First, the content: blind "perfection", lost the theme
I once read an article: a son bought land to repair his tomb in order to settle his father's soul in heaven; Later, in order to let his father always see the vitality of nature and feel the changes of the four seasons and the flow of years, he planted several cypresses beside the monument; In order to let the fence guard his father's death, he built a fence along the tomb. These considerations are not meticulous, deliberate and ungrateful, which shows that he is a dutiful son. It turns out that the cemetery has monuments, walls and cypresses. Come here every year, look up, remind you of nostalgia at any time, and pour out your thoughts at any time, that's enough. However, due to the requirement of perfection and comprehensive functions, he is not satisfied with the "function" of the cemetery, but also wants to have the "function" of viewing. He constantly builds landscapes around the cemetery. As a result, the most important and essential "function" of the cemetery was submerged and dissolved. Repairing the tomb eventually evolved into building a landscape!
From this, the author believes that our education, like the dutiful son above, has generally fallen into the wrong path of "perfection", pursuing too many goals and loading too many "functions", seriously losing the main purpose of education!
In China, the feudal monarchy with the supremacy of imperial power lasted for thousands of years, and the "official standard" culture has always been at the core. Throughout the ages, education in China has always followed politics closely, cooperated with politics, served politics, and even succumbed to politics. However, it is not difficult to find that ancient education adhered to the "right path", and it focused on its own duties and devoted itself to "teaching and educating people." At that time, almost all the students in education were "reading sage books wholeheartedly". However, it is always difficult for modern education to "settle down", concentrate on "running" its own "career" and always let itself play an omnipotent role. Let's look at history. We should remember the education during the Cultural Revolution: at that time, under the guidance of the "May 7th Directive", schools should not only carry out cultural knowledge education, but also organize various social activities; Students "should not only study literature, but also study industry, agriculture and the army and criticize the bourgeoisie". There are always a few times a year, they go to the army for military training for a week or two, go to the factory to learn technology, and go to the countryside to participate in rice harvesting and wheat planting. Let's take a look at the situation now. If nothing else, the students' schoolbags are the best testimony: rummaging through the schoolbags, the state requires no less than ten textbooks such as Chinese, mathematics, English, morality, science, music and art to be used in the course, and supporting textbooks for local courses, such as comprehensive practice textbooks, Wu culture readers, Yixing celebrities and so on. And the legal education books that we don't know yet, but are distributed to students every year or every semester. These are basically included in the curriculum, and they have to be taught in the classroom more or less. In addition, although there are no textbooks, there are also "social classes" that need to be dealt with frequently, even focusing on solemn implementation, such as "anti-drug signature" activities, "online grave-sweeping activities" and "farewell to Internet cafes from me" oath activities.
Education is so greedy and comprehensive that it seems capable of undertaking all the important tasks in the world. Its consequence is only to distract energy, weaken important tasks and do nothing. The knowledge and skills education that students need most is not well taught, and the quality education that is crucial to students' life development is not well cultivated. It can be said that taking care of one thing and losing another is a big loss!
Second, the process: meaningless "cramming", away from the origin.
In the book "classic stories that inspire a lifetime", I read an article "People who can't walk back":
Once, I wanted to nail a picture in the living room and ask my neighbors for help. The painting has been supported on the wall and is about to hit a nail. He said, "This is not good. It's better to nail two pieces of wood and hang the picture on it. " I took his advice and asked him to help me find the block.
The piece of wood was soon found and was about to be nailed. He said, "Wait a minute, this piece of wood is a bit big. You'd better saw it off." So he looked around for a saw. I found a saw. I haven't sawed it twice. "No, this saw is too dull," he said. "It needs grinding."
He had a file at home, and when he brought it, he found it had no handle. In order to deal with documents, he went to a bush near the campus to look for small trees. When I went to cut down the young trees, he found that my axe full of old rust was really useless. He also found a grindstone, but in order to fix it, he had to make some pieces of wood to fix it. To this end, he went to a carpenter outside the school and said that carpenters have ready-made ones. However, he left and never came back. Of course, I nailed the picture to the wall at the same time. When I saw him again in the afternoon, it was in the street. He is helping the carpenter to install the heavy chainsaw in Wujiaohua Store.
There are many kinds of people who can't go back in their work and life. They believe that to do this well, we must do it first. They went upstream and got to the bottom of it until they forgot their original purpose. Such people seem to be busy and hard-working, but in fact they don't know what they are busy with. Some people may know at first, but once they get busy, they really don't know what they are busy with.
This story is intriguing.
A painting should be hung on the wall, as long as it is suitable and has appropriate aesthetic effect. This was originally an extremely simple thing. The neighbors in the story, because of the pursuit of meaningless perfection, are led by this meaningless perfection, and have to find another perfection for the sake of one immediate perfection, so they "hook up" one after another and can't stop, and finally "forget the original purpose completely".
There is no doubt that this attitude and habit of finding the shortcomings of things and trying to remedy and improve them is beyond reproach and should even be advocated; However, it is absurd to put the cart before the horse or even put the cart before the horse, fall into unnecessary formal pursuit and finally abandon the fundamental existence value of things and even things themselves. From this, the author further associates with our education-calm down and meditate, and will find that our education and teaching are really worrying, quite like a "person who can't go back"!
We have seen the basic course of the eight overall reforms of education in China, which can be called frequent; It is also interesting and colorful to see the specific situation of various teaching reforms in China.
From the perspective of administrative decision-making, this series of reforms since the founding of the People's Republic of China has focused on the macro and started with the content; In the final analysis, the reform of educational content is nothing more than adding or deleting categories or adjusting the structure. At the level of school practice, there is basically no room for reform in education and teaching content. The main effect of macro-reform at the grass-roots practice level is the vigorous upsurge of education and teaching method reform, because the so-called "all roads lead to Rome", education and teaching methods can always give schools and teachers the greatest freedom of choice and the greatest room for change, and can form the most positive, abundant and intuitive change situation. I think it is self-evident that the starting point of reform is to improve education and better promote human development; However, the author is surprised to find that we seem to reform for the sake of reform, and it seems that the edge of every reform always points to the previous reform; On the practical level of choosing the most free and changeable space, most schools and teachers pay attention to the renovation of methods and methods, showing a situation of blooming flowers, but ignore the problem of returning to the original point. Therefore, both the macro-reform at the level of administrative decision-making and the specific reform at the level of school practice are too keen on unnecessary formal pursuit to some extent, forgetting the original intention, starting point and returning way of education.
Modern education has become a "person who can't go back"!
Third, the purpose: deliberately "shaping", contrary to the original intention.
Reading the article "Living in Zen" in contemporary literature, the story described in the article is:
Once upon a time, an old Zen master adopted a boy. Boys don't understand Buddhist rules, climb trees to catch cicadas and play all day, just like other children. A monk came to the temple to stay for a few days. He doesn't like the naughty boy very much. One day, after going out in the morning, the old Zen master stopped the boy and taught him temple etiquette. In the evening, the old Zen master just came back from the outside, and the teenager immediately came forward to salute and greet. The old Zen master was surprised: "Who taught you?" The boy replied, "The new monk in the hall."
The old Zen master found a walking monk and gave him a mord: "I have raised this boy for two or three years, so cute." Who told you to teach him badly? " Pack your things and go! "
In the twilight, the monk was driven out of the temple. Deliberately being strong and indifferent is not Zen, but being lively and comfortable from the heart is Zen.
After reading the story, it is not difficult for us to find that the reason why the monk was driven out of the temple by the old Zen master was because he lost the nature of an innocent, lively and naughty child! In the monk's view, Zen is polite, Zen is following the rules, and Zen is not crossing the border; Teaching people to participate in meditation is a strict discipline, which is also the discipline of teaching temples. However, the old Zen master's Zen way is just the opposite. In his view, Zen is arbitrary, arbitrary, unrestrained, free, simple and natural. Teaching people to participate in meditation means respecting nature, giving freedom, stimulating inner spirituality and awakening real vigilance. In a word: the monk participated in the dry meditation, and the old Zen master participated in the living meditation!
From this meditation story, I naturally think of the opening sentence of Rousseau's novel Emile, which is called "Everything that comes from the creator's hand is good, but once it reaches people's hands, it will go bad". The old Zen master's words criticized the wandering monks' misunderstanding of participating in Zen, and Rousseau's words criticized modern education, but obviously, the old Zen master's thoughts are similar to Rousseau's. What the old Zen master advocates and advocates is a meditation method that conforms to and respects nature, while Rousseau advocates and advocates an education method that conforms to nature and respects children.
Why should education conform to nature and respect children? Many people of insight and wise teachers at home and abroad have profound insights. By understanding their views, we can realize the road of wisdom. Mr. Liu Xiaodong once described nature like this: "When we saw the first little flower in early spring, the joy, warmth, poetry and hope aroused in our hearts were not taught by others;" When we see the sunrise and sunset, our most basic feeling is not what education gives us; When I was young, in Seeds of Love, a mysterious feeling emerged like an iceberg. This is not an advantage of education. "[1] This paragraph is very emotional and rational. The information conveyed by perceptual language is: human nature is beautiful, while the information conveyed by rational language is: human nature cannot be endowed by education; The fusion of two kinds of information means: from an ethical point of view, education should not dampen nature, and from a scientific point of view, education cannot change nature; In other words, all attempts to violate or change nature, including education, are immoral and irrational. On the contrary, education should be based on nature. "People should change themselves because of nature, not because of education." [2] Because "nature is man's natural will, world will and universal will", [3] Any behavior that violates natural will, world will and universal will will eventually be severely punished and doomed to failure.
However, institutionalized education has never been clearly aware of this. Since we are divorced from life and step into a planned and systematic running track, it seems that it exists specifically for pruning human nature and changing human nature. And with the passage of time, with its own development and modernization, it has become more and more sophisticated, and it has fallen into the wrong path with the purpose of "shaping up" and cannot extricate itself. People who come out of the "purgatory" of modern education can't seem to erase the deep-rooted mindset in the subconscious. They all think that nature is like weeds and wildfires. It is born without restraint and self-control. If it is not trimmed and restrained, it will be deviant, spread excessively, make trouble crazily, flood and cause endless harm. It is believed that education is to trim human nature and make it get rid of barbarism and move towards civilization. Therefore, education has been constantly strengthening its functions of "pruning" and "chopping", playing the role of a saint who "reshapes the golden body" for people, and more and more openly playing the role of "shaping the body". This kind of "body-shaping" education fundamentally violates human nature, and also fundamentally violates the original educational intention aimed at awakening the sleeping potential, opening up the gifted wisdom and striving to cultivate people with subjective consciousness, innovative spirit and practical ability.
Education is lost in blind perfection, meaningless mending and deliberate shaping. We call for the return of education!
References:
[1][2][3] Liu Xiaodong. Education and humanity [J]. Pedagogy (copy journal of Renmin University), 2003.
(Lv Jianguo, Yixing No.2 Experimental Primary School, 2 14206)