What should I do if I fail the college entrance examination?
Tang Shangjun, a "repeater maniac" from a rural family in Guangxi, once wrote the answer. After deciding to take the 2024 college entrance examination, he wrote on Weibo on the stadium in the mountains: "Not every goal will be scored, and not every wish will be so easy to achieve. ”
Like many rural dolls, this student who had broken his halberd chose to repeat his studies again. He is just more persistent than ordinary people, he was not admitted to Tsinghua University for the first time, and he started over and over again, until 14 years have passed, and he has not "gone ashore".
Tang Shangjun is an example, but behind it is the mentality of countless repeaters.
Zhang Hui, the principal of Guangzhou Gaoshan School, has been focusing on the education of repeat students for 26 years after his retirement. She told Nanfeng Window that with the development of society and higher education, students and parents have an increasingly strong demand for repeating. It's a bunch of stupid kids, losers who are defined by stereotypes in the learning stage.
Ye Jiantao, a doctoral student at Chinese University of China, surveyed more than 2,700 repeaters based on the "China University Student Longitudinal Survey (PSCUS)". He found that among college students, there were significant differences in the probability of students from different family backgrounds being admitted to college through repeating.
As a result, "the incidence of children from disadvantaged classes being admitted to ordinary universities through repetition is higher."
In order to see the trajectory of the repeater's counterattack and the fate of rewriting, we walked into Zhang Hui's repeater institution and observed the day and night here. In the selfless learning world of "senior high school students", you will find that a good education is usually highlighted in the details, but the core is usually similar: giving individuals the opportunity to move fairly, and the hope of changing their destiny.
As 80-year-old principal Zhang Hui insisted, "I want them to find out that they are so smart." ”
Reboot
The main campus of the Alpine School is unobtrusive. On the fourth floor of an office building in Guangzhou's bustling old town, incandescent lights are usually lit late. Stepping out of the elevator, a sign reflected in the hallway of the office building: "We may not really be great, but we can have some great moments in life." ”
Every year, from June to September, it is the most crowded time for visitors. The school's activity room is full of tables and chairs, and parents are seated to ask questions. Zhang Hui remembers that some people's college entrance examination results have not yet come out, and parents and children have begun to consult about repeating.
It may not be just the candidate who wants to repeat it. She has seen many parents who "want their son to become a dragon", and after their children's college entrance examination scores, they feel a psychological gap: "Why can't my child be admitted to college? I want another chance now." "Chinese parents have a strong psychological thirst for higher education, so that the consultation rooms of alpine schools are often filled with middle-aged people with gray hair.
Sometimes it's not just the candidate himself who wants to repeat it/Source: stills from "Six Alleys Cafe".
Zhang Hui remembers a silent father many years ago. During the admissions counseling session, he barely spoke. When the crowd dispersed, he walked up to Zhang Hui and asked her, "Principal, can I cry in front of you once?"
She immediately couldn't understand the "request". Until the father burst into tears and said to her, "I also want to express that it is too difficult to raise a child now." ”
The success or failure of the college entrance examination is closely tied to family background in many pedagogical and sociological studies. Tsinghua University's "Longitudinal Study on the Learning and Development of Chinese College Students" shows that the proportion of repeat students among the "first-generation college students" who lack educational resources and family guidance is significantly higher.
The survey found that from 2011 to 2018, 19.91% of "first-generation college students" participated in repeating, while only 11.76% of "non-first-generation college students" repeated.
In 2021, a study by the Chinese University of China found that in the process of basic education, children from disadvantaged families are also at a disadvantage in the initial college entrance examination because they are in a disadvantaged position in all aspects, and the probability of obtaining higher education can only be increased through repetition.
"Exchanging time for results, this is their most helpless and optimal choice. The study said.
A student at Takayama School
Exchanging time for better grades has prompted many parents and students to embark on the road of repeating. Ding Xiangyu, who has been a class teacher in Gaoshan for five years, told me that there are several types of repeaters in Gaoshan, and a small number of them are top students who have not been admitted to the university of their dreams.
The next level is the students who have passed the undergraduate line in the college entrance examination, but have reached the public line. "This group has a more typical characteristic: overconfidence. Ding Xiangyu said. In most cases, such students seem to have mastered all the knowledge points, but they are "in a situation where they are not satisfied with a bottle of water" and their learning is not solid enough.
There are also a large number of repeat students, whose scores in the first college entrance examination are above and below the undergraduate line, and they are "poor students" in the previous school, and they can only go to three colleges.
"What these people have in common is that they don't have self-confidence. ”
I asked her how students without self-confidence could make up their minds to face another year of brutal exam preparations.
Ding Xiangyu said: "Many of them are not reconciled to the results. "The psychology of not being willing to fail has prompted the change to happen. With the mentality of living again, they decided to restart their senior year of high school in the high mountains.
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In Takayama, students' time is the most valuable – a lesson is 80 minutes long, twice as long as a traditional class. There are six days a week for classes and exams. In this office building, it's easy to see that students are walking faster than office workers.
The rhythm of the teachers is also in full swing. Ding Xiangyu, who wore black-rimmed glasses, walked quickly, turned his head and disappeared into the corridor after the interview. The countdown to the college entrance examination is 100 days, and she is also pressed for time. Some time ago, she typed out the results of more than 30 students in the class in the past six months and analyzed them one by one.
After circling each student's strengths and weaknesses, she then wrote a message on each student's report card, to the effect of: "Where are your strengths? What are your weaknesses that need to be compensated? In my mind, you are a person who can reach what heights." ”
The Alpine School has a dedicated Q&A time every day
This post-90s girl is also a teacher for the first time. In 2018, when he graduated from a university in Hunan with a major in English, Ding Xiangyu became a professional counterpart foreign trader. After only half a year, she decided to leave the foreign trade company and devote herself to the education and training industry that is more suitable for her.
But even she didn't expect that fate would be like a mistake, and she came into contact with a group of "bad students" who had never been deeply aware of when she was studying.
She confessed to me that in her first year of teaching repeaters, she was miserable and "had a hard time understanding why he/she could get such a simple math problem wrong." Sometimes, she can't help but want to lose her temper with them.
"I think back to when I was studying, we were already in a hurry if we got to this point, but [the sense of urgency] was not visible from them. ”
It wasn't until the first year of teaching and accumulating teaching experience with more seniors that Ding Xiangyu found a way to get along with repeat students.
The first step in opening the door to the heart is to see the individual.
Ding Xiangyu told me that many repeaters are ignored and silent in high school. "When I go to school, the teacher may pay the most attention to the students at the top of the grades, or the naughty people at the bottom. But the group of people who are often in the middle are the most likely to be ignored by teachers. ”
After coming to Gaoshan to repeat his studies, Ding Xiangyu wanted these children who were ignored to experience the feeling of being seen, the feeling of being pushed forward by positive incentives.
She wants to rebuild the confidence of the senior high school children as soon as school starts. And this step requires the experience and patience of the teacher.
Ding Xiangyu's method is to first set the goals for each stage for each person according to their personal characteristics. When teaching, she focuses on encouragement and praise. "When the goal is gradually achieved from low to high, slowly, they will have confidence in themselves. ”
Stills from "Black Dog".
In the face of different individuals, she hopes to open their hearts. "When I talk and communicate with individuals, I keep digging into what he thinks: what kind of school he wants to go to, what he wants to prove. Each student will have something different in their body, and after finding it, the student will be very good to carry. ”
She remembers a small child who spent two years in the mountains. Because of his parents' divorce, he has been depressed, and even fell into depression because of this, and he was unable to go out to school for several months.
On the days when he couldn't go to class, in 2021, Ding Xiangyu often called him to chat.
In the second year, what made Ding Xiangyu happy was that during the exchange, he began to "be willing to tell me everything in his heart and ask me for help." ”
She knew that the key opened the door.
The student was admitted to the university of his dreams.
The power of education
When the unwilling students meet highly sensitive teachers, the chemistry brought about by education happens quietly.
Principal Zhang Hui has been in this industry for 26 years. When Dante Xiangyu told me about her, I remembered that this old lady would send students to the college entrance examination every year with teachers. The southern sun in June was often scorching, but she remembered that the principal would stand under the sun to send the exams, and never move under the shade of the trees.
Principal Zhang Hui sent the examination site
Zhang Hui told me that this industry is an idealistic paradise, and the college entrance examination has the effect of changing the lives of others. But what she wants to give her students is the experience of living again. "The senior year of high school is not a simple repetition of a few years of high school, but makes people discover that they are not stupid children, and your ability and wisdom are suppressed. You can do it again. ”
Therefore, unlike many institutions, the head teacher here does not take on the task of teaching, but is responsible for taking the students full-time and observing the dynamics of each student. "People say I'm a fool in the education industry. What a high cost for asking the class teacher not to teach. Zhang Hui said.
At the same time, there are more frequent exams in the repetition phase. A Zhihu netizen recalled, "In Gaoshan, there are morning exercises, small exercises after lunch and evening exercises, and every Saturday to send papers down for mock exams, and in December and April, there are continuous exams for six weeks and two months respectively...... This kind of continuous exam is really hard, but I have adapted to the rhythm after going through it a few times. ”
Ding Xiangyu also admitted to me that this is a senior year of high school life with stricter management and "not so free". Students' advances and changes will be discovered by the class teacher. Some students told her that the papers she made in a week in Takayama were "almost as long as my original month or half a semester."
Rushing for time by doing questions in exchange for grades may be a helpless strategy for students in the repetition stage, as many studies say. Everything is still to squeeze the college entrance examination single-plank bridge, and people can have more non-slip shoes under their feet.
Takayama School student canteen
In 2021, the team of Ding Yanqing, an associate professor at Peking University's School of Education, pointed out in "Is it Useful to Repeat the College Entrance Examination?", taking Ningxia Province as a research sample, according to the breakpoint regression results, "the repetition rate of students within 10 points under the second line is obviously high, and there is a significant positive benefit".
In Gaoshan, what educators hope most is that with a year's struggle, students can not only reap the results, but also hope, love and courage.
A student wrote in Zhihu: "I am grateful to Gao Shan. Repetition is a difficult adventure in itself. There must be grievances, but the moment I walked out of the exam room, I reconciled with myself. At least I can be honest with everybody, 'I'm growing.'" The high mountain exam allowed me to constantly adjust my mentality in the examination room, and I was able to face any question without too much emotional fluctuations, which is my gain. ”
On March 6, 2024, representatives of Guangdong Guangzhou Daily Media Co., Ltd. (Guangdong Media) and Guangzhou Gaoshan Cultural Training School signed a contract at the Guangzhou Journalists' Country Club, and Guangbao Gaoshan School was officially organized. This is the transformation of "media + education" cross-border and in-depth integration, and jointly create the first full-time college entrance examination repeater school in Guangdong Province garden-style campus.
Aerial view of the Alpine School
Multi-purpose classrooms
It is reported that at the signing ceremony, representatives of both sides launched the renovation and construction of the new campus of Guangbao Alpine School. The new campus is located on Shanqian Tourism Avenue, Shiling Town, Huadu District, Guangzhou, and is rebuilt on the basis of Guangzhou Reporter Country Club, covering an area of nearly 50 acres and a construction area of about 20,000 square meters. After the completion of the renovation of the new campus, Guangbao Gaoshan School will form an advantageous school-running mechanism of "one school and three districts".
The career seems to be busier, and the 80-year-old Zhang Hui is still happy to do it. She can always recall that about 60 years ago, when she arrived at the normal school to report for duty, she looked up and saw a sentence on the wall:
"Dear students, congratulations on choosing the career of youth. ”
(Source: South Wind Window)