I was once a student, a primary school student, a middle school student, and a college student. I am now a teacher and have taught primary school students, middle school students, and college students. This problem has been bothering me. I debated it internally with myself, but there was no result; I discussed it with others in the office, but there was no standard. There are countless wise quotes about education, each of which seems to make sense, but none of which can provide the answer. However, when it comes to educating my daughter, I have some insights into the answer to this question.
The youngest daughter is now 33 months old. Many people praise her for her intelligence and call her a "child prodigy" and "talented girl". She does know a little more than kids her age or even a year or two older than her. When she first entered kindergarten, her kindergarten teacher said she was the smartest one in the class. In fact, I know very well: a child is a child, she is not a child prodigy, she is just a child with normal intelligence. For children with normal IQs, the amount of knowledge they understand is completely determined by their acquired education. For early childhood education, it is closely related to the importance parents attach to their children's education and the methods and methods of education.
When it comes to early childhood education, I feel that at least I am not a failure. Since my youngest daughter was born, I have consciously helped her listen to music, identify colors, recognize shapes, recognize Chinese characters, speak English, and count numbers... The early education for my daughter can be said to be a "comprehensive development" education. Of course, efforts will be rewarded. My daughter has a sense of music at a very young age. When she hears music, she knows how to "dance" while shaking her head and twisting her butt to the music. The little girl started talking at ten months old and could express herself in sentences by twelve months old. At fourteen or five months old, he was able to correctly identify colors and shapes, which surprised many parents of children in the community. In order to help my child become literate early, I enlarged and printed out more than a hundred commonly used high-frequency Chinese characters, posted them on the wall, and led her to read them several times a day. One day, she discovered that she could actually recognize most Chinese characters. This made my wife and I very happy, and it also increased my confidence in continuing to teach her literacy. When the summer vacation in kindergarten was about to begin, I suddenly discovered that my youngest daughter's pronunciation in English was very accurate. She could pronounce many sounds that were difficult to pronounce accurately. And she seems to like English very much, although she certainly doesn't understand what English means. So I started teaching her the everyday things she saw. Whenever I encountered something new, I told her the English name of the thing. Now, she can speak more than a hundred English words. During the summer vacation, as long as it doesn't rain, I take my little daughter to the park and the square to play. On the one hand, it is to let her have more contact with the outside world and other children. Contact with the outside world can enrich children's horizons; contact with more children can prevent children from being withdrawn. Another purpose of taking your young daughter out to play is to entertain and educate. Teach her to identify the things around her, teach her the corresponding pronunciation of English words, teach her to get along well with others, and teach her the principles of behavior and work...
My wife hopes that her daughter will be left-handed and that she will follow me in intelligence. , because I am left-handed, like science, and my mind seems to be more flexible than my wife's. However, my daughter is definitely not left-handed and does not seem to be very sensitive to numbers. A year ago she could count from 1 to 25, and she is still like this now. I tried very hard to get her to continue counting backwards, but there was no improvement. Based on this, I don’t think it is necessary for education to develop in an all-round way. It is indeed good if it can develop in an all-round way, but how many people in reality can develop in an all-round way?
Everyone has their own interests and hobbies. Everyone likes to do what they like, and the same is true for learning. If a person learns what he likes to learn, he can learn it quickly and learn it well. If you force a person to learn knowledge that he doesn't like, even if he tries hard, he may not be able to learn it well. So I think education should use its strengths and avoid its weaknesses. The purpose of education is to cultivate people into talents, not to cultivate everyone into comprehensive talents, and it is impossible to cultivate people into comprehensively developed talents.
Therefore, I think that both workers on the education front and parents of children should try their best to discover the strengths of their children and let them study in depth in the areas they like and are good at, so that children will regard learning as a happy thing. , and at the same time, it is also conducive to the growth of children.
Don’t the current curriculum reforms provide happy learning? However, I do not completely agree with the new curriculum reform, because the new curriculum reform itself still emphasizes "all-round development". How can children be happy in this way? Chickens can't swim, so you have to train them to swim; ducks are not good at running fast, but if you train them to fly fast, will they be happy? In the same way, so are people. Every child has his own interests and strengths. What we, parents and educators, need to do is how to discover and improve children's interests so that children can learn and become talents in their favorite fields.
Looking back at China’s decades of comprehensive development education, we cannot say that we have not cultivated talents, but at least we have killed many talents. Just imagine: if Deng Yaping had gone through the process from elementary school to middle school like others, would she still be a female table tennis champion in the world table tennis world? Because Deng Yaping likes to play table tennis. Although she is short in stature and trains hard, she learns and fights in the field she loves. She is happy and successful. There are many champions in Chinese sports. How many of them are the result of comprehensive developmental education? Almost nothing! To give another counterexample: In 1978, the University of Science and Technology of China established China’s first university junior class. Ning Bo, Xie Yanbo, and Gan Zheng were well-known "prodigies" in China at that time, but their fate is thought-provoking. In the end, instead of becoming "future Nobel Prize winners", they became mediocre. What's this? Because throughout their education they have been learning things they don't like.
To sum up, I believe that the initial stage of education should be comprehensive education, but after discovering the strengths of the educated, they should be allowed to use their strengths instead of making up for their weaknesses.
In addition, I don’t like the term “prodigy”, and I don’t agree with “prodigy” education. "Prodigy" education has a history of more than 20 years in China, and new "plans" for cultivating "prodigies" are constantly emerging. Training structures such as experimental schools for extraordinary children, experimental classes for specialties, international Olympic competitions, etc. have sprung up like mushrooms after rain. growing. There are many children participating in these training classes. So far, no physicists or mathematicians have appeared in China. Parents, please wake up. Children are just children. They are children, not prodigies. Even if they are praised by others as being magical, they are still just humans, not gods! Many "child prodigy" education and training institutions are just promoting their own abilities for profit. At best, they just let children learn some courses in advance, but this does not make the child a "child prodigy", and may not even make him a talent in the future. possible!
So now when I take my daughter out to play, whenever I hear someone praising my daughter for being smart, I always smile and say quietly to them: "It's nothing, she just knows more people than other children." Just a few words, and in many ways she is not as good as other children.