Having talked about writing, today I would like to talk about reading ancient poems. In recent years, students who have been parents have often asked me: "Teacher, my baby is five years old." Can I teach my child to read? "Teacher, what can I have my child read?" Do you want to read the Three Character Sutra or the Analects? And so on.
Under normal circumstances, I am not very much in favor of reading the Analects, and for some Mongolian works, it depends on the specific situation, what to read? How to read? Plan well. But I advocate that children be able to read earlier and memorize more ancient poems.
One. Memorizing some ancient poems earlier is good for the child's growth
A few years ago, Mr. Huang Yufeng was entrusted by the Zhonghua Bookstore to preside over the compilation of a set of traditional Chinese culture books for students to read. At a preparatory meeting for the compilation of the manuscript, an expert who spoke about traditional culture on television said: He advocated that children should read the "Four Books and Five Classics", not read any ancient poems, saying that it was useless, and that children did not understand poetry and had no interest.
He said that as far as he knew, the ancients did not read any poetry until they were eight years old. I said on the spot that I disagreed with him, and I said: "Bai Juyi was able to read at the age of three, he could recite ancient poems at the age of five or six, and there are many examples of ancient people who began to recite poems at the age of five or six. Liu Kezhuang's "Thousand Family Poems" is for children to read, and ancient Mongolian studies itself had this course. However, primary school students have not heard of reading the Four Books and Five Classics, otherwise, why would Zhang Xingjian divide students into 'Mengsheng' and 'Jingsheng' in the "Juzhong Trivia"? If children are not interested in ancient poetry, how can they be interested in the Four Books and Five Classics? "Of course the experts can't answer my questions.
China has a two-thousand-year tradition of "poetry teaching", Confucius said: "If you don't learn poetry, you can't speak." "Happy in poetry, standing in etiquette, becoming happy." Because "poetry teaching" can cultivate people's gentle and generous character. In a small way, it can be "more knowledgeable than the names of birds, animals, plants and trees", that is, more literacy and more recognition of things; in general, it can cultivate people, "the father of the things that are far away, and the things that are far away." ”
Therefore, generations have emphasized its role. Now the society is developing rapidly, everything is about efficiency, so people have become very impetuous. From primary school, a little ancient poetry is good for cultivating people's good character: from childhood to like poetry, people may also become interesting, have a more harmonious personality, and anything, plant a seedling when you are a child, grow up to become a tree.
2. Why study poetry earlier?
Some people may ask me, "Aren't you opposed to waiting for the upper hand and pulling out the seedlings to promote education?" Why do you advocate children to read poems and memorize poems? My answer is that children's thinking ability always changes from image to abstraction, so ancient Chinese Mongolian studies also begin with literacy, Bai Juyi himself said to his friend Yuan Shu: "At the age of five or six, he learned to be poetry, at the age of nine, he knew that there were jinshi, and he read in the bitter festival." ("The Book of The Nine Books of The Yuan") And the study of mathematics is generally later. Parents may wish to try, you let your four-year-old child literate, mentally normal child, will be able to do it; but you let him do math, it may be more difficult. From the perspective of modern teaching, this has a psychological basis.
Swiss psychologist Piaget's "Child Psychology" divides the psychological development of children into four major stages:
(1) Perception - the stage of movement, from birth to one and a half years old, two years old, equivalent to infancy;
(2) The pre-computing stage, from the age of two to six or seven, equivalent to the pre-school age period;
(3) The specific computing stage, from the age of six to the age of eleven or twelve, is equivalent to the beginning of school age, that is, the primary school stage;
(4) The formal arithmetic stage, from the age of eleven or twelve to the age of fourteen or fifteen, is equivalent to the middle of the school age, that is, the junior high school stage.
In the "pre-operation stage", it is easier for them to learn the image of things, and Chinese characters are a kind of hieroglyphs, with pattern beauty, and the sound, shape, and meaning are unified, so children can read and write at a very young age, even if they are illiterate, they can also read and recite poems. Instead, at this time, let them do math problems, most children may have difficulties.
Let children read poems earlier there is another reason, ancient Chinese poetry is rhythmic, whether it is read or chanted, or ups and downs, catchy, read several times, naturally remember, people's learning has the difference between "intentional memory" and "unintentional memory", the two can be combined, learning efficiency will be greatly improved. Judging from the Mongolian education in the Ming and Qing dynasties, some famous educators attach great importance to the role of "poetry teaching".
III. "When time passes and then learns, it is hard work and difficult to achieve"
Some foreign psychological works divide the learning period of people's lives, there are so-called "golden periods" and "best periods", for example, 12 to 18 years old is: "the best period", 18 to 25 years old is the "golden period", after twenty-five, back to the "best period".
Why? Because after the age of 12, the memory is strong, but the thinking judgment has not yet reached the peak; 18 to 25, the memory thinking, judgment, logical reasoning image thinking of various abilities to the peak, so it is called the "golden age". After this period, the memory will slowly deteriorate.
When I was a child, although my mental judgment was not as good as in my youth, my memory was very strong. The memories of the learning materials memorized during this period are like engraved on steel plates, while people in their forties and fifties, with age, their memory declines, and the materials they learn, like the marks painted on the beach, will soon be washed away by water. Yan Zhitui, an educator of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, said this when talking about his learning experience:
Life is small and young, spiritual patents, after growing up, thinking about loose, solid must be early education, do not lose the opportunity also. When I was seven years old, I recited the "Spiritual Light Temple Endowment", and as for today, I will not forget it for ten years; twenty years away, the scriptures I chanted will be abandoned in January, and they will be desolate.
That is to say, when he was a child, he did not forget the gifts he recited when he was old, and after twenty years, he forgot all the memorizations, and the main energy after twenty years was not concentrated. There is a saying in the "Book of Learning": "When time passes and then learns, it is diligent and difficult to achieve." "I also experienced that I was in primary and secondary school during the Cultural Revolution, and at that time, the most popular poetry was the works of Mao Zedong and Lu Xun. I can recite thirty of Mao's thirty-seven poems; Lu Xun's poems can also memorize dozens of poems, and I can still blurt them out and recite them at any time. At the end of the Cultural Revolution, I copied the entire "Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty" by hand, and I can still recite a lot. On the contrary, in order to enter graduate school, I learned English from the age of thirty-three, and I still haven't learned it, but my time has taken a lot. There are two main reasons, first, I can't remember it when I am older; second, I don't memorize the English text in whole.
Today I mainly want to explain what a child should learn at what stage, there should be an order, not to be trampled, etc., and not to miss the opportunity.
In the past few decades, some people who are superstitious about foreign education theories have criticized our language education as "rote memorization." In fact, foreign education theories have by no means rejected memorization. And in fact, in our classroom, "rote memorization" has never disappeared, but the memorization of "not things" - the explanations in reference books, the words of the teacher's analysis of texts, the "standard answers" on the examination papers; the real "useful things" - ancient poems and ancient texts are not memorized, so students have no interest in ancient poems and ancient texts.
In the past, there were also parents who let their children memorize Tang poems and Song poems before school, but once they arrived at primary school, because the exams were not taken, they gradually forgot what they had read. Now it is different, the new curriculum standard requires learning traditional culture, from a practical utilitarian point of view, so that children can read ancient poetry has an incentive.
Well, next time, let's talk about how to cultivate children's interest in reading and memorizing ancient poems.