latest "micro headline", Teacher Wang is very optimistic about Teacher Wu Chunlai, a young Chinese teacher in Yongzhou, Hunan, and an important sign that he is optimistic about him is that he upholds the concept of true language, takes real language classes, and can also teach and research from primary school and junior high school classes to high school classes.
Furthermore, Teacher Wang put forward a very high request in this regard-
"I insist that a true Chinese teacher must be able to speak primary, junior and senior high school Chinese classes in accordance with the curriculum standards, and at least primary and junior Chinese classes. How many people can do it now? Now primary schools are even divided into low, middle and high sections, middle schools are divided into junior high and high school sections are the norm, and Chinese teachers who speak a certain section can only and will only talk about a certain section, which in addition to indicating that the level of language teaching has declined, there is no it. ”
I checked some of the information of teacher Wu Chunlai on the Internet, and I am indeed a talented person: a member of the China Essayists Association, the most important person in 2010 of the Chinese Language Network, known as a "talented blogger", and the second prize winner of the second national middle school Chinese teacher basic skills on-site teaching. He has published more than 40 professional papers in magazines such as "Language Teaching Newsletter", "Secondary School Language Teaching", "Language Learning", "Language Construction", "Secondary School Language Teaching Reference" and so on. He has successively edited many teaching and auxiliary materials such as "Speech Posture Expression Skills", "A Complete Book of Student Eloquence", and "Dance of the Character Spirit". Ten years of painstaking efforts, "Ten Years of Extraordinary Language Dreams: Words of Lonely Boats", was published by Tianjin Education Publishing House in March 2013, and it is worth reading.
By the way, I also noticed some of Teacher Wu's classroom records and "quotations". The classroom record does radiate a wide range, from primary school to high school, but it is too long, so let's believe it and read a few of his "quotations"——
1. In class, it is life. With the passion of the teacher to ignite the passion of the students and evoke the experience of the students' life, the Chinese classroom can realize the carnival of life. In class, it is necessary to be vivid, to be casual, to be natural, to be atmospheric, not to stick to skills, to create an aura in the classroom, so that students can be placed in the ark of life, and anything is in the spiritual ocean of literature and life.
2. Over the years of language curriculum reform, it is nothing more than to solve the problems of "what to teach" and "how to teach." As language teachers, we cannot ignore the most essential thing of language— the life characteristics of words themselves. Words are alive, and with their own unique tone and rhythm, they fully and appropriately realize the emotions and rhymes of the words; through words, we can also gain insight into the soul of the protagonist of the work. Therefore, the Chinese language class is actually a "life lesson" - using the passion of the teacher to ignite the passion of the students and arouse their life experience, only in this way can the language classroom truly realize the meaning of life.
3. Really good lessons aren't really exciting. In the classroom, I don't have any tricks, summed up only 5 'more' words, that is, more to the students, more to ask questions, more for students to show, more for students to think, more for students to discuss.
4. In the usual classroom, the teacher always ignores such students and focuses on a few students with a good foundation, but for education, they are not conscientious.
5. The college entrance examination is also testing your reading results, we read novels, to read out the incongruity, read out the doubts, read out the contradictions, now you look at the text, and what new discoveries...
However, to let all teachers reach the height of Teacher Wu Chunlai and have such ability, it is obviously not Teacher Wang's original intention, at best, it is his dream as a language person.
As Teacher Wang Xuming said:
"Ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, from Kong Shengren to Tao Xingzhi, from Plato to Dewey, they have explained the nature of education, the concept and goals of running a school very clearly and clearly, can they use the chatter of today's people like discovering a new continent?"
The silence is further enriched, and the opening becomes more and more empty. Perhaps more front-line teachers should be less chattering and more down-to-earth practice, so that, as Albert Einstein said, "Education should make what is offered to the student receive as a precious gift, not as a hard task." In this way, we can have more "charming situations" like when Teacher Wu Chunlai was in class.
"When Teacher Wu stood on the podium, there was light in his eyes, and it was a very penetrating light..."