Whether it is quality education or examination-oriented education, educational equity is the bottom line of education reform. The idea of educational fairness has a long history, as early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Confucius proposed that there is no class in education. The unremitting pursuit and adherence to educational equity is also the most simple adherence to fairness of human beings.
But every once in a while, especially in the process of education reform, there will always be some arguments that undermine educational equity in the name of change.
These arguments can be summarized in three main categories. They are the theory of the uselessness of exams, the economic determinism of education, and the theory of the uselessness of reading.
Let's start with the theory that exams are useless. At the heart of the theory of the uselessness of exams is that exams stifle students' creativity, and that the students selected through exams are either examining machines or a bunch of indifferent refined egoists.
For example, on a communication platform, some netizens shared their views on Chinese students studying in Japan based on their own personal experiences.
Most of the small-town homemakers study abroad, and after entering the university, their social skills and thinking activity are much lower than those of Japanese students in the same period. As for why Chinese students do better than Japanese students, this conclusion only applies to liberal arts. Most of the students studying in Japan are not as professional as ordinary Japanese students, and they are not as flexible as ordinary Japanese people in terms of social interaction. I don't know what is commendable about the model of relying on exams to select talents?
This argument is a classic "test determinism", poor social skills and lack of creativity are the fault of the exam, and the exam should be cancelled without hesitation.
Exams are not a panacea, and the fact that universities select students through exams is not a major problem in itself. The real concern of education reform is that children spend a lot of time preparing for exams at the most creative and energetic age. In the third year of junior high school and the third year of high school, it takes a whole year to start preparing for the entrance exam, and it is still a mechanical recitation and brushing of questions, which is what we really need to pay attention to.
Examinations have always been the main way to select talents, which is not only relatively low-cost, but also as fair as possible from the process to the result. According to the results of brain science research, exams are also an indispensable way to study.
When you were in school, you probably had this experience. I felt that I knew how to do it by listening to lectures and doing questions, but when I took the exam, I realized that I didn't really understand and master. Some knowledge points are gradually clarified during the examination process.
If the unified examination of the high school entrance examination is cancelled, it is equivalent to directly depriving children from ordinary families of the opportunity to go on to higher education. Children in rural areas have a natural disadvantage in terms of access to information and social resources.
Similar to the theory of the uselessness of exams, the theory of the uselessness of reading books.
The theory that reading books is useless is not a new argument.
Ten years ago, the theory of the uselessness of reading appeared under the guise of "success studies".
Studying is not just to find a job, not to make money. My elementary school classmate, who dropped out of junior high school to work, is now worth tens of billions, and master's and doctoral students are working for him.
If the only purpose of life, the only value of human beings, is to create wealth. Well, of course, there is nothing wrong with the uselessness of reading in the guise of successology. After all, the winner is king, and the loser is cole.
But this view confuses academic qualifications and reading, while directly ignoring the values of different groups of people.
Wealth is not our only pursuit, nor is it the ultimate destination of human beings. As the saying goes: We have to study politics and war, so that my children can study mathematics and philosophy freely. My children should study mathematics, philosophy, geography, nature, history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, with the aim that their children should have the right to study painting, culture, and agriculture.
Economic growth slowed down, the myth of wealth creation was no longer popular, and success studies were no longer popular, and another version of the theory of the uselessness of reading came into being.
If you are unemployed after graduating from college, and you can't find a job when you are admitted to university, what is the point of taking the university entrance examination? What's the point of reading?
Some netizens joked that the purpose of going to university is to be a poor person with self-cultivation and an optimistic poor person.
Since they are unemployed after graduating from college, there are still some college students who choose to work in factories, and there is no difference between their salary and job opportunities and those who drop out of junior high school.
And in terms of life efficiency, they are not as good as those students who dropped out of junior high school. The latter got married, bought a house, and had children.
Reading is not for the sake of making us poor, nor is it for us to be poor with culture.
In the long run, there is definitely no difference between having a degree and not having a degree, studying and not studying, and getting the opportunity to get it. The opportunities mentioned here are not only external opportunities, but also self-awakening and self-creative ability.
Don't talk about educational fairness? This is the utopian ideal.
If you look at capitalist society, whether it is exam-oriented education or quality education, the rich and powerful can turn their economic advantages into educational advantages.
The allocation of educational resources is ultimately determined by economic capacity. This is true for both further education and employment.
In the words of Xuefeng, a well-known education blogger, others have struggled for three generations, and you have worked hard for decades, why should you expect to obtain the same resources as others?
Indeed, whether it is exam-oriented education or quality education, the children of the powerful naturally have more advantages than the children of ordinary families.
For exam-oriented education, the rich can hire one-on-one tutors for their children, and they can spend money to buy internal materials for their children.
Not to mention quality education, the rich can find connections, hand out slips, and even donate money directly to universities.
But don't forget that educational equity is the bottom line of social equity. Equity in education cannot address the root causes of social inequality.
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Why are the rich rich rich and why the poor are poor, this is not a question that education can answer, nor is it a question that education can solve.
Educational equity is the bottom line of social equity, which means that education should give people hope. Educational equity should eliminate as much as possible the differences between students' family backgrounds and economic conditions, so that students can have more opportunities.
Even when we enter developed countries, education is still the main way for young people to work and move across regions.
Lin Xiaoying, author of "Children in the County: The Ecology of Education in China's Counties", said that the more economically backward the place, the more hope education should give people.
Equity in education is the cornerstone of hope.