? In the middle of last century, when an American anthropologist conducted a field survey in Java, Indonesia, he found that in order to increase rice yield, local farmers invested more and more time and energy in farming, which could be intensive, but failed to significantly increase rice yield.
? The anthropologist called this phenomenon "agricultural involution". This is a closed agricultural system, the mode of production has never been improved, and new agricultural technologies have not been introduced. The only way to increase the output is to increase people's input, but when the output reaches a certain value, increasing people's input has little effect on increasing the output.
? The same is true in rural China. Because the population is widespread and the land is narrow, everyone is divided into several fields. In order to increase grain output, farmers get up early and get greedy for the dark, fertilize and irrigate, and intensively cultivate. However, after reaching a certain yield, even if you make more efforts, it is difficult to continuously increase the yield per mu. After a year of hard work, you still have only enough food and clothing, with a slight surplus. At this time, the best choice is to transform the original relatively primitive agricultural model into a new model, improve production methods, and introduce and apply new technologies. The partially closed agricultural system has failed to realize this transformation, and has been wandering in the inherent mode of low efficiency, high human input and low income.
? Therefore, involution is an academic term, and its meaning includes keywords such as "closed, inefficient, high manpower input and low income". In the conference hall, thousands of teacups are placed horizontally and vertically, lined up in a row, which is spectacular and amazing! How many workers and how much time did it take to check bit by bit with a rope? This is called involution. This beauty can only last for a moment, because a meeting and a cup of tea are all messed up.
? When watching a movie, in order to get a better view, a person should stand up first, and the person who is blocked by him should also stand up. Finally, everyone has to stand up and watch the movie. Only the people in the first row are sitting, and they are getting more and more serious. Finally, everyone couldn't sit still.
? Playing games, in order to have better entertainment, a person pays money to hang others first, and the abused person also pays money. Finally, everyone either pays money desperately or is hanged. Chasing girls, in order to better express their feelings, one person's diamond will be passed down forever, others will pass it down forever with diamonds, and everyone has spent more money. In order to grab a train ticket, one person first used the ticketing software, forcing others to use the ticketing software. Because the number of tickets did not increase, everyone finally returned to the starting line, but the development of the ticketing software made money. Others see people working overtime, and in order not to fall behind, they also paddle overtime, which has gradually become an atmosphere, the so-called culture. In the end, the work output did not improve, and everyone worked overtime.
? A more popular and simple explanation is that in a closed environment with limited resources, the more efforts the group makes, the fiercer the competition, but the benefits will not increase or even decrease. In short, "involution" is disorderly, meaningless, worthless and chaotic competition. This kind of competition is extremely utilitarian, which invisibly adds a lot of pressure to the contestants.
What is "involution in education"? Some media pointed out:
? "Education involution" refers to the continuous increase of teaching labor input within the education system to achieve performance growth, but the teaching efficiency and results have not been significantly improved.
? There is a metaphor on the internet. There is a sunflower book in the Jianghu. Everyone wants it. Whoever gets it can stand alone in the world, but if the sunflower collection is made public one day, everyone will have the opportunity to practice. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? If a person has it, it's up to him to practice or not. Everyone has it. It's not up to them to decide whether to practice or not. If you don't practice, your enemy will practice and then kill you, so you should practice.
? In the end, everyone in the Jianghu can practice the sunflower treasure book, so they can be invincible in the world, but because everyone can practice it, there is no invincible in the world. On the contrary, if you want to practice this skill, you must first enter the palace, and the Jianghu people have become eunuchs. This is a complete failure.
Similarly, training institutions are like an open sunflower collection. If you don't study, other children will do better than you. Even some training institutions have put up the slogan "If you can't get on, then we will train your competitors"! Anyone who sees such a slogan is creepy. However, the number of places to go to college has not changed. In fact, no one benefited from it, but all the participants were forced to participate in various training courses and lost their childhood happiness. Education involution means that everyone can improve their grades through training courses. It seems that education is equal, but in fact the internal friction is serious.
? Some time ago, I didn't see a Tsinghua schoolmaster writing a paper on his computer while riding a bike. He worked so hard that those who didn't win the first prize won the first prize. Influenced by Xueba, other students have to follow suit to find a foothold. When the hard competition breaks through a certain level, it becomes harder than anyone else, becomes meaningless internal friction, and beneficial competition becomes useless or even harmful.
This phenomenon of "involution in education" generally exists in our education system at all levels, and shows a trend of youthfulness and overage. All schools, teachers, parents and students are ruthlessly involved in such competition.
? This internal disorderly competition has led to a vicious circle of "the school should rank the grades-the teacher arranges the tactics of asking questions-parents undertake some teaching tasks-correct some homework-the students' learning pressure increases-the grades have not been substantially improved-the school requires extra grades, the teacher works harder, the parents are annoyed, and the students suffer-the students' grades decline. Going deep into involution, everyone can recognize the problem of involution, but everyone can't struggle out of this circle.
? After involution, this educational system will bring some disadvantages. If the investment is too high and the study takes up too much time for students, the childhood wrapped in study will become a nightmare. However, low efficiency, limited energy and ability, and increased learning time to a certain extent are not helpful to improve the learning effect, which is the so-called "marginal diminishing effect". In addition, there are spoon-feeding and seedling-raising methods, which require students to receive more, broader and deeper knowledge in advance, thus forming competitiveness for others, and others intend to do the same, so the academic burden spirals. In order to make children become "Jackie Chan" and "a fashion" and surpass others, the school went to the off-campus training class to make up lessons without making up lessons, constantly increasing economic investment and the number of making up lessons, and even appeared the news that "8-year-old pupils went on summer vacation1/make up lessons".
? At the same time, in order to pursue a higher level of education, our school is constantly intensifying this competition. The refinement of teaching, the gridding of time and the refinement of management are hard to see. In order to compete for further education, we should work overtime, make up lessons, seek sea tactics, invest a lot of time, repeat mechanical training and so on. It may be effective at the beginning, but after reaching a certain boundary, the marginal income decreases and it is difficult to continue to be effective. On the contrary, it will bring negative consequences. Its possible harm is to damage students' learning enthusiasm and stifle their creativity.
So many times people use this barbaric training method, often just to buy peace of mind. Teachers, parents and students all think that we have done our best. We did not go deep into the boundary of this method, and did not study the efficiency, benefits, effects and possible negative effects of this method. When this method exceeds a certain level, it is not only useless, but harmful.
? Suhomlinski said: "Nothing is more harmful than not wasting a minute in class and not doing active mental work for a moment." For individual students, its potential negative consequences are long-term.
? For a region, the involution of education is manifested as bad competition within the system, and its negative effects are also obvious. Under the condition that the total amount of education supply remains unchanged, internal competition will not bring about the improvement of students' overall income, but will form a theater effect. One person stands up to watch the play, and the people behind him are forced to stand up, but the overall viewing effect is even worse.
? This involution leads to collective irrationality, and ultimately damages the overall educational ecology in this area.
? The involution of education has no way out and is unsustainable.
We must think about how to fight the involution of education. The English word in the inner volume is evolution, and the corresponding English words are evolution and revolution.
The enlightenment to us is that reform and innovation are the road to involution of education. Never expect to change the reality with the existing system. If you want to change, you must create a new model.
? It is a change and innovation that cars replace carriages. The speed and comfort of a carriage are limited. If we only study how to improve the speed of carriages, we can only expect faster horses, and there will be no invention of cars. Automatic flushing toilet is an iteration of toilet paper. If we only consider how to improve the quality of toilet paper, there will be no innovation of automatic flushing.
? Education must also resist involution with iteration and innovation. At the school level, from the educational innovation that can be observed at present, the road of anti-involution is unfolding and becoming clear:
? From teaching to learning. The marginal benefit of teaching has reached the limit, and the energy contained in learning needs to be developed. From teaching design to autonomous learning design, pay attention to the cultivation of students' learning quality and learning ability; Because the dividend of teaching is limited, and the kinetic energy of learning is infinite.
? From external control to internal excitation. It is an eternal engine for students to start their own system in the interest, challenge and significance of learning. As President Li Xi said, you should pry the accelerator, not push the steering wheel. External force can only be pressure or thrust, and internal force is the driving force.
? From unified management to flexible teaching organization. From classification to individualization, we should respect each student's individualized learning path, provide flexible teaching time and space and elective courses, moderately break internal boundaries, cultivate self-discipline in freedom, and move from self-discipline to autonomy.
? From shunt elimination to inclusive education. Run an imperfect school, train a group of students with shortcomings, eliminate them step by step with inclusive growth and hedge utilitarian selection and elimination.