Text/Han Shitai
"Dad, what's your hometown?" My daughter, who is in fifth grade, asked me for help to complete an essay topic left by her teacher. Looking at her blank cheeks, my heart felt like something had been stung by something.
My hometown is the place where I was born and raised, and it is a deep memory that can never be erased from the depths of my soul.
Hometown is the soft soil that I stepped on with my bare feet when I was a child, my hometown is the nameless river that flows in front of the door, my hometown is the green crop field behind the house, my hometown is the smell of rice in the evening with the smoke of cooking, my hometown is the sheep intestine path leading to the outside, my hometown is the blue sky, white clouds, herds of cattle and sheep, and my hometown is the birch forest that makes my friends linger. The hometown is the tears that the new daughter-in-law was so naughty that the little boys stuffed the chimney of the cauldron with bean grass when she cooked, the hometown is the tears that the little girl longs to wear a big red flower cotton jacket during the New Year, the hometown is the bursts of laughter and laughter on the river in winter, and the hometown is the hearty Chinese New Year's Eve meal on the Chinese New Year's Eve night......
"Dad, this is your hometown." The daughter's eyes were even more confused and chaotic.
Yes, what is the hometown of children born in the city? Is it a tall building made of reinforced concrete? Is it a community that lives in a unit for several years and doesn't know what the neighbor's last name is? Is it a crowded and bustling park? Or is it a tutorial class that you can't finish and homework that you can't finish? No, the children's hometown should not be like this, the hometown should exude the breath of human affection, and the hometown should be full of the fragrance of the earth!
Hometown is a place where a person longs to leave when he is a child, but when he grows up, he always wants to go back, and in the end he can't go back; My hometown is a place where I can have thousands of grievances against her, and even curse her, but I don't allow others to say anything bad; Hometown is full of memories of our childhood - hometown is our beautiful childhood!
However, do city children still have a good childhood? I started kindergarten at the age of three, and since then I have embarked on a road to study, a road of no return that is always compared with others. In the three years of kindergarten, what Montessori class, what bilingual class, what abacus mental arithmetic, what "Three Character Classic", what "Di Zi Gui", what Tang poetry, what calligraphy and painting, what dance...... Under the dogma of "don't let your child lose at the starting line", he survived.
When it comes to primary school, crazy parents have begun to plan the college entrance examination after 12 years, and the society seems to have pinned the hope of reviving the nation on the childish primary school students early, who have to learn everything, pinyin, arithmetic, English, equations, geometry, science, morality, calligraphy, poetry and music, Chinese rhyme and Tang style, pre-Qin Zhuzi, Chinese and foreign masterpieces, music and dance......
In middle school, it was the moment of saber rattling and bayonet red, ten courses, and nearly 10 million people crowded the single-plank bridge every year; Once successfully passed, another four years followed; In order to fight for the right to choose life, a large number of people fought for the postgraduate entrance examination, followed by another three years; After that, there is a good chance that there will be three more years......
From kindergarten to college graduation, it is at least 19 years, and in order to find a better job, you have to work hard to get into graduate school, which adds up to 22 years. If you don't know anything before the age of three and can't take care of yourself, and after the age of 70 you can't move freely due to physical reasons, then you can count almost one-third of your life in school.
While we envy the abundant material living conditions of today's children, who really cares about the happiness of the children's hearts? In addition to urging and forcing them to learn, has there been any heart-to-heart communication? In addition to planning for their future, have you listened to what kind of future they need?
We are complaining about the rebellion of today's children, but at an age when they should be carefree and playing, how much free time do we give them?
Since entering kindergarten at the age of three, we parents have been anxious and panicked all day long, always imposing their dreams on their children, always thinking that their children should get ahead in this upcoming competitive society, always comparing with other people's children, and always educating their children with a lot of amazing arguments from experts. He is convinced of the so-called wise sayings, and he also forces his children to follow the path he has planned.
I always feel that I have created an incomparably superior living environment for my children, and my children must unconditionally accept the arrangements of their parents, and we must "read only the books of the sages", but we don't know that children are not containers loaded with knowledge, as they grow older, they will have their own ideas, and our consistent practice is to deny all their ideas whether they are correct or not, and then instill our own ideas that we think are correct, and also require children not to have any arguments and independent thinking.
Social competition is becoming more and more fierce, restlessness spreads in every family, and every unit in society is not immune, as if we plan the future for our children is for the sake of children, and let children participate in all kinds of cram schools for the sake of children, as if it should be natural for children to obey the arrangements of their parents. The society pins the hope of national rejuvenation on the next generation, and feels that it is irresponsible not to let children carry the burden of national rejuvenation on their young and immature shoulders.
As a result, in each education reform, experts are emphasizing that the subjects of study should be more refined, the content should be more detailed, the knowledge should be broader, and the ability should be improved...... I can't wait for primary school students to master advanced mathematics linear geometry, and I can't wait for middle school students to climb to the pinnacle of advanced science and technology.
On the one hand, it emphasizes that children should be obedient and obedient, and on the other hand, it requires children to have independent thinking and innovative spirit. Isn't it nonsense that we are extremely reluctant to respect children's nature, and to shape children into obedient and sensible machines, and to require them to innovate independently?
When we see a large number of good children with excellent character and learning stepping into the university campus, they will skip classes, fail courses, indulge in online games and other deviant behaviors that waste their studies, all of them are heartbroken, standing on the moral high ground to criticize and condemn, but who has really thought about why these good children will become another kind of appearance that we do not want to see once they get out of the strict supervision of parents and the high degree of constraints of primary and secondary schools?
Because, we just blindly ask them what to do, and never think about what they need! A child's nature is to like to play and get close to nature, but fifteen years of preschool education plus basic education, who has given children these freedoms that belong to them? As Tao Yuanming's poem wrote, "After a long time in the cage, you can return to nature", once you escape from the "cage" built by parents, schools, and society, and return to a university campus with relatively easy management, isn't it like a bird returning to the forest?
As a result, they will vent their depression for more than ten years, because there is no accumulation and memory close to nature, so they can only indulge in online games? Won't you waste your youth and squander it?
Learning knowledge, should be gradually through the learning of specific knowledge to gradually cultivate children's learning ability and ability to transfer, rather than requiring children to master how much specific knowledge, if the child is used as a container to store knowledge, the memory of the human brain is not as good as the computer, why bother to abandon the end? What we need is the ability to learn, and the transfer of that ability. If a lot of knowledge is exposed to young students too early, it will not only fail to achieve the expected purpose because of their fragile thinking level and knowledge structure, but also lead to boredom due to excessive learning effort.
Have we noticed that a lot of knowledge that we did not grasp very well when we went to school, and it is much easier to understand after a certain age, so there is no need to excessively raise the difficulty of children's learning, and there is no need to impart any knowledge to children, but we should respect the rules and let children dabble in some interesting knowledge by themselves through interest cultivation.
Since we advocate innovation, we should respect children's nature and let them think independently from an early age, only in this way can their imagination and creativity be stimulated.
Some time ago, I saw an expert on the Internet sending a letter to the Ministry of Education, saying that the abacus teaching of primary school students should be strengthened, on the grounds that abacus was invented by the ancient Chinese and intangible cultural heritage is worth inheriting. It seems to make a lot of sense, but when I think about it, such an expert must have no children and has never seen elementary school textbooks. Abacus as an ancient civilization should be inherited, but there is no need to popularize it, should it be more appropriate for interested children to master it?
Do we have to go to the bank to handle business, and ask the bank teller to calculate the interest with an abacus? How many transactions can you do in a day? Do you have to memorize an abacus when buying groceries? Everything is a product of the historical conditions at that time, and the abacus has indeed played a huge role in ancient times and even in modern times, but with the progress of science and technology, the emergence of the computer has obviously completed the historical mission, and what is the point of studying the abacus? Gunpowder was invented by the ancient Chinese, so could it be that the Chinese army must use gunpowder in modern warfare to meet the enemy's high-tech weapons? Don't use Beidou satellite navigation and memorize a compass to navigate?
Give your childhood back to your children, don't let your anxiety affect and infect your children, and let them do something appropriate for that age at what age.
Han Shitai, a Tibetan boy born at the beginning of the reform and opening up, has been teaching for 18 years, loves education, yearns for poetry and distance, loves literature, and is now teaching in Lanzhou New District.