Yang Dongping： Where is the crux of involution in education？

Text | Yang Dongping

At present, the involution of China’s education system has two remarkable characteristics. First, it is holistic and universal, and all classes are anxious. Second, involution begins at the child’s young age, and sinks from the primary school stage to the kindergarten. In fact, it corresponds to the school selection competition between "young to small" and "small to early". This competition for choosing schools has a long history, and it is becoming more and more common and competitive.

To this end, we should consider why there is such a serious education involution, school selection competition, or "academic arms race". For this problem, there are many people inside and outside the education circle who have explained it, and I think it is not particularly perfect.

First, the misunderstanding of the causes of involution in education

College entrance examination system

Because of the existence of the college entrance examination system, competition is inevitable and increasingly fierce. Does this statement make sense? I think it is not very reasonable.

In the early 1990s, the admission rate of college entrance examination was very low, but the students who experienced the "post-70s" and "post-80s" in that era knew very well that the students at that time did not have so much make up lessons, and there was not so much pressure. Students could play games and have a rest during winter and summer vacations and holidays. At present, the admission rate of college entrance examination has exceeded 90% in many provinces. Why has the educational opportunity increased and the competition become more intense? Therefore, the statement that "the college entrance examination is triggered" does not make sense.

Shortage of quality education resources

Another popular saying is "the shortage of quality education resources". Because quality education resources are always in short supply, everyone should compete to enjoy the best resources.

This statement is also specious. In the last two or three decades, especially in the last ten years, have quality education resources increased or decreased? There is no doubt that it has increased. Has the number of students increased or decreased? Generally speaking, it has been greatly reduced. With the popularization and development of compulsory education and the development of higher education, quality education resources are increasing and students are decreasing, but the competition for admission is more intense. Is this a simple resource problem?

The influence of traditional values

Some people say that this is because the core value of China’s more than 1,000-year-old imperial examination education tradition is to be an official and be a master. In the current educational competition, we have particularly rationalized this "traditional value" and think it is natural. In fact, after the May Fourth Movement, the values of getting ahead and being a human being have been severely corrected. For example, Mr. Tao Xingzhi’s ideas of life education and civilian education are all correcting this "elitist" educational value.

Everyone should be a qualified citizen, a self-reliant, healthy and happy person, which was still popular in the 1960s. At that time, the saying was "one red heart, two preparations", and people often said "three hundred and sixty lines, the best in each line", but they didn’t concentrate all their lives on one thing, and they didn’t say that they were going to college. Therefore, due to tradition, it doesn’t make sense.

One-child policy

Another explanation is the one-child policy. Because there is only one child, every parent regards his child as a genius, and he must go to college and a famous university. Does this factor exist? There is no doubt that it exists, and it can be said that it has a great influence on parents’ educational choices.

As we all know, in the era of many children, many urban families had three or four children, and there were more in rural areas. At that time, after a round of natural selection, that is to say, every parent knows exactly what his children are suitable for-those who are naughty and like to fight, send them to the army; Honest and honest, stay at home and farm for the elderly; Those who like to settle accounts go into business. One or two of the four or five children in a family may like reading and studying, so parents let such children go to school. In the case of the only child, this choice disappears. Parents do everything possible to let their children receive the so-called best education.

However, the author thinks that the one-child factor should not be exaggerated, because the one-child policy has been implemented since the 1980s, and the deterioration of educational ecology and the involution of education have only suddenly intensified in the last decade, especially in recent years. Obviously, there are other factors at work.

Middle class anxiety

Others say that this is caused by middle-class anxiety. Because of the emergence of the middle class in the past decade, the "status panic" of the middle class is particularly serious, so I put a lot of energy into the competition for further studies and joined the "academic arms race."

It is also a basic fact that middle-class families are anxious, or that middle-class families and white-collar families pay more attention to education. But when we look back at other Asian countries, are their middle-class people not anxious? Japan and South Korea are calm-mainly referring to the compulsory education stage, while primary schools and junior high schools are still calm.

For example, in South Korea’s compulsory education, every student enters the school nearby, and there is no need for parents to pick him up. The author has investigated that many Korean parents have two criteria for choosing schools in the compulsory education stage: first, they are close to home; Second, the food is good, and a meal is taken care of at noon. This is tantamount to not choosing a school. South Korean primary school students also have extra-curricular classes in the afternoon, but mainly in the aspects of sound, body and beauty, that is, the study of art, and a small part of them are studying English. In the compulsory education stage in Korea, competitive learning and training are strictly prohibited, and there is no exam.

To sum up, although there are factors such as college entrance examination system, middle-class anxiety, and one-child policy, these factors are background, holistic, or will exist for a long time, and are not the direct cause of the sharp deterioration of educational ecology in the last decade. The author believes that the reason is that the balanced development of compulsory education has not really been realized.

Second, where is the crux of involution in education?

Balanced development of compulsory education

Up to now, parents and public opinion in China, including many administrators, principals and teachers, have not really established the concept of "balanced development of compulsory education".

Many people think that learning means competition and elimination, that is, competition at the starting line of life. In fact, this is not the case at all. Compulsory education is a basic human right determined by the state in legal form, and it is a guaranteed education. Because it is a guaranteed and basic education, it is non-selective, non-elimination and non-competitive. The policy of free, exemption from exams and admission to the nearest school is to reflect this value and protect the educational rights of every student. Compulsory education is not competitive, and strong competitiveness and elimination violate the basic value of compulsory education. These problems need to be set right and said frequently.

If all schools are similar, of course, it is most reasonable to choose the school closest to home, which is also the basic reality of compulsory education in most countries in the world. The bounden duty of primary school students is to play games, grow up healthily, exercise and have an outing, instead of taking academic competition as their main mission.

In 1986, China promulgated the Compulsory Education Law of People’s Republic of China (PRC), which set the goal of balanced development of compulsory education. A few years ago, all parts of the country were accepting the balanced development of compulsory education, and almost all places passed the acceptance. In other words, the goal of balanced development of compulsory education has been achieved from the perspective of the administrative department, but in reality, as long as there is competition for school selection, as long as there are school districts and key schools, it shows that there is still a long way to go for balanced development there. In every big city in China, the competition for choosing schools is very serious, and the fundamental reason is that there is a big gap between schools.

What needs to be discussed is that according to the national policies and decrees, the goal of balanced development of compulsory education has been put forward for so many years, why can’t it be balanced?

Influence of management inertia

There is a historical reason here: in the early 1950s, the state established the "key school system" for primary and secondary schools (compulsory education system was not established at that time), and the key school system was conducive to rapidly training professionals for industrialization. At that time, a small percentage of primary and secondary schools all over the country were designated as key investment and key construction schools, and their task was to cultivate top-notch talents and deliver talents to the higher-level schools. The value of this kind of education is completely different from that of compulsory education, and it has a strong elite education attribute.

In 1986, after the country promulgated the Compulsory Education Law of People’s Republic of China (PRC), the key school system was abolished, but it has been implemented for such a long time. Everyone has an inertia. The local education administrative department and even the local government always feel that there should be several excellent schools as models to drive most other schools. This is a usual management thinking, but it goes against the significance of compulsory education implementation. As a matter of fact, there are still key schools in disguise all over the country, and their resources and school-running conditions are much better than other schools, among which the most prominent is the strong teaching force of special-grade teachers and senior teachers.

Balance between students, financial resources and teachers.

How to achieve a balanced development between schools is clearly the balance of three "sources": students, financial resources and teachers. In the final analysis, this is a question of whether we can really administer and teach according to law.

First of all, why emphasize compulsory education to enter the school nearby? Just to balance the students’ sources. If students with so-called high scores are gathered in a school in a "pinching" way, schools cannot be balanced. The balance of students is guaranteed by entering the school nearby.

Secondly, in terms of financial resources, the allocation of education funds should be balanced, and it is not possible to favor one over the other. The balance of financial resources can now be basically achieved, because the per capita funding and per capita funding are roughly the same for each school. But in fact, key schools have many other channels, that is, special funds, so the resources are still much better than ordinary schools. After so many years of construction and development, on the whole, the gap in hardware of compulsory education schools has been relatively small, but what parents value in choosing schools is not the gap in hardware, but mainly the resources of teachers. In other words, the balance of teachers has not been fully achieved today, or even started.

The Ministry of Education has also issued a document on the flow of teachers, requiring all compulsory education schools to carry out the flow of teachers. It was first promoted in the 1990s, but the implementation was not satisfactory.

It is suggested that the relevant regulations should be clarified, and teachers must move for four years and principals for five years. The flow of teachers is not fixed in a school. As you can imagine, its educational quality and educational quality are relatively balanced.

School system and the design of school system

In the dimension of educational equity, is it pinching, pulling out the best and cultivating the best? Or are they all excellent and promote the balanced development of compulsory education? These are two completely different policy choices. It is a great pity that most cities in China have basically gone to the road of "elitism", which aims to build key schools and top talents.

Some people also say that the college entrance examination is a baton, because there is a college entrance examination, so it can’t be balanced. That’s not the truth. The college entrance examination is a baton, but the school system is the chassis of the education system. That is to say, this chassis is designed to be balanced? Still have obvious inclination or tendency? The regional education ecology caused by the two designs is very different. The author suggests that in the future, an important direction of education reform is to reform the public school system so that it can truly achieve balanced development in accordance with the requirements of the compulsory education law.

Home-school relationship

School education and family education should have their own division of labor, their own places and boundaries.

In the process of improving the educational ecology as a whole, parents are a key factor. The current problem is that the relationship between home and school is too close, which transcends their respective boundaries: parents can interfere with the teaching behavior of the school to a certain extent, while teachers transfer the responsibility to let parents be teaching assistants. At present, the relationship between school and family is extremely close, and the school keeps in touch with parents by using WeChat group. Many WeChat groups have become parents’ flattery groups. This relationship between home and school is very distorted.

Some teachers use communication tools such as "home-school communication" to create anxiety, and evaluate and compare students: today, a certain student got an "excellent" and a "little red flower". The implication is that parents who don’t get the "little red flower" weigh it themselves. Therefore, in the Internet age and the information age, how to build and maintain an appropriate home-school relationship is a great proposition. In my opinion, not many of us have a say in this question: to what extent is the relationship between home and school appropriate?

I asked a teacher in Taiwan Province about this, and he said, "We don’t have such things as home-school communication. Teachers are professional jobs, and not every parent can interrupt; We don’t need to ask for their opinions in our educational activities. We do it according to our guidelines. " In other words, there is a distance between school and family, and they should not be closely linked all the time. The teacher also said: "We will send a notice to parents when we have something, and we will send a notice when the parents will hold a meeting, that’s all." There is no need to deal with parents all the time, otherwise it will bring great interference to the school-because everyone can understand the parents’ mentality. If every parent releases his opinions to the school, the school will be unbearable and the school’s educational behavior will be deformed. The school has transferred the responsibility of teachers to parents and asked parents to be teaching assistants. The school also has great problems. "

In educational theory, three different kinds of education (school education, family education and social education) have their own functions, and each has its own place or boundary. Family education has its own unique function, which is not to help schools score or help teachers correct their homework. So, what is its function? It is to discover children’s unique talents, specialties, interests and hobbies, and then encourage children to discover and realize themselves.

Why do American schools finish early in the afternoon and finish at about 1: 30? A teacher in the United States said on this issue: "We must give family education the necessary time, and we must not let school education take up all the students’ time, because the school faces dozens of children, and teachers can’t pay special attention to them personally-this is the responsibility of the family; When parents face their children, they should complete the mission of family education, discover their unique self, and encourage and cultivate their specialties and interests, so that they can embark on a road of self-development. " This is the division of labor between family education and school education in the United States.

Third, prevent the involution of education

Establish a correct educational concept

Today, the whole society is permeated with an extremely utilitarian concept: going to school is to get into a good university. No matter what educational level parents are, it seems to have become a matter of course.

Recently, the "general-vocational ratio" in high school has attracted much attention. It is not a new policy to keep the ratio of general education to vocational education at 5∶5. It was put forward in 1980s, and it has been done for many years. This involves the understanding of the function and importance of vocational education.

Although in China’s traditional concept, there will be "only reading is high" and "those who work hard govern others, and those who work hard govern others", a country’s education must adapt to its economic, market and industrial structure. In other words, this society always needs enough people to enter the economic and professional fields and become technicians or professional talents.

There is a set of data in the Education at a Glance 2018 released by OECD, which reveals the proportion of students who choose vocational education in senior high schools in some European countries (mostly in 2016): Finland 71%, Germany 70%, Netherlands 69%, Switzerland 65%, Austria 58% and Italy 56%. That is to say, in developed German departments and Nordic countries, the proportion of choosing vocational education in high school is quite high, far exceeding 5∶5.

People are born different, some people have strong practical ability, some people have artistic talent, and those who are suitable for studying, I think, account for only a small proportion of the world population. Therefore, it’s not that the high popularization rate of colleges and universities can really produce a lot of top-notch talents, but whether these people really have heartfelt hobbies and enthusiasm for this subject and this major, and they have specialties. Higher education has been popularized in developed countries in northern Europe, and the proportion of vocational education in high school is as high as 70%. Of course, higher education in these countries is universal, and everyone can go to college. Why is the proportion of vocational education in high school still so high? This is going to talk about a very basic problem, that is to say, if students are allowed to choose by themselves, I think many students are not necessarily willing to choose academic and research-oriented jobs, but are willing to choose operational and skilled jobs that suit their own characteristics, and attending ordinary high schools instead of receiving vocational education is, to a certain extent, the choice of students at the request of their parents. A good education should enable everyone to find the career they really love, not as a short-term and utilitarian stepping stone.

We have also seen some tragic events in which master’s degree and doctor’s degree in some universities went to a dead end because they couldn’t write papers. The reasons here are very complicated, but I think one of them is reluctance-these people may not be good at academic work by nature, and you forced them to hold on for so many years, and in the end they were very painful and even miserable. Not only in the academic field, but also in the art field.

There is a very interesting phenomenon: in the mid-1980s, Chinese students began to participate in the international mathematical olympiad in senior high school, and there were also many gold medal winners, once a year. The accumulated number was very large, but after several decades, where did these gold medal winners go? Not everyone is doing scientific research, but many people are doing real estate and stocks. The junior class of the Chinese University of Science and Technology, which aims at cultivating top-notch innovative talents, was held in the late 1970s. Up to now, it has trained about 2,500 graduates, of which less than 20% are engaged in scientific and technological work, others are in all walks of life, and many are bosses.

Therefore, a good education should let everyone find something that they are really interested in and passionate about, and move towards self-realization, instead of taking education as a stepping stone, a utilitarian tool, especially a short-term utilitarian tool. If you want a diploma from a prestigious school, it is irresponsible and a waste of youth.

The faster the modern society develops, the faster the career changes, and the "iron rice bowl" will be broken.

Therefore, with regard to vocational education, we should see that on the one hand, there are social needs, on the other hand, a considerable number of middle school students are indeed suitable for these skilled and hands-on jobs.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, the number of take-away riders has been expanding. There is an academic record about the full-time riders of Meituan: junior high school accounts for 34%, senior high school accounts for 29%, technical secondary school accounts for 17%, junior college accounts for 16%, and bachelor degree or above accounts for 4%. In that case, those with a junior college degree or above account for 20%. How to interpret this data? The author believes that these riders are self-reliant. In the case of employment difficulties, they gave up the face of so-called academic qualifications and chose to support themselves and their families by their own labor. It is very important for a person with higher education to have this spirit.

In addition, it also tells us that professional life is changing. You don’t necessarily have to do what you have learned, and the more modern the society, the faster the career changes. These riders will not be riders all their lives, and they may turn to new fields in the future.

Therefore, we should have a new understanding of the profession, don’t think that engaging in manual labor is inferior, and make all-round preparations for the uncertain future.

Education should focus on cultivating ability and improving happiness.

If we have a forward-looking and transcendental outlook on the future, we will know that it is not so terrible not to go to a prestigious school. What is terrible is that students have no hobbies or specialties.

Therefore, we can understand why the proportion of high school students choosing vocational education is so high in Nordic countries and German-speaking countries. It’s not just because the income of various industries in these countries is relatively balanced-driving a truck and being a repairman are paid the same as a professor. Equally important, many students are not interested in doing research, but are willing to do some jobs that they can control and have a sense of accomplishment, including opening snack shops and flower shops, which can both enjoy themselves and support themselves.

The young generation’s professional outlook and new social needs are changing. What parents need to do is not to kidnap their children’s choices and their future with their stubborn vanity, and give them a free space to grow up and let them do what they like. Only when a person uses the corresponding space to do what he likes can he get happiness in life and do better.

We have been in the stage of universal education for a long time, so our educational values or the goal of school education is to take knowledge and academic qualifications as important goals. We judge a person by whether he has a high school diploma or a college diploma, a bachelor’s degree or a junior college degree. Now, high school education is popular. Among the school-age people aged 18-22, 54.4% have studied in universities, that is to say, more than half of them have entered universities and entered the stage of "popularization of higher education". With the decrease of new-born population and the advent of the era of fewer children, it may become easier and easier to go to college in the future.

In this case, what is more important than academic qualifications? The past is the pursuit of ability, from knowledge-based to ability-based, the pursuit of Excellence, the pursuit of success, success is more important than academic qualifications. But today, we can take a step forward. What is the evaluation of a person’s real success in the Internet age and learning society? It is happiness. Being able to get happiness in life-this is the highest goal of education.

Zhou Guoping, a contemporary writer, once said: What is happiness? Happiness is to find something you like to do and turn it into your career. If you do what you like for eight hours, you are certainly happy-you will be happy within eight hours. There is also a second aspect. Find a person you like and live with him (her), then you will be happy in 8 hours and 24 hours. Should this be the really important goal of our education? Especially for family education, parents should not force their children to pursue rankings or prestigious school degrees, but take their children’s life safety, health and happiness, and finally achieve happiness as the most important goal. If we can establish such values and take happiness as our goal, many behaviors today will be improved. In other words, to respect and trust children to a greater extent, to let children create a world of their own, to dare to take risks, to dare to explore, to dare to enter different fields, and to experience their own future, is the education closer to the goal of happiness.

(Source: Primary and Secondary Education)

Original title: Yang Dongping: Where is the crux of involution in education? 》

Read the original text