Elephant Press: On November 1st, the content sharing column of "Zhitang Lecture" created by Impression Zhitang opened offline, inviting Liu Yu, Liu Shengjun, Wang Sai, Wu Chenguang, and Guo Tingting to discuss how to turn crises into opportunities in uncertain times. Elephant sorted out the full text of the on-site speech of Liu Yu, associate professor of the Department of Political Science of Tsinghua University, and shared with you "Uncertain Times, the Value of Education".
Liu Yu: Uncertainty itself is not necessarily a bad thing. In a sense, it is a characteristic of modern society and the price of social progress. From the Western Han Dynasty to 1949, the average GDP of Chinese remained basically unchanged. At this point, there is no uncertainty in life. The future is a constant copy of the past. Your grandfather was a blacksmith, your father was a blacksmith, and you were also a blacksmith. However, in the past 200 years, the economic curve of various countries has risen sharply, and human society has undergone unprecedented changes. Negotiation is uncertainty, bringing us more opportunities, more possibilities.
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<h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" > uncertainty, the cost of progress</h1>
While uncertainty brings us freedom and opportunity, it also brings us a lot of anxiety. In modern society, we have the freedom to choose our profession and, therefore, to be unemployed; we have the freedom to be educated, and therefore the risk that we may fail examinations. Freedom, the advantage is unlimited possibilities, the disadvantage is unlimited competition.
Freedom, the advantage is unlimited possibilities, the disadvantage is unlimited competition.
Therefore, in order to cope with this risk and competition, human beings have invented various security mechanisms, such as social security, finance and insurance, charity and so on. The rise of mass education is to a large extent one of the various safeguard mechanisms, because we need to acquire a variety of knowledge and skills through mass education to help us cope with various risks.
But the problem is that in the process of knowledge reserve, there will be a vicious competition, which is also the status quo of our education, that is, the "arms race" model, which contains two strategies - the higher the education, the better, the more skills the better. Specifically, China's young people go to college, graduate school, and doctoral studies, finish reading at home and abroad, take the first degree, get the second degree, take the degree, and want to get a variety of certificates. Parents also require their children to be proficient in all kinds of martial arts, participate in various interest classes from an early age, and so on. Unlimited vicious competition, many parents call for quality education. As a result, the Ministry of Education responded positively and used the method of test-oriented education to engage in quality education, so that our parents now hear the four words "quality education" and are frightened.
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<h1 class = "pgc-h-center-line" > the consequences of an "arms race."</h1>
What are the consequences of this "arms race" model of education? Everyone was exhausted. Your child goes to bed at 10 o'clock, my child goes to bed at 11 o'clock, and his child goes to bed at 12 o'clock. You go to two cram schools, he goes to four cram schools. Some time ago, I was in a group of mothers, and I saw a forwarded news about a mother from the liberal arts, who forged herself into a science and engineering bully in order to tutor her children to enter college.
After I read the news at that time, I said in the mother group that I had already thought about it: our child would let her open a milk tea shop later. As a result, other mothers have said that their children will also open a milk tea shop. I realized that it seems that the competition in this milk tea shop is also very fierce, and our children still open a pancake shop.
This vicious competition, in my opinion, has several consequences. First, it is a disservice to the feminist movement. Countless professional women could have blossomed in their careers, but because they were caught up in this vicious competition, they had to focus most of their energy on the "arms race" of children's education and give up their careers. Second, it is a harm to family relationships. Originally a very harmonious family relationship, because you have to force your child to learn this and that, which leads to family relations. Third, it is a disservice to educational equity. In the end, you will find that education is largely fought for the financial resources of parents. If you can afford to go to the best private schools, international schools, then your children have a future.
Growing up in such vicious competition is also easy to grow into a "hollow person". Although he had learned eighteen martial arts, he had no idea what to do.
However, the biggest harm in all this is the child himself. Depression and anxiety disorders in adolescents are common, and the trend of suicide at a young age is very serious, with 1 in 5 middle school students having considered suicide. A child, growing up with an infinite vision of the world, as a result, all of us adults conspired to tell him: The purpose of your first half of existence is to take the exam, and it is completely lifeless. Even if you are not depressed and do not commit suicide, growing up in such vicious competition is easy to grow into a "hollow person". Although he had learned eighteen martial arts, he had no idea what to do.
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how can <h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" > alleviate the pressure of the arms race? </h1>
< h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" > the arms race cannot be completely escaped, but it may slow down. </h1>
01 Know yourself
First, know yourself. This may be more important than knowing the world and acquiring a wide variety of knowledge and skills. The goal of our education is for children to acquire as many skills as possible. But children are rarely encouraged to think – who am I? What am I best suited to do? What can I do? What do I like to do best? Children are rarely encouraged to explore themselves and discover themselves.
Is life really the same – the higher you climb, the better, the faster you run, the better, the more you get, the better? I doubt this very much. I think the purpose of life is not to get higher, faster, more, but to find a suitable position for yourself. If a person goes to a first-class university because of high-intensity tuition or expensive consulting services, and is a phoenix tail in the phoenix group for four or eight years of college, it may not be conducive to his growth. If, because of luck, a boy around you makes a girl he doesn't deserve, will he be happy? not necessarily. He may live very tired. A free-spirited person, because he listened to his parents and passed the civil service examination, whether he was promoted to the rank of a department or a department, he may feel that he is wearing a pair of shoes that are not suitable for his feet every day.
The purpose of life is not to be higher, faster, more, but to find a position that suits you.
Why are teenagers so depressed and so anxious now? It is because of this mismatch. Many people do not choose a major and find a job from their own interests, personalities, and characteristics at all, but learn the profession they don't like, do the work they don't like, "take other people's roads, let yourself say go."
Therefore, our education is not to encourage young people to discover themselves, but to escape from themselves. From the unique self to the average other, the personality flees to the tide, from adventure to safety. If you ask parents why do you enroll their children in interest classes? It's because "everyone else has reported it." If you ask a college student why did you choose this major? It's because it's "easy to find a job." If you ask people in the workplace why do this job? It is because of "stability, high income, and peace of mind for parents" Even if you change jobs, it's not because you like the new job, but because you hate the last job too much. So, your life is about running away endlessly.
To win the competition, you have to do 1, don't do 10001.
However, in my opinion, this sense of security brought by going with the flow is actually a false sense of security, because you are stuck in the place where there are the most people, how can it be safe? That's definitely a stampede competition. Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel wrote a book, "From 0 to 1," which is about this investment principle. The same is true of education. To win the competition, you have to do 1, don't do 10001. If you go to 10001, you're already losing at the starting line, because you're already 10,000 ahead of you. My husband once discussed with me whether to let his children learn to play the piano. I said, no, you think about it, there may be more than 3 million children in Beijing learning piano, we have four or five upstairs and downstairs, in this case to learn piano, if you want to excel, is this not self-destruction? We might as well let our children learn ancient Greco-Roman history. Of course, in fact, I am lazy, belonging to the kind of mother who falls without a fight.
Peter Tiele has a saying that I am very impressed with, he said, "People say that "happy families are the same, and unhappy families have their own misfortunes." (quoted from Lev Tolstoy) But the opposite is true. The unfortunate are all the same, and the happy people have their own happiness. Why? Because unfortunate people are walking the path of others, and happy people are taking a different path. When everyone is doing finance, he does the Internet; when everyone is doing the Internet, he goes to make movies; when everyone is making movies, he goes to education; when everyone is doing education, he comes back to do finance. That's the way to go. Find your own uniqueness to gain a competitive advantage.
Unfortunate people are following someone else's path, while happy people are taking a different path.
The same is true from the point of view of national competitiveness. Many people have found a paradox in Chinese and American education: that is, China's basic education is very good, in contrast, many primary and secondary school students in the United States are not even good at basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. However, at the university level, especially the graduate school stage, the advantages of the United States began to appear, and finally they won the most Nobel Prizes, while the Number of Nobel Laureates cultivated in China was small and small. This paradox between basic education and higher education, I think, has to do with whether or not to encourage "self-exploration and self-discovery." When everyone is encouraged to find their biggest highlights and use their greatest strengths, the creativity of a society will be exerted to the extreme. And when most children are pedaling against the same standard, too busy to explore their own interests, it's hard for him to shine. He may pass or even be good because of strong external pressure, but because of the lack of inner enthusiasm, it is difficult for him to be excellent and extreme.
Some young people may say that I am not without the courage to try, but I do not know what to do; I also want to follow my heart, but there is no movement in my heart. It's not surprising that you grew up on the assembly line, and you really don't know what you should do when you get off the assembly line. In the process of growing up, society, parents, teachers to show you a variety of way forward signs, forward, turn left, turn right, suddenly one day the steering wheel handed over to yourself, you do not know how to do, confused is normal.
Freedom is not just a space, it is a learned ability. Everyone's self is constantly exploring, trial and error. You can't sit in a room and think about it and rack your brains and suddenly have an epiphany, ah, I should do this. No one's "self" is a finished product in his teens, in his twenties, and it is not a piece of jade in the grass. What you initially find is only a stone, and you have to carve this stone into yourself, which is the process of self-discovery.
02 Courage to fail
Since it is trial and error, mistakes will certainly be made, and the result may be failure. The reason why many parents, teachers, and young people dare not try and make mistakes is that they are afraid of failure.
Today, our society is full of success science, but there is no "failure science." Society, teachers, and parents constantly guide children to "accomplish things with aspirations", but in fact, success has multiple factors such as strength, luck, relationship, origin, and emotional intelligence.
Recently, the suicide of a male man from Dalian Polytechnic shocked the whole country, and everyone felt strange. Before he died, he wrote a suicide note, because he felt that he was a waste because of the failure of his experiments, and then he committed suicide. Of course, this is very sad, and people can't figure out: why would he rather commit suicide than choose to quit school? I think a big part of the reason is that our society has too many false views of failure.
Failure is a signaling mechanism that reminds us to turn when it's time to turn, not a road to black.
This concept of failure is first embodied in the fact that only success is allowed, not failure. But failure is actually a necessary way to know ourselves, because failure allows us to know the limits of our abilities and the limits of our interests. Failure is a signaling mechanism that reminds us to turn when it's time to turn, not a road to black. But our education despises abandonment, despises failure, and invents many positive words to encourage this extremely painful persistence: perseverance, perseverance, never giving up, victory over the self... You say you're all in the wrong direction, so why do you have to be steadfast? We have reached a dead end, why should we never give up? Many times, abandonment is a stop-loss mechanism.
Li Xueqin, currently one of the best stand-up comedians in China. Before she went to New York to study, she was a standard Peking University person, but because of depression or personal reasons, she returned to her hometown without getting a degree and began to sell goods online. By worldly standards, she failed. However, this failure was precisely a turning point for her, and she transformed into an Internet celebrity and became a stand-up comedian. In my opinion, China's loss of such a good talk show actress is more than the loss of a female white-collar worker in a New York investment bank. Therefore, self-knowledge is a trial-and-error process. Without the courage to fail, there is no surprise to discover.
So, what if the turnaround is delayed? Risks, of course, are likely to fail, and it may be from one failure to another. But is it better to fail than to commit suicide or chronic suicide? And it's better to be a brave loser than to be a cowardly loser. In the end, even if you don't achieve anything, you become a brave and honest person.
03 What is success?
Another terrible "view of failure" is the singularization of success criteria. What is success? Success is to get ahead, to make more money, to be a bigger official, to have more fans... In short, if you are an ordinary person, then you have failed.
Where are there so many successful people in a society? So much Ma Yun, so many Lang Lang, so many Yao Ming? Most people are ordinary people. A friend of mine said a sentence that I was very impressed with, she said: We must firmly believe that our children will grow into an ordinary person. This sentence is my motto as a mother, so I untied myself from the chariot of the tiger mother at the beginning and gained the freedom to be a mother.
Some people may say, Teacher Liu, don't be modest, your whole family is Tsinghua Peking University, you have also attended the Ivy League School, your children must be very good. I tell you, my child goes to school at Tsinghua Affiliated Elementary School, and the parents of my children are all school bullies, teachers who graduated from Tsinghua Manchurian Street Ivy League School, so what? There is still only one first in a class. In the whole of Beijing, the admission rate of Tsinghua Peking University is about five thousandths, and it is even rarer to be able to go to the American Ivy League school, why do you think that your child is the one who has caught the lottery? This is not scientific. So, it's not humility, it's a rational person's respect for probability. Of course, if my daughter were a prodigy, I would have stolen the pleasure, but so far, my friend is right, and my daughter is becoming an ordinary person unstoppable.
My mission as a parent is to follow this uniqueness of my child and help him find what he likes.
After accepting that the vast majority of people are ordinary people, what is the correct concept of education? It is not necessary to cultivate a small grass into a big tree in the sky, but to cultivate a small grass into a beautiful grass, a healthy grass. Most people may have very ordinary talents, but her/his interests and hobbies have their own uniqueness. My mission as a parent is to follow this uniqueness of my child and help him find what he likes.
Some parents may say that our children do not have any comparative advantage, what to do? In fact, everyone has their own comparative advantage. The so-called comparative advantage does not mean that you do one thing better than everyone else, but that of all the things you can do, which one can do the best. Even if it's a very ordinary thing, such as cooking, makeup, you do it to the extreme, it can be your highlight. There is a job in Japan called "storage consultant", you see, storage can become a job, even a career. Your child may not be a genius, but living a comfortable life in a small world, that is enough, this is success.
Some parents say that my child is very lazy, how can I reform him? One way to do this is to help him find his own highlights and let him form an internal driving force for growth. However, there is a real possibility that some people are lazy by nature and "do nothing hard". Even this kind of child, I don't think we can "fail to humiliate", the most I can do is to help him understand that character is destiny, and he will have to bear the consequences for all his current attitude towards life in the future.
Probably because I was a very "strong" person since I was a child, for a long time I assumed that others should be the same. Although it is impossible for everyone to become Gates Ma Yun, everyone should strive to be the "best version of themselves" and should pursue excellence. However, as I grew, my idea began to waver. Why? Because I slowly realized that the so-called success often corresponds to great responsibility and pressure. Everyone's value ranking is different, not everyone is willing to exchange comfort, calmness, and ease for success, and the pursuit of comfort, calmness, and ease is not necessarily a sin. If one chooses to give up "success" "at ease," this is not necessarily a bad thing.
I also recently saw a very interesting saying: when we talk about people who eat welfare, we all feel that it is a burden on society, especially the lazy people among them, who are more or less looked down upon. But in fact, lazy people also have a great contribution to society, and welfare is actually a reward for this contribution. What contribution do slackers make to society? In a word, they greatly reduce the intensity of social competition. Think about it, we are now breathless, if everyone is desperate, what kind of tiredness do we have to become? So, in an era of high competition, society needs slackers, and society appreciates slackers. They sacrificed themselves and saved countless people from the brink of collapse.
So, what is my view of education? It is said in two sentences: know yourself and accept yourself. This is not only to make children more relaxed, I believe that this kind of situation-oriented education has more advantages than disadvantages to the output of education itself, the optimal allocation of social resources, and the peace and stability of millions of households. Only when everyone has their own beauty, a society will be full of vitality. (End)