Frankly speaking, most university classrooms in China are no different from those in primary and secondary schools. They take notes in class, take notes in exams, and forget after exams. There are great problems in this teaching method. Therefore, I call on university education, including primary and secondary education, to be based on reading and intellectual challenges, so that our classrooms can be truly full of vitality.

I am glad to have the opportunity to share with you some of my thoughts on education over the years. As we all know, there is a famous "Qian Xuesen's question" in education: Why can't China cultivate innovative top talents? Today, let's talk about this topic.

Recently, Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and everyone was in high spirits. But we haven't won the Nobel Prize in Science, especially compared with Jews, we still have a big gap. Someone once joked that the whole world was changed by five Jews: the first Jew named Moses, the second Jew named Jesus, the third Jew named Marx, the fourth Jew named Einstein and the fifth Jew named Freud. Ignore the first two words, the last three words are really important. Marx's view of social problems has really changed the world and is an important ideological weapon for us to analyze and study social problems. There is a discipline in the west called "Ghost Learning", which specializes in studying Marx. It believes that Marx's influence on human society is everywhere. Einstein's theory of relativity changed people's views on the material world and time and space. Freud's psychoanalytic theory completely changed people's view of themselves.

The contribution of Jews to the world really makes us feel that a nation's contribution to the world, especially in science and thought, is closely related to its creativity and profundity of thought.

A few years ago, I gave a speech in Guangzhou. Some media said that I was shelling the education in China. Actually, I'm not shelling, but thinking: Why can't China train world-class talents? I gave several reasons at that time. The first reason is the division of arts and sciences.

The People's Daily once wrote a commentary saying that there is no shortage of scholars with extraordinary intelligence in China, but there are few masters with both scientific spirit and humanistic feelings. Some people pay too much attention to scientific research results and ignore the process of growth. Doing scientific research driven by interests is often easy to get quick success and instant benefit, impetuous in style and even fraudulent. In my opinion, scientists without humanistic feelings must not go far. So I have written many articles calling for the abolition of the division of arts and sciences.

On the surface, the division of arts and sciences lightens the burden on our students, but the scientific spirit and humanistic spirit cannot be separated. We can all see the consequences of premature separation: students are far away from the knowledge they need and the humanistic feelings they need very much. Most middle school students begin to study science from high school, and no longer pay attention to humanities, history, geography and realistic literature. They pay attention to technology and test scores, and gradually drift away from the greatest thoughts of mankind. Those who fail in science choose liberal arts again, and those who take the liberal arts exam become second-class citizens. Think about it, don't you? So I say that our education is a system in which most people learn with a few people. The courses taught in the school are difficult to understand, and many people learn it painfully. I often say that education should be aimed at everyone's characteristics, and the main task of middle school is to lay a solid foundation of humanity, so that most students can learn the truth of being a good person and some people with scientific talents can embark on the scientific road. For most people, learning should not be a burden, but a happy process. So I think the separation of humanities and science is a big problem.

The second problem is reading. The decline of reading ability leads to the decline of the overall quality of citizens.

Recently, Renmin University of China Press published a book of mine, entitled My View on Reading. As I said in my book, the history of a person's spiritual development is the history of reading. Why do you say that? A person's spiritual growth depends on continuous dialogue with the greatest ideas of thousands of years and gaining their wisdom. To do this, you must keep reading. Although reading can't change the length of life, it can change the width of life, enhance the height of life and increase the thickness of life. Reading can help a person's spirit to be more full.

The spiritual realm of a nation depends on its reading level. Many people may say that reading is a personal act. What does it have to do with the country and the nation? On the surface, reading is a personal act, but we know why Jews are so powerful. One of the main reasons is that Jews are a nation that regards reading as a religion, and everyone reads 65 books a year! How much are we? 5. 14 books, including textbooks and teaching AIDS. Jews have a library for every 4,500 people on average, but most of our communities don't have libraries now. It can be said that the reading ability directly affects the future of a country and a nation.

I visited Harvard University the year before last, which touched me a lot. The classroom in Harvard is basically a discussion classroom. In the last class, you should read at least 100 pages of material before discussing it. After the discussion, the teacher will communicate with the students in class. This kind of teaching is a dialogue based on a lot of reading. Teachers should read by themselves, otherwise the class is untenable. However, many of our teachers have no such pressure. Frankly speaking, most university classrooms in China are no different from those in primary and secondary schools. They take notes in class, take notes in exams, and forget after exams. There are great problems in this teaching method. I have criticized that many of our teachers are holding an "old boat ticket" for education every day and "repeating yesterday's story" because the lecture notes can be talked about from 30 years ago to today, and he doesn't need to update them because he has no pressure to talk to students. A good classroom must not be a classroom full of people, but a classroom of dialogue, discussion and demonstration. Therefore, I have been calling on China's university education, including primary and secondary education, to be based on reading and intellectual challenges, so that our classrooms can be truly full of vitality.

Management needs to break through supervision

It is not enough for a school to have only one set of syllabus, but also another set of syllabus, that is, to help students establish their own reading system. Schools should be encouraged to let a hundred flowers blossom, and only a hundred flowers blossom can people's creativity be fully exerted.

I have always said that our nation is the smartest, wisest and most diligent nation in the world, but why is there such a big gap between China and developed countries in science and technology education?

An important reason is management and system problems. Specifically, the local government is too dead, the schools are too dead, the administrative departments have too much power, the allocation of educational resources is unreasonable, the development of education is unbalanced, and the vitality is not brought into play. Our country has such a large population and unbalanced development, which is rare in the world. I have been to Suzhou, Shanghai and Beijing. To tell the truth, a good school can compete with any school in the world, but a poor school is not much better than a poor place in the world. The gap is so big that you have to manage it in one way, and it is impossible to do it across the board. The same education policy is bound to have a good effect in one place and a poor effect in another.

Another problem is that schools lack autonomy. It is very difficult to reform primary and secondary education now, because the national education syllabus has filled the curriculum. If you don't follow the requirements of the syllabus, you can't finish the teaching task. If you follow its requirements, there is absolutely no room for development. Therefore, our teachers often have to do a lot of challenging work. For example, you should encourage students to read more books, but what if they have no time? Can you finish a semester of classes in a month and then innovate your own courses? In this way, children will gain more information and knowledge in the same environment. In my opinion, some repetitive exercises are completely unnecessary, but a lot of reading can provide a very broad knowledge background. Therefore, it is not enough for a school to have only one set of syllabus, but also another set of syllabus, which is to help students establish their own reading system. The greatest schools in the world are all schools with high degree of freedom of principals, and all have their own courses. These principals can't say that they do whatever they want, but at least they are practicing education according to their own educational ideas and concepts. Schools should be encouraged to let a hundred flowers blossom, and only a hundred flowers blossom can people's creativity be fully exerted.

There is also the problem of unreasonable resource allocation. Some of our departments seem to like icing on the cake and seldom do things in time. Over the years, many educational policies have been tilted and strengthened towards good schools, resulting in a growing gap between schools and an increasingly unbalanced development. Moreover, this inequality is not only the inequality in hardware investment, but also the inequality in software and teachers. For example, in developed and underdeveloped areas, the per capita public education funding gap of a primary school student can reach 10 to 1! This inequality in education directly leads to a growing gap in learning quality and level among students. This gap is not only reflected in different regions, but also between schools in the same region. Why is there a problem of choosing schools in many places, and the enthusiasm for choosing schools can't be reduced? Because the gap between schools is too big. At present, China is still dominated by public education, and the vitality of private education has not been fully exerted. Private capital has never really entered the field of education, and the vitality of private education and its important supplement and incentive function to public education have not been fully exerted. In most developed countries, higher education is dominated by private schools, and the government can provide mechanism guarantee in purchasing services.

The key is to promote fairness.

There are actually two points in education reform, the first is fairness, and the second is quality. Excellent educational resources such as excellent teachers should be encouraged to tilt towards rural areas, weak schools and vulnerable groups, so as to truly realize educational equity. Only when the allocation of educational resources is reasonable, we will not have problems such as college entrance examination immigration.

For the current education reform, I would like to make the following suggestions.

The first is to further clarify the objectives of the reform of the education management system. First of all, we should properly handle the relationship among government, schools and markets. There are three different modes. For example, Europe pays more attention to the strength of schools and academics, the United States pays more attention to the strength of the market, and China pays more attention to the strength of the government, each with its own characteristics. We should learn more from the good experience of higher education in Europe and America and fully respect the academic and market forces. Taking university merger as an example, university merger has its advantages, which is of positive significance for optimizing the allocation of educational resources and building a world-class university. However, hasty merger without considering historical and realistic conditions has considerable disadvantages. For example, after the merger, the dominant schools will influence, change and infiltrate other campus cultures, and some disciplines will be left out or even shrunk. There are many such examples. Including the construction of our university town, building a university town on thousands of acres of land, far from the central city, causing students to study in very desert places, which is not conducive to development. We used to put too much emphasis on being big and thought that being big was good. Now there are more than 10,000 students in middle schools and 20,000 to 30,000 students in universities. In fact, it will be difficult to manage if it is too large. In my opinion, a good educational goal should be stratified, one is to train hundreds of millions of high-quality workers, the other is to train tens of millions of specialized talents, and the third is to train a large number of innovative top-notch talents. But now these three kinds of people are trained together, and all education is centered on innovative and top-notch talents, so it will be more troublesome.

The design of our current labor distribution system is also unreasonable. In the past, we have always criticized that those who engage in atomic bombs are not as good as those who sell tea eggs. Later, we gradually adjusted them, and now they are a bit overkill. In a good social system, people should be equal and the income gap should not be too big. A good system should make every professional have dignity and can work and live decently. We should advocate such an educational concept: whether we are scientists or craftsmen, we should start from our personal hobbies and potentials, not from the amount of money we make. If our students choose their major not out of interest and curiosity, but out of learning what is better to find a job and earn more money, such education is actually unsuccessful and can't go far.

The other is the issue of educational equity. The report of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China regards running a satisfactory education for the people as an important strategic goal, which I think is very good. In fact, people's satisfaction mainly depends on fairness, and education reform is actually two things, the first is fairness, and the second is quality. Since public education is a government-run system, all school funds should be treated equally. Whether you are in a big city or a small country, all students should have the same basic rights in education. Within the framework of public education, teachers should move between schools. Excellent educational resources cannot be concentrated in one place, otherwise it will be difficult to achieve truly high-quality and fair education. Therefore, excellent teachers and other excellent educational resources should be encouraged to tilt towards rural areas, weak schools and vulnerable groups, so as to truly realize educational equity. There are three levels of fairness that I am talking about here. The first is fair opportunity, and all children have to go to school. Secondly, the fairness of the process, all configurations are the same, so that children can study hard; Finally, the result is fair, and all the children study well. Only when the allocation of educational resources is reasonable, we will not have problems such as college entrance examination immigration. Finally, according to each child's personality and talent, choose the school that suits you. There is no distinction between good and bad in school, and the best is the best that suits him best.

Decentralization is the key to promote education equity and improve education quality. One of the most important ones is to take local conditions as the basic value and guiding ideology of public education policy. Now our rules are too dead, such as the teacher-student ratio. The situation varies from place to place, and it cannot be across the board. The same is true of the ratio of vocational education to general education. We stipulate that the ratio of general education to vocational education is 5: 5, but it is impossible in some places. Because this ratio is closely related to the local employment situation. If you can't find a job in a vocational school, people might as well go to an ordinary high school. Another example is the merger of schools in rural areas. In recent years, some schools disappeared overnight, and some villages disappeared overnight. For thousands of years, this village has been the cultural center of the villagers. If you turn away at once, students have to run for miles or even dozens of miles to go to school and go back and forth for an hour or two. Running to school is already very tired. Are you still interested in school? Therefore, we can't cut across the board, and cutting across the board will bring problems. As the saying goes, decentralization has vitality, and independence has innovation. Now everyone is talking about strengthening management. Admittedly, some management needs to be strengthened, but sometimes we also need to think backwards. Don't always think about how to strengthen leadership, what is not enough management, it should be the other way around. First, think about what should not be managed. Generally speaking, it is a general direction to liberate students, teachers, principals and educational productive forces.

The call for the liberation of education, Mr. Tao Xingzhi called for the liberation of students' brains, hands and eyes decades ago, but these calls have not yet been realized. We just don't trust our children to be free. The ingrained concept is that children are playing until they finish their homework. In fact, people's real creativity can only be exerted in their spare time. The more you fill your child's space, the more restrictions your child's development will be. I once introduced a foreign research achievement in Weibo. Scientists specialize in the relationship between children's homework and intellectual development. The result is very interesting: the more homework you do, the more stupid you are. This is normal. I don't need a scientific experiment. I know this result only by the intuition of educators. A lot of repetitive, mechanical and low-quality exercises will only make a person more and more stupid. However, our education is doing this. On the contrary, if you give your child free space, he will gradually form his own free interest, free orientation and free development, and his energy can really be brought into play.

I always say that people are far from being as different as we think. Marx said that the difference between philosophers and porters is much smaller than that between domestic dogs and hounds, and their difference is caused by the division of labor. The difference between students and students is closely related to their freedom. Therefore, I suggest that a relatively independent education management system should be established, and the government should shift from rowing to steering, from providing services directly to meeting social needs through various ways and means, expanding capacity and improving the quality of public services. At present, the government has caused excessive concentration of power and arbitrary decision-making to a certain extent. It is already being done to change the appointment of the principal to selection. At the same time, it is necessary to establish a supervision system independent of the educational decision-making and implementation departments. After this system and strength are established, education will be better.

In addition, education should be further opened, both internally and externally. Of course, some people say that our education opening is only to open our own people. So, how to make our university more dynamic and attractive? This is a big problem. Now the proportion of studying abroad is increasing every year. Moreover, from first-tier cities to second-and third-tier cities, from universities to high schools, from high schools to junior high schools, and even primary schools have begun to be sent abroad. A very important reason is that we are not satisfied with our education system and don't want our children to suffer, so we simply send them out. Why is there a lack of motivation for educational reform now? Because some children of the rich and powerful are no longer in China. But rational parents are also thinking, is this the only way to send their children out? Right? No matter from the family relationship, or from the child's character growth and the formation of values, there are indeed problems. If children are sent abroad in elementary school or junior high school, I believe it is difficult for such children to come back, even if they come back in the future, they will not be acclimatized. From the perspective of family education, children who grow up without their parents are always flawed in character. At the most critical time in life, the existence of parents is different. Many children abroad are really worrying. In that case, why don't we open up a little and transform our university appropriately?

I once thought, can we choose some universities and let private capital do it? We have the conditions and the foundation to do it. Non-governmental forces should be encouraged to run some distinctive and excellent schools, instead of turning some well-run private schools into public schools. Now we have some good public schools with high entry barriers, and finally they have become schools for children with money and families. This is a big problem. In fact, it is entirely possible to give private schools more space in system setting, or even give them subsidies, encourage private schools to improve their quality and give people more choices.