Chen Pingyuan, Xia Xiaohong and his wife are in the study at home. Photo by Lu Chen.
I am a professor of literature myself, but I can't say that it is an upgraded version of Chinese (teacher), and the language and writing included in Chinese are different from literature. There is another course in the university that continues the Chinese teaching in primary and secondary schools, which used to be called "Freshman Mandarin", and today some schools are called "University Chinese". In a sense, it is a course that students who want to continue to study and improve their Chinese writing skills when they enter university and choose a variety of majors. But there is a problem with this course, it is not imposed by the Ministry of Education, and each university is free to choose, so the "freshman Mandarin" in Taiwan is a course that everyone must take, about 6 credits. In Chinese mainland, some universities do not have it, and some universities do, but only some departments choose this course, and the credit is about two credits.
A few years ago, when I was the head of the Chinese Department at Peking University, I repeatedly called on Chinese universities to resume the teaching of "freshman Chinese language". But at a seminar, an engineering professor asked me, "Can you guarantee two credits of "college language" that will quickly improve reading and writing skills?I said, "This can't be done, Chinese learning may be able to broaden horizons, and strengthening training is conducive to cultivating students' humanistic care, but it can't be used as a particularly practical course that can be used immediately after learning." Because of this, the design and teaching of university Chinese courses in various universities are diverse, and it is difficult to generalize.
Looking back on it for a lifetime,The biggest influence on us was actually the language class.
The path of a lifetime depends on the language, and I probably proposed it in "The Beauty of Language and the Responsibility of Education", which is a speech, but there is such a sentence in it that is true.
What I'm talking about is that, looking back, in primary and secondary education, a lot of knowledge will be updated, such as arithmetic and so on. Looking back on your life, it was the Chinese class that had the biggest impact on you. For primary and secondary education, every subject is important, but the study of Chinese language and literature may be the most important and affect you for a lifetime. So I once gave an example of how you would buy a Chinese textbook that you learned back then, and make a nostalgic one. But generally speaking, I won't buy that arithmetic textbook, because that nostalgia can't be nostalgic.
And in a sense, these Chinese classes are not only specific language knowledge, literary accomplishment, and outlook on life, but also what we call a variety of ways of thinking, thoughts and feelings, and literary tastes. That's why I said that the thing that overflows the most out of all these courses is the language, so I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the language class affects people's lives.
In addition to the exams,There should be a more lofty goal: literary edification
The difficulty of education is that the pressure of the college entrance examination is too great. The pressure of the college entrance examination is too great, and for students and teachers, a difficult choice they face is how to improve their grades quickly.
I am from Cantonese, and Chinese class is like what we call slow cooking soup, you have to read slowly and gradually. If you read it, you will have benefits, but it is impossible to reflect it immediately after reading, and that is something that only second-class dealers can do. Read tomorrow and say, today I will teach me "the beginning of man", tomorrow I will teach you "the nature is good". In this way, it is not what the language class can achieve or what they are working towards. Therefore, in today's middle school teaching, for teachers, the most tangled is for the college entrance examination.
Relatively speaking, good primary and secondary schools, especially good and responsible Chinese teachers, will pay attention to the care of students throughout their lives. In this way, its reading and training will be different from those who do problems all day long and think about the results of the college entrance examination all day long.
I came into contact with a lot of primary and secondary school teachers in this category. Generally speaking, students who have been trained by them, and students who have been trained according to their literary concepts, educational concepts, and language methods, will also have good results in the college entrance examination, but it is just a hurry. In this sense, perhaps what should be changed is the college entrance examination, not the Chinese course centered on quality education that we are talking about today, and it should not be the college entrance examination that commands the entire education, but how to adjust our examination system in the process of education development, which is my idea.
Literary education should not be too utilitarianAnd don't be too utilitarian
Education is more like agriculture, I didn't invent it, I cited it. This issue has already been mentioned in it, and literary education moistens things silently. This concept is for people who study education. I believe that this is not a new proposition, and everyone can accept this concept.
The question is how to cultivate what you call literary education from an early age. In recent years, especially in the last decade or two, parents have had the time and ability to give their students more time for that kind of study, more and more training courses. The only reminder is, don't be too utilitarian.
In particular, I am concerned that I am not very able to accept literary education as a method of ideological and moral education, and that the desire to teach is too strong and not very suitable for young readers. In a sense, when I was a child, especially for children, I read a little literary works, such as Tang poems, Song Ci, and more at home and abroad, such literary works, don't be too utilitarian. I said not to be too utilitarian, the first is that parents should not be too utilitarian, thinking about asking if they can add points to the college entrance examination in the future;The second is not to be too utilitarian, that is, not to think about it as a tool for ideological and moral education.
In fact, the Chinese class, in a sense, has the meaning of moral lessons, but this morality is because this should be hidden behind, first of all, the charm of the article and the poem, and then this aspect. I say this because I've seen a lot of anthologies, and when I first went in, I knew why he chose these articles, and the one behind these articles was too cooperative with the current politics, which is not very good for children to read.
To put it to an extreme, when I was teaching elementary school in a mountain village, I was particularly impressed by our articles at that time, and the articles we chose that matched the political situation of that era would not seem to work in the future. In this sense, reading needs a more long-term vision and interest, don't be too eager to meet the present, whether it is political and economic, or realistic requirements, so it is more appropriate, this is my basic judgment.
"Chinese culture fever" is a kind of regressionOverexploitation of children's intelligence is often counterproductive.
Chinese classes are not entirely literature, we must understand this, Chinese classes and literature classes are not the same thing, so some of the Chinese classes, such as language knowledge, such as thinking training, and some of the cultural interests we call are mixed together, political positions, and so on. How to grasp the proportion of these things must be well considered, or should children be trained more to be aesthetic. In recent years, re-reading the Three Character Classic, those of Chinese learning, should not actually do this.
I was deeply influenced by the New Culture Movement. I don't think about the position of going back to 500 years ago, back to 1,000 years ago. Today's re-mention of "filial piety first", and the re-mention of some ethics and morals of various past eras, as our teaching, for example, they talk about 24 filial piety, and so on, I think it is a very bad retrogression.
Now these national studies craze that is rising among the people is caused by the combination of some economic forces and some political forces, and the effect is not good, so I don't advocate that, and I don't advocate excessive development of children's minds, not that the sooner you read the better, nor the more you read, the better, some works are touching and helpful to read in a certain era. But some other good works may have to wait until high school, maybe they have to wait until college, maybe they have to wait until adulthood to read.
Excessive exploitation of children's intelligence will cause a rebellious, and juvenile and old-age is not a good word. Winter and spring are not right, and neither is the youth and old age. I don't think it's appropriate for an age group to have their reading needs and the goals we need to cultivate, and to disrupt all of this and stuff all the good stuff or the bad stuff, or what we say, the mixed stuff to the kids. Some parents want their children to become a genius in the future, so what I say is to shoehorn things that are not suitable for learning at this age to them, which is not a good teaching method. This aspect requires the cooperation and guidance of educators and front-line teachers. It is not enough to be a university professor alone, and I once participated in the compilation of Chinese for secondary and primary schools, and I found a problem. It's hard to tell the difference between college teachers. The difference in reading between 6-year-old children, 8-year-old children, and 10-year-old children, we do not have the practice and experience of this. Often you take it for granted that this is a good thing, and a good thing does not necessarily have to be learned at this time.
Education must always remember these two words:Step by step, teach students according to their aptitude
Human life is very long, and there needs to be a gradual process of learning what kind of things at a certain time. Education, in fact, is to teach students in accordance with their aptitude step by step. These two words must always be remembered. Step by step, it means that we must cooperate with the process of his mental growth. Teaching students according to their aptitude is the material of the students themselves and their tastes, and we must respect them, and it is not appropriate to put the knowledge that should be learned and accepted by young people in the youth.
All these issues need to be discussed by educators, psychologists and language teaching experts, so that we can make a better decision. My feeling is that today's reading, and the demands placed on the students, are significantly higher than those of my generation. Some of it is that times have changed, and when I think about it, what I read in middle school is completely different from what I read today. If you are a 60-year-old, a 40-year-old, or a 20-year-old this year, and you each come up with your elementary school essay, you will know the change. Why do you say that, my college entrance examination essay was published in "People**" in the past ten years, and many people have shown it to me, of course, some are praised, and some are ridiculed, "You can be commended when you look at such an article back then, and I think it's amazing." ”
Actually, you have to see that today's children are much more mature in writing than we were back then, because they read a lot more than we do, and their world has changed. Our things, our reading, our life experience are different from theirs, in a sense, to understand the changes of the times, to understand the thinking and interests of young people, and then to decide our teaching, which is also needed.