As an education professional who serves front-line parents and children, every time I mention "happy education" in China, I always feel like eating flies, which is particularly uncomfortable.
Regarding the education of children, I have interviewed many young parents with financial strength and high education. Many people will not hesitate to send their children abroad in the future, and the most important driving factor is "making children happy".
Under the guidance of the traditional education of "you can be the master if you suffer", our generation has experienced the feeling of growing up by beating and cursing to some extent, and there are many conflicts and unhappiness in our hearts, so when we have our own next generation, how eager we are to keep our children away from such pain. Many books on psychology and pedagogy have mentioned that if a child has experienced a painful childhood when he was a child, he is likely to have psychological problems such as personality disorder when he grows up.
Therefore, we must not let children have a painful childhood, but give them a happy childhood!
However, in fact, under such great competitive pressure in China society, is all this feasible?
It's too difficult!
It's too difficult!
We can make children happy and worry-free in childhood. But I can only look at the fierce competition and cruel survival of the fittest behind TA. Many parents used to uphold the concept of happy education and let TA grow up happily when their children were young (such as attending kindergarten in Montessori). However, when children enter primary school, there are all kinds of maladjustment, forcing parents to make a choice: happy or unhappy. Some began to pave the way for children to go abroad, some let them teach themselves at home, and some forced them to adapt to this cruel reality. ...
I remember Bi Daqian's heartfelt words in the play Tiger Mom, Cat Dad and Cat Mom: "Happy education will harm children."
Does this sentence make parents who are working hard for their children's happiness feel chilling? As an old teacher with decades of teaching experience, Bi Daqian's views are not arbitrary. He has trained many social talents with his methods. Isn't this "evidence"? I remember the host Luo Xin once said: "I don't believe that learning will be happy, and learning has always been associated with pain."
So, will happy education really hurt children?
In fact, there should be no right or wrong answer to the question.
Think about it, how do we want our children to live in the future?
Live with dignity? Live with dignity? Have a good life? ..... Maybe our answers are quite different, but I want to say that I agree with what Bi Daqian said: "Cultivate children to be strong in life", but I don't agree with his definition of "strong". In fact, we all want our children to be strong, but we have too many concerns to admit.
Qiang, this word is too heavy for China people. The "competition" we have experienced (even now we are still grabbing seats, toilets and parking spaces from time to time ...) tells us that the strong can "grab" what we want.
But if you catch all these, is it the strong one? The real strong should be those who can live every day no matter what life has given TA. Isn't it our duty to bring TA into this world without the consent of the children?
And many of our parents ignore this. In the constant swing of "cat education" and "tiger education", more and more of our children have become "freaks" with strong sense of competition but insufficient competitiveness (forgive me for using such a derogatory term, because if this group breeds in large numbers, we will really become more confused and feel powerless).
In fact, the truth of life is that there are both pain and happiness. Then why don't we restore this real thing to our children? A sterile and happy world is not good for children, and cruel experiences are not necessarily suitable for children.
So, what should we do?
Simply put, it is to let children face the real world. TA will encounter difficulties, and TA will meet "noble people". TA can face it or retreat ... but parents must be the strongest spiritual backing for their children. "Son, no matter what you will face, adversity or prosperity, we will give you unconditional love."
In real life, I met many school-age children. They go from kindergartens in happy paradise to schools in hell. The maladjustment in the first few years made them and their parents feel pain. In fact, in the process of learning, many times it is really painful. We should not deliberately beautify the pain of learning in order to encourage children, which will only make children feel incomprehensible. At the same time, don't deliberately avoid the pain of learning, which will only let children learn to escape. In many cases I have received, many parents will eventually choose to change their children to a relaxed school to avoid the various maladjustments that their children are currently facing. This does not solve the problem.
What we really need to do may be to let the children really experience the pain of learning and accompany TA to taste the bitterness of this life. Understanding and sympathizing with children is the first step.
The second step is to lend a helping hand and discuss ways to deal with the hardships of life with children. For example, how to overcome the pain in learning? It's like a child who is afraid of taking medicine and eventually wants to take medicine. It's just a matter of ways and means.
The third step is to confirm our unconditional love for TA to our children. Love is a child's strength to face pain. If children can accumulate full energy, then TA will definitely become a strong person in life.
The topic is here, and it may have nothing to do with "happy education". Actually, it is not. What I want to say is that happiness is our goal, but not our means. Only the strong in life can reach the end of happiness.