When we read, don’t think about pleasing, think about how we can be fun
On July 5, the 2022 Beijing senior high school entrance examination results were announced. Haidian District has the largest number of people with a score of 655 or more, more than the sum of other districts.
In recent days, celebrity test editors have aroused widespread discussion again. Ordinary people who are tested editors are referred to as “small town testers” in an article, and this title is mentioned again.
In China, exams have always been regarded by ordinary people as the most effective and fair way to cross classes and change their destiny. However, when education becomes a means of taking exams, everyone competes for limited resources in education in exchange for the only competition. Running to the front of the road, education is getting farther and farther away from “people”, and its original appearance is becoming more and more blurred.
Are we anxious about what kind of person we should educate our children, or are we anxious about how to get our children to enter the school that looks better in the selection process? Have we ever attended a good school, have we chosen the right major, and have these choices about education really made us a better version of ourselves? Do good schools provide good education, or do they have more advantageous social resources? Is the goal of education to be a better version of yourself, or to be successful in the competition?
In “Taking Yourself as a Method”, Wu Qi and Xiang Biao talked about the topic of “education” several times. We have excerpted some of the content that needs to be revisited today, and hope that readers and friends can leave a comment in the comment area. “What do you think is the ideal education” idea.
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80’s
Wu Qi: During high school, where did you mainly spend your time? What kind of books do you read?
Xiang Biao: High school is still very important to me. I would like to thank my alma mater Wenzhou Middle School. After I arrived at Peking University, I learned that many middle schools in the country start from 7 or 8 in the morning to 6 or 7 in the evening, as well as evening self-study. In our Wenzhou middle school, it ends at 3 or 4 in the afternoon, never after the class schedule. Also sit there at night for self-study. After class, students go to the movies and buy things. We have free time, and the pressure of exams is not too great. Perhaps at that time, the salary of middle school teachers was not linked to the admission indicators, so the teachers would attend classes normally and would not be overweight. There were various interest groups at that time, such as literature club, drama club, computer group, biology group… This is actually the tradition of Wenzhou middle school. When it comes to art festivals, I’m an activist.
High school also happened to be in the late stage of the “cultural craze”. The biggest influence on me is the “Wenhui Monthly” organized by the Shanghai Writers’ Association. I remember very clearly that the editorial office was at No. 149 Yuanmingyuan Road, Shanghai. I read every issue seriously, especially long-form reportage. For Chinese literature and the Chinese revolution, reportage is very important. Reportage has several important characteristics, one is of course the bottom layer, the second is its directness, and the third is its thickness. From Xia Yan’s “Body Worker” to “The Beggar Gang Drifting”… I came home during the Spring Festival this year and found some notes from middle school. I was surprised to see that I made a lot of comments.
There is also a publication that I always read, called “Appreciation of Masterpieces”, which belongs to literary and art criticism. It is very thick, well written, and very speculative. I think it’s pretty fun, but I can’t say how much it affects the present. I read a little more about “ideological enlightenment” and came into contact with some young Marxist discussions on “alienation”, not using political economy but using the perspective of “human liberation” to talk about social development, and it was very interesting to read.
“Three idiots make trouble in Bollywood”
Wu Qi: Was the 1980s also your personal enlightenment period?
Xiang Biao: From the age of 16 to 18, this stage is very important. Start reading, and also start giving some critical speeches. The first time I did social surveys was in the 1980s, when I was in high school. Thanks to my alma mater.
The political class teacher in the first year of high school took us to do research in Yueqing County—now Liushi Town, Yueqing City, one of China’s electrical appliance production bases, and my mother’s ancestral home. When I went to the factory to listen to the factory manager’s report, the classmates were making trouble. The factory manager was very angry and said in dialect, “You are so noisy, I have nowhere to talk.” As far as I listened carefully, I felt sympathy for the factory manager. We lived in a hostel. I saw that the front desk clerk was always building circuit boards. I asked her where the circuit boards came from, and she said that they were outsourced from a private enterprise run by a relative. I asked you how much to build one, and I know that she earns more from building circuit boards than she does as a waiter in a hostel, but the problem is instability. I asked about the ins and outs, and then came up with a picture. Later, I wrote about this, saying that private companies will spread economic opportunities to the entire village through family relationships. There was a debate in society at that time, asking whether the private economy would bring about polarization. I made a very speculative conclusion based on the example I saw, saying that there will be no polarization, because the opportunity to make money will be scattered among relatives, and it will bring regional common prosperity. I am very proud of this report. In fact, that observation at that time also had an impact on my later research on “Zhejiang Village”. It made me see that a small business is not so much an organization as it is a network. In other words, an enterprise is a kinship organization and a social organization first, and an economic organization second.
I have never been attracted to the humanistic enlightenment in the 1980s, but I became less and less attracted to it later, which may have something to do with the style. I remember very clearly that Zhang Jiasheng was the voice actor for the narration of “Heshang”. I didn’t like the whole voice and tone. There was also the second half of Qian Gang’s reportage “Tangshan Earthquake”, which was recited on the radio station. do not like. It seems to be a religious language, praying for something in common with human beings. I think I should be a normal person, most people don’t like this tone. Some particularly good students, in a rather peculiar school atmosphere, even a psychedelic situation, embraced that tone. I have to thank my alma mater Wenzhou Middle School. At that time, the middle school was in a relaxed and pragmatic state. When I was still in middle school, my mother was a middle school teacher and taught mathematics in another middle school. She came back one day and told me that one of her students went to high school and college, and the parents invited everyone to have a drink. As a result, someone said in front of the student, what’s the use of going to university now, that student was a little embarrassed and unhappy, only seventeen or eighteen years old, and didn’t know what to do at the banquet. Wenzhou is indeed a super down-to-earth place, and I find the literary accent very strange.
Wu Qi: It seems that Wenzhou Middle School is a very special existence. Is it because this place has always had such a tradition, or did it just catch up with the period before and after the reform and opening up to develop a different ecology?
Xiang Biao: Wenzhou Middle School is a relatively old school, run by a squire named Sun Yirang, who is engaged in the study of oracle bone inscriptions. The teachers of Wenzhou Middle School were Zhu Ziqing and Zheng Zhenduo. During the war in the Republic of China, Beijing was a war-torn place, Shanghai was a ten-mile foreign market, a place with rich people, and many literati were scattered on the side of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. In the past, middle schools were the highest local institutions with strong roots. Now middle schools are mainly to train and send college students to Beijing and Shanghai. The local universities are also looking out, which is completely different from the meaning of middle schools under the gentry culture at that time. Early secondary schools also played an important role in the revolution. Of course, I didn’t know what historical continuity there was at that time, so I thought Wenzhou Middle School was a key middle school. The teachers were all older, as if they were transferred from other places. They had experienced the “Cultural Revolution” and were more serious about teaching. With the concept of a task like the previous one, the scores of the college entrance examination are OK, and there is no need to compete with other cities, which is such a natural state.
“Dead Poets Society”
mourning of young people
Wu Qi: After the 1990s, the main framework for discussing Chinese-style education in China was the distinction between quality education and exam-oriented education. However, it was later discovered that the so-called quality education had also changed, and interest classes had become a new burden, while the pressure of learning did not ease.
Xiang Biao: I was taught in a very typical Chinese style. I have to attend classes, and I have to persevere if I have no interest. I have never imagined the joy of learning, and our teachers have not imagined turning education into a pleasure. Let me give you an example. I am a liberal arts major. I have a wide range of interests, but I am not interested in history. If I can teach students like me to the point where they have no interest, this history class is absolutely amazing. When the teacher talks about history class, he has no concept at all. Why do you want to talk about something that has nothing to do with what it seems to be? What is the meaning and meaning of this history to today’s students? In this way, the facts of history cannot be activated. There are two ways to activate. One is to go into the interior of history and tell the internal stories of the Three Kingdoms when you talk about the Three Kingdoms. What’s more important is to be able to establish some connections, such as the power struggle between the three countries, the changes between territories, and people’s territorial consciousness, which is completely different from what we are now, and this layer can be spoken out.
To be honest, Western education is still relatively strong. Our ability to grit our teeth and persevere is stronger than theirs, and we have learned what Western students have not learned, but on average, their work enthusiasm and discipline are stronger than domestic-educated students. It is obvious that I have a Ph.D. and a master’s degree by myself, and the sense of fun among undergraduates is also very strong. I don’t usually teach undergraduates, but once an undergraduate student was doing a paper called “Comparison of Waste Disposal in India and Germany”, which was mainly to study how people understand the relationship between clean and unclean. He went to the homes of those who picked up garbage in India and found that their homes were temporarily rented houses next to the garbage disposal plant, but they were very clean. He had to understand their concept of life. In Germany, garbage has nothing to do with being dirty anymore. A lot of it is clean plastic packaging. If you want to keep throwing it away to form a circular economy, you must be concerned about what to throw away and what not to throw away. This is an example, very imaginative, you can see his fun, he did not design this project based on what everyone said, but went to the garbage dump to see people’s houses so clean and asked these specific questions.
Another student went to Cambodian orphanages to study adoption policies, investigating why the orphanages were reluctant to allow children to be adopted by other families. She found out that the orphanage sought to secure international resources and funding by retaining the number of orphans. This amounts to the commercialization of humanitarian organizations, a strategy in the context of the global industrialization of humanitarian aid. The difference can be seen here . What problems did our undergraduates care about when they were 19 and 20 years old?
“Genius Gunner”
Wu Qi: The biggest resonance of young Chinese people on the Internet is “mourning”. Now the conditions have improved, the degree of freedom has become higher, and they have their own hobbies. They have started to have their own fun, but they have fallen into a kind of General depression, as if nothing makes sense and see no change in life.
Xiang Biao: Because the overall economy is growing, everyone can continue to rely on its returns. The post-70s and some post-80s can continue for ten or twenty years according to this situation, but this road will definitely be completed. Fun means being able to have great interest and enthusiasm for the thing itself, without the need for external rewards to stimulate enthusiasm. Art, mathematics, these things are good examples, probably human nature. Our home and school education force you to think about return, even if you have a personal interest, you must never take this as a career. The orientation is very different. Enthusiasm in art is quite natural. People who love to paint always love to paint, but other work, such as research and public welfare, will involve a lot of tedious details, and there must be a continuous enthusiasm. Not entirely spontaneously, but through education.
Wu Qi: The dividends of economic development may not be completely over to this day. These very “mourned” young people are still in it, but they may subjectively not take these progress seriously. For example, everyone’s attachment to hukou is gradually weakening, global or national mobility is increasing, and the scope of choice is not limited to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, but more second- and third-tier cities, or returning to hometown. These specific aspects are actually It’s more progress than before.
Xiang Biao: This is very interesting. We need to provide alternative sources of meaning in life. Japan gives us a warning, there are many closed otaku and otaku, and life is very stable and solid. Education in Japan is also not very good. It emphasizes the spirit of craftsmanship, insists on persistence and concentration, and does not emphasize fun too much. Another example, my niece is learning to draw. I accompanied her to a teacher’s house to talk about painting. The teacher said that you should paint beautifully, and if you draw a portrait of a person, if that person’s hands are not good-looking, Just put your hands behind your back so everyone can’t see. This seems like a lot of fun for kids. But if art is understood as such a visual beauty, children will soon feel boring, because beauty is formalized and difficult to pursue. The real charm of art is to produce a visual effect that allows the other party to think and reflect, and has the power of thinking. To understand art from this perspective, the interesting space will be larger, and children will also think a lot of questions. If you draw the unsightly hand accurately and draw that kind of movement, it can be very touching.
This goes back to the original question. When we read books and understand the laws of human society, we must have a relationship with ourselves, otherwise we will engage in art for the sake of beauty, like a service job, to please people. Everyone has to look upside down, don’t think about pleasing, think about how you can have fun, even in a very simple service industry, such as a restaurant, if you look carefully, you can be very fun, like a small writer to see all kinds of people, etc. , what is the difference between each person when they pass the front desk, how to interact with him… If employees are given a lot of autonomy and space, so that he feels that he is not a part of the machine, but is dealing with people as a social person, he will also There is a lot of innovation.
“Genius Girl”
Universities should look for exceptions
Wu Qi: Along with the issue of community, let’s go a step further. What expectations do we have for today’s universities? What should universities do? There seems to be a big difference and tension between your practice at Oxford and the reality at home.
Xiang Biao: The functions of universities are different in each era. We have entered a period of relatively abundant material resources and a relatively high level of urban education, so “human production” has become more and more important. As we mentioned earlier, many problems are not solved through economic redistribution. There are various demands of some people. The so-called diversity of people’s needs for material, spiritual and cultural life is very real. Under such circumstances, what kind of people our universities cultivate is indeed a very important issue. Let me repeat what I said before: university is to give you an environment to explore yourself and the world in the special four or five years of your life, allow you to make mistakes, allow you to do crazy exploration, and allow you to understand things Generate understanding and, of course, learn basic knowledge and techniques. This is my understanding of college. I think the teaching function of the university is definitely higher than the research function, and the future research should be spread out and integrated with the industry. As I said before, universities are not about setting the example, but about finding the exception.
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What do you think is the ideal education
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