Don't let the child's hard work exhaust the enthusiasm for learning too early.
Huang Xiaodan
Associate Professor of the Department of Chinese of Jiangnan University, Master Supervisor, Doctor of Chinese Classical Literature of Nankai University, author of "Fourteen Poets" and "Tao Yuanming Is Also Troubled - Traditional Culture Enlightenment Lessons for Parents"
Telling an ordinary thing or even a serious thing is very interesting and fun, which is one of the characteristics of Huang Xiaodan. For example, she said, "Zhuangzi is a storybook" and "almost all of Zhuangzi's teachings are done in jokes and stories." Therefore, the "traditional culture" in the paper pile was immediately "alive" as soon as she talked about it.
Recently, Huang Xiaodan wrote a book "Tao Yuanming is also troubled - traditional culture enlightenment lessons for parents", talking about why she wants to write a book for parents, she usually has a ridiculous tone: "A few years ago, the publishing industry rose up a wave of 'for children... ' book fever, I think parents do not study, just buy books to go back to let children learn, this is very unfair." To be fair, I wrote a book for parents. ”
Jokes are jokes, in fact, Huang Xiaodan is serious.
After graduating 10 years ago, Dr. Huang Xiaodan became a teacher at Jiangnan University, teaching "children's literature" in primary education at the Department of Education. As a researcher of classical literature, she was often invited to talk about "traditional culture".
In the classroom, many people asked Huang Xiaodan questions about traditional culture education. She found that whether it is teachers or parents, there are not too many people who really know how to carry out traditional culture education or can figure out what traditional culture education is.
In the late summer of 2017, Huang Xiaodan saw a child in Shanghai who was assigned by his mother to copy "Water Margin" – the purpose was to learn Chinese studies. Huang Xiaodan was deeply "stimulated": Not to mention that "Water Margin" is generally not regarded as the content of Traditional Chinese education, even if it is a classical masterpiece suitable for children to read, is it useful to copy it down?
Seeing that too many parents mistakenly believe that they are the "overseers" of their children's learning, so that their children are struggling in "traditional culture" is very painful, Huang Xiaodan decided to open a simple introductory course for parents.
In this course, Huang Xiaodan takes the understanding of children and the understanding of children's growth as the background throughout, starting from his own childhood, combined with his own experience and profession, in view of the current parents' confusion, troubles and anxiety, trying to tell them about authentic and elegant, interesting and useful, suitable for children's "traditional culture" and related education.
Huang Xiaodan said that poetry and song are the "secret garden" of her growth, where she can gain a sense of security and privacy, and can obtain a wealth of resources - cognition, aesthetics, emotions to offset the various pressures encountered in the process of growing up.
But she didn't read only the "classics", and in her eyes, poetry and song were not much different from other readings or even newspapers. However, many years later, the contents of the newspaper have been forgotten, but the classics have been remembered.
The intersection of multiple identities allows Huang Xiaodan to talk about traditional culture in the interlude between literature and education, adults and children, and she sees this process as "an adventure of modern people in that unfamiliar tradition, and in a wonderful strange scenery along the way, what can bring back to the modern era is some stories and dreams, and a basket of dinosaur eggs that may hatch into wisdom." This egg, about reading, about literature, about parental anxiety, about children's learning and growth... She has a lot of advice for parents, but no simple answers.
China Teacher's Daily: Teacher Huang, you are a doctor of classical literature and teach at a university, why would you write a book for parents to enlighten traditional culture?
Huang Xiaodan: In the 10 years of my work, whether it is training primary and secondary school teachers or being invited by various units to give literary lectures, 80% of the audience's questions do not begin with "I", but with "my children".
Adults rarely worry about their own learning, but more for their children's learning, and see themselves as the "gold lord" and "supervisor" of their children's learning career. Other than that, they can't seem to help anyone else.
In order to make parents spend less money and promote their children's learning rather than reactively when they are "supervisors", I have to pay attention to the problem of children's traditional cultural enlightenment.
What exactly does "traditional culture" mean?
China Teacher Daily: What message do you mainly want to convey to parents?
Huang Xiaodan: What I'm talking about probably includes 4 kinds of things. One is the "traditional culture" that I learned about in my academic training in classical Chinese literature, the second is my understanding of how children grow up as an educator, the third is my understanding of their troubles after listening to the confusion of hundreds of parents, and the fourth is my memory of my childhood. Fortunately, I am a person who never contradicts "traditional culture" but does not become closed and pedantic because of it.
China Teacher's Daily: Traditional Chinese culture is a big concept, a general formulation, and sometimes there is a vague feeling. How do you define this concept?
Huang Xiaodan: First, when tradition has not yet been lost, "traditional culture" does not exist. Therefore, the existence of the word "traditional culture" means that we are looking back outside the tradition. Therefore, "traditional culture" means first of all that it is heterogeneous with the current culture.
Second, "traditional culture" means a continuation, "tradition", that is, the combination of the word "inheritance" and "unification". The original meaning of "unification" is the silk in the cocoon, the cocoon looks like a circle, pulled out and a thousand threads, but it is actually a complete silk. This silk is the essence of the cocoon, and that circle is not. Therefore, at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Confucian scholar and master of classics, Zheng Xuan, said "unification, Benye", while the Qing Dynasty text exegesis scholar and scribe Duan Yujie's "Commentary on the Interpretation of Texts and Characters" said that the unity was "extended to the name of Gangji". Therefore, "tradition" means the continuation of something essential, and "gangji" generally refers to the integration of laws, institutions, and ethics, so "tradition" means to fundamentally retain and continue the core of laws, institutions, and ethics, and believe that it is the essence of one civilization that distinguishes it from another civilization. But there is a complex relationship between the inheritance and evolution of civilization, which makes "tradition" often at the center of controversy.
Third, for ordinary people, the real past has been completely lost, and the fragments of past history only appear in the literature research and cultural relics excavations that literary and historical researchers are exposed to, and people other than professional researchers are not really interested. But ordinary people are willing to accept the history constructed by the television media and believe that we have come from a source of great splendor. Therefore, "tradition" is a utopia for them, the "antidote" to the cultural, emotional, and value problems of our time.
Fourth, for me, "traditional culture" is a concept that I use to refer to all cultural activities and cultural achievements on the land of China before the gradual study of the West and the East in modern times, even including the existing Chinese territory, created in ancient times by ethnic minorities such as barbarians and Rongdi, or brought about by international transportation. Among the ancient Chinese literatureS I studied, the Gelu poems of the Tang Dynasty and the words of the Song Dynasty were influenced by the Sanskrit phonetics of India and the Hu Le of Central and Western Asia, and the Qing Shang Le of the Central Plains, respectively. But I do not exclude them from my concept of "traditional culture".
The "must-read list" is a pool of books
China Teacher Daily: In your childhood memories, what role did "traditional culture" play?
Huang Xiaodan: I am very fortunate that when I was a child, no one ever asked me to learn anything about "traditional culture". In the 1990s, when I spent my primary and secondary school days, it was very abnormal for a child to read Tang poems and Song poems all day long, and to chant and scatter texts. The books could only be read in a hole in the classroom, confiscated if inadvertently, and used as evidence of a decline in grades or eccentricity at a parent-teacher conference.
Actually, I read everything. The roof of the toilet inside my elementary school was covered with a layer of newspaper before painting the wall powder. As the wall powder fell off over time, I read the newspaper on the roof in its entirety as I went to the toilet. But I don't remember a word of what was written in the newspaper, but I remember the classics. So the important thing is not that you have to read the classics, but that only the classics are not easy to forget.
China Teacher Daily: What "traditional culture" do you think is suitable for children? Which ones don't fit? Why?
Huang Xiaodan: As long as there is freedom and speculation in reading, there is nothing inappropriate.
I think that's true of all books. No "bad book" can brainwash people alone, and there is only one situation that can make reading harmful, and that is to allow only one kind of book to read and isolate all other books.
China Teacher's Daily: Now many schools and institutions will have "must-read books", including many classic readings, what do you think of the "must-read books"?
Huang Xiaodan: I think the controversy surrounding the "required reading list" is caused by inaccurate naming. It should not be called a "must-read list", but an "essential bibliography". It's like families need "essential medicines" but don't need uniform "must-eat medicines."
Anyone who has been a teacher knows that even if you teach the most recognized classics to the most perceptive person, there is no guarantee that all students will have an equal interest in the classics. Some people love to read Li Bai and not du Fu, and some people love to read Du Fu and do not love to read Su Shi, which is a perfectly normal thing.
I was a beneficiary of the "book series boom" of the 1980s and 1990s, because the "book series" was published according to the "bibliographic" way of thinking.
I remember when I was in elementary and middle school, when no one was instructing me to read outside the classroom, I could go to the Library of the Children's Palace to find the bibliographies I was familiar with, and then go down one by one according to Tu Suoji, looking for books that I might be interested in reading in full. But by far, less than 60 percent of the books I've ever appreciated have actually been read.
To sum up, the "bibliography" is a possible and accessible pool of books, and every child should have such a pool of books around him, but what they extract from it to read must be different, and should be allowed to be different.
Let the children learn something that the adults will taste first
China Teacher's Daily: But some classic reading materials have become intimidating in the eyes of many people, especially primary and secondary school students.
Huang Xiaodan: Don't start by reading the most classic works. One of the reasons why a classic is a classic is because it is not so shallow, it requires some learning and experience to read.
Anyone who has read a university Chinese department knows that popular novels are easier to read than classic works, modern classics are easier to read than Ming and Qing prose, Ming and Qing prose is easier to read than "Four Books and Chapters", and "Four Books and Chapters" is used to explain "Four Books", so it must be easier to read than "Four Books".
So, for a primary school student who can't even read novels, do you have to read "Four Books" at the beginning?
I have always had the most basic and least polite advice for this confusion, to let children learn something, adults taste it first, if adults also find it difficult to swallow, do not force children.
China Teacher's Daily: Is the diaphragm and rejection of traditional culture (classic reading) by students (children) closely related to the adults' rejection of these barriers?
Huang Xiaodan: I think so. If adults love classic books and understand traditional culture, children may be infected by their enthusiasm and read subtly. If adults hate traditional culture and hide classic books, children may also read because of curiosity and reverse.
The worst case scenario is that adults hate and refuse to read the classics, but ostensibly force children to learn because they hear that traditional culture is important. Children can easily feel this divisive attitude and thus lose curiosity and disgust for this learning task.
If parents themselves can be interested in a certain aspect of traditional culture, such as poetry, calligraphy and painting, music, etc., it may bring a good feeling for traditional culture for children as a whole, if parents really can't do it, then directly tell the child, I don't understand this thing, if you are interested, I will find help for you. It's also good.
China Teacher's Daily: It seems that as soon as you talk about it, the classics suddenly come alive, close to our lives, and become particularly interesting.
Huang Xiaodan: Because I am "alive". A person who talks about classics, of course, can't talk nonsense, but there is at least one bottom line requirement - can't be a classic reader who reads it himself and thinks it's very funny, and the only thing you talk about is no fun.
I have been very restrained, never adding oil and vinegar, I will tell the classics I know the truth, people are originally written so funny places... So it's already fun.
Don't let the child's hard work exhaust the enthusiasm for learning too early
China Teacher Daily: As an educator, what kind of understanding do you have about "how children grow up"?
Huang Xiaodan: Children's talents are different. It is common for children of the same age to vary greatly in their interest and understanding of different subjects, and this difference can even be significantly continued into adulthood.
But most people's IQ doesn't make much difference numerically. That is to say, most children have a seed of life of similar quality. It's just that some of the seeds are roses, and some of the seeds are ginkgo biloba.
Many of the sadness, doubts, conflicts, and failed education cases I have seen are because I have to cultivate roses with the successful experience of cultivating ginkgo biloba. On the contrary, many of the cases of relief, happiness, intimacy, and successful education I have seen are due to the discovery of cultivation methods that are less in conflict with their nature.
In the current environment, there are indeed problems such as "not losing at the starting line" at the macro level, but as far as individuals are concerned, the longer the number of years of willingness and ability to receive education (including self-education), the greater the possibility of satisfaction in economic income, social status, and life.
Therefore, how to balance the hard learning in a young age and the interest in lifelong learning, and not let the hard learning in the early years prematurely exhaust the enthusiasm for learning, has become a problem that every wise parent needs to measure.
China Teachers Daily: How are the roles of schools and teachers different from those of parents in the growth of children?
Huang Xiaodan: The teaching goals of schools are different from those of parents: schools are staged, and parents are lifelong. Therefore, schools and teachers can only think about the children's learning results in just a few years, if there is a kind of learning, it is sneaking into the night with the wind, moisturizing and silent, the initial results may be in 10 years, some schools are unlikely to do it.
But parents are more in a position to wait and find the most appropriate time. Few teachers can have the right opportunity to experience with their children "the sea is born of the bright moon, the end of the world is at this time" or "the jade step is born of white dew, the night is long invaded by the socks", but parents will have many such opportunities, but can parents "be with" their children in such a situation, feel it, talk about it, and turn it into an aesthetic experience? And aesthetic experience is often connected to the moral realm. Does a parent have the ability to present a certain moral experience to their children in an intuitive way? This is something that teachers cannot do.
Source | China Teachers Daily
Reporter | Ma Chaohong
Source: China Teachers Daily