Xiong Bingqi: How far can the anxiety-stimulating "Chicken Baby" go

Source: Global Times

Recently, an article about the "Inside Story of The Chicken Baby" has continued to cause controversy. The article titled "I Peeked at the Secret of haidian Chicken Baby" on the self-media account "Qingzhu" said that the "Chicken Baby" has now achieved group operation. Subsequently, the self-media company suspected of manipulating the "Chicken Baby" sent a lawyer's letter to "Qingzhu" on the grounds of "seriously affecting the brand image", asking it to delete the article and apologize. Interestingly, with the fermentation of the incident, some questioned "Chicken Baby" have successively deleted the word "Haidian" in the name of the public account.

The so-called "chicken baby number", that is, to give students and parents "chicken blood", hype education anxiety of some self-media numbers. It remains to be seen whether the official accounts and self-media service companies involved will adhere to the protection of rights to the end. However, some "chicken dolls" actively cooperate with the anxiety marketing of off-campus training institutions and real estate intermediaries, and use anxiety stimulation as a means of profit, which needs to be paid great attention to by the regulatory authorities. In order to create a good education ecology, we must also include these "chicken dolls" in governance, and prohibit them from publishing illegal information such as speculative early education, advanced education, and false school district housing and school district school rankings.

"Chicken Baby" has a common feature, that is, most of them use "so-and-so mother" and "so-and-so father" to appear and say, in the name of sharing parenting experience, emphasizing the importance of early education and advanced education. These public accounts can gain a large number of fans, that is, they are good at grasping the mentality that parents have already fallen into anxiety and fanning the flames. Originally, if it only involves the concept of parenting, there is no problem with the "Chicken Baby", but if the "Chicken Baby" involves hyping up early education, advanced education, distorting the interpretation of the promotion policy, and as an off-campus training institution to carry out advance training in violation of the law and real estate agencies to raise the price of school district housing marketing force, it needs to be cleaned up.

For example, the state clearly requires kindergartens to "go to primary school", and also prohibits off-campus training institutions from conducting illegal training for young children, while the "Chicken Baby" renders this as "deliberately making ordinary people's children lose competitiveness", strongly suggesting that parents must pay close attention to early education from the time of birth to win the so-called "education stratification" war. For another example, for the choice of off-campus training and participation in competitions, the "Chicken Baby" will use the story of the so-called "bullfrog" to stimulate parents to compare, so that parents will have a sense of crisis and urgency that if they do not send their children to the training class, they will be completely backward. Because the "Chicken Baby" fits into the utilitarian education environment, its propositions are easy to be recognized and followed by some parents. For example, for the "Qiangji Plan", the rational interpretation is to require students and parents to choose to apply according to their interests, while the "Chicken Baby" renders how many points will be reduced by the "Qiangji Plan", analyzes the quota allocation of demonstration high schools, and the nearest enrollment policy in the compulsory education stage. Using data that has no scientific basis at all to guide parents on how to win the battle for school choice runs counter to the original intention of education policy. Obviously, these "chicken dolls" will be favored by off-campus training institutions and real estate intermediaries, and will flourish in this way, and even achieve group development.

Recently, many places in China have launched centralized governance of false and illegal advertisements that speculate on school district housing, including the governance of self-media public accounts, such as the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Market Supervision, which will strengthen the monitoring of 527 traditional media and Internet media advertisements.

At the same time, to deal with the current social anxiety and "education involution" problems, it is also necessary for the whole society to form a joint force, and the national level needs to promote comprehensive education management and evaluation reforms, and social institutions are also responsible.

Last year, "education inner volume" became a hot word, and "chicken baby" is the specific performance of "education inner volume". Overall, parents are surrounded by the "chicken baby anxiety" created by society: off-campus training institutions carry out advanced education, advance education and anxiety marketing; real estate institutions spread false information to hype school district houses; self-media platforms focus on the topic of "chicken baby"; even film and television dramas are "keenly" aware that the "chicken baby" theme has a strong social attention... All the makers of "chicken baby anxiety" claim that they are to let children win the future, cross classes, and change their destiny, however, this is not really for children, but to create a counter-education ecology that completely disregards the healthy growth of children's physical and mental health, constantly increases children's academic pressure and training burden, and upgrades parents' "chicken baby" means to make profits.

Corresponding to the "chicken baby anxiety" is the "educational theater effect". That is, the audience in the front row of the theater stood up, the audience in the back row also stood up in order to see clearly, and finally the audience of the whole theater stood up to watch the play. There is an "educational theater effect" of parents competing for classes and competitions, in which there are reasons for the lack of supervision, and the relevant departments have not timely banned the advanced education and advance education of institutions, so that the front row audience who stood up sat down; it is also related to the fact that some individuals and links disregard public order and public interests for private interests. In reality, there is no theater where all the audiences stand up to watch the play, but in the educational scene, there are such theaters everywhere. There is no doubt that students are the biggest victims of the theater effect. All those who create "chicken baby anxiety" have an unshirkable responsibility. To control the "chicken baby anxiety", it is also necessary to systematically manage the overall education ecology. (The writer is Vice President of 21st Century Education Research Institute)