【Editor's Note】This article is authorized by the author himself, "Qin'an Strategy" was published exclusively on today's headline platform, reprinted from the public account "Yin Shuaijun", there are many wonderful contents, welcome to pay attention.
The other day, I posted two articles on education, one about the problem of domestic universities taking Western standards as the first standard, "From Shanghai's defense break, education colonization, and then to the withdrawal of Chinese University and Lan university from the foreign university rankings."
One is about the foolishness policy and education of the United States, "Why the United States, which is against the sky with science and technology, has become an anti-intellectual and anti-science stronghold." The latter article was also published in the state media, but I republished it two days ago and deleted it for some reason.
Today I will talk about primary and secondary education. In addition to college education, in our primary and secondary education stage, this kind of sublime and charming momentum is also very common.
Not only are the first-tier cities in Shanghai very common (why the epidemic prevention in Shanghai is so far across, which has a great relationship with this), but also many second- and third-tier cities are also very popular.
Many officials, entrepreneurs, and ordinary people like to send their children abroad to study. It is only because of this new crown that it has disrupted the study abroad plans of many families.
It can be said that in the field of education, we are seriously unconfident, not only the officials and teachers responsible for education reform are not confident, but also parents and students are very unconfident.
More than a decade ago, I also wrote a big article on this issue, "Changing educational thinking is the key to educational reform", which started from the disciplines of history, philosophy, art, natural sciences, etc., and listed excellent examples of Western countries such as the United States and France to criticize domestic education.
Today, although I often criticize the test-taking education in China, I have a lot of elaboration on this in my book "What is wrong is not us, it is the world". But my understanding today has changed dramatically from before.
The other side of Western-style education
What is American education and Western-style education? You can watch a documentary, and the general situation will be understood. This is the documentary "Are Our Children Strong Enough: Chinese Schools in Britain" created by the British BBC, which has become popular all over the online world.
BBC Three-Episode Documentary "Chinese-Style Education"
In this documentary, a British secondary school invites three Chinese teachers to teach British students.
British students are seeing Chinese education for the first time, with strict discipline, overloaded learning tasks, and what we call cramming education.
And Chinese audiences have seen the true face of British public schools as never before, free and loose students, classrooms without discipline and order, classrooms that are almost game-oriented, students with self-centeredness, and laissez-faire freedom. This freedom is very different from what we originally envisioned as Western education. It was so free. There is no discipline in freedom.
After experiencing the initial discomfort and being forced to collapse and cry by students and parents, Chinese teachers showed a Chinese style of teaching according to their talents, such as making up lessons, opening small stoves, dancing fan dances, throwing solid balls, speeches under the national flag, etc., and finally the experimental class (large class) led by Chinese teachers in the three subjects of mathematics, natural sciences, Chinese all exceeded the small classes taught by British teachers.
After the video was broadcast, it triggered a heated discussion on the Internet. Many people who once believed in British and American education began to reflect on their blind identification with Western-style education.
Can such a free, undisciplined and disorderly classroom educate good people? Students are loud and noisy in class, it is difficult to develop the ability to concentrate, affecting the entire class, not ashamed but proud, and the result of "student-centered" "happy learning" is to promote many bad problems.
After Chinese teachers used the Trump card of Chinese schools to "find parents", the parents of British students actually said that it was anti-human to not drink tea in class!
A similar film is "Danish 9th Year Z Class vs Junior Third Class 13"
WeChat can only display 3 videos. The video has a total of 4 episodes, the other 3 episodes please search for yourself
In the documentary, The City of Hoos in Denmark (9th grade class) vs 69 Lianhe Middle School in Harbin, China (junior high school class, all 15-year-old students). There are 5 PK projects: Reading Comprehension, Math, Creativity, Teamwork, and English.
The Danes feel that these tests justify the right way they are educated. However, the results showed that in these 5 rounds of competition, except for English subjects, All Chinese students won other subjects.
Reading comprehension and mathematics are easier to understand than to win these courses, because these are the strengths of Chinese students, training and memory.
In the English program, Danish students won because Danish and English belong to the same Germanic language, and some vocabulary structures are similar, that is, the pronunciation is different, so the students in Harbin in the northeast have not passed the Danish students.
Teamwork Chinese students win, but also easier to understand, because Chinese students in school are more cooperative and collectivist, so when doing a thing they are focused on the goal, while Danish children pay more attention to their own play, very individualistic, based on their own opinions, so the whole cooperation is still slightly difficult.
In terms of creativity and creative thinking, Chinese students have even won, which makes many people wonder. Hasn't the West always emphasized creative thinking and individuality?
Later, Danish teachers finally realized that the reason was that in the teaching of basic knowledge, Danish junior high school students were actually far behind. There is only innovative thinking, but no basic knowledge, and innovation is just a source of water, a wood without a root, and cannot be carried forward.
It is precisely because of this comparison of Chinese and Western education that we have seen a news. Half of primary schools in the UK will teach mathematics using the Chinese method. However, this time it was limited to mathematics education in science and engineering.
Liberal educational philosophy
Now we have questions, why the West, especially the United States, has been preaching how great their education is, why must they adopt their heuristic education, with a strong emphasis on the individual, individualistic, egocentric education.
First of all, let's first look at the main ideas of liberal education:
1. There is a strong emphasis on liberalism and individuality
For example, "Everyone is a genius, and everyone can become a president, a rich man, a star, a star." Encouraging individual success and selfishness, the subtext is the success of a few capitalists, the failure of the majority.
For example, "I am what I am, you are you, I am not you, you are not me." Attaching great importance to people's personality, ignoring people's commonalities, creating contradictions between people, and taking neighbors as enemies.
For example, "unless in an atmosphere of freedom, children can neither develop themselves nor be subjected to useful research." ”
Such views are not only very popular in the West, but also in today's Chinese cultural circles, media circles, and social opinion circles have also begun to heat up.
2. Great emphasis is placed on equality and human rights
In many public schools, you can't talk about students' grades, you can't say that students are stupid, you can't say behind your back, even if you say that students and students have different receptivity, you can't classify students, you can't talk openly about differences between students and students. Different methods cannot be used to teach different students according to their aptitude. This is something that American education strongly opposes. Because this violates the human rights of students, it is an act of discrimination, and it is necessary to respect students and treat everyone equally.
In this situation, Chinese can't help but ask, why can't we teach according to our aptitudes, why can't we give students some pressure and supervision? But this is the case in many public schools in the United States.
As a result, many of the students produced in ordinary public schools in the United States are extremely self-centered. We can also feel this when we watch many American films, many children are extremely vain, grumpy, very egotistical. The children of these schools come home early from school at three o'clock in the afternoon and play.
In this context, teachers dare not criticize students, let alone scold. Similar phenomena are increasingly emerging in today's Chinese schools, and many teachers dare not criticize students.
3. According to the concept of educational freedom, private education is very common, and the level is much higher than that of public schools
This is a point that many people overlook. The United States and other Western countries also have many more disciplined private schools and cram schools. Private school tuition in the United States is very expensive, and many Chinese in the United States send their children to private schools, or send their children to cram schools after public schools. It is not at all like the study life that we rumor in China is very relaxed, but there are many, many homework. Only many blacks and whites who can't afford high tuition do have plenty of time to play around after school.
The discipline of these private schools is still relatively strict, the learning pressure is very high, and it is not easy to keep up with the teaching speed. In addition to the learning pressure that our domestic students have to deal with, they also have a lot of social activities to do and need to excel in all aspects. The competition of many private schools is even more cruel than that of China's key middle schools, such as Eton College in the United Kingdom, Chort Rosemary High School in President Kennedy, and so on.
These private schools also use heuristic education, but why do students in these schools do better?
Because the parents of students in these schools have money, the level of education is relatively high, the method of educating children is relatively better, the children go to more cram classes when they are young, and the basic knowledge is relatively solid. With solid basic knowledge, coupled with the heuristic education of small class teachers, grades will naturally be better.
In many public schools, the education level of students' parents is not very high, the basic knowledge of children is not solid when they are young, the level of teachers in schools is not as good as that of private schools, and the school is very loose, the discipline is not strict, and the learning task is relaxed, so it leads to the knowledge level of children in many public schools and private schools.
This leads to the result that the children of the rich go to private schools and have a higher level of education. Children of the poor go to public schools and have a relatively low level of education. In this way, the division of classes and classes was quietly completed. Theories that complete this differentiation are educational equality, educational freedom, opposition to discrimination against students, "happy education", heuristic education, and so on.
What would happen if China adopted the Western model of education?
Education in our country today is also influenced by Western liberal educational ideas. Let's see what happens if we adopt this model.
I once did a survey on the educational situation of a middle school in Bijie City, Guizhou Province. The city of Bijie must be known to everyone, and last year there was a news of the suicide of 4 left-behind children in a family, which caused a national uproar. A few years ago, there was also a news that 5 children were warmed up in a garbage truck and smoked to death, which was also a national uproar. The economic development of this place is very backward.
I surveyed the math teacher at a local middle school. She told me a shocking truth.
Her school is a large school with more than 2,000 students, not a remote small school, most of the teachers are also college graduates, the teachers' education level is not bad, but the students' grades are miserable. In the first and second grade classes, the average score of the whole class in mathematics is more than 20 points, and many students are more than ten points. Most of the students also wrote the papers full, not the white papers.
She briefly introduced the situation of the students, and there were many left-behind children. Children have been grandparents since childhood (the cultural level of grandparents in the Midwest is generally relatively low), and they have not cultivated the habits and abilities of children to observe, think and understand problems independently, so in the classroom, the children's eyes are very dull, like wood.
At the same time, according to the requirements of the superiors, the school has just completed the teaching reform and absorbed many heuristic education methods. I asked the teacher for his opinion on the teaching materials and educational methods, and the teacher said that the education method of the new version of the textbook was completely unsuitable for children in the Bijie area. Why, because the basics of children are really poor. There is no way to teach heuristically.
Obviously, what will happen if we one-sidedly absorb the Western methods of liberalism and happiness education and promote them in the areas where we settle down throughout the country? Will it become the new education of the foolish people, will it lead to class division?
As mentioned earlier, private education in the West, today many private education in our country has also begun to appear. In many areas, private school teachers are paid very well, attracting many good teachers from public schools to private schools. In the long run, this will certainly lead to a much higher level of education in private schools than in public schools. This is unfair to many students and parents.
Thus, we saw a legislation by the National People's Congress prohibiting the establishment of for-profit private schools during the compulsory education stage.
Behind this legislation, in fact, there is a struggle between two ideologies and two concepts. The first is American-style, Western-style private education, where those who have no money cannot go to good schools. The second is the ideology of socialism, education must reflect fairness and justice, and can not be because there is no money to go to good schools.
Of course, we still have a lot of work to do in terms of educational reform, and there are many places where we are not doing well. But one thing is certain, that the way to let private education become bigger and stronger is certainly not in the interests of the majority of Chinese children and parents.