Parents of college students inquire about their children's grades every day: a college teacher's incomprehension and thinking

My nephew is a freshman at a university in Wuhan, and as his uncle and a teacher in the sociology department of a university, I instinctively wanted to peek into the interests of the parents of college students and what topics they were talking about.

At the beginning of the establishment of the group was in the middle of August last year, parents discussed with each other before the official start of school, the purchase of children's computers, mobile phones, bedding and other necessary items, and the transportation mode to the school, the school is located in Wuhan City and Hubei Province tourist check-in points, etc., some parents are relatively familiar, some are relatively unfamiliar, communicate with each other, exchange information, it is also a good thing.

But now, a semester has passed, and the biggest feeling for me is that the parents in the group talk about the most trivial matters such as children's food, clothing, daily life, etc., especially in the last half month, the children's first final exam in college is over, and they are going home during the holidays.

It is understandable that parents of junior high school students or high school students care about or value their children's grades, after all, grades are related to their children's academic status. When a child enters college, he still cares so much about his child's grades, and almost only cares about his child's grades, I think this is very abnormal. Many parents complain that their children lock the door to play games as soon as they come home from vacation, and often sleep until noon. There are even fewer who do their own laundry, help with cooking, and chat and talk with their elderly grandparents. It is not uncommon for children to stretch out their hands for clothes and open their mouths for food.

Parents only care about their children's grades, and as long as their grades are good, nothing else matters; children are the eldest young masters of the family, and the whole family serves me and regards me as the best in the family and the hope of the future.

In my opinion, this is the sadness of homeschooling. As we all know, after graduation, how well and to what extent college students develop is related to their academic performance, but it is by no means only related to their grades, but also strongly related to other factors, such as strong physique, healthy psychology, independence, logical thinking, social skills, teamwork, diligence and steadfastness, perseverance, and facing difficulties. Common sense tells us that a person who can only endorse, is only good at exams, and only gets high scores will most likely become a nerd, and there is a high probability that he will suffer all kinds of hardships after entering the society.

Parents understand the above truth, but the problem is that in front of their children, who are college students, they say one thing and do another, only ask for grades, only emphasize grades, and ignore other important and critical life experiences.

Not only college students, from kindergarten, primary school, junior high school, to high school, many children have always been the "king" of the family, from grandparents, to grandparents, to parents, everyone in the family is dedicated to children's learning and performance, and concentrates or gathers all resources to create conditions for children's learning. Even some parents with average economic conditions will choose to cut down on their own food and clothing to compress their consumption needs to the greatest extent, but they will give their children good food, good clothing, good use, all kinds of valuables, all kinds of brand-name goods, and try to give their children as much as possible, for fear that their children will not be able to raise their heads in front of other classmates. As everyone knows, some children may not know or understand that this is the result of their parents' thrift, which is all the hard-earned money of their parents, and even feels that these efforts of their parents are taken for granted and justified.

Needless to say, this is the failure of family education, hypocrisy, falsehood and comparison of values in the invisible transmission, obviously the family economic conditions are average, but let the child feel that the family is not bad, many children take it for granted that their parents are born to owe me, and my parents should pay for my study. As a child, I have a clear conscience, and I don't need much to repay my parents' nurturing kindness. In fact, this will make children develop the bad habit of gnawing at old age, and eventually become "giant babies" or "crispy" college students who have to rely on their parents for everything. As an important process of socialization, parents do not pay attention, or do not pay enough attention, and do not give children the opportunity to accept the tempering and beating of the society, parents only hope that they only read the sage books, the result is obvious, into the society, children are destined to be black-eyed, at a loss, a blank, all kinds of bad results or out of control of the situation will naturally come unexpectedly.

I have a real case around me. When she was young, she was too busy with work and neglected to accompany and educate her children, and her junior high school children were transferred to five schools within six months, and then they still had all kinds of discomfort, so what should she do? She had to send her children to study in England, which was very expensive. As a retiree, she had to scrape together and borrow money from everywhere. The problem is that the child went abroad, and he still had all kinds of discomfort, he studied several preparatory classes, and also made a girlfriend, and later, his girlfriend broke up with him, and he actually chose to go on a hunger strike; in order to so-called "relax", he reached out to his mother and asked for 200,000 yuan, saying that he wanted to buy a car, and he wanted to travel around Europe to increase his knowledge. The helpless colleague had no choice but to feel indebted to him, so he had to agree to his request.

To tell the truth, after listening to my colleague's story, I was very indignant, why would such a child spend money to give it away? What is the need to send it away? Even if he returns from school, what can he do?

Obviously, the root of the problem lies in family education, children seriously lack family education at an early age, and in the later stage, they want to make up for it moderately by paying money, and the results are very unsatisfactory.

In order to study hard and get good grades, some parents do not recommend or even strongly oppose their children falling in love during college, worrying that love will affect their studies, but when their children graduate, they require their children to be able to get married, start a family and have children immediately. Truth be told, it's pretty weird logic. Not in love, don't know how to fall in love, can't talk about feelings, how to get married, how to start a family.

In the eyes of many parents, I provide for your education and life, I give everything for you, you have to listen to me, you have to do what I say, you have to implement my ideas, they find it difficult to understand the real mentality of young people today, and they are too lazy to try to understand. If the child does not agree with their ideas, they feel that the child is rebellious and the child is disobedient.

Objectively speaking, among the current college students, there are not a few people who are afraid of marriage, clearly express that they do not get married, or marry but do not have children. At this time, if parents only use words to force or force them to go on a blind date and get married, the effect will definitely not be good.

As parents, you should make efforts in marriage and love education. For example, if you want your child to believe in the beauty of marriage and starting a family, you must let your child feel the good way of getting along with their parents and the intimate relationship between husband and wife from an early age.

On the contrary, if the children's eyes are full of parents who often do not speak and often quarrel, the father plays games when he comes home, and the mother watches videos whenever she is free, so that the normal state of the family is not to disturb each other, and there is no or little communication. Let's ask, how can such a family atmosphere make children willing and dare to believe in the so-called holiness of love and the beauty of so-called marriage?

What I mean by this is that to reduce the rate of non-marriage or refusal among young people today, parents may wish to set an example and improve the relationship between husband and wife, which may be one of the strategies to solve this problem of the times.

In addition, many children show the characteristics of "severing their parents", communicating little with their parents or other relatives and friends, or even "not talking speculatively for more than half a sentence", what is the problem?

As a parent, you are either busy with work, or busy socializing, or swiping your mobile phone, you don't care about me, you ignore me, what should I do? Of course, I seek other ways to meet my needs, one of the ways is to turn to the Internet, which is mixed, good and bad, and of course I will be deeply affected by it, whether it is positive or negative.

As a parent, if you don't play a role in my socialization process, of course the Internet will take advantage of it and replace it, "I have become a bad boy in your eyes", which is naturally a natural thing.

In this sense, bear children, bad children, disobedient children, rebellious children, to a large extent, are the absence of parents, and there is a serious problem with the parent's education style.

In short, after the child enters the university, there is a parent group, and the most discussed thing in the parent group is the child's grades, which is not normal. I think that the root cause of the abnormality lies in the problem of family education, and many parents fail in moral education, quality education, value transmission, words and deeds, etc.

• (The author is a professor of the Department of Sociology, Guangzhou University, this article is only the author's personal opinion, does not represent the position of this newspaper)

Yao Huasong

Editor-in-charge: Chen Bin