When a child can speak, he begins a long "journey" of memorizing poems. At first, it may be just that the parents try to teach him to speak more fluently, and the child will soon be able to recite "At noon on the day of hoeing, the sweat drops down to the soil", and sometimes it can be displayed in front of others as evidence of his cleverness. Gradually, parents will buy relevant reading books for their children based on their understanding of traditional culture (which is influenced by a large number of promotional articles on the Internet), as well as various audio, video or paid courses on the Internet. After entering primary school, many children will buy books that "primary school students must memorize ancient poems", and since then, they will officially connect the memorization of poems with their studies. After the middle and upper grades of primary school, the chinese textbook has added a part of the language and language, and the learning of traditional culture has become one of the key indicators that can determine the language performance.
However, most of the works in traditional Chinese culture do not take children as the main reading object, and do not take into account children's interests, reading methods and receptivity, so there are also a large number of readers in the children's book market that try to "low-grade" traditional culture, which is not enough to describe its number with dazzling. Only four masterpieces can be turned into pop-up books, comic books, picture books, pinyin books, adapted versions, audio versions, original editions, interpretation editions and other forms, as long as parents are willing to buy, children can buy one or more versions of them every year older. When parents look at this market, this market is also reminding them with massive resources that traditional culture must start from dolls. Even the most Buddhist parents have been troubled to choose which version of the idiom story.
Like any cultural concept that is constantly emphasized, traditional culture begins to carry a deeper meaning of life in the eyes of many parents. Some parents believe that learning it helps to form a Chinese national identity. Some parents believe that modern society is corrupt, but the moral discipline in traditional culture is an excellent parenting method. Some parents believe that learning it can enhance their children's cultural accomplishment, and when they grow up, they can express or discharge their inner feelings with poetry and songs in the great rivers and mountains of the motherland.
When traditional culture becomes more functional for children, parents are also easy to become the supervisors of their children's learning. In the view of Huang Xiaodan of the School of Humanities of Jiangnan University, any kind of learning or reading, as long as it can act on people's true knowledge, virtue, happiness or one of them, it is worth learning. Traditional culture is one of many cultures, and does not need to be specially independent, and children's traditional cultural learning should return to the mainstream of reading, like other readings, driven by interest.
Huang Xiaodan recently published "Tao Yuanming is also troubled: traditional culture enlightenment class for parents", because she teaches ancient literature classes at universities, she often trains primary and secondary school teachers, and also gives literary lectures for some people in government and public institutions. Many listeners are troubled by their children's learning, accusing them of not loving to read ("What if my children don't love to read the four masterpieces?"). The title of this excerpt is taken from her own long question), and she had the idea of writing a traditional culture enlightenment book for parents. She believes that the choice of traditional cultural reading books should not be "the four famous works are so famous, children must read." The classical Chinese works she recommends in the book have three commonalities: classic, interesting and child-friendly, with the aim of allowing readers to see the dynamic parts of traditional culture so that children can read them interestingly.
"Tao Yuanming is also troubled: traditional culture enlightenment lessons for parents", by Huang Xiaodan, Lefu Culture | Beijing United Publishing Co., Ltd. June 2021 edition
We also used this book as an opportunity to interview Huang Xiaodan. In the interview, we paid more attention to the confusion of parents in the choice of traditional cultural reading books, and the myths about memorization that are most discussed among parents.
There are so many adaptations of traditional cultural readings, is there any adaptation standard?
When it comes to traditional culture, some people will think of the twenty-four solar terms, some people will think of Confucian classics, and some people will think of the four masterpieces. Everyone can talk about the essence and dross of traditional culture, but it is difficult for non-professionals to clearly define it. In Huang Xiaodan's view, traditional culture is a neutral concept, broadly speaking, all cultural achievements and cultural activities before the May Fourth New Culture Movement can be called traditional culture, even including the existing Chinese territory, in ancient times by the Dongyi, Nanman, Xirong, Beidi and other ethnic minorities created by or brought about by international transportation. The scope of "traditional culture" is very large, but in our current and generally positive usage, "traditional culture" generally refers to "traditional cultural classics".
Huang Xiaodan said that after the New Culture Movement, the attitude of the academic circles toward "traditional culture" has three kinds: "total denial," "preservation of the country," and "compromise improvement." From the point of view of the "total negation" school, whether the classics are classics or not, Chinese books are best not read; from the point of view of the "compromise reform" school, it is best to find a balance between retaining traditional classical standards and adapting to modern values; while the "preservation of the country" school requires adhering to the traditional "four-part study". The dispute between these three schools is at the academic level, and what the public calls "traditional culture" today is only the most superficial part of traditional culture, and for most people, it is no more than the Analects, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Three Hundred Tang Poems, Ancient Literature Guanzhi, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West, dream of the Red Chamber, and the three Mongolian textbooks of the Three Character Classics, the Hundred Family Names, and the Thousand Character Text, and the pseudo-Mongolian textbook of disciple rules. But these ten or so books, within the scope of "traditional culture" and even "traditional cultural classics", are only a drop in the ocean.
But even with these dozen books, it is already difficult for modern people to fully understand them. This is not because the cultural level of modern people has declined. The average cultural level of modern people is far beyond that of the ancients, but the language and writing, the system of famous objects have changed in time, so whether it is the ancient classics of the East or the West, they need to be re-annotated from generation to generation in order to be understood by contemporary people.
Huang Xiaodan said that there are about three methods of interpretation used by predecessors. One is to make annotations, first annotate the original version, and then annotate the annotations, so that layer by layer of annotations, forming the order of "transmission", "annotation", "note" and "sparse", such as the famous "Mao Shi Zhengyi", which is the first round of annotations by Mao Heng of the Western Han Dynasty, called "Chuan", Zheng Xuan of the Eastern Han Dynasty made annotations on the basis of Mao Chuan, called "Notes", and Kong Yingda of the Tang Dynasty then annotated on the basis of Zheng Zhi, called "Justice". The second is translation, just as the teacher translated the text into the vernacular when we were in class. The third is a restatement, which is a creative rewrite, such as Lu Xun's "New Compilation of Stories". Through these three methods, ancient texts that people could not read were interpreted and disseminated, and future generations continued to add their own views when interpreting.
Huang Xiaodan is currently an associate professor at the School of Humanities of Jiangnan University and a master tutor. At the university, he teaches both ancient Chinese literature classes in the Chinese Department and children's literature classes in the Elementary Education Department. Fourteen Poets has been published.
There is nothing wrong with this interpretation for the sake of dissemination, but it is very different from many of the adaptations we see now. Previously, whether it was annotated, translated or restated, there were defining criteria. One definition is officially designated, and the imperial examination is also tested according to it, such as the Ming Dynasty imperial examination, which uses Zhu Xi's "Annotations on the Collection of Chapters and Sentences of the Four Books" as the standard textbook. There is also a kind of peer review by the intellectual group, such as looking at Qiu Zhao'ao's annotated "Du Gongbu Collection" and Wang Qi's annotated "Li Taibai Collection". But now it's different, and the standard now becomes traffic review. In this kind of review, whether the rewriting respects the original work, whether it is a relatively high level of intervention in knowledge, values and language beauty in the rewriting process is not important, what matters is how the marketing is done, and whether more people have seen it and heard it.
Huang Xiaodan believes that now many publishers blindly cater to the concept of traditional culture when making books, many books that look like traditional culture, in fact, the content of traditional culture is very small, after being diluted many times, just like the milk drinks we drink, milk is not much, but the taste is very good, in fact, children do not draw nutrition from it.
However, it is difficult for us to find a universal standard for traditional cultural readings, and only when two books on the same topic are brought to the experts can he know which one is talking nonsense and which one is basically correct. For parents, looking at traditional cultural books is the same as art appreciation, relying more on the connoisseur's own qualities.
Huang Xiaodan suggested that if parents have formed a set of guidelines for buying children's books by themselves and believe in their own selection vision, then there is no need to feel that their guidelines are not applicable because the book in their hands is about traditional culture. Sometimes such a popular concept as traditional culture will affect the reader's judgment, if the parent feels that the values in a "traditional culture must read" are unacceptable, the language form is not exquisite enough, the picture is ugly, and the judgment is a pastime, then he should trust his own judgment. A recognized classic should be higher than our standard for evaluating ordinary books, not that because it is a classic, it can be lower than this standard. Parents don't have to doubt their own vision, and don't think too much of themselves as laymen.
Why are some children just not interested in traditional culture?
Children's interest in traditional culture often has a lot to do with the guidance of parents. But Huang Xiaodan has also seen many examples, that is, parents are interested, and children are still not interested. She believes that this is related to the innate temperament of the child.
Huang Xiaodan said that the modern discipline system includes natural sciences, humanities, social sciences, etc., and is divided into different disciplines such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, history, geography and so on. At the beginning of the 20th century, some scholars tried to sort out the achievements of ancient Chinese culture and incorporate them into the modern academic system, but the problem is that the development logic of natural sciences and humanities is different. The natural sciences develop with iterative laws, and new achievements generally surpass and eliminate old ones. The humanities develop in a cumulative way, and new achievements do not dismiss old ones. Thus an imbalance is formed: we can still study and appreciate the literary, artistic, philosophical, and historical works of the pre-Qin and Qing dynasties, but it is unlikely that we can learn and appreciate the works of mathematics, astronomy, and geography in ancient times. Therefore, "traditional culture" is not omnipotent, and many disciplines in natural science have no counterpart in "traditional culture". They originated in modern times and can only be learned in modern ways.
Huang Xiaodan believes that people have innate temperament differences, ancient Greece has a classification of personality, and the "Big Five Personality Test" and "MTBI" developed later provide a deeper understanding of the difference in innate temperament. Therefore, some children's endowments are in literature, art, and philosophy, and these disciplines have corresponding books in the tradition, and some children's endowments are in programming, biochemistry, and physics, and these disciplines do not have corresponding books in the tradition. When the latter type of child shows no interest in "traditional culture", it is actually a lack of interest in certain disciplines.
Huang Xiaodan mentioned that those children who are interested and gifted in literature and art, they can read Shakespeare, they can also read Cao Xueqin, there is basically no obstacle to the acceptance of traditional culture Chinese the art part, and they can get many benefits. But there are also some children who feel that the world of literature, whether in the East or the West, is absurd, has no interest in the humanities, and is of course reluctant to cooperate with the study of traditional culture. Because the traditional culture that can be passed down is basically in the humanities. There is no need for parents to deliberately pursue their children's achievements in learning literature and art, and they should break the superstition that "learning traditional culture can become an elegant person".
But when Huang Xiaodan was doing training, he found that there are some adults with science and engineering backgrounds who want to seek guidance in literary and artistic appreciation, and their reason is that they feel that their feelings are not enough. Why do some people start thinking about sensitivity after gaining a certain status or achievement? Because happiness is related to feelings, analytical skills don't have much to do with it. So when they started thinking about my connection to the world, to others, to children, they turned their attention to traditional culture. If they learn traditional culture with such a need, they can notice what really makes them feel in traditional culture, rather than first considering whether the culture ranks 1st or 200th in the classics.
Therefore, regardless of whether you have a talent for the humanities, as long as you start from your own needs, it is not too late to start contacting, rather than trying to memorize the classics defined by others, it is better to activate your own feelings first and establish the connection between the classics and your own life.
With a lot of memorization, will the child really be able to recite naturally in the future when a certain emotion is deep?
Many parents believe that childhood memorization can leave memories in their lifetime, requiring children to memorize certain poems or articles whether they like it or not, Huang Xiaodan believes that this is like memorizing the entire database in order to extract information from the database in the future. But in fact, the traditional culture is vast, just take the poetry, there are more than 50,000 surviving Tang poems, more than 20,000 surviving Song poems, and 270,000 surviving Song poems. Even if you memorize all the poems in "Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty", are these 300 poems enough to cope with all the feelings of children in the future?
Huang Xiaodan said that the normal logic should be that when you have a certain feeling, someone posts the poem that is most suitable for expressing this feeling for you to see, and then you think the poem is really good and is comforted by it. It is beneficial to deliberately memorize such poems, and this memory will be more natural, deeper, and more lasting. What children need in the future is to use the database to respond to their own needs, rather than through the current forced recitation, waiting for the future to collect poems that can express their feelings in the memory database.
Huang Xiaodan said that as long as a person turns over the "Ten Thousand Tang Poems", he will eliminate his attachment to the "Three Hundred Tang Poems". A person with perceptual power and a certain level of knowledge who goes to see "Ten Thousand Tang Dynasty Sentences" can find his favorite 100 songs and will effortlessly recite them, which is a way to connect with his own feelings.
Huang Xiaodan believes that parents should have two kinds of thinking, although these two kinds of thinking may be contradictory. The first is to break the worship of the concept of traditional culture, if there is no new cultural movement, we do not know this is called tradition, everything that happens is traditional culture. The second is that parents should know how rich the content of traditional culture is, and its richness has exceeded the sum of all our modern cultures. Therefore, traditional culture is not something that can be completed by making up lessons, and no one in the world can exhaust the study of traditional literature.
Many parents hope that poetry can improve children's sensitivity, so that poetry becomes a medium for transmitting feelings between themselves and children, parents also pass on the beautiful side of the world they feel to their children by reciting for their children, Huang Xiaodan suggested that if it is for this purpose, do not use rigid recitation methods, you can try to buy traditional cultural reading books that are not so purposeful. When adults love traditional culture, children may be infected by their enthusiasm and take the initiative to understand.
Huang Xiaodan deeply felt that many children are not resistant to traditional culture, but to the narrowing of traditional culture. This narrowness limits their own sensitivity and requires them to occupy their own memory space according to the standards of others. Although the interesting and imaginative content of traditional Chinese classics is not at all inferior to that of Western classics, children have always felt that the parts are boring and too moral.
Written | Shen Chan
Edit | Wang Yi
Proofreading | Li Shihui