Recently, two new books by Wu Jun, a well-known computer scientist and Silicon Valley investor, "Wu Jun Reading and Writing Lecture Notes" and "Wu Jun's Lectures on General Mathematics", were released online. Wu Jun's sharing of dry goods is full, attracting 100,000 people to watch online.
Screenshots of live streams
Due to the popularity of the TV series "Little Shed", many people have discussed around "extracurricular tutoring classes" and "chicken babies".
Wu Jun also answered the education topic that parents are most concerned about at present: should extracurricular tutoring classes be reported? How should mathematics be learned? How should reading and writing be trained? How do students manage their time? How can I improve my grades quickly? How do parents conduct general education for their children?
Wu Jun believes that mathematics and language are two lifelong underlying abilities, as well as survival tools and the art of living for the next generation.
Why does everyone need a general education?
In Wu Jun's view, general education must be the standard of the next generation. Most people are only educated in single or overly specialized skills. No matter how much such technical education is received, it may only change from one kind of craftsman to several kinds of craftsmen.
Even if you do the same thing, the gap between the elite level and the ordinary executive level level can be several orders of magnitude. To reach the elite level, it is necessary to improve the overall quality, rather than to obtain a single skill. The most effective way to improve comprehensive quality is to receive general education.
"The only way to do that is to master something that no one else has, and now it's just that everyone is brushing up on the problem, doing some general education, which is the most missing." Wu Jun said, what factors can change fate? It is what you have, what others don't have. Society is pyramidal, and skills can be learned in college and on the Internet, but even at the best universities, they may not be able to get a good general education. So what to do? Only outside the classroom can I find a way to remedy it.
Mathematics is the way of thinking, language is the means of tool
"Is the meaning of learning mathematics to be able to do problems?" Not. Instead, it is to form mathematical thinking, to think like a mathematician. Wu Jun said that mathematics is the underlying logic of the world and the best way of thinking to deal with various things in work and life. From identifying scams to calculating mortgages when taking out loans, from upgrading resumes through primary selection to investing and managing money, piles and pieces are inseparable from mathematical thinking.
Why Math? Wu Jun believes that in the face of a complex society, emotions alone are not enough, rationality is needed, and mathematics is the best tool for training rationality. Building models of real-world problems, doing logical analysis, reasoning, and calculations are all mathematical abilities. "In the future society, if people who are not very good at mathematics, there will be some obstacles to communicating with people."
In the book "Reading and Writing", Wu Jun spends about half of the time doing a classic introduction, from Tang and Song poems, modern literature, to ancient Greek tragedies and Russian poetry, taking us into a door to the world of classic reading.
Wu Jun
He mentioned that reading and writing are one of the most important underlying general abilities we need, and that the language field in which it is located, especially the content of large languages centered on "understanding others and expressing ourselves", can benefit us more than any professional course for life. It can be said that if we only learn one course in our lifetime, it should be language, and language will also help us build a knowledge system.
What we call "language" is called "language art" in the West. No art in the world can be as closely related to life as language, and it has a very rich connotation.
How to learn mathematics, history, geography, extracurricular tutoring classes should not be reported?
In the Q&A session, a reader asked Wu Jun How to Learn Mathematics at Primary School. He said that the content of mathematics education in primary schools in our country today is deep enough, but it is not wide enough, and improving the breadth of learning can be used to cultivate students' interest in mathematics. If you only teach deeper, students will slowly lose confidence. For example, three digits multiplied by four digits, this problem to do 100, he is very familiar, but since then there is no interest in this course.
Wu Jun recalled that when he was a child, a book recommended by his teacher was Gamov's "From One to Infinity", which opened his eyes to mathematics, and the original content of mathematics can have a lot of content.
"It is important to educate a child in mathematics to broaden his understanding of mathematics." Wu Jun said that his classmates are very good at mathematics, and his parents have let him manage the accounts in the house since he was a child. The classmate will not only calculate the account, but also make a schedule to arrange how the family's approximate monthly income should be spent, and now, this classmate is investing on Wall Street.
Wu Jun also talked about how to learn the course of history, such as how to evaluate Qin Shi Huang as a person, so that students can read different materials, publish their own views, write a paper, find evidence to support their own views, this is the writing of language, but also the writing of history, and can even think that this is a scientific research.
Wu Jun's new book
To study geography, in addition to textbook knowledge, such as a trip to London, to understand why the city developed, its role in the world economy, and how culture was formed, which is also part of human geography. Therefore, it is not only necessary to read thousands of books, but also to travel thousands of miles.
Some readers asked whether extracurricular tutoring classes should be reported? Wu Jun said that whether children go to extracurricular tutoring classes or not, there is a very important one, and children must learn with the mentality that they will be the masters of society in the future. "General education is for children to be masters, not slaves."
Shared Learning Methods: How to Train Reading and Writing? How can I improve my grades quickly?
How do elementary school students train themselves in reading and writing? Wu Jun believes that the simplest way to train writing is to start with writing an observation diary and mood record, which is actually the same as sending a circle of friends.
Reading is actually a gradual process, and he suggests that parents choose magazines for their children that are suitable for reading and interested in, and at the same time, they should also read classic literary works. Younger children should read some picture books. In addition, not only after reading, parents should take time, such as eating, to talk to their children about the picture book they read today and what stories they told.
Wu Jun shared in the live broadcast how to let students save time and cost, using the wrong question book is a good way, the practice will be efficient, the performance will improve faster, rather than a large number of brush questions. This is a time-saving method. The second way to save time is to restrict students' use of electronics. According to statistics, only about 10% of the time spent on social networks is really communication, and the remaining 90% of the time is basically brushing gossip, chicken soup and other useless things.
Wu Jun also shared a tool that is very effective in time management - a 25-minute alarm clock. Do any thing, set up a 25-minute alarm clock, the alarm clock does not ring, can not move can not look at the phone, when able to concentrate, can be increased to 35 minutes, 45 minutes, 55 minutes, he is basically a 55 minutes alarm clock.
Talk about the topic: "education hereditary" does not exist
During the live broadcast, Wu Jun mentioned a new term: "education hereditary".
It stemmed from a question that a reader left a message for him: "The children of people who go to good schools will also continue to go to good schools, education is a new hereditary, so what about ordinary people?" ”
Wu Jun made a conclusion, "If one of your husbands and wives is a graduate of Tsinghua University or Peking University, you live in Beijing or Shanghai, you raise your children as 'chicken babies', but the probability is that he still can't surpass you, so education hereditary does not exist, which is a conclusion obtained from mathematical thinking analysis." ”
Wu Jun mentioned an analysis of his Tsinghua sister, Hao Jingfang, a well-known science fiction writer and Hugo Award winner. Hao Jingfang studied physics as an undergraduate, and used mathematical thinking to calculate the account, completely subverting the imagination.
She uses Tsinghua Peking University as an example to illustrate this problem, because in the impression of many people, Beijingers are the most likely to go to Tsinghua Peking University, because these schools have the highest proportion of enrollment in Beijing. Therefore, Hao Jingfang made an estimate, for example, Tsinghua Peking University enrolls about 8,000 people in the country every year, and about 4,000 people stay in Beijing. How many families have these 4,000 undergraduate graduates of Tsinghua Peking University formed, even if they intermarried internally, at least 2,000 families will be formed, but in fact, this is impossible, and they will certainly not form families with all the graduates of Tsinghua Peking University, and there will be outsiders who have formed 3,000 families or more. But at least, they make up 2,000 families.
2,000 families have given birth to 2,000 babies, and they will all apply to college in the future. How many people does Tsinghua Peking University recruit in Beijing every year? There are more than 600 people in total, but such families still have at least 2,000 children, which means that no matter how hard these children work, at least two-thirds of them are destined to go to school in this lifetime to be inferior to their parents, which is a certain high probability event.
"You Qingbei graduates, as long as your children stay in Beijing in the future, the school they attend is likely not Tsinghua Peking University, which is a certain high probability event, so the education hereditary system does not actually exist."
Wu Jun said that some people have cited cases like Gao Xiaosong, whose mother is Tsinghua and he is Tsinghua, and indeed there is such a case, but if there is a mathematical way of thinking, it will be found that education hereditary is not a fact.
Wu Jun
Silicon Valley investor, expert in artificial intelligence, speech recognition and Internet search, best-selling author. He is currently a visiting professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
He is the author of more than ten best-selling books such as "Top of the Tide", "The Beauty of Mathematics", "The Light of Civilization", "The Mystery of Silicon Valley", "Insight", "Pattern", "Attitude", etc., and his works have won many book awards, including the Wenjin Book Award, the China Good Book Award, and the China Excellent Publications.
Red Star News reporter | Chen Mou
Edited | Duan Xueying
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