Yang Bin: Cultivating people's "instrumental knowledge" is the first priority of future education
Education powerhouse. 
The word education is particularly intriguing. In Chinese, education and education are two words, and in terms of origin, each has its own meaning. Open "Shuo Wen Jie Zi", teaching, refers to "the upper and lower effect"; Raising is about "raising a son to do good". In the current expression, if it is used separately, teaching, more emphasis will be placed on formal teaching and learning, teaching, teaching, teaching; In addition to focusing on the birth and nurturing of the family, at the school stage, it generally emphasizes those informal and non-curricular ways of training, edification, chemical education, and education. To teach, there are teachers, teachers, teachers, students, learners. Education, there is ecology, atmosphere, system, compared with teaching, the color of the network is heavier than the layer, and the roles involved are richer but not so easy to grasp. Of course, the relationship between the two is integrated and unified, but by comparing them and doing some thinking, it may give us a perspective to think about the future of education.
The sudden outbreak of the epidemic has brought about a large-scale exploration of schooling at home. This sounds true, but when I dig deeper, I keep asking a lot of people if home-based schooling is a complete schooling. In the case of the most organized and responsible Chinese schools, all courses can be carried out in an orderly manner except for experimental courses, teachers and students meet on the cloud, and classes are realized in a variety of interactive ways on different platforms.
If the quality of teaching is the quality of teaching, then do you think that school education is complete? If it's incomplete, then, what's missing? It's definitely not physical education or lab classes, and some schools have even tried to moderately deform these classes online or distribute them. Thinking seriously about this question of "what is still missing" is, in fact, like an ideological control experiment, giving us a good opportunity to ask what the fruits of education really include.
**, become a talent, become a groupThree categories of outcomes of university educationDifferent stages and levels of school education have their own positioning and value. Specific to the university, the "three percent" is the three types of achievements I try to summarize. The three "become" are all verbs.
*, refers not to the natural adulthood brought about by age and physiology, but to "grow up" in the sense of independence, maturity and responsibility**Personality, character, and character are taking shape, and you are yourself. It is an important foundation for talent and herd. Frankly speaking, there are many college students in reality, maybe the goal of ** has not been achieved, the course is qualified, the study is completed, maybe you will say that he has become a talent, but as soon as he deals with it, he will feel that he is not **; This kind of talent without the foundation is quite unreliable, but it may not be distinguished by the graduation certificate. Think about it, if you want to achieve the goal of **, you just teach, and if you don't educate, you really can't do it.
When it comes to becoming a talent, teaching has made a great contribution to becoming a talent, and the chain of cause and effect logic is relatively clear, and it is relatively effective to achieve. This makes this "Cheng" a bit dominant, conspicuous and occupied. A lot of it is said that it is educational research, and it becomes teaching research, or even classroom teaching research. The Northeast dialect is called pumping, and it has shrunk. This (perhaps) casual slippage of the concept is really worthy of high vigilance.
Multiple intelligences have been explored for so long, but school education still grasps logical, mathematical and linguistic intelligence, and even linguistic intelligence is overly logical and formalized. In college, it is often specific to a certain major, which is not impossible, but does the college have a general background, a thick foundation, and a key? The disease of professional cocoons, which has caused society to become more and more Barbie, cannot be cured by giving up the profession, but must be prevented by strengthening general knowledge.
Finally, when it comes to the important educational achievement of the group, we say very little, in fact, it is very inappropriate. In the process and result of "grouping", there is a very important interaction and sharing of values, norms, and identity, and the goal is to make every person in each generation not only grow into an individual, but also grow into a member of the community, an organic member.
The students in the school are mobile, but the people walk in groups, which is a very positive contribution of school education to the society, the country and even the community with a shared future for mankind. To achieve the goal of being a group, education can make a great contribution and is indispensable, and peer training and community building are a kind of mutual education. Teaching should also focus on teaching in groups, but in reality groups are often forgotten by teachers and teachers.
Teamwork is highly valued in a variety of ways and is written into the teaching objectives of various training programs and syllabuses. However, the evaluation and evaluation of students in schools are always individual-oriented, and it is difficult to see the team as a whole to be recognized and encouraged, and the results must be divided clearly and refreshingly.
Emphasis on education and light on education
to make education the essential
Today's school education, whether it is higher education or basic education, observes, schools have put a lot of effort into "teaching", and they will not be evaluated if they have the law, but they must be concentrated in resource investment, evaluation is the most important, and there are many indicators and fine indicators. In terms of "education", looking at it realistically, there are quite big differences between schools, between principals and principals, and between different teachers.
Either people are always accustomed to placing education in characteristic indicators, better to h**e rather than must, rather than mainstream, decisive indicators of school, teacher and educational achievement. The investment in education always likes to say that this is a work of conscience or a bottomless pit. In the final analysis, the measurement and evaluation of education is not so methodical, between the input and output of education, the results are not obvious enough, and most of the cause and effect can only be seen for a long time, and the process is still very complicated.
teach, always have a plan; Educate, but rely on play. When people recall that when they were studying, they said that they met a good teacher or caught up with a good class, not only that they taught well, but that the students in the class were the best of the best, and that the teacher changed themselves, and that the class influenced them, relying on education. Good play, improvisation in the level, seems to be natural, but in fact it is through the fire experience of the old way. Play, different from person to person, according to the situation, this is an important feature of education.
As another example, please be aware that sports are not sports. In fact, sports, sports, and time-consuming competitions between different collectives (look at those seasons that are densely arranged), the effect of nurturing in ** and groups is far more important than sports skills and physical fitness, about this, Tsinghua Mr. John Ma wrote a master's degree ** "The Migration Value of Sports" in 1926 is worth reading carefully, and you must do it sincerely to understand it.
A teacher of my generation asked me, what can be done in college now to make boys more bloody and stronger? I don't dare to say that if this is really highly valued, according to the way of emphasizing education and neglecting education just described, it is estimated that we will have to find a way to open a course, a course with credits. If you want to strengthen your leadership, communication skills, and critical thinking skills, you have opened a course that goes straight to the point.
I call this the differentiation and curriculum, which is a silo and a knowledge-based solution, and the result we want is to happen in values, character, ability, and literacy, and we can't rely on learning 16 chapters of leadership and communication knowledge and theory, which are all swimming books, recipes, and news reports of champion athletes. Setting up classes at every turn is a misunderstanding of the relationship and difference between teaching and education. Of course, it also highlights the lack of tricks in education.
From this perspective, if we look at the hope of the future of education, I believe that this state of education may and should undergo important changes, bringing about positive changes in the process and results of education, and of course, bringing challenges and opportunities to educators and learners. What is it? To put it simply, the pattern of emphasizing education over education and emphasizing education over education may move towards a more balanced education and education, and take education as the key. Teaching and education are more balanced, but education will become the key.
The goal of education
Nurturing tools or nurturing the whole person
Why is it so judged? There are many reasons for this. First of all, universities are close to a thousand years old, but in the more than 260 years since the Industrial Revolution, we are experiencing an accelerated change from knowledge scarcity to instrument scarcity, which can also be called a great change from knowledge to instrumental knowledge.
For a long time, our education system has evolved into what it is today, driven by a path that emerged from a life of scarcity of knowledge. The intergenerational transmission of knowledge is the most efficient in teaching. How great is the kind of individual in Liu Cixin's "The Village Teacher" that focuses on "the transfer of knowledge between two generations of living beings". People are always accustomed to what they lack, they value what they pay more attention to, and they need to make up for what they urgently need, and this "hunger memory" will also precipitate into the genes and pass it on in the system. It is often said that knowledge is power, and knowledge changes destiny. Intellectuals are also easily understood as knowledgeable people, which makes many intellectuals feel that this is not so energetic.
The good news is that the productivity of knowledge is improving at an accelerated pace, and the bad news is that education is still working efficiently in a pattern inherited from the context of knowledge scarcity. Knowledge is never enough, but in advanced education (which overlaps with developed economies and has a different concept), and among the expanding group of higher-level recipients of education, the marginal contribution of knowledge, especially knowledge, is declining, and the discrimination between people is decreasing (it is still to be said here that the real challenge of global knowledge distribution and education disparities remains serious, just like the global economic and wealth disparities).
This trend is instructive for thinking about the future, which is already in place but is not evenly distributed. This shows that when knowledge is freed from scarcity and no longer plays a decisive role because of its scarcity (do not misunderstand, the fundamental role of knowledge is still strengthened), human instrumental knowledge highlights its scarcity.
Instrumental knowledge refers to the measure and insight, judgment and belief, pattern and realm, the richness and tolerance of the spiritual world, and the way of a gentleman. I've often heard people quote Fitzgerald from a variety of angles—that being able to act normally while having two completely opposite ideas is a sign of first-rate wisdom. I think that's what I'm talking about. Very early, in the Axial Age, instrumental knowledge was proposed and aspired to. However, it is only the liberal arts of a small number of people, and the skills of the so-called free people are really far from the general public. Compare two words that contain the word "instrument": a gentleman is not a instrument, and instrument knowledge comes first. These two words are etymically derived from containers, but they represent two different educational goals—is it to cultivate tools, or to cultivate the whole person?
The cultivation of instrumental knowledge
Education is the foundation, and education is the key
The harm of the scarcity of instrumental knowledge to education is also a judgment and a warning in 1947 by Liang Sicheng, the son of Mr. Liang Qichao, in his speech "The World of Half Humans". What kind of life will the people cultivated by a good university go out of and what kind of contribution will they make? In terms of architectural design, people will talk about the difference between architects and architects, and the difference between craftsmanship and master's ingenuity. At that time, Liang Sicheng called on the arts and sciences not to divide the family and not to abandon it, otherwise the cultivated ones would only be half humans.
Many senior scholars have followed or followed Mr. Liang Sicheng's words, here I use his metaphor to say that education and education can not be neglected, and if you do not do a good job or do not do a good job in education, what you will cultivate is half a person, not a whole person.
There is a lack of knowledge and knowledge, and what is taught is manpower, which may barely be called a talent, but I am afraid it is difficult to get out of the world. A character is someone who can make a difference in the fate of a region, an industry, or an organization because of him (and the people he unites and inspires). Some people use the phrase "knowledge but ignorance" to say a similar view, which can also be regarded as the same, with knowledge but lack of knowledge. As we will see later, instrumental knowledge is the most scarce and valuable insight when it comes to innovation.
In order to get rid of scarcity, we must have a basic understanding, that is, instrumental knowledge should not be and is no longer the exclusive property of a few people, not an aristocratic thing, but the basic characteristics of ordinary people and ordinary workers in the future. In the cultivation and cultivation of instrumental knowledge, teaching is the foundation, and education is the key. In other words, relying on teaching alone will not achieve the goal of instrumental knowledge.
There are also studies that analyze "education" from the perspective of implicit curriculum. In school, the various elements of students' informal learning, such as teacher-student relationships, student-student interactions, various campus rules and procedures, metaphors, and various school life experiences that are unintentional, everyday, implicit, or explicit, are often and effectively "nurtured". In the translator's preface to The Essentials, I say that principals and deans should not think that once they have done administrative work, they will no longer have the opportunity to teach students in the classroom, so they are reluctant to give up on the podium.
In fact, they are still teaching the class, and the scope is even larger - they are teaching a very important general compulsory course, which is the words and deeds demonstration of the president and dean, which is an important implicit course with great educational value, and is not only open to current students, alumni and the public, are learners of this implicit course.
It can be said that the management work and daily operation of the school are also educating people in the form of implicit curriculum. How the school treats those grassroots staff, how to treat different opinions, how to respect tradition and bring forth the new, these ways of governing the school, in the eyes of students, they will go to the heart, this is also educating people, it can also be called teaching without teaching (but I don't want to call it a class without teaching, because I am afraid of returning to the old way of looking for answers to all training problems and setting up classes to find solutions).
Teaching without teaching, one can be pronounced as teaching without teaching (jiào), emphasizing less preaching and more attention to the acceptance of learners; Teaching without teaching (jiāo) can also be read in a different way, which is understood as the purpose of teaching so that there is no need to teach in the future (Mr. Ye Shengtao's thought, teaching people to fish instead of teaching people to fish); Teaching without teaching also emphasizes that teachers do not teach, and that the learner's main role is played by self-teaching, mutual teaching, and the teacher's previous non-enlightenment, so that students can enter a state of anger and sorrow, and only then can the teacher's enlightenment and development be possible. It also reminds us to avoid getting caught up in over-teaching, where the content is too clear and complete, at the expense of the learner's curiosity, thinking, and endogenous motivation.
Teaching without teaching also has a meaning, which is the letting go of parents in the college stage. Continue to care, continue to love, but do not easily intervene, get started, work on behalf of the brain, which is the key to the achievement of Sancheng. Teaching and learning is a contradiction, if you teach too much, the subjectivity, enthusiasm and creativity of learning will be inhibited; Parents and children are similar, and if the parents' opinions are too strong, the children's courage to explore and try will be inhibited and self-restrained. Groping is not so good compared with exploration, but groping has the unique value of groping, and the psychological state and behavioral characteristics of lack of experience and grasp contain real growth. There are two words in English, independent and interdependent, which are the degrees that both parents and children need to ponder.
Education, all the staff in the school are working hard, teachers of course have an unshirkable responsibility, "how the teacher teaches, but also what the teacher teaches", it means that the teacher in the curriculum teaching conveys the values, vision, taste, and pursuit that are integrated into the content and beyond the content, which is extremely important for the "education" of instrumental edification. In addition to subject teachers, more and more educational content requires the participation of specially trained or even professionally certified mentors, consultants (communication, career development, psychology, relationships), and coaches (in fact, sports coaches, art directors, etc. have long been educating people in schools, but the concept of future coaches is broader).
One of the reasons for the emphasis on professional qualifications, in addition to the level factor, is that these mentors, consultants, and coaches have a great deal of moral and legal responsibility for the long-term impact they give to their learners.
Of course, in this process, the learner takes the initiative to act and deal with the ups and downs of the relationship, and others should be on the sidelines, either standing by (seemingly doing nothing, in fact, it is better to handle it properly than to be promising), or to ask the key question in a timely manner - in short, the learner is to live this life by himself, and the mentor is not the master of the student's fate, but may be honored to be an enlightener and lifelong friend such as in "The Dead Poets Society".
Teachers in universities (as well as primary and secondary schools) are not academic professors, do not belong to a specific department or discipline, and focus on forming an ecology of "educating people" and giving full play to their well-trained advantages around the growth of students; The increase in the size and quality of professionals in such schools will promote the achievement and enrichment of "education" in future schools (which are needed at all levels). It is also necessary to see that this part of the professional staff is in short supply, and a large number of personnel need to be supplemented and continuously trained in the future, but the relevant reserves and training are still very insufficient, and they are far from enough.
In addition, the rapid development of technology should also provide appropriate help and assistance in the aspect of "education". For example, there is an important concept in the field of leadership called "melting pot moment", which refers to the fact that people face some very challenging setbacks and stagnation, the fear and challenges that come with entering a foreign land or leaving their comfort zone, etc., and experiencing the melting pot to find (create) meaning often leads to the key sublimation of leaders, and of course, there are many people in the melting pot who sink or choose to avoid it.
Competence can bring contribution and happiness, but "hard work" can grow. To recognize the value of the furnace, we must also see its cost and cost in reality, which are mostly irreversible. With such a valuable process of nurturing and growing, I imagine that in the future, it will be possible to use an immersive technology to bring people into this high-fidelity situation "intrinsically safely", in some kind of furnace experience, in some kind of design of growth loss-in-law, to help promote leadership (and many "instruments" such as ethical perception and decision-making).
Of course, autonomous dieting is never forced starvation in a famine, but the future development of technology in the dimension of immersion is still very promising. My thinking is that technology is still investing a lot in teaching and content delivery, and there is a lot to be done in the future in "education", and virtual reality and augmented reality should not only be used for knowledge transfer, but should be more consciously supported in the process of learning through experience. The future of education is not the future of teaching; The object of technical assistance and services should be the former.
Instrumental knowledge comes first
The essentials of not being machined or alienated
Education, as the key to future education, actually reminds the hot topic of intelligent education, whether your concept is too big. Maybe it's just intelligent teaching or intelligent knowledge point search and answering procedures. The education of education has given educators in school education a great challenge, and it also leaves a lot of world, "a tree shakes another tree, a cloud pushes another cloud, and a soul awakens another soul", the tree and the cloud are not easy to say, the soul is not a matter of machines, intelligence, and so on.
At the same time, the goal of future education, human knowledge, is an irreplaceable advantage for both AI and high technology. This is also my theme, if education wants to face the future, it must return to the original, which is to understand the essence of human beings, and the integrity and balance of education and education.
When it comes to technology and the future of education, educators ask themselves what challenges will the rapid development of technology bring to education. Whether it is the victory of "Alphago" or the heated discussion of the singularity theory, it really makes students and their parents anxious - although it is only the second decade of the 21st century - what kind of major to choose, so that the future will not be crushed, defeated, and replaced by artificial intelligence; Or it can be transformed into a question for educators - more generally, what kind of skills and characteristics should education cultivate in the educated people (we are not machines, not configurations) in order to be more able to adapt to the future and even lead the future.
In fact, there are many test questions answered correctly by machines, which just shows that the test paper still examines knowledge rather than instrumental knowledge. Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that he is not worried about machines becoming human-like, but more worried about people becoming machine-like. I add the word "let" to raise the question again, whether it is now or in the future, whether it is "making people like machines", every organization and individual in society should reflect on it, but education is the first to bear the brunt.
The key to making people not machined and alienated is the same: instrumental knowledge first.
For example, in the future, more people will need to exercise their own leadership, and the role of leaders is no longer (by no means) the role of a certain group of people, and everyone will have to lead in their own unique way at some different moments. It is important to know that leadership is not an extreme value optimizer with faster calculations, more sophisticated algorithms, and a larger amount of data.
Here is a sentence related to the view that we just said about teaching without teaching, that is, we need to examine whether the content of education in different disciplines at different stages, as well as many management practices of educational organizations themselves, is self-evidently showing or infiltrating some kind of extreme optimization program to learners, and in many cases, it is still short-term local extreme optimization, and if there is, it is easy to lead the cultivated people to utilitarian calculations.
Contrary to the extreme value optimization program, perhaps you have not thought about it from this perspective, leadership is precisely at a certain point in time, contrary to linear extrapolation based on hard data, choosing disagreements and disagreements that are not seen by the mainstream and turning them into organizational wills and common intentions to make them realize - it is only at this time that we have hindsight and "recognize" that he has a vision - in many cases, it really becomes recognition.
There is another word that is often paired with foresight, which is called wisdom. Insight is a very beautiful word, but in fact, the word "wisdom" means not being grouped, isolated, and if it cannot be transformed into the consensus of the organization and society in a timely and effective manner, it means a kind of risky responsibility for the leaders who own it. Whether it is foresight or insight, in most cases, it comes from belief and love based on understanding and experience.
There is a saying that most people believe because they can see it, and a very small number of people can see it because they believe it, note that the visibility at this time is not derived through rigorous logical deduction, but because of belief and instrumental knowledge, which cannot be replaced by relying on logical and evidence-based algorithmic intelligence.
It is definitely a thrilling leap for the leader, his organization, and the industry, and for the society and the world, it is an important moment to change the course of history and make mankind move forward. In many cases, wisdom becomes consensus, which is not the place where logical and mathematical intelligence comes into play, but relies on interpersonal resonance. At this time, empathy and storytelling power make the visions of leaders that are forward-looking but lack evidence to support them become the dreams that followers yearn for and are willing to work hard, which cannot be replaced by rational data-based algorithmic intelligence.
Friedman, the author of "The World is Flat", once said, "My daughter's generation and I have received very different words of encouragement when we graduate. The message of our generation is often 'find a job', or 'find a job';And my daughter's generation is expected to 'define a job' when they graduate. ”
That's right, in the not-too-distant future, we will have to rely on instrumental knowledge to create jobs that didn't exist before (and create a work environment that makes people more like people rather than machines), to sublimate jobs that cannot be replaced by the smartest computers (work itself is meaningful, interesting, and enjoyable), and to enrich jobs where the essence of humanity is deeply embedded and cannot be reduced to algorithms and alienated into machines. More importantly, we will place more emphasis on and effectively cultivate students' empathy, human nature, emotional connection, and humanistic care, which humans can do well but algorithms, robots, and applications cannot.
It is the people who decide, and progress is the evolution. Even if human beings want to evolve, they will not evolve to be complete, subtle, and predictable like machines, but to evolve to imperfect, uncontrollable, and unreliable (not living on a written map) living people, as well as people who share the beauty of each other.
Therefore, if you ask "what is the essence of future education", my answer is that "education" with temperature and "instrumental knowledge" of cultivating people is the original nature of education, which will also support the future of education and shape the future of mankind.
[Yang Bin: Keynote speaker of Chang'an Street Reading Club, Vice President of Tsinghua University].
Note: Authorized to publish, this article has been selected and included in the "Chang'an Street Reading Club" theoretical learning platform (People's **, People's Political Consultative Conference Daily, Beijing**, Xinhuanet, Central**, National Party Media Information Public Platform, Horizon, Beijing Time, Surging Government Affairs, Phoenix News Client "Chang'an Street Reading Club" column synchronization), * must be uniformly marked "Chang'an Street Reading Club" theoretical learning platform source and author.
Editor-in-charge: Xue Linxi; Preliminary review: Cheng Ziqian, Chen Jiani; Re-examiner: Li Yufan
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