Recently, the news of "108 members of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference jointly proposing to reduce the burden on primary and secondary school students" has aroused heated discussion in the whole society.
"I didn't expect such an impact." Wu Zhiming, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, chairman of the Fujian Provincial Committee of the China Democratic National Construction Association, and director of the Fujian China Vocational Education Society, said in an exclusive interview with the www.thepaper.cn.
During the two sessions of the National People's Congress this year, he and Cui Yuying, Xing Shanping, Lei Chunmei, Chen Yixing, Zhan Ru, Cao Hui and other 108 members of the NATIONAL Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference jointly submitted to the Third Session of the Thirteenth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference the "Proposal on Implementing the Concept of Health First Education and Loosening the Burden on Primary and Secondary School Students", which poked at the "pain points" of society, which triggered heated discussion among some people and parents in the education circles.
A few days ago, The Paper interviewed Member Wu Zhiming and asked him to conduct a more in-depth analysis of the causes and crux of the problem of reducing the burden on primary and secondary schools.
Wu Zhiming, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
The teacher made the lesson more difficult
The Paper: Your proposal to reduce the burden on primary and secondary school students has resonated with everyone, what do you think is the reason?
Wu Zhiming: This proposal has indeed aroused strong resonance among everyone, and it took only two days before and after 108 members of the NATIONAL Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference to sign the joint signature. This is also related to China's education system, and for many years, the Chinese people have been most concerned about the education of their children.
The Paper: When did you start studying the problem of reducing the burden on primary and secondary school students? Based on your research and observations, do you think it is urgent and necessary?
Wu Zhiming: So far, our country has been talking about reducing the burden on primary and secondary school students for more than 20 years, the education department has also continuously practiced the "burden reduction" for more than 20 years, and the national education department has also introduced a series of policies and measures, but the problem is that it cannot be reduced, or it has failed to achieve a fundamental burden reduction. I think there must have been a lot of specific problems.
The Paper: In your opinion, what is the problem?
Wu Zhiming: I think the fundamental problem is the baton, over the years, our country's educational resources have developed a lot, but overall is still limited, and it is still particularly uneven, now every parent and child wants to enter a prestigious school, or want to get into a standard school, whether from kindergarten, primary school or middle school, how to screen such a large number of students? Can only be judged according to the test scores, now from junior high school to high school, about 45% to 50% of the candidates are to be diverted to vocational schools to study, if not admitted to the general high school, can only go to vocational schools to study, which is the most parents and children do not want to see the situation. What to do? Can only go all out, let the child be admitted to the ordinary high school, and finally admitted to a good university, after graduation can find a good job, there is a stable and good income, this is a deep-rooted social ecological environment, hope jackie chan, do not let the child lose on the starting line, and the evaluation standard is the score, the middle school entrance examination, college entrance examination, less than one point is not OK, so thousands of troops and horses together to cross the single wooden bridge, the final result can only be layer by layer.
The Paper: What exactly do you mean by "layer by layer"?
Wu Zhiming: This also involves the school's assessment system, from teachers, class teachers to principals, there are also layers of assessment, students' performance rankings, school promotion rates and students' probability of entering famous schools, will eventually become an indicator. These indicators are linked to the effectiveness of teachers and principals and their performance, and together become the motivation for schools to grasp grades. Can only put more pressure on students, the curriculum should be very full, homework must be arranged a lot, each subject teacher must assign homework to students, each subject teacher wants to be able to test well in their subjects, can occupy more students' time, forming an objective effect of "layer by layer" continuous transmission of pressure.
The Paper: Some people say that china's primary and secondary school curriculum is more difficult, so students must train more to master the knowledge points, is this the real situation?
Wu Zhiming: It is true that many people are saying that the content of Primary and Secondary School textbooks and curriculum in China is too deep and too difficult, but after the comparative study of more than 10 countries by the expert group of the National Education Advisory Committee, the final conclusion is that the difficulty of Chinese textbooks and courses is not too high and relatively moderate, so this statement is not true.
The Paper: Since the difficulty of textbooks and courses is not high, why is the burden on students still so heavy?
Wu Zhiming: I think it may be that the teacher has broadened the difficulty of the course in the process of teaching, which has also increased a lot of burdens. The Ministry of Education stipulates 33 lessons per week for primary and secondary school students, while in foreign countries there are usually 23 lessons, and we have 10 more lessons. This means that if students attend 13,000 classes from elementary school to high school graduation, and foreign countries only need 5,800 classes, China has more than 1 times more. In addition, the summer vacation and winter vacation of middle school students in China are a total of 11 weeks, equivalent to two and a half months, and the primary school is 12 weeks, while foreign countries usually give primary and secondary school students a holiday time of 4 and a half months, so that China's primary and secondary schools have lost two months of vacation time.
Extracurricular training increases the burden on students
The Paper: Not only is the holiday time short, but the homework tasks of Primary and Secondary Schools in China are also very heavy, how to solve it?
Wu Zhiming: Yes, the homework of students in primary and secondary schools in China cannot be finished, and now it is normal for children to do homework at night until 10 or 11 o'clock, and they have to do it for more than three hours on average every day. The most important thing is that most of the homework of our primary and secondary school students is to do exercises, many exercises are repetitive, and some of the homework is disconnected from real life, which has no meaning, but is just reviewed for the exam.
The Paper: Since the examination system has not changed, how to reduce the burden?
Wu Zhiming: Indeed, now everyone wants to reduce the burden desperately, but in fact, has it been reduced? The state and the education department also want to reduce the burden, but in fact, the "baton" has failed to reduce. Even if the school has decreased, the off-campus tuition has increased again. The Ministry of Education stipulates that the first and second grades of primary schools cannot reserve written homework and do not take examinations, including no final examinations. From what I know, many schools simply cannot do so, and not only do they have difficulty complying with the rule of leaving no written work, but they are also exacerbating it. We also learned in the survey that a primary school student of a famous school had to complete 101 pages of school assignment homework during the "May Day" festival, and could only stay at home to do homework from beginning to end, even if it was impossible to finish, let alone go out to play.
The Paper: Are parents also involved in this process?
Wu Zhiming: Chinese parents are keen to let their children participate in various extracurricular training and cram classes, which invisibly increases the burden on students.
The Paper: Extracurricular training has formed a huge industry, what does this mean?
Wu Zhiming: According to a survey conducted by the China Education Association in 2016, there are now 220,000 training institutions, and only 177,600 primary schools in the country, which is equivalent to 40,000 more training institutions than regular primary schools. Now there are many training institutions in the country, extracurricular training teachers reached 8 million people, primary school teachers only 5.7 million people, a full 2.3 million people, the country has 137 million primary and secondary school students to participate in extracurricular training, the annual national training fee as much as 800 billion yuan, the average cost per student is 5600 yuan, and it is growing at a rate of 12% every year. This is all very surprising data, and it is incomprehensible that many of the content of the training institution's tutoring is repetitive with the content of the school classroom.
The Paper: How do you see this phenomenon?
Wu Zhiming: Now many primary and secondary school students are learning Olympic numbers, if children are very talented in mathematics, but also interested, you can learn Olympic numbers, if there is no talent in this area, learning Olympic numbers is of little significance. There is a 12-year-old child downstairs at home, also learning Olympiad, homework can not be done to come to me, let me help him tutor, I also read a doctorate, the result of doing half a day can not be solved, I later found out that the Olympiad is no longer a mathematical or scientific problem, it has become a skill problem, like a trick. The Olympiad problems done by the third and fourth grade students of primary school are equivalent to the topics only done by the second-year students of high school, so it shows that most of the training exceeds the syllabus and moves the knowledge point forward, which not only affects the normal teaching order of the school, but also greatly increases the burden on students.
The Paper: What are the consequences of such a burden?
Wu Zhiming: The burden on students today is very heavy, 60% sleep less than 8 hours, which naturally produces a series of problems. According to the "China National Defense Daily" report, in some areas of the conscription pass rate of less than 50%, there are obesity, myopia and other problems, I proposed the most important way to solve in the proposal, that is, to include physical education subjects in the middle school entrance examination and college entrance examination, otherwise the physical education class from primary and secondary schools is often occupied by other so-called main courses.
The Paper: Do you also want to use the "baton" to promote the problem of burden reduction?
Wu Zhiming: China's so-called "burden reduction" for primary and secondary school students has been used for more than 20 years, why is it getting heavier and heavier? I believe that because it is not grounded, as long as you grasp the nose of the cow, you can use the fulcrum to pry the earth, the so-called fulcrum is to include it in the examination, so that students, parents, schools to teachers can produce endogenous motivation, and the problem can be solved. In the past few days, I have received a lot of calls and WeChat, many people like, think that this suggestion is great, it is related to the future of our country and the nation; of course, there are many people who do not agree with this point of view, think that each child's physique is different, the test standards are not easy to set, worried about the fairness problem; but more parents are worried that their children's physical fitness is not as good as others, and the physical education subject test will suffer losses. In fact, we still think: it is because your child's current physical fitness is not good, not as good as others, it is more necessary to participate in various physical exercise activities, enhance physical fitness, and achieve the comprehensive development of morality, intellectual, physical and aesthetic work.